… Houston’s stagnant style is inarguable. The Rockets rank 28th in assists and 29th in passes. Harden recently scored 57, 58 and 48 in consecutive January games, and none of his 47 field goals in that stretch were set up by a teammate’s assist. By contrast, the back-to-back champion Golden State Warriors, who preach “strength in numbers” under Coach Steve Kerr, rank first in assists and fifth in passes. Remarkably, Harden averages 15 shots after holding the ball for more than six seconds; Golden State’s entire team averages only 12 such shots.
Much of this disparity is by design. Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey and Coach Mike D’Antoni, long a paragon of passing and activity, have carefully crunched the numbers on Harden’s isolation brilliance, concluding that his ability to maintain his efficiency through three-pointers, lay-ups and free throws, regardless of workload, justifies the strategy. Understandably, they’ve double-downed on Harden after injuries sidelined Chris Paul and Clint Capela, asking their superstar — rather than their fringe role players — to fill in the gaps.
When Gerald Everett was a high school basketball player, he was inelegantly referred to as a “tweener.” He was a 6-foot-2.5-inch forward pursuing a college basketball scholarship, but his ambition exceeded his reach. He was too short to play near the rim, not quick enough to play on the perimeter.
Everett wanted to create an opening for himself in big-time sports, and he was smart enough to realize he could waste his immense athletic ability by being stubborn about basketball. He took the tweener hint and changed sports. In his senior year of high school, Everett became a football player, and the NFL has evolved right into his lap.
The quasi–tight end for the Los Angeles Rams, Everett has a more elegant label these days — “hybrid” — because the NFL has become a “space” game, where teams are looking for big, fast people to exploit big, slow people in open spaces. The Rams made the now 6-foot-3, 236-pound Everett, a second-round draft pick in 2017, and he is an emerging star in the NFL’s space age. Now he is in the Super Bowl, hoop dreams long gone. “Sometimes you’ve got to give up your first love,” he says.
Throughout his career, Neymar has let emotions get the better of himself and has failed to properly respond to physical play, and the end result is an oft-injured superstar who has the misfortune of missing key matches for club and country.
… At Winter Warm-Up, president of baseball operations John Mozeliak was asked about the Cardinals’ rotation. After talking about the top five … and after talking about Alex Reyes … Mozeliak then talked about even more pitchers:
“When you have the depth of somebody like a Austin Gomber or a John Gant or a Daniel Ponce de Leon, that’s why we have some confidence in how to sort of do this. And the one name I think we don’t really give real consideration to as a starter and probably should be doing more of is Hudson. And so, you know, all of a sudden, when you hear it said like that, you realize those five you started with probably aren’t going to get all of the innings. In a perfect world they would, but it’s, we know it’s far from perfect.”
Mozeliak said that Hudson, 24 this season, would hopefully be stretched out as a starter during spring, but cautioned that “it’s hard in spring training because you sort of run out of innings, right? As the calendar turns, all of the sudden it’s just tougher and tougher because you’re trying to get that starter two or three innings, but you’re playing a nine-inning game.”
… “I’m relentless,” Howard said. “Even if I miss a couple shots in the beginning, I’m still going to go at it. No matter who’s in front of me. No matter what’s thrown at me.”
Howard plays 32.8 minutes per game for MU, which is ranked ninth in the USA Today coaches poll and No. 10 by The Associated Press.
He is maniacal about his physical fitness. Howard came into the season noticeably stronger in his upper body so he could absorb some of that contact.
Most of his conditioning work comes in the summer, sweating in his home state of Arizona alongside his dad and two brothers.
… What has not changed is Belichick’s abiding enthusiasm for special teams. For his first full-time NFL coaching job, Belichick served as the New York Giants’ special teams coach. He credits those years with shaping his coaching outlook. He has multiple players whose only role is playing on coverage and return units. He treats special teams not as something that happens between offense and defense, but as a full third of the game.
Most everything about Belichick’s operation can be gleaned through how he approaches special teams. He uses them to promote solidarity. He demands correct execution down to excruciating detail. He mines opponents for weaknesses and ruthlessly exploits them. He devotes roster space to smart, tough players who understand their roles.
“Because of the way he came up in this game, he understands hidden yardage and field position and the value of the third phase of the game,” said Matthew Slater, a Patriots captain who for 11 seasons has served as New England’s special teams ace. “A lot of coaches say it’s important, but they don’t really show it by how they build their roster. He reflects that every year in how he builds his roster.”
Listen to your elders, they say. Well, I wasn’t sure what to think when as a seven-year-old I sat in the kitchen and listened to my grandpa. On the table in front of us was a big bag of assorted candy. He polished them all off, piece after piece. “Does Mom know about this?” I sat there wondering. As though sensing my disbelief, he explained with a slightly defensive but definitive tone, “I have a sweet tooth.” I was perplexed. Was a sweet tooth something you “had”? Was it permanent? Did I have one?
Years later, I realized my grandfather was performing a kind of mental gymnastics to attribute his indulgence to an inherent part of his identity. Eating copious sugary snacks was easier to justify that way. He likely thought to himself, I’ve always liked sweets. That’s just who I am. So why bother even trying to resist?
The implication here was that any effort he could exert to resist the candy, or curb his temptation, would be futile.
