Applied Sports Science newsletter – November 28, 2018

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for November 28, 2018

 

Believe the hype: Matthijs de Ligt, Frenkie de Jong are next big stars on radar of Barca, Man City

ESPN FC, Simon Kuper from

… The two youngsters have helped spark the resurgence of Ajax, which this month could qualify for the Champions League knockout rounds for the first time since 2003, and Oranje, which beat Germany 3-0 at home in the UEFA Nations League last month and plays the return in Gelsenkirchen on Nov. 19. Yet even many well-informed foreign fans haven’t yet heard of either player. That should change by next summer, when each is expected to join a giant club.

De Jong was born in 1997 in the southern Dutch village of Arkel and was named after the British band Frankie Goes to Hollywood. His family was soccer-mad (his grandfather has a referee’s whistle carved into his gravestone), and the boy grew up playing on the village streets, often with an undersized ball, as recommended by Cruyff, the father of Dutch soccer. From age 8, he spent a decade in the academy of local professional club Willem II, a tiny kid with a mop of blond hair dribbling from central midfield. He frequently frustrated his coaches. When he got into Willem II’s first-team squad, the coach, Jurgen Streppel, a devotee of passion and hard work, would scream at him. De Jong didn’t care. He was devoted to soccer — “I think I was the last teenager to get WhatsApp,” he has said — but he insisted on playing it his way.

 

Adrian Peterson Is Still the Same AP

Bleacher Report, Master Tesfatsion from

At 33, he defied the odds with his comeback. Yet, his image remains sullied from a corporal punishment case involving his son. What has Peterson learned since the days of All Day? That there are lessons in his flaws.

 

Andres Iniesta: Jose Mourinho damaged Spain’s national team

Eurosport from

Jose Mourinho was to blame for the culture of hate that developed between Barcelona and Real Madrid players, according to former Barca midfielder Andres Iniesta.

 

Sleep and exercise compete for people’s time

Reuters, Carolyn Crist from

On weekday mornings, two healthy activities – exercise and sleep – compete with each other for time, researchers say.

As exercise increases, sleep decreases among those who wake up early to work out before heading to their jobs, the study authors report in the journal Sleep Health. At the same time, getting some exercise versus none during the day also helped people to sleep better.

“Sleep research has focused on the ways that sleep deprivation affects overall health, but at some point we began wondering what people were doing with the time they weren’t sleeping,” said senior study author Dr. Mathias Basner of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

 

How to Take the Perfect Nap, According to Science

Heleo, Next Big Idea Club, Daniel Pink from

… Before I take that nap—this is going to sound weird—I have a cup of coffee. (Stick with me on this.) Then I close my eyes and set that timer for 25 minutes. I can usually fall asleep in about 10 minutes, so if my alarm goes off after 25 minutes, I’ve gotten a 15-minute nap—that’s the ideal time for napping.

 

Restricting short-wavelength light in the evening to improve sleep in recreational athletes – A pilot study

European Journal of Sport Science from

Sleep is crucial for recovery and skill acquisition in athletes. Paradoxically, athletes often encounter difficulties initiating and maintaining sleep, while having sufficient sleep opportunity. Blue (short-wavelength) light as emitted by electronic screens is considered a potential sleep thief, as it suppresses habitual melatonin secretion. The current study sought to investigate whether blocking short-wavelength light in the evening can improve sleep onset latency and potentially other sleep parameters among recreational athletes. The study had a within-subject crossover design. Fifteen recreational athletes, aged between 18 and 32 years (12 females, 3 males), were randomly assigned to start the intervention period with either the light restriction condition (LR; amber-lens glasses), or the no-light restriction condition (nLR; transparent glasses). Sleep hygiene practices, actigraphy and diary-based sleep estimates were monitored during four consecutive nights within each condition. Sleep hygiene practices did not significantly differ between conditions. Results indicate that blocking short-wavelength light in the evening, as compared to habitual light exposure, significantly shortened subjective sleep onset latency (Δ = 7 min), improved sleep quality (Δ = 0.6; scale 1–10), and increased alertness the following morning. Actigraphy-based sleep estimates showed no significant differences between conditions. Blocking short-wavelength light in the evening by means of amber-lens glasses is a cost-efficient and promising means to improve subjective sleep estimates among recreational athletes in their habitual home environment. The relatively small effects of the current study may be strengthened by additionally increasing morning- and daytime light exposure and, potentially, by reducing the alerting effects of media use before bedtime.

