… “I don’t think football will ever be the same,” Messi said in an interview with El Pais on Sunday. “But beyond football, I don’t think life, in general, will ever be the same, either.
“All of us that have experienced this situation will remember what happened in one way or another. In my case, it’s with a feeling of sorrow and frustration for those that have suffered the most due to the loss of loved ones.
“I am sure that football and sport, in general, will be affected. Financially, because there are companies linked with the world of sport that will maybe experience some difficulties because of the coronavirus.
… But life took a dramatic twist for Pierce in 2000. For a player whose outstanding natural ability was haunted by the gloomy shadow of her abusive father and coach, Pierce was finally able to come through the darkness.
It was in the March at Indian Wells where the Catholic-raised Pierce became a born-again Christian.
“I woke up in my hotel room one morning and I felt I couldn’t keep living my life this way. That’s the moment I prayed, repented of all my sins and gave my life to Jesus.”
It also led to the ‘huge miracle’ of Pierce forgiving her father Jim for the hurt and suffering he caused with his brutal, drill-sergeant training methods and foul-mouthed courtside outbursts which led to the Women’s Tennis Association banning him from attending all tour matches in 1993.
Evander Kane continues to be a face and voice for social and racial injustices. That includes in the NHL as well.
The Sharks’ star winger announced Monday the formation of the Hockey Diversity Alliance. Kane will serve as co-head with Akim Aliu, who last played in the NHL in 2013.
Former Sharks winger Joel Ward, who announced his retirement on April 27, was named to the executive committee as well.
After the pandemic wiped out spring practice for most major college football teams, an NCAA plan to extend the preseason by two weeks could help coaches and players make up for the lost time.
The NCAA’s football oversight committee expects to finalize a plan on Thursday to allow teams to conduct up to 12 unpadded, slow-speed practices, also know as walk-throughs, during the 14 days before the typical preseason begins in August.
Teams will be permitted up to 20 hours per week of what the NCAA calls countable athletically related activities during those extra two weeks, leading into a normal 29-day preseason practice schedule. The walk-throughs will be part of those 20 hours per week, along with weight training, conditioning, film study and meetings. Players will not be permitted to wear pads or helmets during walk-throughs, which cannot exceed one hour per day.
Iowa players returned to campus Monday to prepare for voluntary workouts amid an uproar after former Hawkeyes alleged systemic racism and other mistreatment in the program, the team’s strength coach was placed on administrative leave and coach Kirk Ferentz’s leadership was called into question.
About two dozen current players took to social media to voice messages of unity, with several referencing the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the social unrest in the country. None complained directly about his treatment inside the Iowa program.
“I’m a human before an athlete, I’m black before anything,” redshirt freshman receiver Desmond Hutson tweeted. “There is an obvious problem and it’s up to us to fix it.”
… A critical mass of players — nearly 50 and counting — have come forward to describe a program that left them feeling bullied, belittled and stripped of their identity by an unreasonable demand to conform. Many of the accusations have come from black players, but not all. Taken at face value, the allegations paint the picture of a program with a race problem but also a deficiency in treating players with basic dignity.
Ferentz has said subsequently he was unaware of those issues before they surfaced on social media. He’s also said he wants to play a lead role in fixing them.
But on both counts, Ferentz has one major credibility problem that will be impossible to escape: The coaches being held most responsible by the former players are his son, Brian Ferentz, and a strength coach in Chris Doyle, who has been his closest professional associate for the length of his tenure.
Muscle stem cells (MuSCs) are an essential stem cell population for skeletal muscle homeostasis and regeneration throughout adulthood. MuSCs are an ideal candidate for cell therapies for chronic and acute muscle injuries and diseases given their inherent ability to self-renew and generate progenitor cells capable of myogenic commitment and fusion. Given their rarity and propensity to lose stem-cell potential in prolonged culture, methods for ex vivo MuSC expansion that achieve clinical-scale stem cell yields represent a critical unmet need in muscle cell-therapeutic development. Here, we tested a microenvironment engineering approach to achieve long-term adult mouse MuSC expansion suitable for clinical demands through the combined optimization of techniques previously reported to achieve small-yield MuSC expansion in short-term cultures. We developed an optimized protocol for high-yield MuSC expansion through the combination of inflammatory cytokine and growth factor co-stimulation, temporally-staged inhibition of the p38α/β mitogen activated protein kinase signaling pathway, and modulation of substrate rigidity in long-term hydrogel cultures. We found that, on soft, muscle-mimicking (12 kPa) hydrogel substrates, a mixture of the cytokines TNF-α, IL-1α, IL-13, and IFN-γ and the growth factor FGF2 stimulated robust exponential proliferation of adult MuSCs from both wildtype and mdx dystrophic mice for up to five weeks of culture that was accompanied by a phenotype shift towards committed myocytes. After observing that the temporal variation in myogenic commitment coincided with an oscillatory activation of p38α/β signaling, we tested a late-stage p38α/β inhibition strategy and found that blocking p38α/β signaling after three weeks, but not earlier, substantially enhanced cell yield, stem-cell phenotypes, and, critically, preserved transplantation potential for up to five weeks of FGF2/cytokine mix culture on soft hydrogels. Notably, this retention of transplant engraftment potency was not observed on traditional plastic substrates. We estimate that this protocol achieves >108-fold yield in Pax7+ stem cells from each starting MuSC, which represents a substantial improvement in stem-cell yield from long-term cultures compared to established methods. [full text, preprint]
American Chemical Society, ACS News Service Weekly PressPac from
Scientists have tried to develop synthetic red blood cells that mimic the favorable properties of natural ones, such as flexibility, oxygen transport and long circulation times. But so far, most artificial red blood cells have had one or a few, but not all, key features of the natural versions. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have made synthetic red blood cells that have all of the cells’ natural abilities, plus a few new ones.
