England’s Lionesses have condemned the “unacceptable” situation at Birmingham Women after players at the club raised a series of complaints with the board.
The Football Association has opened an investigation after City’s squad sent a letter to the club’s hierarchy highlighting a lack of support for them compared to that given to the men’s team.
The complaints have been reported to include players earning “less than the minimum wage” and delays over treatment for injured players, while a lack of access to the training-ground gym, changing rooms and travel arrangements for away fixtures were other issues raised.
FC Bayern extended their gap atop the Bundesliga to 7 points over the weekend, beating RB Leipzig in a match that will surely see the 9th consecutive Meisterschale remain in Bavaria. In a tight affair that hung in the balance until the very end, it was a goal from one of Bayern’s most reliable performers which ultimately made the difference: Leon Goretzka.
A player who less than 18 months ago was rumored to be on the chopping block has now flourished into an integral figure at FCB. Though his trophy cabinet speaks of a seasoned veteran, at just 26 years old Leon Goretzka has yet to enter his prime and continues to develop each season despite already performing at the absolute pinnacle of club football.
In this piece we take a deep dive into the Bochum native, looking at what makes him such a crucial figure for Bayern Munich’s renewed title aspirations, and Jogi Löw’s hopes of a successful farewell at this summer’s European Championships.
Sports organizations governing youth activities from soccer to swimming to gymnastics to baseball have a duty to protect athletes from sexual and other abuse, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In a case involving girls aspiring to be Olympians who were molested by their martial arts coach for years, the court held that USA Taekwondo could be held liable. But the court cleared the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee from liability because it did not have a close enough relationship with the coach or athletes.
With the rollout of coronavirus vaccines picking up, there’s a lot of talk about resuming our pre-pandemic lives. But although many of us may welcome such a return, we also may have made changes over the past year — such as prioritizing our health, creating new family traditions and learning new skills — that we’d like to carry forward.
As the world starts whirring again and people return to offices, schools and schedules, the risk of lapsing into our pre-pandemic ways is real. “We’re going to be faced with two sets of habits: pre-pandemic and during the pandemic. And we’ll have to choose which to repeat,” said Wendy Wood, a research psychologist at the University of Southern California and author of “Good Habits, Bad Habits.” “It’s usually easier to act habitually, so we may end up returning to what we’ve done before the pandemic.”
So, “don’t leave your habits to chance,” said BJ Fogg, a behavior scientist, the founder and director of Stanford University’s Behavior Design Lab, and author of “Tiny Habits.” “Now, as things shift back, it’s a wonderful opportunity to be deliberate about what habits you want to keep and what new habits you want to form.”
Running is almost as mental as it is physical. No matter how innately gifted you are or how hard you train, it’s rarely your legs, lungs, or heart that holds you back in this sport; rather it’s your mind, hardwired as it is to shield you from pain, injury, and overexertion.
Elite runners are not only blazing fast, but also experts at managing pain, pushing limits, and synching their physical and mental efforts. Here are key strategies gleaned from six professionals — whose specialties range from 1,500 meters to ultramarathons — on using our minds to get the most from our bodies.
EurekAlert! Science News, National Research Council of Science & Technology (South Korea) from
… The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), or KIST, announced that a research team led by Director Jin-Sang Kim of the Jeonbuk Institute of Advanced Composite Materials has developed a high-efficiency flexible thermoelectric device that is capable of autonomously generating some of the electricity required for its operation from body heat. The device developed by the team features enhanced thermal insulation capabilities, made possible through the fabrication of the flexible silicone compound (PDMS) into a sponge-like configuration, which was then used as a framework for innovatively enhancing the device’s performance.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Junfei Xia, Hongrong Yang, Michelle Mu, Nicholas Micovic, Kira E. Poskanzer, James R. Monaghan, Heather A. Clark from
Mapping and measuring neurotransmitter release in vivo provides critical neurological insight into animal behavior and pathology. Acetylcholine, a pleiotropic neurotransmitter, impacts cardiovascular, cognitive, and other physiological functions. To circumvent genetic manipulation and provide high sensitivity as well as temporal and spatial resolution, we developed a DNA-based enzymatic nanosensor for real-time monitoring of acetylcholine release in the PNS of living mice. The nanosensor rapidly responds to endogenous acetylcholine release in a dose-dependent and reversible manner, providing spatial mapping of signal transmission within a single ganglion when combined with advanced image analysis. The nanosensor expands the analytical toolbox for detecting PNS neurotransmission but will also be applicable for the CNS in multiple species, enabling elucidation of fundamental neurological and neuropathological pathways.
