If Amanda Kessel does nothing else in her storied career, she’s already done a rare public service in the world of sport.
She’s spoken often and openly about concussions.
Athletes and their teams are usually happy to talk about ACL injuries, or torn rotator cuffs; it’s a badge of honor to be hurt and then fight to return to play.
… Even if it is an isolated ACL tear, he is unlikely to make an Adrian Peterson-like recovery for the beginning of the next season.
Basketball is a very ACL-dependent sport with continuous running, jumping and cutting. Football is very situational with many starts and stops.
Besides, one has to play both ways in the NBA. It is easier to play offense and dictate moves than play defense and react to cuts. This is why it was unfair to compare Derrick Rose’s return to play with Peterson’s. It is easier for an NBA big man than point guard, but Porzingis is a hybrid.
When people try to describe Kylian Mbappe, they usually compare him to Thierry Henry: the child of a poor Parisian satellite town, a winger supreme both on the square inch and in a 20-yard sprint, who went from AS Monaco to greatness.
But try that story on Mbappe’s youth coaches and they’re outraged. In their dingy office in Bondy, a bus ride from rich Paris but a world away, Antonio Riccardi and Jean-François Suner shake their heads and take turns shouting out protests: “Nothing like Henry!” “More Eden Hazard.” “Robinho.” “Neymar.” “A dribbler, a creator.”
… The key is to realize that Kerr isn’t coaching; he’s building a bond. Let’s look more closely at how Kerr does it. Here’s what he says in one of the exchanges:
Love it. One of the things I love about you is you’re two for 11, and you have no hesitation about shooting a sixty footer… nobody in the league does that… You have so much confidence in yourself, and within games like this, you turn it on like that. That’s awesome. Amazing. I wish I had your confidence.
Brains receive input from the outside world, their neurons do something to that input, and create an output. That output may be a thought (I want curry for dinner); it may be an action (make curry); it may be a change in mood (yay curry!). Whatever the output, that “something” is a transformation of some form of input (a menu) to output (“chicken dansak, please”). And if we think of a brain as a device that transforms inputs to outputs then, inexorably, the computer becomes our analogy of choice.
For some this analogy is merely a useful rhetorical device; for others it is a serious idea. But the brain isn’t a computer. Each neuron is a computer. Your cortex contains 17 billion computers.
Overuse injuries are a common issue for athletes,[1–3] and preventing them is a priority in our field. Paying attention to the onset of the overuse injuries is a prevention strategy. The injuries may initially present as small pains that can easily be ignored and not addressed until significant pain or impairment is present.[1] When symptoms, such as pain appear gradually, they should be taken as warning signs by the athlete and acted upon – but this is considered difficult to do in comparison to sudden onset. It really comes down to listening to one’s body and taking any kind of pain seriously.
They have developed a small metallic tab, called a triboelectric nanogenerator which, when attached to the body, can generate electricity from simple movements – including bending a finger.
The tab is only 1.5cm long and 1cm wide, and can deliver a maximum voltage of 124 volts, a current of 10 microamps and a power density of 0.22 millwatts per square centimetre.
This is certainly not enough to rapidly charge a smartphone, but these are the early days of the invention’s development, and it was able to power 48 LED lights simultaneously.
The collaborative research project was led by teams at the University at Buffalo in the US and the Institute of Semiconductors (IoP) at the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS).
University of Washington engineers have turned tissue paper – similar to toilet tissue – into a new kind of wearable sensor that can detect a pulse, a blink of an eye and other human movement. The sensor is light, flexible and inexpensive, with potential applications in health care, entertainment and robotics.
The technology, described in a paper published in January in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies, shows that by tearing tissue paper that’s loaded with nanocomposites and breaking the paper’s fibers, the paper acts as a sensor. It can detect a heartbeat, finger force, finger movement, eyeball movement and more, said Jae-Hyun Chung, a UW associate professor of mechanical engineering and senior author of the research.
“The major innovation is a disposable wearable sensor made with cheap tissue paper,” said Chung. “When we break the specimen, it will work as a sensor.”
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) — Lightweight, low-cost and flexible electronic systems are the key to next-generation smart technologies for military as well as consumer and commercial applications.
An Air Force Research Laboratory-led project in conjunction with NextFlex, America’s Flexible Hybrid Electronics Institute, has resulted in the first ever, functional samples of flexible Arduino circuit board systems made by using a flexible hybrid electronics manufacturing process, setting the stage for smart technologies for the internet of things and sensor applications like wearable devices.
“The possibilities for FHE (flexible hybrid electronics) technology are virtually limitless,” said Dr. Benjamin Leever, AFRL Advanced Development Team leader and NextFlex government chief technology officer. “Proving the manufacturability of this technology through an open-source platform will expand FHE’s reach even further by providing everyone from industrial product developers, to high school students, the opportunity to innovate on new electronics concepts.”
