… Geron Sr. will entice NFL teams for many reasons. He is still young, 21 until September. He is tall and quick, with huge hands (10 3/4 inches) and a long wingspan (82 3/4 inches) measured at the combine Wednesday.
Perhaps most importantly, he is durable, having started every game at Louisville. The offensive linemen underwent X-rays on Tuesday, and Christian said it was the first X-ray of his life.
“That’s one of the main questions they ask, about injuries or background and stuff,” Christian said. “I feel like that helps me a lot, separates me from a lot of the other guys, just because a lot of linemen have knee problems and different knee injuries like that.”
… “I wanted a truth-teller, somebody to tell me, ‘You gotta do this, and you gotta do that,’ completely unfiltered,” Kerr says. “Somebody whose experience and wisdom made everyone stand up and listen. I knew right then that we were talking to the right guy, and I’m just thankful we have him because he’s been instrumental in all that we’ve done.
PLOS One; Joanna S. Zeiger and Robert S. Zeiger from
Mental toughness in endurance athletes, while an important factor for success, has been scarcely studied. An online survey was used to examine eight mental toughness factors in endurance athletes. The study aim was to determine mental toughness profiles via latent profile analysis in endurance athletes and whether associations exist between the latent profiles and demographics and sports characteristics. Endurance athletes >18 years of age were recruited via social media outlets (n = 1245, 53% female). Mental toughness was measured using the Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire (SMTQ), Psychological Performance Inventory-Alternative (PPI-A), and self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE). A three-class solution emerged, designated as high mental toughness (High MT), moderate mental toughness (Moderate MT) and low mental toughness (Low MT). ANOVA tests showed significant differences between all three classes on all 8 factors derived from the SMTQ, PPI-A and the RSE. There was an increased odds of being in the High MT class compared to the Low MT class for males (OR = 1.99; 95% CI, 1.39, 2.83; P<0.001), athletes who were over 55 compared to those who were 18–34 (OR = 2.52; 95% CI, 1.37, 4.62; P<0.01), high sports satisfaction (OR = 8.17; 95% CI, 5.63, 11.87; P<0.001), and high division placement (OR = 2.18; 95% CI, 1.46,3.26; P<0.001). The data showed that mental toughness latent profiles exist in endurance athletes. High MT is associated with demographics and sports characteristics. Mental toughness screening in athletes may help direct practitioners with mental skills training.
The objective of this study was to investigate the injury incidence and patterns in elite youth football at a category 1 Premier League Academy before and after the introduction of a new development strategy, the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP). A prospective study was performed over six consecutive seasons encompassing three years before and after the introduction of the EPPP. The findings revealed a most likely moderate increase in total exposure per player per season when the post-EPPP football exposure (640.86 ± 83.25 hours per player per year) was compared with the pre-EPPP football exposure (539.08 ± 71.59). The total injury incidence pre-EPPP was 3.0/1000 hours compared to 2.1/1000 hours post-EPPP (rate ratio 1.43). 6% of all injuries were re-injuries (20.24 ± 33.43 days) but did not result in a substantially longer absence (16.56 ± 15.77 days). The injury burden decreased for the U12-U15 from pre- to post-EPPP, whereas the injury burden increased for the U16-U18 (respectively 125 and 47% higher). These findings suggest that following the introduction of the EPPP there has been a reduction in injuries in the younger age groups U12-U15 but in the older age groups U16-U18 there has been an increase in the severity of the injuries sustained at this club.
This is a talk by Josh Tenenbaum for course 6.S099: Artificial General Intelligence. This class is free and open to everyone. Our goal is to take an engineering approach to exploring possible paths toward building human-level intelligence for a better world.
A new biotech device made with gold can generate electricity when attached to moving body parts. This technology could eventually be used to fuel wearable devices and even eliminate the need to carry device chargers.
The nanogenerator tab uses triboelectric charges to generate electricity. These charges are produced when certain materials come in contact with other materials. Static electricity is one example of a triboelectric charge.
Researchers at the have successfully etched edible circuits onto the surface of food, paving the way for RFID tagged edibles that can help us track food from farm to tummy. The project, which uses something called laser-induced graphene (LIG), is a process that creates a “foam made out of tiny cross-linked graphene flakes” that can carry electricity through carbon-rich products like bread, potatoes, and cardboard.
“Overall, the process demonstrated that LIG can be burned into paper, cardboard, cloth, coal, potatoes, coconuts, toasted bread and other foods,” wrote the researchers who hail from Rice University’s Smalley-Curl Institute and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
North Carolina State University, NC State News from
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new technique that allows them to print circuits on flexible, stretchable substrates using silver nanowires. The advance makes it possible to integrate the material into a wide array of electronic devices.
Silver nanowires have drawn significant interest in recent years for use in many applications, ranging from prosthetic devices to wearable health sensors, due to their flexibility, stretchability and conductive properties. While proof-of-concept experiments have been promising, there have been significant challenges to printing highly integrated circuits using silver nanowires.
Silver nanoparticles can be used to print circuits, but the nanoparticles produce circuits that are more brittle and less conductive than silver nanowires. But conventional techniques for printing circuits don’t work well with silver nanowires; the nanowires often clog the printing nozzles.
