Sports Science
Bullying and violence are the latest cultural magnet for administrators in schools around the country, but the solution may not be paid commercials, more books or talks in the gym - it may be as simple as embracing team sports again.
At the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, D.C., researchers discussed their analysis of data from the 2011 North Carolina Youth Risk Behavior Survey to see if athletic participation was associated with violence-related behaviors, including fighting, carrying a weapon and being bullied. A representative sample of 1,820 high school…
Synthetic surfaces, popularly called Astroturf since the Houston Astrodome made it famous, were introduced in the 1960s to reduce strain on the playing surface and thus reduce field maintenance.
But it was linked to an increase in injuries, one example in football parlance being "turf toe".
Third generation artificial surfaces behave more like grass and soil but continue to be associated with injuries to the foot, ankle, toe, knee and even concussions. Characteristics of the play surface directly affect how much energy is absorbed by the athlete upon impact and that means shoes are…
Blanket stereotypes are bad but they often come into existence for a reason; the problem becomes when everyone is labeled with the same brush. There is a common belief that some schools, high school and college, are giving athletes an easier time because they have physical skills but not academic ones, for example, and so all athletes become considered "dumb jocks".
Are college athletes victims of stereotype threat the way sociologists contend women and minorities in science classes are?
Maybe, but scholars at Michigan State University say college coaches can be the best defense against this…
Engineers at the University of Sheffield have been doing some science of rugby - measuring the dynamic friction between the material of the ball and the skin on the fingertips and palm, and the mitts that some players choose to wear under different weather conditions to find the best way to limit the risk of a player fumbling the ball.
As the Six Nations Cup reached its patriotic climax, Drs. Roger Lewis and Matt Carré are more interested in grip than glory. They're experts in tribology, the science of friction.
Rugby balls are now manufactured with pimples on the surface of their…
French women are less likely to spend any time on any physical activities - not sports, exercise or even household chores, compared to women in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the UK, according to a new survey.
The multi-national survey on sport and exercise habits also reveals that more than 50 percent of French women did not play competitive sport or spend any time on intensive workouts such as running or cycling in a given week. As the French women's football team prepare for this summer's UEFA Women's EURO in Sweden (that's soccer to you Yanks), the countdown to the championships offers an…
When a marathon runner approaches the finish line of race but suddenly collapses, it's reasonable to assume it is because of a muscle issue. It might also be a braking mechanism in the brain which swings into effect and makes us people tired to continue. What may be occurring is what is referred to as 'central fatigue'.
Central fatigue is a phenomenon which has been known for about 80 years; it is a sort of tiredness which, instead of affecting the muscles, hits the brain and nervous system. By conducting scientific experiments, it is possible to observe and measure that the brain sends…
America leads the world in science and Nobel prizes but we may never compete in men's soccer. The reason may be because men are too smart to hit things with their heads. A paper on the effects of young women who hit things with their heads is why.
The ongoing effects of a boxer hitting you in the head (bad) or Ronda Rousey arm-barring you into unconsciousness (kind of awesome - once, anyway) would seem obvious but a new paper says even less forceful actions, like 'heading' a soccer ball, can lead to changes in performance on certain cognitive tasks. It may be the American academia is out to…
A new paper says a hockey player's birthday strongly biases how professional teams assess his talent.
The authors found that, on average, National Hockey League (NHL) draftees born between July and December are much more likely than those born in the first three months of the year to have successful careers. In particular, 34 percent of draftees were born in the last six months of the year, but these individuals played 42 percent of the games and scored 44 percent of the points accumulated by those in the study. By contrast, those born in the first three months of the year constituted…
If you liked FoxTrax, that glowing hockey puck shooting around the ice during NHL games, you will love what engineers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Electro-Communications (UEC) in Tokyo have done: they put a camera inside a football.
The camera is embedded in the side of a rubber-sheathed plastic foam football can record video while the ball is in flight. Want a ball's-eye view of the playing field? Now you have it. But because a football can spin at 600 rpm, the raw video is an unwatchable blur so the researchers also developed a computer algorithm that converts the…
Surveys show that the most frequent turning point in father-daughter relationships is shared activities — especially sports. Participating with daughters in sports is even ahead of such pivotal events as when a daughter marries or leaves home, according to a Baylor University scholars.
The 43 fathers and 43 daughters in the study were not related to one another but were asked to pinpoint in writing a crucial moment of change in their own father-daughter relationships. Daughters in the study were required to be at least age 22, while fathers ranged from 45 to 70. Adoptive and step-family…