… The team have been in transition but it seems things are starting to click at the right time. “Usually you find in many teams before a big tournament it comes together and clicks,” says Ertz. “Cycles happen; after the Olympics we had retirements, we had to bring some people in. The really cool part is we’ve had some really tough opponents in the past three years.
“We definitely feel it – that we’re all coming together as a full unit, coaches and team as well, so we’re really excited for 2019.”
After the euphoria of the Super Bowl Ertz’s season took a hit as a knee injury at the SheBelieves Cup sidelined her. But fearing for her World Cup place was not on the cards. “I wasn’t really thinking about anything like that till October and qualifying. When I knew it was a two-to-three-month injury I definitely took a sigh of relief.”
Andy Murray is still hoping to make it to one more Wimbledon tournament before his problematic hip forces him into retirement. For now, he’s only committing to the Australian Open.
In an emotional news conference Friday, when a tearful Murray had to leave the room shortly after his first attempt to get it started, and needed to pause several times to compose himself once it had resumed, he confirmed he’d play his first-round match at the Australian Open next week but wasn’t sure how much longer he could continue beyond that.
Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin has informed the NHL that he will not attend the league’s All-Star Game in San Jose later this month, after fans voted him the Metropolitan Division captain.
Ovechkin said he wants the extra rest, with the league’s all-star break bleeding into the Capitals’ bye week, which will now give him more than a week off. But the decision has a cost: Ovechkin will be required by the league to miss one game either immediately before or after the All-Star Game. Washington plays in Toronto before the break and hosts Calgary after it.
DeJuan Jones and Camden Riley were leaning against a wall in a tunnel underneath Orlando City Stadium, a look of satisfaction on their faces. Riley scored in Team X’s 2-1 win over Team Nemeziz at the MLS Player Combine. His teammate Jones capped off a week in which he graded off the charts in terms of his athleticism and impressed with his production on the field as well. Each was content in the knowledge that he had increased his stock, in what could be the last ever combine, ahead of Friday’s MLS SuperDraft in Chicago.
“I can’t think of any better experience in my life, getting to go out there and play and train with the best players in the country out of college,” said Riley, a midfielder from the University of the Pacific. “It’s an unbelievable experience. I’m trying to take it all in.”
Jones, a forward from Michigan State added, “This is the next level, so it’s not going to be as easy as it was in college, but you have to step up your game a lot. It’s going to be a big transition, but this is a good warmup getting ready for the preseason.”
… Here are some of the ways I’ve learned to be more predictably creative.
1. Frame the problem, then step back. Like a grain of sand in an oyster, cognitive irritation stimulates creativity. When you give yourself a compelling, complex, unsolved problem — and make sure to clearly, concisely, and vividly articulate it — your brain becomes irritated. For months before my trip to Nairobi, I carried around a pad of paper on which I had handwritten the following statement: “How, with no outside resources, will we create 300 middle class jobs for the people in our group?” The problem turned in my mind. One way to further amp up the cognitive irritation, is by slogging through a first, unsatisfying round of generating solutions. This effort is more about priming the pump than solving the problem. Then, walk away for a bit, and allow the unconscious work — that which draws from a fuller complement of mental resources, experiences, and creative connections — to begin.
Imperial researchers have developed a new bioinspired material that interacts with surrounding tissues to promote healing.
Materials are widely used to help heal wounds: Collagen sponges help treat burns and pressure sores, and scaffold-like implants are used to repair broken bones. However, the process of tissue repair changes over time, so scientists are looking to biomaterials that interact with tissues as healing takes place.
… Carbon fiber has been around in running shoes since the mid 90’s. With the greatest marathoner we’ve ever seen (Kipchoge) and the most innovative shoe company we’ve ever seen (Nike) it looks like carbon fiber is finally going to permeate the entire running shoe market. Hoka One One will be the first to market post Nike and looks like many others are going to follow. The history of carbon fiber is full of starts and fails. It’s hard to imagine we would be where we are today without the history. Much has been talked about the Nike Vapor Fly 4%. Let’s dig in and see where it came from.
Are you always the coldest person in the room? Or are you one of those people who feels overheated even when it’s snowing? Relief is only one gadget away: Meet the Embr Wave.
The Embr Wave is essentially a high-tech version of wrapping a cold washcloth around your neck on a hot day. The thinking goes like this: When even small temperature sensations are applied to specific areas of the body with a high concentration of nerve endings, like the inner wrist, they can quickly and noticeably change a person’s inner climate.
So if you could wear something on your wrist that changes your temperature in that one sensitive spot, then your whole body would experience the warming or cooling impact.
Working from this simple concept, researchers at Embr Labs in Boston have been building the underlying technology for Embr Wave since 2013 when many of their principal designers were engineering students at MIT.
… Consider what unfolded at the World Cup in Russia, six weeks after the Champions League final: Soccer’s governing body, FIFA, fined the national soccer associations of England and Sweden about $70,000 each because four players (three from England and one from Sweden) had worn Trusox over socks made by Nike — the official supplier for both teams. And this was not a first-time transgression: All four men had ignored previous warnings to take off their Trusox socks. (Sweden and England appealed the fines.)
But while the socks engendered tremendous loyalty, the company that made them was in trouble. Today, Cherneski is locked in a legal battle with two of the company’s investors over its future. One of those investors happens to be Bill Plank, a brother of the founder of Under Armour — itself once an underdog to Nike and Adidas in the sports apparel world, but now one of the big boys that Trusox sought to challenge. From Plank to Cherneski to the athletes who have continued to risk fines by wearing the socks, there have been, and still are, no shortage of people who believed fervently in the product Trusox created. And yet, the company itself has never come close to achieving its lofty ambitions.
