Chad Wheeler started at left tackle for four years at Southern Cal and wasn’t drafted in April.
Wheeler knows why. It’s not just his injury history. It’s a sordid past checkered with character concerns, personal issues and a 2015 altercation with police.
And so Wheeler knows he has a lot to prove, not just to disprove doubters but to validate the Giants’ trust in signing him and lining him up as Ereck Flowers’ primary backup at left tackle in training camp.
… medical professionals still cast doubts on portions of Brady’s routine. Earlier this year, a sports medicine doctor at the Lahey Hospital and Medical Center penned a rebuttal to Guerrero, who slammed the medical establishment in a Men’s Journal piece about the TB12 Sports Therapy Center in Patriot Place (Guerrero and Brady own the clinic together). In the article, Guerrero convinces writer Mike Chambers to walk on an antigravity treadmill, even though he’s recovering from ankle surgery. Guerrero claims Chambers’ surgeon “doesn’t care” if he recovers from his injury. All the surgeon wants, Guerrero says, is for Chambers to feel better.
Dr. Jessica Flynn, a self-proclaimed Patriots fanatic, took umbrage with Guerrero’s insults. “Guerrero functions in a different world than doctors. He doesn’t have to prove his therapies work, or even that they are safe,” she wrote. “The thing about functioning in a space like that is that it’s very easy to become cavalier.”
Flynn also challenged Brady and Guerrero to release studies that support their methods. Without research, she argues it’s impossible to apply the TB12 Method™ to the general public.
MEGAN RAPINOE doesn’t answer the question at first. Perhaps she misheard it, or maybe she doesn’t want to brag.
Dancing around it, she first talks about how she’s improved her strength and her diet. Then she explains how she’s recovering better between games than in the past. Eventually, though, she gets around to a more direct answer and decides that if she has to rank it, she’s in the best form of her life.
“I think this is the longest streak of consistency that I’ve had—the best that I’ve played,” said Rapinoe, speaking to the media after the United States women’s national team’s 4-3 comeback win over Brazil on Sunday. “Obviously, we’ll see when the big championships come around. What you can do then is really where you make your money.”
This is an interesting time for Borussia Dortmund. After finishing third in the Bundesliga last season behind not only Bayern Munich but also fizzy drink-funded upstarts RB Leipzig, internal machinations saw coach Thomas Tuchel depart and Peter Bosz arrive from Ajax. How the first-team reacts to the change and the possible upheaval will be fascinating.
But beyond the concerns of the first-team, Dortmund are developing a reputation as a top coaching production line. Jurgen Klopp’s move to Liverpool showcased a fully formed, title-winning manager going from one big club to another, something that happens all the time. But the more interesting personnel are found further down the Dortmund system.
David Wagner, who managed the reserve team for four years, has taken Huddersfield into the Premier League. His successor Daniel Farke was appointed as Norwich City’s boss this summer. Last season, the club’s former Under-19s coach Hannes Wolf brought Stuttgart back into the Bundesliga in his first season, despite only arriving there in September.
… Win a little, and the culture might mean something on the broader market. Word will trickle out about happy moods and healthy bodies. The Nets provide the VIP sports science treatment to every roster player. They invested heavily in reliable technology, from Delos wobble boards that measure balance and power to lower-body exercise machines that highlight muscle fatigue that may require rest.
Atkinson and Marks put almost everyone on a minutes restriction. Players found the quick hooks frustrating at first, especially when they were hot, but eventually they got used to it because Atkinson was transparent about what was coming. Older players felt fresher. “I could play another five years doing what they do,” said Randy Foye, who spent last season in Brooklyn.
Every player does individual skill work before and after practices — “vitamins,” in Brooklyn’s adopted Spurs parlance. Chefs prepare customized meals. The Nets will experiment with game-day Amtraks from Brooklyn to nearby cities instead of arriving late the night before. Players fill out daily questionnaires about sleep, soreness and diet. “They even track the color of your piss,” Joe Harris said.
… Some worry that our kids’ paralyzing fear of failure is a symptom of coddling or unreasonable expectations, and has once again raised the question of whether modern life has brought with it unique psychological challenges.
An opinion in the British Medical Journal suggests otherwise. Writing back in 1906, the author laments the reluctance of professionals and peers to admit their own stumbles, and encourages sharing experiences of which we may be less than proud.
Sleep could be the next frontier of sports science, with Europe’s top-flight teams turning to experts to recharge their multimillion-pound assets and gain a competitive advantage on the field. As reported by Mark Bailey of The Telegraph, teams such as Manchester United, Chelsea and Real Madrid are recruiting “sleep coaches” to help their players snooze better.
Why? Because, as Bailey put it, “Despite the boom in sports science services designed to improve every component of an athlete’s life, from nutrition and hydration to psychological wellbeing and physical conditioning, sleep is a subject which has often been neglected.”
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Studies published in the World Journal of Biological Psychiatry agree, stating, “Sleep is crucial for psychological functioning and daily performance.”
… MIT Sloan Management Review: What prompted you to investigate people’s acceptance or lack thereof of algorithms in decision-making?