Objective Several lower limb tendinopathy treatment modalities involve identification of pathological paratendinous or intratendinous neovascularisation to target proposed co-location of painful neoneuralisation. The ability to reliably locate and assess the degree of neovascularity is therefore clinically important. The Modified Ohberg Score (MOS) is frequently used to determine degree of neovascularity, but reliability has yet to be established among Sport and Exercise Medicine (SEM) consultants. This study aims to determine inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of an SEM consultant cohort when assessing neovascularity using the 5-point MOS.
Method Eleven participants (7 male and 4 female) provided 16 symptomatic Achilles and patella tendons. These were sequentially examined using power Doppler (PD) enabled ultrasound (US) imaging by 6 SEM consultants who rated neovascular changes seen using the MOS. Representative digital scan images were saved for rescoring 3 weeks later. Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of the MOS was examined using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Kappa Agreement scores.
Results Neovascular changes were reported in 65.6% of 96 scans undertaken. ICC for inter-rater reliability was 0.86 and Fleiss Kappa 0.52. ICC for intra-rater reliability was 0.95 and Weighted Kappa 0.91.
Conclusions Neovascular changes were present in two-thirds of symptomatic tendons. Excellent SEM consultant inter-rater and intra-rater reliability was demonstrated. These findings support the use of PD-enabled US to assess neovascularity by appropriately experienced SEM consultants. Furthermore, future interventional research using a similarly experienced SEM consultant cohort can be undertaken with assurance that assessment of neovascularity will be reliable. [full text]
… “I love Erik,” said former Rays / now Cubs manager Joe Maddon. “He’s a star. Erik Neander is a star. The thing that stands out to me about him was brilliance. Absolutely brilliant. He presents his work and he’s never offended by your comeback, your retort. He’s got a real good level-headedness about him. And a real strong belief in what he believes in, which I love. Because if he told you something, it was vetted. It got to that point, “If Erik is saying it, I’m in.’
“He’s a great listener. And he doesn’t act like he knows everything. But he knows everything. … He’s going to be a GM for a long while. And a good
one.”
Neander’s dream to make an impact as a player ended basically during his junior year at Oneonta High in upstate New York, not far from baseball’s most hallowed grounds in Cooperstown, where he worked summers in Sal’s Pizzeria. He hurt his right shoulder diving – for a basketball. Several surgeries couldn’t get it right, and despite hitting .516 as a senior, a seemingly solid opportunity to play Division I college ball disappeared.
He went to Virginia Tech, anyway, and tried hard to shake the baseball bug he first got growing up in Silver Spring, Md., an Orioles fan and Cal Ripken fanatic.
… It’s impossible to ignore how the advances in the way basketball is played and players train year-round have contributed to wear and tear.
The NBA is playing faster than it has in over two decades, as pace has increased in each of the last six seasons. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how much the helter-skelter style of play has influenced injury rates, if at all. But each game packs more trips up and down the court and quicker turnarounds than we have seen since Gary Payton was a rookie.
“Of all the sports we study, elite-level basketball is the most demanding, period,” says Dr. Marcus Elliott, who runs P3 Peak Performance in Santa Barbara, California, a training facility that many pro athletes visit. “There are still players who rely overly on the preseason to get into game shape. With so much of the sports science conversation in the NBA focused on rest and player load, I worry that players may equate offseason rest with longevity.”
The days of the high school baseball blowout may be over.
A new mercy rule was enacted Friday by the executive committee of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association. It says scholastic baseball games will be ended after five innings (or four-and-a-half if the home team is ahead) if there is a 10-run deficit. The rule would go into effect this season, with the opening pitch only two months away.
Old-school fans and traditionalists say the new legislation ruins the game, removes any opportunity for heroic late-game rallies and embraces a movement to diminish hurt feelings that may arise with a blowout. The prevailing notion, though, is it saves pitchers’ arms and falls in line with lower pitch counts mandated by a state rule enacted in 2017.
“I think it’s only because of the pitch counts,″ said Saugerties coach Mike Pugliese.
The fact that you can afford to purchase a Stradivarius is never going to guarantee your status as a violin virtuoso, although it certainly isn’t going to do you any harm.
In the pursuit of excellence in whatever pastime, profession or passion that lights your fire you always want to be blessed with the very best of raw materials that will assist you on your journey to the very top.
Which brings me to the subject of Pep Guardiola and one of the issues that has been discussed more often lately. Could Pep do what he has done at Manchester City without the financial resources he has behind him?
1/ So many of our decisions are influenced by past precedent/norms. How many NBA/NHL/MLB teams have dedicated drivers on staff? None I’m aware of. How many MLS clubs? Many. Why? Because European football clubs have drivers (Roma had several!), so it’s “what you do” in soccer