… Devices that convert AC electromagnetic waves into DC electricity are known as “rectennas.” The researchers demonstrate a new kind of rectenna, described in a study appearing in Nature today, that uses a flexible radio-frequency (RF) antenna that captures electromagnetic waves — including those carrying Wi-Fi — as AC waveforms.
The antenna is then connected to a novel device made out of a two-dimensional semiconductor just a few atoms thick. The AC signal travels into the semiconductor, which converts it into a DC voltage that could be used to power electronic circuits or recharge batteries.
In this way, the battery-free device passively captures and transforms ubiquitous Wi-Fi signals into useful DC power. Moreover, the device is flexible and can be fabricated in a roll-to-roll process to cover very large areas.
Imagine a cell phone you can fold up and carry in your wallet. When you drop it, nothing cracks or breaks, or if it does, it repairs itself. And when it’s time for an upgrade, the old phone will biodegrade instead of taking up space in a landfill.
Maybe you’d rather wear your laptop or tablet in the fibers of your clothes, or wear a monitor that provides constant data about your health but feels no different than your own skin.
This is the future of electronics, and it’s happening in UC Merced Professor Yue ‘Jessica’ Wang’s lab.
Wang and her students are synthesizing organic polymeric compounds that conduct electricity and behave like no electronics on the market today.
These are conjugated polymers — plastics — that conduct electricity like copper or silicon. However, conducting plastics have a distinct advantage over metals that are mined.
… Dr. Paul Neilson, Hudl’s director of market development, explained how the newly-released Hudl Pro Suite was developed.
“It all started with us installing cameras for the tactical feeds within stadiums,” said Neilson. “Then we thought, now we have these cameras in stadiums, can we create a player tracking system which can integrate with our existing software solutions?”
“Hudl’s research and development team worked on this new project for the best part of two years to build a player tracking system which utilises ‘machine vision’ and ‘machine learning’ to track any object within an image frame.
Wearable devices like heart-rate monitors, GPS and RFID trackers, ECG and EMG sensors can record just about every key biometric indicator of an athlete’s training load—except hydration. Thirst and urine color are helpful guides, but an objective assessment of hydration level has remained elusive.
Nobo is seeking to fill that gap with its B60 wearable and will make its case as one of five finalists in the NFL’s 1st & Future pitch competition on Saturday, which is sponsored by Arrow Electronics and hosted by Georgia Tech. Founder and CEO Russ Rymut said Nobo can determine if an athlete is dehydrated, over-hydrated, or a healthy level in between. He described the basic principle as analogous to “a conventional pulse oximeter, the finger clip that you see people wearing in the hospital.”
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) from
The next generation of flexible and transparent displays will require a high-performing and flexible polymeric material that has the optical and thermal properties of glass. The material must be transparent to visible light and have a low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE). Unfortunately, such a polymeric material has not been available. A KAIST research team has succeeded in making a new polymeric material with an exceptionally low CTE value while retaining high transparency and excellent thermal and mechanical properties. The method developed for amorphous polymers with a controlled CTE can be applied to control the thermal expansion of organic materials as well.
The Washington Post, Rachel Damiani and Ted Spiker from
Americans, who spend about $8 billion a year in massage and chiropractic treatments to relieve pain, may have no idea that they’re all probably experiencing the same thing — a manipulation of their fascia, a three-tiered layer of tissue that encases tissues and organs.
Although some people who are kneaded, stretched, or cracked may have a vague notion that fascia exists, they probably don’t know much about their fascia — or understand why it even matters.
Some in the scientific and medical communities think the same way.
They cannot agree on what fascia is. They don’t know what fascia does. They may not even know it when they see it.
… “If you look at look at a lot of teams that have had recent success, they’re very deep, and I think that’s what it takes to win at the major league level at this point,” [Jed] Lowrie told the Associated Press last week, after signing a two-year, $20 million deal to be every Mets infielder’s backup.
Despite being an excellent player, Lowrie is 34 years old, and the current free-agent market is a disaster for players as teams work to tamp down salaries. So you can maybe understand why he’d accept a superutility role.
But what about D.J. LeMahieu? The former Rockie is a two-time All-Star and also just 30 years old. Unlike Lowrie, who played other positions fairly frequently before last season, LeMahieu has spent the vast majority of his major league playing time at second, logging 892 of his 941 games there. He’s also won three Gold Gloves at second base, leading you to figure that multiple teams would line up to sign him and start him at the deuce.
The aims of the current study were to analyze the evolution of players’ age in the UEFA Champions League since the start of its modern-day format in 1992–1993 up until 2017–2018 and to determine how the players’ age relates to their market value. The sample consisted of all players participating in the UEFA Champions League from the 1992–1993 to 2017–2018 seasons (n = 16062). The following variables were used in this study: players’ age, number of seasons in the club, number of Champions Leagues won, team performance, and market value of the player in the season. Data were examined using a one-way ANOVA and a linear regression. The main finding of the current study is that an aging trend has occurred in the last three decades in the Champions League. A significant increase in average players’ age (>1.6 years) was observed, rising from an age of 24.9 to 26.5 years. Goalkeepers and Center Backs tend to peak later than attackers, and their peak performance can last until an age of about 31 years. Finally, an inverted-U curve defines the association between market value and age, with peak value appearing in the 26–30 age range. These results provide useful information regarding at which age soccer players are likely to perform at the highest level, as well as the age they are likely to have the highest market value. [full text]