ANDRE JOHNSON REMEMBERS the moment he realized DeAndre Hopkins was different. It was two months before Odell Beckham Jr. made a catch — the catch — that would vault him from top draft pick to household name in 2014. That September, Hopkins, then in his second year in the NFL, also made a one-handed grab. Like Beckham, he was chasing an overthrown deep pass (from Ryan Fitzpatrick), spun around to track the ball, then caught it as he fell backward, plucking it out of the air with his left hand as nonchalantly as a child might reach for a dangling peach. It was a gasp-inducing show of strength and coordination, but unlike Beckham’s catch, Hopkins’ was largely forgotten because it didn’t count thanks to an illegal formation penalty. And also because, well, he played for a Texans team that had gone 2-14 the previous season.
World Sport sits down with Olympic Silver Medallist and Tokyo 2020 hopeful Josh Prenot, as he talks about how he got into swimming, Rio 2016 and what the future holds for the breaststroke specialist.
Whenever he hits the court for his first few NBA games of the 2018-’19 season, Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki has a warning.
“Rhythm will be tough,” Nowitzki said after Sunday’s practice at the Lympo practice facilities. “The last game I played was (Apr. 10 against Phoenix). Nobody can take seven months off, eight months off and comes out balling.
“That’s going to be a progress for me playing against NBA players – the speed of the game these days. Everybody’s pushing the ball, a lot of athletes. It’s going to take me probably a couple of games to get used to it, so we’ll see how it goes.”
… “For a coach that works with a player day after day after day,” he said, “it’s nice to see them rewarded on a big stage for the hard work they put in.”
The moment, small as it was, might have been a perfect representation of [Mark] Krikorian’s attitude.
Just moments after reaching perhaps the greatest professional accomplishment of his life – he’s now one of just five coaches to win multiple NCAA Division I women’s soccer titles – Krikorian is telling his players to go enjoy themselves, then telling reporters how nice it is to see them rewarded for their efforts.
… “I’ve got a tremendous staff and we will start to zero in on these teams,” Ellis told reporters at the Seine Musicale in Paris.
“We’ve set a really competitive schedule for us in the next six months and I think that’s going to give a lot of answers and let us try a lot of different things,” she added.
“I feel like we’re going to be battle-tested going into this World Cup with the schedule we’ve planned.”
The ability to anticipate what will happen next is critical to performance in many sports as well as other professional domains. We review progress made in our scientific understanding of this topic since the seminal work conducted some 50 years ago. We highlight advances in methods and measures and identify the different perceptual-cognitive skills that have been identified by researchers as playing a pivotal role in anticipation. We examine how these perceptual-cognitive skills are used in a dynamic and interactive manner to facilitate anticipation, as well as how their importance varies due to the stress placed upon athletes by anxiety and fatigue. We summarise the impact of existing research on the development of training programs that facilitate acquisition of the skills underpinning anticipation. Finally, we provide some suggestions for future research in this area. We encourage continued growth in recent research exploring the role of contextual information in anticipation and present suggestions as to how the translational impact of this work can be increased in applied domains.
Visual exploratory action – scanning movements expressed through left and right rotation of the head – allows perception of a surrounding environment and supports prospective actions. In the dynamically changing football environment, the extent to which exploratory action benefits a player’s subsequent performance with the ball is likely influenced by how and when the exploratory action occurs. Although few studies have examined the relationship between visual exploration and on-pitch football performance, it has been reported that a higher frequency of exploratory head movement up to 10-s before receiving the ball increases the likelihood of successful performance with the ball. This study investigated the relationship between head turn frequency and head turn excursion, and how and when exploratory head movement – within 10-s before ball possession – is related to performance with the ball in 11v11 match-play. Thirty-two semi-elite football players competed in 11v11 match-play. Head turn frequency and head turn excursion before ball possession were quantified with wearable inertial measurement units, and actions with the ball were coded via notational analysis. Odds ratio calculations were conducted to determine the associations between exploration variables and on-ball performance outcomes. A total of 783 actions with the ball were analyzed. Results revealed a strong relationship between head turn frequency and head turn excursion. Further, a higher than average head turn frequency and head turn excursion before receiving the ball resulted in a higher likelihood of turning with the ball, playing a pass in the attacking direction, and playing a pass to an area that is opposite to which it was received from. The strength of these outcomes varied for different time periods before receiving the ball. When players explored their environment with higher than average head turn frequency and excursion, they used more complex action opportunities afforded by the surrounding environment. Considerations for future research and practical implications are discussed.
