El Maestro spent the spring cooped up in his Portland home, just like many of us. The Argentine national, who joined the Timbers in 2013, turned 34 in May, weeks before he and his teammates were allowed to practice together, and before Major League Soccer announced the resumption of its season with the MLS is Back tournament (the Timbers start group play July 13 against the LA Galaxy, their first game since March). We talked to him when he was still under stay-home orders about how he’s kept fit, what he learned from completing his coaching license during lockdown, and whether he might want to coach the Timbers one day.
“[At home] we have a strong routine from Monday to Saturday. Our trainers prepare us with an application on the phone. Every day you have something different, keeping working strength, aerobics, and as much as you can do. We have a good routine. It’s about an hour, hour and a half—training strength, different muscles. And then at the end we try to work the feet, the endurance, or mix them. Or pass the ball, and move it in short spaces.
… Ings, who spent last summer slavishly following a personal fitness programme, took up pilates during lockdown, and closely studies opponents in a search for weaknesses.
The Southampton forward, in contention for the Golden Boot, now feels like he will score every time he steps onto the pitch
“Once you get a goal or two then things just flow, you find yourself in good positions and, as a striker, it’s always important to believe you can score,” said the 27-year-old, who has 19 Premier League goals this season.
… George, however, has no more lingering doubt about his health.
“The whole season, all the way up until maybe a month or two ago, I had to always do shoulder rehab stuff, warming the shoulder up,” George said Friday. “Just so much stuff went into stuff I had to do before I actually took a foot on the floor. Now I feel great again.
Clippers head to Florida with health and workouts on mind
“I feel great going on the court, shooting, doing regular things. Just confident in that — feeling back to myself again.”
Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Research Blog from
Back on my last blog post referencing Morgan Ames’ book The Charisma Machine, Alan Kay said in a comment, “What we have here is a whole world view and a whole different world.” I’ve been thinking about that sentence a lot because it captures what I think is going on here. A Kuhnian paradigm shift is happening (and maybe has already happened) in research around education and educational technology from the world of Papert and Bruner to the world of learning sciences. I am going to take a pass at describing the change that I see happening in the field, but I encourage you also to read the International Society of the Learning Science (ISLS) presidential address from Victor Lee here, which describes the field more authority and with more authenticity than me.
When it comes to the benefits of exercise, experts warn that they can’t be banked for future use. Use it or lose it, we’re told. But there’s one very notable exception, and that’s regarding bone health: exercise in your youth builds strong bones for the golden years.
Physically active kids and teens boast eight to 10 per cent more hip bone density in adulthood when compared to their sedentary peers. And about half of the gains in bone size and one-third of improvements in bone strength acquired in those early years is kept throughout life.
Although learning styles (LS) have been recognised as a neuromyth, they remain a virtual truism within education. A point of concern is that the term LS has been used within theories that describe them using completely different notions and categorisations. This is the first empirical study to investigate education professionals’ conceptualisation, as well as means of identifying and implementing LS in their classroom. A sample of 123 education professionals were administered a questionnaire consisting both closed- and open-ended questions. Responses were analysed using thematic analysis. LS were found to be mainly conceptualised within the Visual-Auditory-(Reading)-Kinaesthetic (VAK/VARK) framework, as well as Gardner’s multiple intelligences. Moreover, a lot of education professionals confused theories of learning (e.g., behavioural or cognitive theories) with LS. In terms of identifying LS, educators reported using a variety of methods, spanning from observation and everyday contact to the use of tests. The ways LS were implemented in the classroom were numerous, comprising various teaching aids, participatory techniques and motor activities. Overall, we argue that the extended use of the term LS gives the illusion of a consensus amongst educators, when a closer examination reveals that the term LS is conceptualised, identified and implemented idiosyncratically by different individuals. This study aims to be of use to pre-service and in-service teacher educators in their effort to debunk the neuromyth of LS and replace it with evidence-based practices. [full text]
… As surfing prepares for its global spotlight, it is experiencing a seismic shift from a laid-back, go-with-the-flow mindset to one shaped by innovations in data analysis, physiological testing, and technology. Specialists in fields such as nutrition, psychology, and orthopedics are working with US surfing coaches like Brett Simpson to develop an Olympic training regimen that increasingly resembles those long favored by everything from basketball to volleyball. The team is undergoing cognitive analysis, establishing baseline biometrics, and tracking analytics to enhance performance. Surfers are experimenting with gear like pressure-sensing booties to glean insights into board control and GPS-equipped motion trackers to improve paddling technique. This embrace of science and technology has come as research and engineering yield advances long considered impossible—most obviously, consistent machine-made barrels suitable for competition. Some of the gadgetry can’t help but eventually make its way onto beaches everywhere, adopted by recreational enthusiasts and elite competitors alike, further changing the culture of the sport.
