Sports Science
Research on muscle fatigue has largely been confined to the muscle itself. That makes sense, where there is burn, there is fire. But motivation and will power turns out to have a greater impact on muscle fatigue than previously believed, according to a joint research project between the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich has shifted the focus to brain research.
The researchers discovered neuronal processes for the first time that are responsible for reducing muscle activity during muscle-fatiguing exercise. The third and final part of this series of experiments, which was conducted by…
Nearly anything can be rationalized if the value is subscribed to an intangible like 'good will.' The Olympic Games are big business and generate substantial amounts of revenue for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) through lucrative television contracts and corporate sponsorship - yet they lose money for the hosts.
Governments seem to be okay with the losses because The Olympics are perceived as promotional opportunities - and so a marketing expense - for cities seeking to reinforce their claims as 'world class' destinations for tourists and capital in the global economy…
Old-fashioned 'leatherhead' football helmets from the early 1900s were as effective, and sometimes better, than modern football helmets - at least when it comes to injuries during routine, game-like collisions.
The study in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine compared head injury risks of two early 20th Century leatherhead helmets with 11 top-of–the-line 21st Century polycarbonate helmets.
In their biomechanics lab, Cleveland Clinic researchers conducted impact tests, crashing helmets together at severities on par with 95 percent of on-field collisions (75 g-forces or less) in collegiate…
Why do some people, chess players or musicians, practice less but attain more?
The common belief is that practice is necessary to achieve mastery in chess, but it's not enough. There has to be something else that sets apart people who get really good at chess, just like in music. A study published in Psychological Science last year found that musicians need a lot of practice, but researchers identified one additional factor: musicians who are better at sight-reading have better working memory, the ability to keep relevant pieces of information active in your mind.
For chess, that additional…
In the 1990s, under the guise of wage protectionism, the Clinton administration got legislation passed that made it far more difficult for immigrants to get a work visa. The concern was that a foreign worker would work in the US for less. Result overall: Jobs instead went overseas.
Impact in science; we now spend $5 billion a year on STEM programs, trying to convince American children who are inclined to be doctors that they should instead be scientists, while foreign science students educated in the US are forced to go back home where they become competitors to the US.
It isn't…
Hank |
Cornelius McGillicuddy, Sr., better known as Connie Mack, once said that pitching is 75 percent of baseball. He was speaking from experience, not data, and looks can be deceiving, as people who think a curve ball move two feet can attest, but science is about understanding the world according to data, and that includes baseball. The data say he is wrong, according to a new analysis by a University of Delaware professor. Pitching is just 25 percent of a team's success.
Writing in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, Professor Charles (Charlie) Pavitt says he has created…
A recent study fed rats homobrassinolide, found in the mustard plant, which produced an anabolic effect, and increased appetite and muscle mass, as well as the number and size of muscle fibers.
So maybe you can get ripped by gardening a little more. Homobrassinolide, a type of brassinosteroid found in plants, given orally to rats triggered a response similar to anabolic steroids, with minimal side effects. In addition, the research found that the stimulatory effect of homobrassinolide on protein synthesis in muscle cells led to increases in lean body mass, muscle mass and…
Many people exercise to improve the health of their hearts. Now, researchers have found a link between your heart rate just before and during exercise and your chances of a future heart attack.
Just the thought of exercise raises your heart rate. The new study shows that how much it goes up is related to the odds of you eventually dying of a heart attack.
More than 300,000 people die each year from sudden cardiac arrest in the U.S., often with no known risk factors. Being able to find early warning signs has been the goal of researchers like Professor Xavier Jouven, of the Hopital Européen…
Here’s a question for your buddies at the next golf outing or bowling league night: Are we more active because we drink more or do we drink more because we’re more active? Recent research showed that there is a correlation between the two, but could not offer a solid reason.
Either way, another study claims the combination of moderate alcohol use and exercise will help our hearts more than just choosing one over the other.
Michael French, a health economics professor at the University of Miami, and his colleagues dug into data from the 2005 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a yearly…
Hank |
The highest paid player in baseball has the last name "Rodriguez" and 3 of the top 10 highest paid players in major league baseball are black - but major league umpires are racist, argues Johan Sulaeman, a financial economist at Southern Methodist University.
They looked at 3.5 million pitches from 2004 to 2008 and found that minority pitchers are so convinced white MLB umpires call strikes more often for white pitchers than for minority pitchers that they throw 'safe' pitches and therefore hurt their own performance.
In other words, umpires aren't biased, but this 'study' claims minority…