For the past year, he has been earning $10 an hour washing carts, clearing the practice range, and anything else required of him as a part-time employee of Sycamore Creek Golf Course in Goochland. This isn’t what Aaron McGarity expected to be doing, not after having a bang-up fall of 2019. A relief pitcher in the New York Yankees organization, he was sent to Arizona for additional competition as a prized farmhand — and didn’t disappoint.
After allowing a home run to the first hitter he faced, the 6-foot-3, 195-pound right-hander, with the 94 mph fastball and equally effective slider and change-up, didn’t allow another earned run in 10 games (11 1/3 innings). He struck out 15, walking one. Having become almost lost in the system, McGarity was back on the organization’s radar when new director of pitching Sam Briend went to bat for the Virginia Tech alumnus and said not to overlook him solely on an up-and-down regular season.
Briend, 33, joined the Yankees after working for Driveline Baseball, a data-driven pitcher development camp/system that uses 18 cameras to detect flaws and track every movement. He was hired in June of 2019 and became an instant advocate for McGarity.
… When we talk about prospects’ stocks falling ahead of the NFL draft, it doesn’t always mean there’s some inherent red flag like a bad pro day, health issues or character concerns. Sometimes, it’s as simple as teams trading up to target different players or having interest in alternative options.
Let’s take a look at some players who, for any of the reasons above, may find themselves selected later than expected.
Although Michael Oher had hoped to continue his career in the NFL, a severe concussion ultimately kept him on the sidelines.
In summer 2017, Oher, 34, was released by the Carolina Panthers after failing a physical. Oher had only played three games in the 2016 season and was placed in concussion protocol in late September of that year.
Now, almost four years later, he’s reflecting on his health crisis.
“I wanted to keep playing but it took me a couple years to get healthy,” Oher tells PEOPLE in a recent interview. “It took me about two years to get healthy, to think again and to make things happen again because I had a concussion and it took me a while to recover.”
This is a lecture I recorded for the 2021 Spring Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine-Northland Regional Chapter. Live Q&A session was held on March 26th, 2021. Directed at Sports science students and established researchers/teachers. [video, 47:17]
Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon warns that whatever you do, never — under any circumstances — invite coach Nick Sirianni to play a game of blackjack.
Or chess. Or H-O-R-S-E. Or anything that even remotely involves winning or losing. You’ll come to regret it.
“The guy is, in my opinion, like exhaustingly competitive,” Gannon said via the Eagles’ team website.
Gannon worked alongside Sirianni on the Indianapolis Colts’ staff from 2018 to 2020 before joining him in Philadelphia this offseason — Gannon serving as cornerbacks coach and Sirianni offensive coordinator — and would often be sucked into Sirianni’s competitive aura.
Google has introduced its latest Nest Hub, with a focus on making it the “ultimate bedside assistant and alarm clock”.
Speaking with media about the “second-generation” Nest Hub, Nest product manager Ashton Udall said it came as a surprise to Google that people were mostly using the Nest Hub in their bedroom, so the company decided to double down and focus on adding new bedroom-specific features.
“When we talked to people, what they really wanted more help with in their bedrooms, by far and away, the resounding response was ‘help me get better sleep’,” he said.
“Quality of sleep has become the number one concern when it comes to health and wellness in the home … one in three adults are sleep deprived, one in seven have a sleep breathing disorder … and one in two adults, myself included, have trouble falling asleep.”
Narvalo wants face masks to transform from a protective product into an informative one, offering important insights into the user’s breathing and the surrounding air quality.
Yale University, Yale Daily News student newspaper, Veronica Lee from
In January, researchers led by associate professor of psychology Robb Rutledge launched The Happiness Project, an app that will help scientists study decision-making, happiness and mental health.
Created by neuroscientists working in the Rutledge lab at Yale University and at University College London in the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research and the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, the app allows users to play four different games, unlocking new levels and tracks their happiness as they continue to play.
“With this app, we’re inviting the general public to play games for science where we can see how they make decisions and how they feel about the outcomes,” Rutledge said. “We know there are certain things that affect people’s well-being and happiness, including uncertainty, rewards and learning. The data from this app will allow us to draw conclusions about how these factors are actually affecting the way people feel.”
Due to their tissue-like mechanical properties, hydrogels are being increasingly used for biomedical applications; a well-known example are soft contact lenses. These gel-like polymers consist of 90 percent water, are elastic and particularly biocompatible. Hydrogels that are also electrically conductive allow additional fields of application, for example in the transmission of electrical signals in the body or as sensors. An interdisciplinary research team of the Research Training Group (RTG) 2154 “Materials for Brain” at Kiel University (CAU) has now developed a method to produce hydrogels with an excellent level of electrical conductivity. What makes this method special is that the mechanical properties of the hydrogels are largely retained. This way they could be particularly well suited, for example, as a material for medical functional implants, which are used to treat certain brain diseases. The group’s findings were now published in the journal Nano Letters.
All my apps combined. The ultimate pocket lab!
Mobile phone with rightwards arrow at left
+30 tests including jumps, VBT, runs, sprints/COD, ROM, Mocap&more!
A variety of metrics could indicate that the country is getting the pandemic under control, including the number of new daily cases and the number of deaths. But epidemiologists say three specific metrics are required to get a clear understanding of the country’s overall response: the number of Covid-19-related hospitalizations, the virus’s so-called reproduction number and the number of vaccinations administered.
… From their first signing of the off-season (Robbie Ray) to the last free agent they brought in (David Phelps), the team made it clear that they are comfortable treating 2020 as an anomaly and putting far more faith in how players performed in complete seasons, under less extreme circumstances.
That’s a logical stance considering how bizarre last year was from a competitive standpoint — both in terms of small samples and the pandemic’s asymmetrical effects on different players and teams. Adding players who scuffled in a season where that seems less likely to be indicative of their true talent level than any other could be a smart strategy.
Even so, it’s rare to see a team dismiss recent performance so brazenly,
… A few things we found in the new coaching contracts …
Confidential information
This falls under Article 2, Section 4 and deals with exactly what it describes. It states that this job will include the knowledge of such “Confidential Information” and its use by a “competitor Division I institution would place the University’s football program at a serious competitive disadvantage.
As such, the employee is agreeing to not share confidential information. We’re talking recruiting intel and playbooks here and the whole Wake Forest leak scandal might have something to do with this contract addition.
One of the main objectives of those involved in elite sports (parents, coaches, scientists, managers, etc.) is to understand what factors make success possible. The influence of a players’ birth month is an aspect that has attracted great interest, looking at how it impacts on the probability of having a successful sports career. In youth categories, players who were born between 1st January and 31st December of the same year are grouped in the same competition category. However, the personal development of children born in the first months of the year tends to be far ahead of those born in November or December. That maturation difference is known as the Relative Age Effect (RAE).2,3,4 Having boys and girls with an advanced biological development compared to their opponents makes it easier to win matches and championships, although the one who loses might have more technical-tactical talent. This focus on winning at an early age can lead to the selection of the most biologically advanced children, despite their more limited talent. But how important is birth date in football player’s sports career?