Sports Science

A new study finds benefits to consuming a blend of soy and dairy proteins after resistance exercise for building muscle mass. The researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch found that using a protein blend of soy, casein and whey post-workout prolongs the delivery of select amino acids to the muscle for an hour longer than using whey alone. It also showed a prolonged increase in amino acid net balance across the leg muscle during early post-exercise recovery, suggesting prolonged muscle building.    The new research builds on their earlier work reporting that a soy-…

It's believed that cheats are always a step ahead of testing. But if blood samples were stored longer - 10 years - the 'biological' profiles of athletes would be around long enough for testing to catch up. And much wider use should be made of  the athlete's biological passport - biological profiling - which will show up tiny changes made to the individual's unique genetic blueprint by doping substances and methods, without the need to identify the presence of the substance itself, when regularly monitored. Players competing in the FIFA World Cup in Brazil this June will be among the…

Nothing is more antithetical to baseball culture than apple slices and kale chips - fans want crackerjack and beer and hot dogs. For events, that's okay, but it is also a recurring part of youth sports, according to researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. An observational study (naturally) published in Childhood Obesity found that high-calorie snacks and sugar-sweetened drinks dominate the youth baseball scene.  "Though youth sports are an excellent way to promote physical activity, social interaction and positive health behaviors, the food environments are often characterized…

Basketball is a popular high school sport in the United States with 1 million participants annually. A recently published study by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital is the first to compare and describe the occurrence and distribution patterns of basketball-related injuries treated in emergency departments and the high school athletic training setting among adolescents and teens. The study, published online in the Journal of Athletic Training, examined data relating to adolescents 13-19 years of age who were treated in U.S. emergency…

In high school and college, your coach told you to avoid alcohol. And for good reason; alcohol saps muscle strength and it's lingering lethargic effects aren't welcome either. The lack of muscle strength really becomes evident when studying long-time alcoholics but it is also evidence in patients with mitochondrial disease.  A new study on mitochondria that are unable to self-repair may mean a new way to diagnose mitochondrial disease, and a new drug target.  Mitochondria -- organelles that produce the energy needed for muscle, brain, and every other cell in the body -- repair…

A systematic review in the Journal of Nutrition has associated iron supplements with improved exercise performance of women in child-bearing years. Lead researcher, Dr Sant-Rayn Pasricha from the University of Melbourne School of Population and Global Health and colleagues concluded that iron supplementation improved women’s exercise performance, in terms of both the highest level they could achieve at 100% exertion (maximal capacity) and their exercise efficiency at a submaximal exertion. Women who were given iron were able to perform a given exercise using a lower heart rate and at a higher…

NJIT Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences Bruce Bukiet has released his annual Major League Baseball projections and he doesn't say see good things for the Pittsburgh Pirates - the official baseball team of Science 2.0 - but at least his favorite team, the Mets, are going to stink too. Well, in the world of Bayes projections anyway. They still have to play the games.  Bukiet's model, published in Operations Research, can be used to project the number of games a team should be expected to win, the optimal batting order for a set of 9 batters, and how trading players will likely…

Golfers would rather they not hit a rock with their titanium alloy golf clubs anyway, but now they have a more compelling reason than the cost of buying a new one; they can create sparks that are more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit which can ignite dry foliage. So if you really want to golf during the drought, you now have one more thing to overthink while playing.  In a Fire and Materials, the authors say Orange County, California, fire investigators asked U.C. Irvine to determine whether such clubs could have caused blazes at Shady Canyon Golf Course in Irvine and Arroyo Trabuco Golf…

It used to be that you might see someone walking with some difficulty and they might say 'old football injury'.  That happens less and less, as long as they didn't have a long career as an offensive lineman. The anterior cruciate ligament is one of four that connect the thigh bone to the shin bone. Over-stretching or tearing of this ACL, partially or completely, used to be quite common - and career-ending. Today, that is not the case, even at the high school and college levels. A new paper at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Specialty Day finds that even…

Ulnar collateral ligament (UCLR) reconstruction, a common injury for pitchers in Major League Baseball, is often called "Tommy John Surgery" after the New York Yankees pitcher who made it famous, In 1974, Dr. Frank Jobe made medical history when he replaced the pitcher's torn medial collateral ligament with a tendon from John's forearm and he went on to pitch for 14 more years and added 164 more victories - after an injury that had been career-ending in the past. Results out today show that pitchers win more games following Tommy John Surgery but another paper disagrees. The scholars at Henry…