 

Teenage sleep and brain health may improve with a better pillow

The Washington Post, Adriana Galván from

… Research from my developmental neuroscience lab shows one solution to the sleep deprivation problem that is deceptively simple: provide teens with a good pillow. Because getting comfortable bedding does not involve technology, expensive interventions or lots of time, it may be particularly beneficial for improving sleep among disadvantaged adolescents.

 

NBA players perform worse after late-night tweets

Futurity, Stony Brook University from

NBA players who use Twitter or other forms of social media late at night don’t perform as well on the court the next day, a new study shows.

 

How the fitness tracker became a million dollar idea

BBC News, Aaron Heslehurst from

Fitness trackers – those things you put around your wrist to measure your physical activity and your health – have been on the mass market for fewer than 10 years.

Nowadays, hundreds of millions are sold every year. But a lot of the technology inside these hi-tech gadgets was developed as long as a century ago, as the BBC’s Aaron Heslehurst explains.

 

ACM SenSys ’18 Best Paper Runner-up Award: System Architecture Directions for Post-SoC/32-bit Networked Sensors – RISE Lab

University of California-Berkeley, RISE Lab, Hyung-Sin Kim from

RISELab publication “System Architecture Directions for Post-SoC/32-bit Networked Sensors,” authored by Hyung-Sin Kim, Michael Andersen, Kaifei Chen, Sam Kumar, William Zhao, Kevin Ma, and Prof. David Culler, has won the best paper runner-up award at ACM SenSys 2018. This paper triggers paradigm shifts on low-power embedded networked system design, which was formed by a two-decade old paper from UC Berkeley.

 

UCLA cell study reveals how head injuries lead to serious brain diseases

UCLA Newsroom from

UCLA biologists have discovered how head injuries adversely affect individual cells and genes that can lead to serious brain disorders. The life scientists provide the first cell “atlas” of the hippocampus — the part of the brain that helps regulate learning and memory — when it is affected by traumatic brain injury. The team also proposes gene candidates for treating brain diseases associated with traumatic brain injury, such as Alzheimer’s disease and post-traumatic stress disorder.

 

A week of football injuries, from youth to the pros, shows the damage the sport can inflict

Boston Globe, STAT; Kathleen Bachynski, Lisa Kearns, and Arthur Caplan from

One year ago, we debuted the Football Injury Highlight Reel in STAT to bring attention to the enormous amount, and variety, of damage the game of football does to players. It emphasized non-concussion injuries, both because concussion garners so much press on its own and because other injuries, while severe, disabling, and costly, draw relatively little attention in debates about the future of football.

This year’s equally grim edition focuses on non-concussion injuries that football players from youth leagues, high school, and the pros sustained between Nov. 6 and Nov. 12. While serious injuries and deaths are also occurring at the college level, this highlight reel calls attention to the risks to child athletes, with NFL players included as a point of comparison. And, like last year, this is just a snapshot of the slew of major injuries associated with the game.

 

Barça Innovation Hub and FIFA create standard format for transfer of control data generated by teams

FC Barcelona from

At the second session of the Sports Technology Symposium, an important announcement was made on an issue will change the way we understand the monitoring data that football teams collect during training and matches. The Barça Innovation Hub and FIFA joined forces to create a standard format to unify this data, which until now has been stored differently by each club. This information is collected using EPTS (Electronic Performance and Tracking Systems) and under the new format developed by the two organisations can now be exchanged and compared in a unified and standardised fashion.

Johannes Holzmüller, head of sports technology at the FIFA World Cup 2018, made the announcement during one of the round table discussions this Friday on the final afternoon of the Sports Technology Symposium.

 

14 Seconds or Less: How the NBA’s New Offensive Rebound Shot Clock Has Changed Basketball

SI.com, NBA, Jake Fischer from

The NBA’s pace has dramatically increased, partly due to a new 14-second shot clock following offensive rebounds. The league’s top coaches explain the phenomenon.

 

Good MLB Teams Oppose Income Inequality

FiveThirtyEight, Travis Sawchik from

… In 2017, four players accounted for a least 20 percent of their teams’ payrolls. Greinke (36.5 percent) and Joe Mauer (21.3 percent) appeared in the postseason, though the Diamondbacks lost in the National League Division Series, while the Twins lost in the American League wild-card game. In 2016, eight players accounted for 20 percent or more of payroll, and only one — Yoenis Cespedes of the Mets — played in the postseason.

This may be part of why teams have become more leery of free agency in general. The combined salaries of each team’s top-paid players totaled $680 million last season. But those players accounted for a middling 69.8 WAR, or $9.7 million per win over replacement level. Teams seem content to spread the risk in a sport loaded with uncertainty.

 

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