The job of maximizing all this potential falls to Kevyn Dean, the US team medical director. An orthopedic physical therapist who has spent two decades using physiology and biomechanics to help top wave riders achieve their best, Dean was the first to push such an approach within USA Surfing, the organization that selects teams for international competition. He sees the evidence-based methods that he pioneered within the sport inevitably ruling it, pushing it into the future.
The discovery of stable two-dimensional (2D) materials has effectuated a rapid evolution of skin conformal sensors for health monitoring via epidermal electronics. Among the newly discovered 2D materials, MXene stands out as a solution-processable 2D material allowing easy fabrication of highly conductive thin films with the potential to realize flexible skin conformal sensors. Here, we present a successful demonstration of a Ti3C2–MXene resistor as an extremely sensitive strain sensor in the form an ultrathin skin mountable temporary tattoo. The skin conformability and form factor afforded by the sensor promises inconspicuous and continuous monitoring of vital health parameters of an individual, like the pulse rate, respiration rate, and surface electromyography. The sensor serves as a single conduit for sensing the respiration rate and pulse, dispensing with the need of mounting multiple sensors. Its remarkably high sensitivity with a gauge factor of ∼7400 has been ascribed to development of nanocracks and their propagation through the film upon application of strain. The fast response and highly repeatable sensor follows easy fabrication steps and can be patterned into any shape and size using a laser.
KOLN, 1011now.com (Lincoln, NE), Nicole Griffith from
Youth and adult sports are picking backup after people were stuck at home for three months. As excited as they are to hit the fields, doctors are seeing a trend.
Physicians at Nebraska Orthopedic and Sports Medicine are seeing a surge in overuse injuries in high schoolers and adults. They say it’s common in softball and baseball players which started practices right away after months of being off.
“Everybody was so excited to get back into it and start doing things, and they’re a very small ramp up period before we’re starting to play in games and tournaments,” said Dr. Dane Todd, of Nebraska Orthopedic and Sports Medicine. “There are a lot of overuse and strain injuries that are occurring right now that we’re seeing everyday in clinic.”
The Washington Post; Jenn Abelson, Nicole Dungca, Meryl Kornfield and Andrew Ba Tran from
[Rose] Wong said she worries that when she returns to the Duke campus next month, the university and its medical clinic will be incapable of keeping her and 15,500 other Duke students healthy and safe in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Everyone I know says that student health is awful,” Wong said. “It’s an open secret.”
Wong’s misdiagnosis at Duke is among the scores of problems documented by The Washington Post at college health centers nationwide. As millions go back to school during the pandemic, the ability of campus health services to safeguard and care for students will be tested as never before — and many colleges appear unprepared for the challenge.
The lack of data frustrates state Sen. Adam Hollier (D-Detroit).
The former Cornell football player understands what’s at stake in the ever-changing dilemma that surrounds the coronavirus pandemic and college athletics. The NCAA permitted football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball players to return to campus beginning June 1 for voluntary workouts.
Positive coronavirus cases poured in at major schools, causing some athletic departments to shut down training sessions. But others have gone through the process without a peep.
“The more information we can put out the better,” Hollier said. “The more testing we can do helps us have a better idea about how this thing is working as we talk about masks and social distancing.
… Good nutrition—or rather, the lack of it—is likely to be the thread that ties all these issues together, and why the U.S. and the U.K. (who eat the most ultra-processed foods in their respective regions) are among the worst-hit countries. While the elderly and frail are most at risk from coronavirus, data from more than 2.5 million American and British users of the COVID Symptom Study app showed that people who were obese were much more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19, compared with people with a lower body mass index, and were also more likely to need respiratory support like ventilation. This was true across all the age groups we considered, including younger people. Social and economic deprivation was another major risk factor for hospitalization in both the British and American populations we studied, which also goes hand in hand with poor nutrition.
Garry Gelade, described as the elder statesman of football analytics following his pioneering work with clubs including Chelsea, has died at the age of 74.
The news of his death, on July 5th, was announced via his personal Twitter account today (July 12th). Gelade’s brother-in-law, Ram Dubey, told TGG that the data scientist had died just four days after being diagnosed with lung, bone and kidney cancer.
Julian presented his recent paper “As Seen on TV: Automatic Basketball Video Production using Gaussian-based Actionness and Game States Recognition” at the CVSports workshop. We jump right into the paper, discussing details like camera setups and angles, detection and localization of the figures on the court (players, refs, and of course, the ball), and the role that deep learning plays in the process. We also break down how this work applies to different sports, and the ways that Julian is looking to improve on this work for better accuracy. [audio, 42:15]