… Two years ago, at the start of Metcalf’s unprecedented rise, the view was very different. After a freak neck injury at Ole Miss, vulnerable and scared, he looked up from a hospital bed as doctors informed him he might never play football again. They were wrong. Just a few months later, in fact, Metcalf burst onto the scene as the viral (and often shirtless) star of the 2019 combine and the eventual second-round pick of the Seahawks. And in Seattle, a perfect storm of ingredients — the Seahawks’ veteran leadership, Metcalf’s upbringing as the son of an NFL lineman and a budding telepathy with Wilson that was buoyed by a strange (but effective) offseason bonding ritual — have created a generational talent who is now eyeing NFL immortality.
In the Vaporfly era, that’s a high-stakes decision–so she headed to the lab with a few pairs of shoes to do personal running economy tests. The results were surprising…
… “It’s scary to think about the long term and it definitely affects your mood in the short term,” said Bosa, who was sidelined the past two games. “A little depressed for a few days thinking about it and the way it affects your brain. It’s tough, but I feel 100 percent normal. I have for a while.”
Bosa, 25, was cleared from the concussion protocol before Wednesday’s practice and is on track to return for Sunday’s game against the New York Jets at SoFi Stadium. He’s ready to move forward, but he’s going to be extra cautious to avoid contact to his head.
Bosa has always prioritized his mental health. He’s well aware of the brain diseases many football players suffer from. But Bosa had never experienced a concussion as serious as this one.
… Seriously. It’s time to think of Springer as a top-10 hitter. Even when many of his teammates took a step back in the wake of their cheating revelations in 2020, Springer didn’t miss a beat. Look at the names surrounding him on the weighted runs created plus leaderboard across the past two seasons.
2/n What so special about the ODC? It remind us that hemoglobin is a very active molecule that can respond rapidly to environmental conditions by varying its ability to bind oxygen.
3/n Also its sigmoid shaped because when hemoglobin binds its first oxygen this increases the affinity for bind more (and vice-versa for “unloading”). P50 is the oxygen level were hgb is 50% saturated. So the higher the P50 the less hemoglobin can bind oxygen.
Seeing an athlete in a bathtub full of ice water—complete with chunks of ice floating on the surface—is fairly common in movies and professional sports coverage, as a way to show how athletes lower inflammation quickly to boost recovery. But do ice baths really have legit benefits? According to recent research, the technique may be more cinematic than effective.
A meta-analysis published in the journal Sports Medicine looked at eight studies that had five common factors: controlled conditions, performed on humans, associated with a training program, immersion performed at 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) or below, and measurements taken both before and after immersion.
Professor Andrew Jones has worked with marathon greats like Eliud Kipchoge and Paula Radcliffe. We caught up with him to find out what makes them so exceptional. And how you can use their secrets to boost your running.
Electronic shirts that keep the wearer comfortably warm or cool, as well as medical fabrics that deliver drugs, monitor the condition of a wound and perform other tasks, may one day be manufactured more efficiently thanks to a key advance by Oregon State University researchers.
The breakthrough involves inkjet printing and materials with a crystal structure discovered nearly two centuries ago. The upshot is the ability to apply circuitry, with precision and at low processing temperatures, directly onto cloth – a promising potential solution to the longstanding tradeoff between performance and fabrication costs.
Objectives: The main aim in the current study was to use a single-subject analysis to profile the physical performance characteristics of individuals within an injured group and a between-group approach to profile the group as a whole. These profiles were then used to inform single-subject and between-group rehabilitation interventions. Methods: Fifty-three (28 with athletic groin pain and 25 non-injured) Gaelic football players (24.8 years±7.1 years; 179 cm±5.5 cm; 79.7 kg±9.2 kg) underwent 3D biomechanical analysis, which was used to measure a series of physical performance characteristics. The non-injured group was used to create a ‘performance database’ to compare the injured individuals, and a between-group analysis was also conducted. The scores from each analysis were used to inform the targets of interventions. Results: The analysis highlighted the variety of profiles that existed across the tested individuals and that these profiles differed from that of the between-group analysis. By analysing individuals in a single-subject approach, detail can be seen that is lost with between-group analysis.
Female soccer players should soon get their maternity rights protected under new employment rules announced Thursday by FIFA.
The governing body of soccer is preparing to mandate clubs to allow at least 14 weeks of maternity leave paid at a minimum two-thirds of a player’s full salary. National soccer bodies can insist on more generous terms.
“Her club will be under an obligation to reintegrate her into football activity and provide adequate ongoing medical support,” FIFA said.
