If Vladimir Guerrero Jr. got one thing across during his 10-minute media scrum at the conclusion of the Toronto Blue Jays’ annual development camp at Rogers Centre on Friday, it’s that he’s focused on “getting better.” He said it no less than a dozen times. It was the leitmotif of his answers to question after question about his major-league future, the same questions he’s answered a hundred times before, the same questions he’ll answer a hundred times again.
It sounds like lip service. And in some ways, it is. Guerrero should be a big-leaguer today; he should’ve been one months ago. But he’s not, and he won’t be one for a little while longer. And there’s little sense in griping about it so you might as well say the things your team wants to hear you say.
But there’s also substance behind it. Speak to the people who work with Guerrero every day and they’ll tell you he really, truly is trying to improve every time he puts on a uniform.
… “So much has changed. The standard of football in Spain in general and the standard of the players have got better and better,” [Irene Paredes] said. “You can see that in the way we qualified, in the friendlies we play. I honestly think we’re in a better position than we were ahead of Canada.”
That said, she is keen to play down expectations: “Spain are on the up but we’re novices when it comes to World Cups and European Championships. We haven’t played that much against the world’s big teams, though we do have the quality to beat anyone. I’m not going to set any specific objective for this national team but I’m not setting any limits for it either.”
For Siad Haji, the fact that he’s set to start preseason with the San Jose Earthquakes this week is a miracle.
After being selected No. 2 by the Earthquakes in the 2019 MLS SuperDraft, Haji used his speech to provide a two-minute snapshot of his path to professional soccer.
Born in Somalia, a civil war forced his parents to leave the country when he was very young, settling into a refugee camp in Kenya. When his family was accepted into the United States, they moved to New Hampshire – quite the contrast for natives of East Africa.
It was college soccer that ultimately put Haji closet to the pro game. Growing up playing at clubs in the Northeast, he started playing collegiate soccer at New England College, a Division III school. A phone call from a friend alerted VCU head coach Dave Giffard to Haji’s potential and interest after he finished his first year in college – even though the attacking midfielder, having obtained U.S. citizenship while growing up, had appeared in youth national team camps as a teenager, and was no unknown.
With as many as 70 million adults in the U.S. suffering from a sleep disorder, there’s no question that a good night’s rest is incredibly valuable to many. Just how valuable, you ask? According to one survey, the average American would pay $290 for a perfect night’s sleep.
Stretch that $290 out over a year, and we’re talking $105,000 for 365 straight nights of peaceful, healthy slumber. That might even be worth it to the 35% of American adults who log less than seven hours of sleep in a typical night. This latest survey of 3,000 adults, commissioned by Mattress Firm, found the average American gets just 6 hours and 17 minutes of sleep nightly.
A new deep learning approach can automatically analyze and score sleep tests as effectively as sleep technologists, according to researchers from Georgia Tech’s School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) and the Neurology Department of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
The breakthrough – outlined in a paper published in the December 2018 issue of the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association – will enable greater access to critically needed diagnostic testing for the 40 million people in the United States who suffer from chronic long-term sleep disorders.
National Post (Canada), Montreal Gazette, Pat Hickey from
The Montreal Impact headed to Florida Monday but, unlike most of the travellers headed south, they aren’t looking forward to a vacation in the sun.
The Major League Soccer team opens training camp in Bradenton on Tuesday and, if last year’s camp under the tutelage of head coach Rémi Garde was any indication, there’s hard work ahead.
“Last year was intense and we expect the same thing, even harder,” said midfielder Samuel Piette. “We joke with Robert Duverne, our physical trainer and he said it’s going to be even more intense than last year. I don’t know if he’s trying to scare us, but we know it’s going to be hard. But that’s good because we know it will help us during the season.”
In elite football, measurement of running kinetics with inertial measurement units (IMUs) may be useful as a component of periodic health examination (PHE). This study determined the reliability of, and agreement between a research orientated IMU and clinically orientated IMU system for initial peak acceleration (IPA) and IPA symmetry index (SI) measurement during running in elite footballers. On consecutive days, 16 participants performed treadmill running at 14kmph and 18kmph. Both IMUs measured IPA and IPA SI concurrently. All measurements had good or excellent within-session reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC2,1) range = 0.79–0.96, IPA standard error of measurement (SEM) range = 0.19–0.62 g, IPA SI SEM range = 2.50–8.05%). Only the research orientated IMU demonstrated acceptable minimal detectable changes (MDCs) for IPA at 14kmph (range = 7.46–9.80%) and IPA SI at both speeds (range = 6.92–9.21%). Considering both systems, between-session IPA reliability ranged from fair to good (ICC2,1 range = 0.63–0.87, SEM range = 0.51–1.10 g) and poor to fair for IPA SI (ICC2,1 range = 0.32–0.65, SEM range = 8.07–11.18%). All MDCs were >10%. For IPA and SI, the 95% levels of agreement indicated poor between system agreement. Therefore, the use of IMUs to evaluate treadmill running kinetics cannot be recommended in this population as a PHE test to identify prognostic factors for injuries or for rehabilitation purposes.