With COVID-19 testing becoming more available and more vaccines being administered, the NBA expects all arenas to be at full capacity next season and is hopeful that it can safely welcome additional fans into arenas this season, league sources said.
A key aspect toward that effort is the NBA’s new multiyear leaguewide partnership with Clear, a biometric screening company known for its expedited security process at hundreds of airports worldwide. The partnership makes Clear’s COVID-19 health screening technology available to all 30 teams in their NBA arenas, and it’s expected to help facilitate more fans returning to games, though it’s up to each team how to use the technology.
The partnership, which is in effect, is expected to be announced as soon as Wednesday morning, according to league sources. One-third of the league — including the Orlando Magic, San Antonio Spurs and Atlanta Hawks — has already been using Clear’s Health Pass program, which includes a combination of health surveys and secure linking to COVID-19 lab results and vaccination records, for their employee or fan safety protocols in-arena.
The Vancouver Canucks said 25 players and coaches have tested positive in a COVID-19 outbreak involving a variant of the virus.
The team said Wednesday that 21 players, including three from the taxi squad, and four members of the coaching staff have tested positive, and one other player is considered a close contact.
“This is a stark reminder of how quickly the virus can spread and its serious impact, even among healthy, young athletes,” the team said in a statement.
… The make-up of the gut microbiome is influenced by many factors, including how the person was born (vaginal or caesarean delivery), the use of drugs (especially antibiotics), smoking habits, alcohol consumption, stress levels, age and — most obviously — diet. Remarkably little, however, is known about how exercise affects the microbiome, or vice versa. Although the field is in its infancy, researchers are beginning to glimpse a relationship, along with potential mechanisms.
A frequent finding is that fitness is associated with greater microbial diversity. One 2016 study2 that used 16S rRNA gene sequencing found that, in 39 healthy adults, cardiorespiratory fitness correlated with microbial diversity. This was the case even after factors such as diet were accounted for. Variation in cardiorespiratory fitness was better than sex, age, body mass index (BMI) and diet at predicting the degree of species diversity in participants’ guts.
Dawn Staley has been the women’s basketball coach at South Carolina since 2008 and led the Gamecocks to the 2017 national championship. A three-time gold medalist as a player, she will coach Team USA at the Tokyo Games this summer. Staley is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. She spoke with USA TODAY Sports about how the conversations ignited during the three weeks of the 2021 women’s NCAA Tournament can — and should — be turned into action.
For 3 decades we have tracked and analyzed the quantity and quality of coverage of women’s and men’s sports in televised news and highlights shows. In this paper, we report on our most recent iteration of the longitudinal study, which now includes an examination of online sports newsletters and social media. The study reveals little change in the quantitative apportionment of coverage of women’s and men’s sports over the past 30 years. Men’s sports—especially the “Big Three” of basketball, football and baseball—still receive the lion’s share of the coverage, whether in-season or out of season. When a women’s sports story does appear, it is usually a case of “one and done,” a single women’s sports story obscured by a cluster of men’s stories that precede it, follow it, and are longer in length. Social media posts and online sports newsletters’ coverage, though a bit more diverse in some ways, mostly reflected these same patterned gender asymmetries. Gender-bland sexism continued as the dominant pattern in 2019 TV news and highlights’ stories on women’s sports. Three themes of this “gender-bland” coverage include: 1) nationalism, 2) asymmetrical gender marking coupled with local parochialism, and 3) community service/ charitable contributions. [full text]
The National Women’s Soccer League and the NWSL Players Association have begun negotiations on the league’s first collective bargaining agreement.
“The sustainability of our League is inextricably linked to the stability of players’ careers,” players association executive director Meghann Burke said in a prepared statement Wednesday. “Through this CBA, we seek to secure stability, equity, and longevity of a playing career in NWSL for all players.”
The collective bargaining process began in late 2020, the league said. The two sides had already worked together on issues including player health and safety and pay ahead of last summer’s Challenge Cup, played in a bubble in Utah. The NWSL was the first professional U.S. team sports league to return amid the coronavirus pandemic. Players who opted out of the tournament for personal reasons were still guaranteed salaries and insurance.