Red blood cells (RBCs) take up oxygen from the lungs and deliver it to the body’s tissues. These disk-shaped cells contain millions of molecules of hemoglobin –– an iron-containing protein that binds oxygen. RBCs are highly flexible, which allows them to squeeze through tiny capillaries and then bounce back to their former shape. The cells also contain proteins on their surface that allow them to circulate through blood vessels for a long time without being gobbled up by immune cells. Wei Zhu, C. Jeffrey Brinker and colleagues wanted to make artificial RBCs that had similar properties to natural ones, but that could also perform new jobs such as therapeutic drug delivery, magnetic targeting and toxin detection.
… “Nobody really knew what to do,” said NPSL chairman Kenny Farrell.
Farrell, who also runs the NPSL’s New Orleans Jesters, thought about the demographic of the league’s owners. Most of them also run small businesses to support themselves. Two weeks into the economic shutdown, they were beginning to feel its effects, with no indication of when people could head back to work.
Farrell knew that if he kept postponing the season until they were ready to play, owners would have to worry about spending money on the necessities — housing for the team, uniforms for the players, contracts for the home stadium sites.
With that in mind, Farrell made the call on March 26. The NPSL became the first American national soccer league to cancel its 2020 season.
A college with a sports medicine department reporting to or financed by an athletic department then was more likely to have athletic trainers treating more patient loads than colleges with a medical model for administration. Colleges with sports medicine departments with lower patient loads had lower rates of injuries, reinjuries, and concussions.
Objectives: To: (1) analyze the results of 5 years of preparticipation cardiac screening including 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I athletes; and (2) assess the rates of ECG screening abnormalities and false-positive rates among 3 ECG screening criteria.
Design: Retrospective chart review.
Setting: National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I University.
Participants: One thousand six hundred eighty-six first-year athletes presenting for their preparticipation examination including 12-lead resting ECG.
Interventions: At the completion of the study period, all ECGs were retrospectively reviewed using the Seattle, Refined, and International Criteria.
Main outcome measures: (1) Prevalence of pathologic cardiac conditions identified by screening; and (2) number of ECG screening abnormalities by criteria.
Results: Three athletes (0.2%) were found to have conditions that are associated with sudden cardiac death. Retrospective review of ECGs using Seattle, Refined, and International criteria revealed an abnormal ECG rate of 3.0%, 2.1%, and 1.8%, respectively. International criteria [odds ratios (OR), 0.58; P = 0.02] demonstrated a lower false-positive rate compared with the Seattle criteria. There was no significant difference in false-positive rates between the Seattle and Refined (OR, 0.68; P = 0.09) or the International and Refined criteria (OR, 0.85; P = 0.5).
Conclusions: There was a low rate of significant cardiac pathology in this population, and no athletes were permanently restricted from play as a result of screening. Our results suggest that the International criteria have the lowest false-positive rate of athlete-specific ECG criteria, and thus, it is the preferred method for preparticipation ECG screening in NCAA athletes.
European Society for Neurogastroenterology and Motility from
When seeking a causative factor for the onset of insulin resistance and low-grade inflammation that usually accompanies obesity and diabetes, in the past scientists have turned to bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) as a triggering factor.
However, the causal role of gut microbiota in obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) remains elusive. While the vast majority of studies have focused on studying fecal microbiota in obese people with diabetes, little is known about the existence of microbial signatures in tissues and organs involved in metabolic control.
A new study by Anhê and colleagues uncovers a unique microbial profile in the liver, adipose tissue and plasma in people with morbid obesity and diabetes.
Here’s one familiar pre-COVID-19 scene that runners won’t miss this summer: the long, tense lineup for the portable toilets before the start of a mass-participation race.
Of course, that doesn’t mean no one is currently suffering from runner’s trots or other exercise-linked gastrointestinal hassles. If anything, the reported surge in social-distance-friendly workouts such as running and cycling is reminding a whole new cohort that eating and exercising don’t always mix well.
But the solution obviously isn’t simply to avoid eating. As Patrick Wilson points out in his new book The Athlete’s Gut: The Inside Science of Digestion, Nutrition, and Stomach Distress (VeloPress, 2020), sometimes avoiding food for too long before exercise can raise your risk of mid-workout nausea as much as scarfing a meal right before you warm up.
Eating and drinking while playing video games is a time-honored tradition. And while it’s surprisingly ubiquitous, according to a new study, it could also have profound implications on your health.
A whopping 80% of gamers around the world said they eat food or drink beverages while they play video games, according to a new study from researcher NewZoo. Men are slightly more likely than women to eat or drink while playing games, and age appears to be a factor: 91% of men and 87% of women in North America between the ages of 21 and 35 are chowing down during a game session.
