Monk’s career didn’t get off to the best start in Charlotte. But after some time and space, both he and the Hornets are reaping the rewards of their partnership. Could that encourage other franchises to keep their former lottery picks around longer?
… In essentially a two-year playing career, Smith helped change the way football was fundamentally played, elevated his university to the cusp of a new paradigm and helped author a historic first-time accomplishment in the sport. Then he skipped town to be the No. 1 pick in the draft, opening the door for other spread quarterbacks. That’s quite a vast legacy tucked into three years on campus.
“He was so big to that team to really put us in a direction of becoming a nationally ranked and known program,” former Utah athletic director Chris Hill said by phone on Monday night. “I think it was a tremendous push for us to go from one level to the next. He really helped turn the corner for us, along with the other players and Coach Meyer.”
Smith didn’t exactly arrive at Utah portending great expectations. He was so skinny in high school that his father, Doug Smith, encouraged him to run cross country. His mother, Pam, pushed hard for him to attend an Ivy League school.
… In 2007, Aldridge was diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome (WPW) after experiencing dizziness and a rapid heartbeat during a game.
Imagine laying on your side and all of sudden, you feel your heart flutter and you know what’s coming next — dizziness, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, fatigue, anxiety and so on.
Speaking from personal experience, heart palpitations are no joke and can last for hours.
Tracking the emergence of humanlike cerebral features in the hominin fossil record could provide evidence of the timing and process of brain changes and offer a glimpse into the behavior of our ancestors and relatives. Because brain tissues rarely fossilize, changes in brain size, shape, and organization are gleaned from brain endocasts (replicas of the inner surface of the braincase) (1). After his observations of brain imprints preserved in fossil cranial specimens from Olduvai (Tanzania) (2), paleoanthropologist Phillip V. Tobias stated that “hominid evolution attained a new level of organization…with the emergence of the genus Homo.” There have since been debates on whether humanlike brain organization emerged concomitantly with the appearance of the genus Homo. On page 165 of this issue, Ponce de León et al. (3) challenge this view by suggesting that Homo in Dmanisi (foothills of the Georgian Caucasus) 1.85 to 1.77 million years (Ma) ago showed a primitive organization of the brain.
Reconstructing the chronology and mode of hominin brain evolution requires a good knowledge of subtle changes in brain areas. In this respect, the inferior part of the frontal lobe, where Broca’s cap is located, has been the focus of thorough investigations and intense discussions (4). In addition to its use as a critical landmark for brain reorganization, Broca’s cap plays a fundamental role in language production and comprehension, the evolution of which is an equally intriguing topic. The Broca’s cap of extant humans differs structurally from that of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos. Chimpanzees and bonobos have one distinct furrow in that region called the frontoorbital sulcus. This is absent in humans, who instead have two vertical furrows. In human evolutionary studies, it is assumed that the chimpanzee and bonobo brains more closely approximate the primitive condition for the hominin brain. Within this context, the “single-furrow condition” is interpreted as representing the ancestral condition.
American University, The Eagle student newspaper, Alec Branch from
Steve Jennings wishes he had access to sports science technology and advanced statistics when he was a player. Now, as the head coach of American University’s field hockey team, Jennings gets to implement these new elements into his coaching system and learn alongside his players.
“I would’ve loved it. I’m jealous of all the athletes today,” Jennings said with a laugh. “For video, we used to have a VHS and had to rewind it for different sports, and couldn’t really get stats. After every game, the players now get a video, which has all of their touches and all of their defensive plays all in one package instantly. Back in the day that was just not possible.”
The rise of sports science and analytics has infiltrated almost every sport worldwide, from the professional leagues down to amateur, college and high school sports. The teams at AU are no different, immersing themselves in data that gives acute insight into players’ bodies and playing styles. The data also helps coaches refine their tactics and practices, all to gain a crucial edge over their opponents.
In 1968, Dick Fosbury wowed the world with a brand new high jump technique at the Olympic Games in Mexico. Until then, the world record had been held by Valeriy Brumel of the Soviet Union, who jumped using the spin-roll technique, attacking the bar head-first and clearing it with the traditional straddle movement. Fosbury broke all conventions with his curved run-up and diagonal back-jump, but he won gold and set an Olympic record. The crowd, for the first and only time, did not cheer as the marathon leader entered the stadium at the very same moment, before they were all so enthralled by the extraordinary innovation in the high jump. Today, all jumpers use the ‘Fosbury Flop’. It has been debated whether Fosbury’s creativity was due to his imagination or his limitations, since the latter, whether intrinsic or imposed by the task at hand, are often a good source of creativity due to the need to adapt to the context. But one hypothesis is that it happened due to a fundamental change in the context itself, and which Fosbury viewed as a chance to explore new possibilities: the introduction of the foam landing mat.
This is what researchers Dominic Orth, John van der Kamp, Daniel Memmert and Geert J.P. Savelsbergh claim in their 2017 article Creative Motor Actions as Emerging from Movement Variability. Creative actions depend both on the characteristics of the individual and the environment in which they are to be carried out, an approach that differs from traditional ones that consider that the brain, from a higher hierarchical position, devises creative actions that can later be put into practice. This approach differentiated between the generation of ideas and their execution, when it has been shown that action is a constitutive part of creativity. Thus, creative solutions only emerge on the spot, during action, and not before. They are a product of individual, task-related and environment-related constraints. It would be incongruous to separate mental production from execution.
The NFL and NFL Players Association have approved a position-specific helmet design for the first time since they began regulating equipment for players, representatives for both groups confirmed Tuesday.