“Our approach uses electrohydrodynamic printing, which relies on electrostatic force to eject the ink from the nozzle and draw it to the appropriate site on the substrate,” says Jingyan Dong, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor in NC State’s Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering. “This approach allows us to use a very wide nozzle – which prevents clogging – while retaining very fine printing resolution.”
Overuse injuries are reported to account for nearly 50% of sports injuries and, due to their progressive nature and the uncertainty regarding date of onset, are difficult to define and categorize. Comparing the capture rates of overuse injuries between injury-surveillance systems and medical records can clarify completeness and determinants of how overuse injuries are represented in injury-surveillance data. OBJECTIVE:
To estimate the capture rate of time-loss medical-attention overuse injuries in men’s and women’s soccer in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance System (NCAA ISS) compared with medical records maintained by certified athletic trainers and assess the differences in completeness of capture and factors contributing to those differences. DESIGN:
Descriptive epidemiology study. SETTING:
Fifteen NCAA institutions provided NCAA ISS and medical record data from men’s and women’s soccer programs from 2005-2006 through 2007-2008. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS:
National Collegiate Athletic Association men’s and women’s soccer players. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S):
Time-loss medical-attention overuse injuries were defined as injuries with an overuse mechanism of injury in the NCAA ISS or medical records. Capture rates were calculated as the proportion of total overuse injuries classified as having overuse mechanisms in the NCAA ISS and the NCAA ISS and medical records combined. RESULTS:
The NCAA ISS captured 63.7% of the total estimated overuse mechanisms of injury in men’s and women’s soccer players. The estimated proportion of overuse injury mechanisms captured by both the NCAA ISS and medical records was 37.1%. The NCAA ISS captured more overuse injury mechanisms in men’s soccer than in women’s soccer (79.2% versus 45.0%, χ2 = 9.60; P = .002) athletes. CONCLUSIONS:
From 2005-2006 through 2007-2008, the NCAA ISS captured only two thirds of time-loss medical-attention overuse mechanisms of injury in men’s and women’s soccer players. Future researchers should consider supplementing injury-surveillance data with a clinical record review to capture the burden of these injuries.
Nature Research Microbiology Community journal from
Where does our gut microbiome come from? In recent years this has become a much sought after question. While we know that our microbiomes are similar to those of our parents, we don’t know if this is because we share the same genes or because we lived in the same house when growing up. This question may even have practical implications. For example, if our genes exert a strong influence on our microbiome, then microbiome transplants may require finding a genetically-compatible donor, which complicates the deployment of these techniques. Hence, the classic question of nature-versus-nurture has deep clinical implications with respect to our microbiome.
We were therefore very excited by the opportunity to investigate this nature-versus-nurture question hands-on, based on a cohort of ~1000 Israeli individuals with genetic and microbiome profiles that we collected as part of our large-scale personalized nutrition project.
Heart rate variability (HRV) is a common measure of the autonomic modulation of the heart. To ensure accuracy, various external factors known to affect HRV such as medication use and concurrent illnesses are frequently controlled during measurement. Despite extensive recognition of the importance of such confounds, the influence of ostensibly innocuous daily activities such as drinking and eating have received remarkably little attention in comparison. Water consumption provokes a powerful pressor stimulus that is buffered by changes in cardiovagal outflow yet it is sporadically controlled during experimentation. This paper examines the dose-dependent magnitude of the effect of water on HRV, the loss of HRV during a common attentional task after water consumption, and the typical scenario of water and mixed meal ingestion. Water affects HRV in a dose-dependent manner, and exaggerates attentionally- mediated HRV reduction. This effect is antagonised by simultaneous mixed meal consumption, which strongly increases cardiac sympathetic activity. Water consumption during or previous to HRV measurement should be carefully controlled, if possible. Considering the diverse nature of experimental protocols and populations, we suggest a hierarchy of methods to control for water consumption in HRV research.
The Times & The Sunday Times (UK), Matthew Syed from
… After all it is only successful managers who survive long enough for the club to be described as stable in the first place. If an underperforming manager was given the latitude to keep on going, we may see that stability is not the panacea it sometimes seems. They might just keep on losing.
And this brings me to the curious reign of Arsène Wenger. His early days at Arsenal were stellar, but the club have failed to win the title for 14 years, and may finish out of the top four for a second consecutive season. This means that Wenger is one of the few managers given time to turn around sustained underperformance — and who has failed.
Yesterday, Arsenal were comprehensively outplayed by Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final, a match that showcased all of the defects that have plagued them for years. This is why Wenger, perhaps more than any other manager, reveals the dangers in the fetishisation of stability.
… We’ll start, though, with the quarterbacks, and how far each guy has to go. The interesting thing about this group is the distance each needs to travel as players and people (with the exception of Mayfield as a player) hasn’t changed much since the NFL world was buzzing about the quarterbacks six months ago.
So those guys arrived here Wednesday, and they won’t yet be able to answer the questions that have followed them for the better part of a half-year (or longer). But they can give teams some level of confidence that a corner-turning could be coming in specific areas. Let’s dive in…
One of my favorite moments from the 2018 Winter Olympics was the US team of Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall winning the women’s cross-country team sprint. In this episode of How the Race Was Won, Cosmo Catalano deftly breaks down how the pair did it, from start to finish (along with a little social commentary about how shitty parental leave policy is in the US). As Matt Haughey said, “This is a better explanation of the women’s sprint cross-country ski race than any Olympics TV coverage anywhere.”