… “We are delighted to have appointed 11 highly qualified centres from the four corners of the world to assist us with our mission,” commented IOC Medical and Scientific Commission Chair and IOC Vice-President Prof. Uğur Erdener. “These centres have all demonstrated that they are at the forefront of research in sports medicine and are committed to our shared goal of using knowledge and resources to ensure the athletes’ well-being so that sportsmen and women can perform at their best level with minimal risks to their health.”
The IOC Head of Scientific Activities, Lars Engebretsen, added: “While athletes were previously active until they were 25, today they compete until they are 40 to 45 at a very high level. An injury to one of them is a major issue, so treatment and prevention have become all the more important.”
[Joe and Megan Johnson] co-founded Vade Nutrition. The company produces portable protein powder that comes in edible “pods,” which look a bit like the laundry detergent-filled capsules you throw into the washing machine.
Each Vade pod contains a single serving of whey isolate powder encased in a food-grade film that dissolves in liquid in a few seconds, which Vade says makes for easy mixing and transport. A bag of 30 pods retails for $44.99 on the Vade website, although the product is also sold online through Amazon and GNC.
Soon after the couple came up with the concept, Vade worked with MSU’s Spartan Innovations and The Hatch startup incubator on product development. The company first went about protecting its intellectual property by filing patent applications, which are pending, then sought out product refinement and manufacturing help.
Background
Previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses explaining the relationship between carbohydrate quality and health have usually examined a single marker and a limited number of clinical outcomes. We aimed to more precisely quantify the predictive potential of several markers, to determine which markers are most useful, and to establish an evidence base for quantitative recommendations for intakes of dietary fibre. Methods
We did a series of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of prospective studies published from database inception to April 30, 2017, and randomised controlled trials published from database inception to Feb 28, 2018, which reported on indicators of carbohydrate quality and non-communicable disease incidence, mortality, and risk factors. Studies were identified by searches in PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and by hand searching of previous publications. We excluded prospective studies and trials reporting on participants with a chronic disease, and weight loss trials or trials involving supplements. Searches, data extraction, and bias assessment were duplicated independently. Robustness of pooled estimates from random-effects models was considered with sensitivity analyses, meta-regression, dose-response testing, and subgroup analyses. The GRADE approach was used to assess quality of evidence. Findings
Just under 135 million person-years of data from 185 prospective studies and 58 clinical trials with 4635 adult participants were included in the analyses. Observational data suggest a 15–30% decrease in all-cause and cardiovascular related mortality, and incidence of coronary heart disease, stroke incidence and mortality, type 2 diabetes, and colorectal cancer when comparing the highest dietary fibre consumers with the lowest consumers Clinical trials show significantly lower bodyweight, systolic blood pressure, and total cholesterol when comparing higher with lower intakes of dietary fibre. Risk reduction associated with a range of critical outcomes was greatest when daily intake of dietary fibre was between 25 g and 29 g. Dose-response curves suggested that higher intakes of dietary fibre could confer even greater benefit to protect against cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and colorectal and breast cancer. Similar findings for whole grain intake were observed. Smaller or no risk reductions were found with the observational data when comparing the effects of diets characterised by low rather than higher glycaemic index or load. The certainty of evidence for relationships between carbohydrate quality and critical outcomes was graded as moderate for dietary fibre, low to moderate for whole grains, and low to very low for dietary glycaemic index and glycaemic load. Data relating to other dietary exposures are scarce. Interpretation
Findings from prospective studies and clinical trials associated with relatively high intakes of dietary fibre and whole grains were complementary, and striking dose-response evidence indicates that the relationships to several non-communicable diseases could be causal. Implementation of recommendations to increase dietary fibre intake and to replace refined grains with whole grains is expected to benefit human health. A major strength of the study was the ability to examine key indicators of carbohydrate quality in relation to a range of non-communicable disease outcomes from cohort studies and randomised trials in a single study. Our findings are limited to risk reduction in the population at large rather than those with chronic disease.
Billy Vunipola has warned that rugby union is more brutal than ever but admits he does not know how the sport can fix the problem.
The Saracens and England No 8, who has started only three internationals in two years because of injuries to his shoulders, knees and arms, was responding to an RFU report that revealed the severity of injuries in top-level English rugby is on the rise.
“The report is scary but I’m not sure how to address it,” Vunipola said. “It is just the way the game has gone. Everyone is so desperate to win that defences have just become so unbelievably tough to break down and sometimes the only way to break it down is to run over or through people.
… “It’s all the little things right now,” the 33-year-old Ovechkin told the Washington Post. “You can take the short offseason, a long [playoff] run, but right now my body needs a rest. I’m not saying it’s sore or something, but for us I think it’s the right decision.”
Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price was selected by the NHL Hockey Operations Department to be one of the Atlantic Division’s goaltenders (despite subpar numbers that currently feature a 2.71 goals-against average and .909 save percentage, it should be noted). Shortly after, Price, who recently missed three games with a lower-body injury, declined the invitation.
“We took the time to discuss the situation with Carey and the medical group earlier today, and we all agreed that the best decision for him would be to rest and recuperate during the upcoming All-Star break,” Montreal general manager Marc Bergevin said in a team-issued statement.
