Applied Sports Science newsletter – April 30, 2019

… “In the last two or three years, she has really evolved her game,” Parsons said. “She’s maintained all those qualities that she has had all her career, in and around the 18, scoring or creating. Now, she’s also becoming this playmaker. In her position, she crosses between three positions. She looks like a No. 8 sometimes, breaking from the midfield, arriving late. She’s this No. 10, who creates and sets people up. Then, she’s this No. 9, who is finishing chances inside the 18.”

While Sinclair’s performance during games has been critical to Portland’s success, her work ethic and leadership in training and in the locker room has been equally as important to the club.

Even though she has long been viewed as a superstar within the women’s game, Sinclair has never relied on her talent alone. During the offseason, she spent hours and hours working out in the gym and focusing on her conditioning. She said she is now the fittest that she has ever been in her career.

… “We are the recipient of Jo trying to inch along slowly and buy time,” Sixers coach Brett Brown said earlier this month. “You win a game, two more days, you win a game, three more days, you might drop one, four more days.

“How do you deliver him responsibly to a later date in ultimately what you hope will be a deep playoff run?

“It’s not as clear cut as you thought it would be on ‘how do you maintain a fitness base and still get his knee rest?’ What do we do to help him most now?

Going on their 25th year since their last Lombardi Trophy, the 49ers shrewdly used their top draft picks to fill their greatest needs.

First, they scored the best pass rusher, Nick Bosa.

Next came wide receivers Deebo Samuel and Jalen Hurd.

All share a familiar concern that feeds into this year’s glaring theme: Will they be healthy?

Citing “medicals” that gave the 49ers the green light to draft one guy after the other, general manager John Lynch proposed a theory Saturday night why these new 49ers got banged up in college.

A mouse study finds that when blood platelets are activated during exercise, they release factors that increase the number of newborn neurons in the hippocampus.

Here’s a fascinating paper (PDF) that’s not exactly chemistry-related (well, not directly) but definitely has some relevance to a person’s everyday work life in the sciences. The authors are using data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) questionnaire, administered every three years in OECD countries to teenage students. And they are able to provide us with some rare data on the extent to which the respondents are trying to bullshit their way past things they don’t know. See, I told you this was relevant.

… Imagine a society in which 93 percent of children grow up playing organized sports. Where costs are low, the economic barriers to entry few, travel teams aren’t formed until the teenage years — and where adults don’t start sorting the weak from the strong until children have grown into their bodies and interests. Then, the most promising talents become the most competitive athletes in the world, on a per-capita basis.

I am talking about Norway.

The country found its way onto my radar in a meaningful way last year at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, where Norway, a nation of just 5.3 million, won more medals, 39, than any other country in the history of the Winter Games.

Cognitive networks have evolved a broad range of solutions to the problem of gathering, storing and responding to information. Some of these networks are describable as static sets of neurons linked in an adaptive web of connections. These are ‘solid’ networks, with a well-defined and physically persistent architecture. Other systems are formed by sets of agents that exchange, store and process information but without persistent connections or move relative to each other in physical space. We refer to these networks that lack stable connections and static elements as ‘liquid’ brains, a category that includes ant and termite colonies, immune systems and some microbiomes and slime moulds. What are the key differences between solid and liquid brains, particularly in their cognitive potential, ability to solve particular problems and environments, and information-processing strategies? To answer this question requires a new, integrative framework.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Liquid brains, solid brains: How distributed cognitive architectures process information’. [full text]

Fiber electrodes, as the key part of fiber-shaped supercapacitors for wearable electronics, are widely explored on the basis of carbon nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene fibers due to their high mechanical strength, electrical conductivity and specific surface area. The incorporation of carbon nanomaterials with other pseudocapacitive materials is a common strategy to improve the electrochemical properties of resulting fiber-shaped supercapacitors. However, the pseudocapacitance is far from fully developed especially at high rate owing to the insufficient electron supply and ion accessibility during electrochemical reactions. Hence developing new fiber electrodes is very important to realize efficient electron supply and ion accessibility simultaneously in one single fiber.

Some fitness trackers are inaccurately measuring running distance, according to research from the consumer watchdog Which?

It tested 118 trackers using a treadmill to complete the distance of a marathon – 26.2 miles (42km).

It found that the least reliable was the Garmin Vivosmart 4, which underestimated the distance by 10.8 miles – meaning the researcher actually ran 37 miles.

Garmin said it was because that particular tracker did not contain GPS.

It described the Vivosmart 4 as an “all-round smart fitness tracker” and suggested that marathon runners use its Forerunner range which is GPS-enabled.

A next-generation foam technology developed by engineers at Florida State University could soon be a key component in safer and more effective football helmets, thanks to a new grant from the National Football League’s Play Smart. Play Safe. health and safety initiative.

The technology, called auxetic foam, was invented by Changchun Zeng, an associate professor in the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and a researcher in FSU’s High-Performance Materials Institute (HPMI). Zeng said the foam’s advanced properties make it ideally suited to the critical and complex demands of a professional football helmet.

Clemson football and legal department people were happy for all three of the Tigers defensive linemen selected in the first round of the NFL draft Thursday night but probably happiest for Dexter Lawrence, who went to the New York Giants with the 17th overall pick.

Lawrence, a 6-4, 340-pound junior defensive tackle, was one of three Clemson players who tested positive for ostarine, a banned performance-enhancing drug, prior to the Cotton Bowl in December. All three were banned from the Tigers’ Cotton Bowl and national championship game victories.

Athletic director Dan Radakovich said Friday he expects an NCAA appeal result in the next few days, a ruling originally due in February before Clemson received an extension. The timing might not be coincidental: Two Clemson senior administration officials who requested anonymity told The Post and Courier that the school feared a lawsuit from Lawrence, long projected as a first-round pick, if he fell too far in the draft and if the tumble could be tied to the failed PED test.

… Whenever a new strategy is successful for one team, whether it be Moneyball, bullpenning, the use of an opener, or even tanking, other teams are quick to imitate the trend. The Houston Astros and Chicago Cubs each have won a World Series by losing for multiple years, stockpiling high draft picks, and trading for young talent.

Now, many teams are imitating that strategy and going into a rebuilding cycle, which puts the competitiveness of the game at stake. Seattle general manager Jerry Dipoto recently addressed this issue, saying, “You could argue that you’re going to compete with more clubs to try to get the first pick in the draft than you would to win the World Series.” This is not good for baseball. Having fewer competitive teams has negatively affected the game, with total attendance dropping to its lowest in 15 years last season.

… in the summer of 2018, I went to the World Cup in Russia with Belgium and it just went really well. It was never my plan to go full time with them but things went so well, and I forged so many strong relationships, that I just couldn’t turn down the chance to join them full time.

What is the role of an analyst?

The biggest role of the analyst, in my opinion, is to support the manager and his technical staff, at all times. If you’re willing to support them when you’re flying high, winning games, then you’d better be ready to support them when things don’t go to plan as well, because that is when they need you most.