The helmet, known as the VICIS ZERO2-R TRENCH, was built for offensive and defensive linemen and is ranked No. 2 on the league’s 2021 safety rankings. The helmets are equipped with bumpers on their front and upper sides, where NFL engineering studies showed are a common point of contact for linemen who absorb concussion-causing contact, according to Dr. Ann Good, a senior engineer at BioCore and a consultant to the NFL.
The world has been a busy place for a while now. No wonder somewhere deep inside people recognize the need to stay healthy amidst all this, now that the pandemic has shaken things up even more.
Many people realized stay-at-home fitness was a thing, while others found a trusty friend in their smartwatch as they started running for stress relief. Fitness and activity tracking apps are indeed the dominant segments. Yet some find refuge in a meditation app, and the rest is being tucked in by a sleep tracker. The market is growing, especially in the Asia Pacific region. It might turn out to be true that many more people will adopt a technology-related job to not be so vulnerably tied to their workplace. Whether or not a surge in tech stabilizes, fitness applications are here to stay. Safe to say now is the best time to get into fitness app development. For a step-by-step on how to do that, read on. This guide gives you five steps from an idea to post-rollout maintenance.
University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley News from
Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a tiny wireless implant that can provide real-time measurements of tissue oxygen levels deep underneath the skin. The device, which is smaller than the average ladybug and powered by ultrasound waves, could help doctors monitor the health of transplanted organs or tissue and provide an early warning of potential transplant failure.
The technology, created in collaboration with physicians at the University of California, San Francisco, also paves the way for the creation of a variety of miniaturized sensors that could track other key biochemical markers in the body, such as pH or carbon dioxide. These sensors could one day provide doctors with minimally invasive methods for monitoring the biochemistry inside functioning organs and tissues.
“It’s very difficult to measure things deep inside the body,” said Michel Maharbiz, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. “The device demonstrates how, using ultrasound technology coupled with very clever integrated circuit design, you can create sophisticated implants that go very deep into tissue to take data from organs.”
Four players have already stepped away from the game for personal reasons this season, as a growing number are speaking out about mental health issues.
The first thing you should know about HIPAA is that it’s HIPAA, not HIPPA. There is only one P, and that P doesn’t stand for “privacy.”
“People make up what that acronym stands for,” Deven McGraw, co-founder and chief regulatory officer of the medical records platform Ciitizen and former deputy director for health information privacy at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR), told Recode.
“More often than not, [they think it’s] Health Information Privacy Protection Act: HIPPA. Yeah, that law does not exist.”
Background Studies on subsequent anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) ruptures and career length in male professional football players after ACL reconstruction (ACLR) are scarce.
Aim To investigate the second ACL injury rate, potential predictors of second ACL injury and the career length after ACLR.
Study design Prospective cohort study.
Setting Men’s professional football.
Methods 118 players with index ACL injury were tracked longitudinally for subsequent ACL injury and career length over 16.9 years. Multivariable Cox regression analysis with HR was carried out to study potential predictors for subsequent ACL injury.
Results Median follow-up was 4.3 (IQR 4.6) years after ACLR. The second ACL injury rate after return to training (RTT) was 17.8% (n=21), with 9.3% (n=11) to the ipsilateral and 8.5% (n=10) to the contralateral knee. Significant predictors for second ACL injury were a non-contact index ACL injury (HR 7.16, 95% CI 1.63 to 31.22) and an isolated index ACL injury (HR 2.73, 95% CI 1.06 to 7.07). In total, 11 of 26 players (42%) with a non-contact isolated index ACL injury suffered a second ACL injury. RTT time was not an independent predictor of second ACL injury, even though there was a tendency for a risk reduction with longer time to RTT. Median career length after ACLR was 4.1 (IQR 4.0) years and 60% of players were still playing at preinjury level 5 years after ACLR.
Conclusions Almost one out of five top-level professional male football players sustained a second ACL injury following ACLR and return to football, with a considerably increased risk for players with a non-contact or isolated index injury.
Food choices are an integral part of wellbeing and longevity, yet poor nutrition is responsible for millions of deaths every year. Among the complex mosaic of determinants of food choices are demographic, socioeconomic, physiological, and also cultural. In this work, we explore the connection between educational attainment, as a proxy for cultural capital, and food purchases, as a proxy for food consumption. Unlike existing studies, which use diaries and surveys, we use a large-scale dataset of food-related products purchased from a major retailer in London over the course of one year. By using this high-resolution dataset, we are able to explore the spatial dependence of the various factors impacting food choices, and estimate their direct and indirect spatial effects. We characterize food consumption across two complementary dimensions of (1) diet composition, and (2) diet variety. By building spatial auto-regressive models on these variables, we obtain an improved fit compared to traditional regression, and illustrate the importance of spillover effects. Our results consistently confirm the association between a higher educational attainment and a healthier diet, even when controlling for spatial correlation. First, a low educational level is connected to diets high in carbohydrates and low in fibers. Second, it is also associated with higher consumption of sweets and red meats, while high educational level is linked to a greater consumption of fruits, vegetables, and fish. Third, highly-educated areas show an increased nutritional diversity, together with a lower caloric intake. Finally, we show the presence of spillover effects within the neighboring communities, which would need to be taken in consideration when designing public health policies and interventions. [full text]
The annual survey of opening day baseball salaries by The Associated Press usually reveals something interesting about the state of the game, and this year’s version was even more interesting than most.
Here’s a tidbit from it that borders on surprising: Despite all you hear and read about the game’s huge salaries, a big percentage of major league baseball players aren’t millionaires.
That’s not to say they won’t be by the time they’re done playing. Even those playing for minimum salary — assuming they are somewhat frugal with their money — will eventually end up with a pile of cash if their careers last long enough.