January 2, 2007, 12:19 AM CT
Surfing Safer Than Soccer
While public perception may frame surfing as a dangerous sport, new research begs to differ. In the first study of its kind, scientists have computed the rate of injury among competitive surfers and found they are less prone to harm than collegiate soccer or basketball players. Led by scientists at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown Medical School, the findings of the study are reported in the January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Sports Medicine.
"We observed that competitive surfing has a relatively low risk of injury - 6.6 significant injuries per 1,000 hours of surfing - in comparison to other sports for which comparable data is available," says lead author Andrew Nathanson, MD, an emergency medicine doctor with Rhode Island Hospital's Injury Prevention Center. "However, the risk of injury more than doubled when surfing in large waves or over an area with a hard bottom".
The sport of surfing has rapidly grown in popularity since the 1960's, but little is known about surfing injuries - particularly the relative frequency, mechanisms and risk factors. Nathanson and his research team collected injury data from 32 surfing contests worldwide, both professional and amateur. Documentation of every acute surfing injury sustained during competition was recorded, as well as wave size, mechanism of injury and therapy. "Significant" injuries were qualified as those that prevented the surfer from surfing for one or more days, resulted in a hospital visit, or mandatory on-site suturing.........
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December 5, 2006, 5:08 AM CT
Can the Stanley Cup playoffs harm your hearing?
During last year's NHL playoffs, Edmonton Oilers' fans tried to earn the title of loudest arena in the game, but new University of Alberta research shows that even a few hours of exposure to that level of noise can be harmful.
Bill Hodgetts from the U of A's Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine and Dr. Richard Liu, from the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry measured the noise levels during games three, four and six during the Stanley Cup finals against the Carolina Hurricanes last year. Liu attended the games and wore a noise dosimeter near his ear every second of the entire game. No matter where he went in the building, the dosimeter would sample his noise exposure. The research is reported in the current edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
The scientists observed that for the levels experienced in game three, it took less than six minutes to reach the maximum allowable daily noise dose. Or everyone at the game received approximately 8100 per cent of their daily noise dose without any hearing protection. "Given the vast numbers of fans that do not wear hearing protection to hockey games, thousands are at risk for hearing damage," said the researchers.
Most people don't consider the risk of excessive noise exposure when participating in leisure activities, say the researchers, even though such noise over a period of a few hours can be harmful. "The risk of hearing loss for those who attend hockey games frequentlyseason ticket holders, workers in the arena, hockey players themselveswarrants serious consideration," they write in the paper. Even the cheapest foam earplugs would make a difference.........
Posted by: Jim Permalink Source
November 20, 2006, 5:06 AM CT
Adolescent Girls More Active if Neighborhoods Have Parks
Adolescent girls who live within half a mile of a public park are significantly more physically active than other girls, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have found.
The study found that physical activity was higher for girls who lived within a mile of parks and showed highest levels among girls who lived less than one-half mile from a park, said Dr. Diane Catellier, a study investigator and research associate professor of biostatistics in the UNC School of Public Health. The researchers found that girls only got about 114 minutes a week of intense physical activity outside of school hours, or about 16 minutes a day.
Dr. Deborah Cohen, a senior natural scientist at RAND Corporation and lead author of the study, said the U.S. surgeon general recommends that all children and adolescents get at least 60 minutes of exercise a day. "We still have a long way to go in encouraging girls to be active".
The results appear in the November 2006 issue of Pediatrics. The study was led by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. Researchers from UNC-Chapel Hill, the University of Arizona, the University of South Carolina and San Diego State University participated. Funding was provided by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.........
Posted by: Gina Permalink Source
November 13, 2006, 8:34 AM CT
Sports cheats beware
Injecting performance enhancing corticosteroid hormones for other than medical therapy is banned, and tests exist that can detect injected hormones. Injecting synacthen, which stimulates the body to produce extra amounts of its own corticosteroid hormones is also banned. But until now there has been no test that could detect it in a blood sample.
That has just changed. Research published this week in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry describes a method that can detect synacthen, even though it will only be found in incredibly low concentrations in a person's blood sample.
Synacthen is a protein, and researchers have developed a method that can specifically search for the minute traces of synacthen in a blood sample. Called immunological purification, this technique can find any synacthen molecules even though its concentration is 10,000,000 less than other proteins in blood plasma.
There are severe penalties for any person caught taking banned drugs. It is therefore very important that any test is able to be certain about its statement that a particular molecule is present in this case synacthen. To confirm that the immunological purification has pulled out synacthen, the protein is then subjected to a further two-stage test chromatography separation and mass spectrometric analysis. This lets researchers produce a chemical fingerprint of the molecule a fingerprint that uniquely identifies it.........
Posted by: Jim Permalink Source
October 3, 2006, 8:54 PM CT
Can Math Professor Predict New York Yankees Victory?
The New York Yankees have better than a 3 in 4 chance of defeating the Detroit Tigers in their best of 5 series beginning tonight, said Bruce Bukiet, PhD, associate professor in the department of mathematical sciences at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).