Leeds are top of the Premier League. Leeds are bottom of the Premier League. It just depends on which table you consult. Marcelo Bielsa’s hyperactive players have made the most challenges in the division, an average of 21 per game. And yet they have conceded the joint-most goals, 17, with West Bromwich Albion.
It is not a contradiction as much as a consequence of idiosyncratic tactics. Pep Guardiola, one of the host of managers influenced by Bielsa, once infamously said he did not coach tackles. A mentor has adopted a very different approach. Leeds’ 21 tackles have been necessitated by the Argentinian’s policy of man-marking all over the pitch; at times they have required more. The flaw in the theory is that if one opponent escapes, the entire system is under threat. As Leeds only have one spare man, in a centre-back, there can be no one else to halt the suddenly free runner.
Leeds may highlight how simplistic some of the thinking around football can be. The implication behind Guardiola’s much-mocked words was that defending can be accomplished without resorting to tackling and, usually, the elite sides make the fewest tackles, partly because they have the ball most of the time. Leeds are a rarity: high in both the possession and the tackling charts.
Using machine learning models to predict the future is a powerful tool for creating or enhancing software applications. ML-driven predictions can power content recommendations, risk assessment, ads targeting, and much more. By understanding the probability of future outcomes, these machine learning applications deliver personalized experiences that benefit the user and the business.
In order to create a model that can predict future events, we train it on labeled examples from the past. For example, if we want to predict if a user will click on an ad, we need past examples of users clicking (and not clicking) on ads for the model to learn from. And it’s extremely important that when we construct this training data set, we make sure not to accidentally use information from the future in any one example. This problem is a form of data leakage and if handled incorrectly, it can have disastrous effects on model quality.
… Since 2006, American players must be at least 19 years old and at least one NBA season must have elapsed since they graduated from high school or, if they didn’t graduate, when they would have graduated. This policy was collectively bargained by the NBA and NBPA. Prior to 2006, high school players could “jump” directly to the NBA. Between 1975 and 2005, 40 players made that ascension, among them LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, Tracy McGrady, Tyson Chandler, Lou Williams, Amar’e Stoudemire and Jermaine O’Neal.
The NFL and WNBA are even more age-restrictive. Prospective NFL players must until at least three years from high school have passed. American players seeking the WNBA must be at least 22 years old or college grads (or four years out of high school).
These eligibility rules are uniquely limiting. Players can jump from high school—in some cases even earlier—to the NHL, MLB, MLS, UFC, pro tennis and pro golf. Basketball players in other pro leagues can also begin sooner. At age 13, Dallas Mavericks star Luka Dončić signed with Real Madrid. He went on to play five years of pro hoops before joining the NBA as a rookie. The WNBA seems to concede that its rules for Americans wouldn’t work for international players, who are WNBA-eligible once they turn 20.
Making Sense Of: IoT
The Internet of Things, IoT, is a world with double or triple the current number of intelligent, Internet-connected devices, and it will be here sooner, rather than later, according to Pete Warden, blogger and lead of the TensorFlow Mobile/Embedded team at Google. “What I see is that there is a lot of latent demand for technology that I believe will become feasible over the next few years,” he recently wrote, “and the scale of that demand is so large that it will lead to a massive increase in the number of embedded devices shipped.” Warden forsees a low-power, low-price threshhold that once broken, will open the floodgates, for widespread adoption.
MCUNet is an example of the disruption Warden expects: faster and more accurate machine intelligence at lower cost and using less energy. Song Han’s group at MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science accomplished the “tiny deep learning” in MCUNet using two component parts. TinyEngine is a sort-of operating system that directs resource management. TinyNAS is a neural architecture search algorithm that feeds compact neural nets matched to TinyEngine’s available microcontrollers. “Everything put together is just one megabyte of flash,” says Han.
Industry standards are, wisely, treading water awaiting next-gen systems like MCUNet. From IoT analyst Stacy Higginbotham, “Zigbee Alliance said that it had created a separate working group for the Project Connected Home over IP standard [ProjectCHIP] designed for commercial buildings.” It sets up a path for all sorts of consumer-ready connected devices from all kinds of vendors to interoperate in homes, offices and commercial spaces.
Internet of Things is bleeding edge technology and with sports teams investing in digital infrastructure like few other industries, sports should lead development of new, real-world applications. The economic incentives to prevent injuries to million-dollar athlete justify business models for large, sometimes experimental, IoT investments. Get ready.
Thank you for your attention. Stay safe and take care.
-Brad