Scientific American, Catherine L. Caldwell-Harris from
Does the language you speak influence how you think? This is the question behind the famous linguistic relativity hypothesis, that the grammar or vocabulary of a language imposes on its speakers a particular way of thinking about the world.
The strongest form of the hypothesis is that language determines thought. This version has been rejected by most scholars. A weak form is now thought to be obviously true, which is that if one language has a specific vocabulary item for a concept but another language does not, then speaking about the concept may happen more frequently or more easily. For example, if someone explained to you, an English speaker, the meaning for the German term Schadenfreude, you could recognize the concept, but you may not have used the concept as regularly as a comparable German speaker.
Scholars are now interested in whether having a vocabulary item for a concept influences thought in domains far from language, such as visual perception.
Newly published data from a team of Rochester, New York researchers give credence to a cardiovascular health monitoring system built into a home toilet seat. Examined over an eight-week period, the system demonstrated clinical grade accuracy for measurements of blood pressure, stroke volume and blood oxygenation when compared with their respective gold standards.
A new device developed by Stanford University researchers could make it easier for doctors to monitor the success of blood vessel surgery. The sensor, detailed in a paper published Jan. 8 in Nature Biomedical Engineering, monitors the flow of blood through an artery. It is biodegradable, battery-free and wireless, so it is compact and doesn’t need to be removed and it can warn a patient’s doctor if there is a blockage.
“Measurement of blood flow is critical in many medical specialties, so a wireless biodegradable sensor could impact multiple fields including vascular, transplant, reconstructive and cardiac surgery,” said Paige Fox, assistant professor of surgery and co-senior author of the paper. “As we attempt to care for patients throughout the Bay Area, Central Valley, California and beyond, this is a technology that will allow us to extend our care without requiring face-to-face visits or tests.”
ScienceNordic, Nancy Bazilchuk, based on an article by Mari Hanger from
There is very little systematic research on how patients respond to physiotherapy. A new Norwegian database should provide insights into how well treatments work for patients.
In baseball pitching, biomechanical parameters have been linked to ball velocity and potential injury risk. However, although the features of a biomechanical model have a significant influence on the kinematics and kinetics of a motion, this influence have not been assessed for pitching. The aim of this study was to evaluate the choice of the trunk and shoulder features, by comparing two models using the same input. The models differed in thoraco-humeral joint definition (moving or fixed with the thorax), joint centre estimation, values of the inertial parameters and computational framework. One professional pitcher participated in the study. We found that the different features of the biomechanical models have a substantial influence on the kinematics and kinetics of the pitchers. With a fixed thoraco-humeral joint the peak average thorax angular velocity was delayed and underestimated by 17% and the shoulder internal rotation velocity was overestimated by 7%. The use of a thoraco-humeral joint fixed to the thorax will lead to an overestimation of the rotational power at the shoulder and will neglect the power produced by the forward and upward translation of the shoulder girdle. These findings have direct implications for the interpretation of shoulder muscle contributions to the pitch. [full text]
Liverpool’s prospects of winning their first league title in 29 years have seemingly been hit in recent weeks by injuries in defensive positions. Fortunately for them, they have a couple of versatile players like Fabinho and James Milner who can capably cover for Joe Gomez and Trent Alexander-Arnold. Their versatility helps negate the need for transfers or loans during the January window.
An ability to play multiple positions is often a consideration for clubs in recruitment, but it’s not usually a make-or-break attribute. Whether it should be is something Real Madrid might be considering now; hit with injuries as they try to ensure a top four finish and progression in the Champions League, they don’t have many players who are used to playing in different positions (below). Indeed they have one of the least versatile squads among Europe’s top teams, and the gap in quality between their best players and their substitutes might mean they need to recruit this window.
The Tampa Bay Rays are reportedly considering a play for free agent Matt Davidson, a power-hitting corner infielder and designated hitter who also happens to have a wicked curveball.
If baseball’s rare and unproductive history with two-way players is any indication, such an effort will likely prove futile. Yet the prospect of a player producing as a regular both on the mound and at the plate is so tantalizing, teams keep investigating ways to tap into that huge potential. It’s led to a mini-boom in two-way players in today’s game, as teams keep chasing that elusive dragon.
The easiest, lowest-pressure way to shoehorn players into both roles is to give position players cameos on the mound.
… Way back in 1979, German researcher von Salis-Soglio showed that top-ranked tennis players had more leg and back injuries after playing on hard courts than on clay.
But that’s not because hard courts are hard. It’s because they’re not slippery enough.