Olivia Moultrie has spent the last week and a half practicing with the Portland Thorns and she still doesn’t look out of place training alongside professional players.
Watching Moultrie in practice, Thorns coach Mark Parsons said that it’s easy to forget that she is just 13-years-old.
“If you take five seconds to watch Olivia, there’s no way you would believe she was 13 in the way she moves, in the way she thinks, in the way she sees the game and her technique,” Parsons said.
… The old-school Giants have a card-carrying old-school GM in Gettleman, and there is no doubt that the receiver’s high-maintenance ways contributed to his exit. Beckham engaged cornerback Josh Norman in the octagon, lost a fistfight with a kicking net, proposed marriage to said kicking net, took a boating vacation before his dreadful playoff performance against Green Bay — and then punched a hole in a Lambeau Field wall — and sat with Lil Wayne and ESPN’s Josina Anderson and questioned everything from Eli Manning’s arm to the team’s heart.
Tom Coughlin, two-time Super Bowl-champion coach with the Giants, once said that Beckham brought qualities to the Giants “the likes of which I’ve never seen.” And yet three head coaches (Coughlin, Ben McAdoo and Pat Shurmur), two general managers (Jerry Reese and Gettleman) and one team president and co-owner (John Mara) could never quite figure out how to manage Beckham and how to channel his boundless energy in a less disruptive direction.
This year, Chicago Cubs catcher Willson Contreras is going to let his play do the talking. Not long ago, the sometimes boisterous backstop was arguably on his way to becoming the best in the game at his position when — very suddenly — his development stopped.
His energy never quit, but his bat and glove betrayed him as he dropped off both on offense and behind the plate. His second-half demise in 2018 mirrored his team’s — but now both are on the comeback trail. Contreras is out to prove that he is every bit the All-Star who was voted a starter just last season.
The British Psychological Society, Research Digest, Christian Jarrett from
… To research psychologists, the placebo effect isn’t always a phenomenon of wonder, but a methodological nuisance. Researchers must go to extreme lengths to rule out the influence of participant expectations, so as to establish which observed effects are truly attributable to an intervention.
Here, in a celebration of the mysterious and maddening placebo effect, and to help inspire future research into this most fascinating aspect of human (and animal) psychology, we digest 10 amazing placebo-related findings.
Instead of spending big money on transfer fees and wages (because they can’t), Brentford have decided to invest in specialists who can maximise player performance.
One of them is the Danish sleep expert Anna West, founder of Sleep2perform, who has been working with the Bees since 2016.
“Our philosophy is to focus on doing the basics incredibly well in order to maximise results,” explains Head of Performance Chris Haslam. “Besides training, I truly believe quality sleep is the biggest fundamental tool a player can use to reach peak performance on a daily basis.”
… Developed after more than five years of interdisciplinary research at the Insight SFI Research Centre hosted by University College Dublin (UCD), and in partnership with its new spin out company, Output Sports, this novel technology brings a whole new level of portability, efficiency and accuracy to athlete performance optimisation processes. Output Sports is currently headquartered at NovaUCD, the Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs at UCD.
Speaking from an event at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Minister Bruton said: “I am delighted to announce this new technology capability from the Insight SFI Research Centre and its spin out, Output Sports. It demonstrates how the Irish research ecosystem is responsive and flexible, supporting the commercialisation and transfer of cutting-edge research into the marketplace. The government-funded SFI Research Centres continue to make important knowledge advancements; enhancing enterprise and industry, developing critical skills and further growing Ireland’s international reputation.” [audio, 5:16]
Researchers in the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering have developed a unique new device using the wonder material graphene that provides the first step toward ultrasensitive biosensors to detect diseases at the molecular level with near perfect efficiency.
Ultrasensitive biosensors for probing protein structures could greatly improve the depth of diagnosis for a wide variety of diseases extending to both humans and animals. These include Alzheimer’s disease, Chronic Wasting Disease, and mad cow disease—disorders related to protein misfolding. Such biosensors could also lead to improved technologies for developing new pharmaceutical compounds.
“What running shoes should I buy?” it’s probably the most asked question in running. And with so many brands, so many styles and so much go-faster marketing spin packed into every single shoe, it’s a bloody hard one to answer.
It’s made even more so by the fact that no two runners are the same. The shoes that help Eliud Kipchoge sprint his way to a marathon world record might not fit so well on the feet of a slower mortal. So you can’t even ask your fast running friends what they recommend.