Dietvorst: When I was a Ph.D. student, some of my favorite papers were old works by [the late psychology scholar and behavioral decision research expert] Robyn Dawes showing that algorithms outperform human experts at making certain types of predictions. The algorithms that Dawes was using were very simple and oftentimes not even calibrated properly.
A lot of others followed up Dawes’s work and showed that algorithms beat humans in many domains — in fact, in most of the domains that have been tested. There’s all this empirical work showing algorithms are the best alternative, but people still aren’t using them.
So we have this disconnect between what the evidence says people should do and what people are doing, and no one was researching why.
What’s an example of these simple algorithms that were already proving to be superior?
Dietvorst: One of the areas was predicting student performance during an admission review. Dawes built a simple model: Take four or five variables — GPA, test scores, etc. — assign them equal weight, average them on a numerical scale, and use that result as your prediction of how students will rank against each other in actual performance. That model — which doesn’t even try to determine the relative value of the different variables — significantly outperforms admissions experts in predicting a student’s performance.
… I’ve been researching generational differences for 25 years, starting when I was a 22-year-old doctoral student in psychology. Typically, the characteristics that come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum. Beliefs and behaviors that were already rising simply continue to do so. Millennials, for instance, are a highly individualistic generation, but individualism had been increasing since the Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. I had grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and valleys. Then I began studying Athena’s generation.
Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data—some reaching back to the 1930s—I had never seen anything like it.
Biometrics, or the measurement and analysis of unique physical or behavioral characteristics as a means of verifying personal identity, is being explored across financial services. The insurance industry is no exception, as carriers work to familiarize themselves with the latest emerging technology that encompasses everything from fingerprints to voice to facial structure.
Donald Light, director of Celent America’s P&C insurance practice, says insurers have some catching up to do compared to banking, technology, and security firms. However, he expects insurance use of biometrics “will grow probably pretty quickly over the next two to three years.” That includes use cases around cybersecurity, ease of access and customer experience.
“With this technology, members can use something they are – like their face or voice – to provide an additional layer of security to verify their identity,” said Gary McAlum, chief security officer at USAA.
… The tension between the benign, putative use of collected data and its potential for misuse could redefine the relationship between employers, employees and insurers, said Edward McNicholas, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP. McNicholas counsels companies on data privacy.
The degree to which companies can successfully collect data pivots on trust. Companies must be transparent about what data they’re collecting and how they will use it, said Bill Spiers, vice president, risk control consulting practice leader, Lockton Companies. Spiers says pre-loss data technologies are “exciting tools to prevent injury” but he sees the potential for litigation if they’re misused.
“If you get buy-in from workers, compliance isn’t a problem. When you bait and switch, that gets to be a problem in the workplace. Responsible companies embrace the fact that their employees are their most precious asset,” Spiers said. “They want employees to go home as they left.”
… It’s not clear why sales are up so significantly. Some people have suggested that compatibility with AirPods have helped sales. It also probably helps that fitness trackers like Fitbit are struggling and Jawbone is going out of business. Also, since the release dates were staggered, a September 2016 watch is more current than an April 2015 watch was in the same period last year.
At Nokia Bell Labs, our mission is to invent the future and solve the greatest human need challenges 5-10+ years out. We do this by applying “future back” thinking where we predict the intersection of technology with the evolution of human communication/interaction needs.
One of the greatest human needs of our generation is for more free time. We spend far too much time creating and tolerating inefficiencies. We believe the solution is human-centric technology.
Technology should enable people to reach higher into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs–towards self-actualization and transcendence–rather than focus on physiological and safety needs at the bottom of the pyramid which most of us do today. Technology should enable us all to live better lives, spend more time with our loved ones, and break down today’s communication and cultural barriers by sharing emotions and experiences.
If you were monitoring the activity-tracking industry lately, you’d detect a condition somewhere between a weak pulse and full cardiac arrest. The stock price of market leader Fitbit (fit, +15.19%)—known for wristbands that count users’ steps, hours of sleep, and more—tumbled from a peak of about $48, reached shortly after the company went public in 2015, to just over $5 today. Its most recent quarterly sales were 40% lower than the equivalent period a year ago. Meanwhile, in July, Jawbone, maker of the Up wrist tracker and a onetime startup darling flush with VC funding and a $3 billion valuation, is liquidating its assets.
Does that mean the trackers were mere fad gizmos, somewhere between a GoPro and a fidget spinner, destined to live out their lives in the bottom of a drawer? Certainly, there’s more than a dollop of truth to that notion: Of Fitbit’s more than 50.2 million registered users, 23.2 million remain active—an impressive number to be sure but one that still means millions of abandoned devices. The first generation of fitness trackers has largely run its course, it seems.
Now the race is on to come up with the next breakthrough. And this time, players much bigger than Fitbit may enter the fray. Google, Apple, and a number of pharmaceutical companies are trying to develop the next generation of wearables, which can track medical metrics in addition to fitness data.
With the march of three true outcomes — walks, strikeouts, and home runs — the sport has been pushed to its efficient extreme. MLB has undergone a quiet revolution without anyone stopping to ask the question: Is this what we really want?