… Baseball isn’t immune from the idea that robots will supplant humans in certain jobs. The speculation (or wishful thinking) in the game focuses on the most visible way in which technology could eliminate the human element from baseball — replacing the human umpire behind the plate with the mythical automated strike zone. The idea is hardly new, and the #RobotUmps hashtag enjoys a renaissance with every controversial call on the field, though an adequate robotic replacement for the umpire has yet to come to fruition.
But if you’re truly worried about how robots and technology are encroaching upon the human element of the game, look a bit further behind the plate, past the protective netting. The small cohort of people sitting there with clipboards and radar guns is slowly diminishing. Quietly, front offices are cutting their scouting staffs and reorganizing those who remain, with the Astros being particularly aggressive. While baseball isn’t exactly replacing human scouts with robotic ones, some organizations are making strides in that direction, which has implications for the human element, not only in the form of the scouts themselves but also in the product (and people) on the field.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Ben Shneiderman from
A 70-year-old simmering debate has erupted into vigorous battles over the most effective ways to conduct research. Well-established beliefs are being forcefully challenged by advocates of new research models. While there can be no final resolution to this battle, this paper offers the Twin-Win Model to guide teams of researchers, academic leaders, business managers, and government funding policymakers. The Twin-Win Model favors a problem-oriented approach to research, which encourages formation of teams to pursue the dual goals of breakthrough theories in published papers and validated solutions that are ready for widespread dissemination. The raised expectations of simultaneously pursuing foundational discoveries and powerful innovations are a step beyond traditional approaches that advocate basic research first. Evidence from citation analysis and researcher interviews suggests that simultaneous pursuit of both goals raises the chance of twin-win success. [full text]
Earlier this year, Yale Men’s Lacrosse team won its first national championship since 1883. While no single factor is responsible for the team’s success, it’s certainly fair for the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science (SEAS) to claim some of the credit.
It was at the Center for Engineering Innovation & Design (CEID) where students developed the Lightboard, a device designed to help goalies hone their reaction times. The students worked on it as part of the course, Introduction to Engineering Innovation & Design (ENAS 118), and it was in regular use by the lacrosse team, and later, the soccer and hockey teams.
Soon after he arrived at Yale in 2016, Thomas Newman, Yale’s Director of Sports Performance and Innovation learned about the CEID and he didn’t waste time paying a visit. “My mentors used to tell me, ‘You can’t have too many friends who are engineers.’”
… Samantha Magliato is on the Case Western Reserve University crew team. Part of her workout routine right now includes attaching a VivaLNK Vital Scout sensor to her chest.
“That’s where you can get a reading of your EKG, which shows the electrical activity of your heart,” Magliato explains.
Biomedical PhD Student Dhruv Seshadri monitors her real-time results on a mobile device. He wants to see if the data, her heart rate, stress level, performance and recovery rates, can translate into safer, more efficient training.
As biometric systems — technologies which measure biological information to identify a person — continue to advance, their potential impact on health care capabilities surge. Via tools such as fingerprint recognition, face recognition, iris and retina recognition, and vein recognition, health care workers are provided with increasingly sophisticated ways to monitor patients.
Researchers from Penn State and Johns Hopkin University are working to develop additional capabilities by capturing vital signs of patients in resource-constrained environments with a device most Americans use every day — a cellphone camera.
Funded by an initial $100,000 pilot grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the project, “Non-Contact Estimation of Biomarkers in Resource-Constrained Environments,” uses cellphone camera and computer vision techniques to capture patients’ vital signs at distances of up to four feet away — a critical distance needed for highly contagious diseases like Ebola or tuberculosis.
Tim and Sid look at the inconsistent judgments made by the NHL’s Department of Player Safety and issue their take on how the decisions are really being made.
… “All my staff are back at home locked in a room planning now,” said Neville, whose side will find themselves shuttling from Nice to Le Havre and back to the Riviera during a tough-looking group stage. “But playing in Nice twice will be fantastic, it’s a nice place to be. Obviously Le Havre is at the other end of the country but, logistically, we’ll fly and be fine. Playing two games in the same place is a positive.”
… cure disease within the confines of what’s reasonable and tolerable to the patient. Fevers can have marginal benefits in fighting infection, but they hurt. And I go to the doctor to stop hurting. I don’t care about double-blind studies when I’m shivering under a blanket. If you have a pill that can make a fever stop, give it to me now.
It may be rational to welcome a fever, but for most people it’s not reasonable.
And that framework—aiming to be reasonable instead of coldly rational—is one investors should consider.