But what if technology could take the guesswork out of choosing the perfect footwear for your running style? Runner’s World’s tech expert, Kieran Alger, goes in search of futuristic answers to running’s No.1 question.
… These are still very early days for wearable ECGs but the industry is growing rapidly. Apple took a major step forward to influence the future of healthcare with its ECG enabled Series 4 watch last year. Withings is set to deliver a ECG activity watch and blood pressure monitor later in 2019. But there are other options out there.
One of these comes from Sanatmetal, a Hungarian owned outfit which has been serving innovative devices and implants to clinicians since 1967. I’ve had a chance to test WIWE, their portable ECG monitor. The company says it dishes out clinical-quality results after 1 minute. Here’s what I made of it.
My bodega is only a little bigger than my studio apartment, and sells no fewer than 10 kinds of Muscle Milk. In the drink cases, crowded with bottled water, Snapple, and Arizona iced tea, Muscle Milk occupies prime, eye-level real estate, protein counts splashed across the front of the bottles in black, bold lettering: 15, 20, 35 grams. Inside the bottles are creamy shakes in flavors like Chocolate, Strawberries ‘n Crème, and Mango Tangerine. The branding is literally protein-themed, and the higher the number, the greater the halo: protein is the reason for its central location and fluorescent spotlight.
We all need more protein, even if few of us know why. Protein has emerged as an undisputed Good Choice over the past 50 years of warring scientific studies slagging fat and carbs, endless opportunistic fad diets, and skyrocketing obesity in America. Just as one might look at all the world’s religions and decide that, while none is correct, there must be “something out there,” one might look at all the world’s weight-loss diets and note that, while they contradict each other in many ways, they all seem to preach protein, so protein must be good.
Many agree that the future of nutrition is personalized nutrition. However I also often hear that “we have been doing this for years”. Of course both claims are valid. Some form of personalisation has been the basis of the work of a sports dietitian or sports nutritionist. However, there are different levels of personalized nutrition.
New York Magazine, Intelligencer, Will Leitch from
My favorite off-season sports story was when Adam Ottavino, then a free-agent relief pitcher, told MLB.com’s Mike Petriello on the excellent Statcast podcast that if he faced Babe Ruth today, “I would strike Babe Ruth out every time.”
The “strike Babe Ruth out” line got all the headlines — particularly when Ottavino ended up signing with the Yankees and backed down from his initial statement — but I loved what Ottavino said next: “I mean the guy ate hot dogs and drank beer and did whatever he did. It was just a different game.”
It may sound sacrilegious to your grandfather, but, of course, Ottavino is totally right. What baseball players are doing today and what they did 90 years ago, or 50 years ago, or even 10 years ago, is so dramatically different that it is almost two separate sports entirely.
Medium, Multiple Views: Visualization Research Explained, Jessica Hullman from
… My strong way of promoting information visualization is to declare that it is such a powerful amplifier of human abilities that it should be illegal, unprofessional, and unethical to do data analysis using only statistical and algorithmic processes. (However, as with all visualizations, the accompanying design has to account for users with visual disabilities by using sonification or other methods. Visualization’s potency in revealing unusual distributions and interesting clusters may productively encourage statistics and algorithms designers to extend their methods to detect these patterns as well as incorrect, anomalous, inconsistent, and missing data.)
And finally, remember that: the purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures. By addressing meaningful problems and difficult decisions, we can help leaders and managers to be more effective.
… Teams just don’t turn the ball over all that much anymore. In addition to being the best overall shooting season of the 3-point era, the 2018-19 campaign also has seen teams commit turnovers at the lowest rate they ever have, as just 12.6 percent of possessions leaguewide have ended with the offense giving the ball away to the defense in one manner or another. This is down from a high of 15.8 percent during the 1982-83 season.
But while the genesis of the other offensive changes can be neatly traced, the decline in turnovers is a bit more puzzling. In my search for an explanation, I figured it was best to ask a person whose teams have mastered the art of avoiding turnovers: Gregg Popovich, whose San Antonio Spurs own the lowest turnover rate in the NBA this season (which doubles as the fifth-lowest rate since the league began tracking turnovers) and have finished with a better-than-average turnover rate in 14 of the past 15 seasons — a time during which they have the league’s fourth-lowest turnover rate overall. Popovich, though, was also stumped (or perhaps just characteristically cagey). He didn’t really have any idea why his teams have avoided turnovers so consistently, nor why the league has done a better job in recent seasons.
The Giants’ dumbfounding decision to trade an all-time great at the peak of his powers is the latest example of an NFL team valuing their culture and the allure of hope over talent