Bukiet's mathematical model, which was reported in the journal "Operations Research," computes the probability of a team winning a game against another team with given hitters, bench, starting pitcher, relievers and home field advantage.
In the other American League (AL) match-up, Bukiet said that the Minnesota Twins have a 71 percent chance of defeating the Oakland A's. "So, it looks as if the AL Championship series will have the Yankees facing the Twins," he added.
In the National League, the teams are more evenly matched. The Los Angeles Dodgers have a 58 percent chance of defeating the New York Mets, while the San Diego Padres have a 62 percent chance of defeating the St. Louis Cardinals.
Bukiet, an avid Mets fan, said that winning the first game can change a team's fortunes markedly. If the Mets win the first game, their chances of advancing increase from 42 percent to 62 percent. If the Cardinals win in the first game, their chances of winning, as per Bukiet, improve 38 percent to 57 percent.........
Posted by: Jim Permalink Source
September 7, 2006, 9:03 PM CT
No More ATVs For Children
Neurosurgeons at St. Louis Children's Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are renewing calls for a ban on use of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) by children under age 16 after a 10-year review of injuries caused by the vehicles.
"Children have no experience or training in driving motorized vehicles, and they're driving them on uneven terrain where they can't see what's coming up ahead of them very well," says T.S. Park, M.D., the Shi Hui Huang Professor of Neurological Surgery at the School of Medicine and pediatric neurosurgeon-in-chief at St. Louis Children's Hospital. "This is leading to an increasing number of fatalities and devastating injuries with lifelong consequences for children and their parents".
Park and colleagues reviewed all cases seen at the hospital over a 10-year span, identifying 185 patients admitted as a result of ATV-related accidents. Among the study's findings:
- One-third of the patients suffered serious neurological injuries including cerebral hemorrhages and skull fractures.
- Two-thirds of the total patient population had to undergo inpatient rehabilitation.
- Two patients had spinal cord injuries.
- Two patients died
.
The review was published in a July 2006 pediatric supplement to the Journal of Neurosurgery.........
Posted by: Jim Permalink Source
September 7, 2006, 6:36 PM CT
Bodybuilding as a sport
Bodybuilding is the process of developing muscle fibres through the combination of weight training, increased caloric intake, and rest. Someone who engages in this activity is referred to as a bodybuilder. As a sport, called competitive bodybuilding, bodybuilders display their physiques to a panel of judges, who assign points based on their aesthetic appearance. Bodybuilding has contributed to the success of many public figures worldwide. Examples from North America include Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno.
The period of around 1940 to 1970 is often referred to as the "Golden Age" of bodybuilding because of changes in the aesthetic for more mass, as well as muscular symmetry and definition, which characterised the "early years". This was due in large part to the advent of World War II, which inspired many young men to be bigger, stronger and more aggressive in their attitudes. This was accomplished by improved training techniques, better nutrition and more effective equipment. Several important publications came into being, as well, and new contests emerged as the popularity of the sport grew.
This period of bodybuilding was typified at Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California, US. Famous names in bodybuilding from this period included Steve Reeves (notable in his day for portraying Hercules and other sword-and-sandals heroes), Reg Park, John Grimek, Larry Scott, and Bill Pearl.........
Posted by: Jim Permalink Source
August 23, 2006, 5:52 PM CT
El Hombre Vs The Babe
Baseball purists, particularly those of Yankee allegiance, might argue that St. Louis Cardinals homerun-hitting superstar Albert Pujols is simply not in the same league as legendary New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth.
It's an argument that science may never fully resolve, but scientists at Washington University in St. Louis can now offer at least some hard numbers on how Pujols compares to the Babe in terms of the perceptual and motor skills necessary to consistently hit balls out of the park.
Pujols visited Washington University in April to take part in a series of laboratory tests similar to those conducted on Babe Ruth on a summer afternoon in 1921 by a couple of graduate students at Columbia University. Results of the Pujols testing, conducted at the request of a reporter from GQ magazine, are detailed in a story that appears in the magazine's September issue.
"This spring, GQ persuaded Albert Pujols, reigning National League MVP and the game's most dominant slugger, to take time off from an epic home-run tear and reenact, at Washington University in St. Louis, the 1921 Babe Ruth tests," writes Nate Penn, author of the GQ article, which is titled "Performance: How To Build The Perfect Batter."
The Pujols tests were conducted by faculty in the University's Department of Psychology in Arts & Sciences and in the School of Medicine, including Richard Abrams, Ph.D., professor of psychology; Desiree White, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology; David Balota, Ph.D., professor of psychology; and Catherine Lang, Ph.D., assistant professor of physical treatment, neurology and occupational treatment.........
Posted by: Jim Permalink Source
August 4, 2006, 7:12 AM CT
Langer pitches one in for Sox
Photo / Julie Cordeiro, Boston Red Sox
MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer throws out the ceremonial first pitch at Fenway Park on July 28.
Before taking the mound at Fenway Park last week to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, Institute Professor Robert Langer figured he ought to practice a little. So his 12-year-old son, Sam, devised some stretching and throwing exercises and worked with Langer for a couple of days before the big moment.
The practice must have paid off, because Langer delivered a strike for the ceremonial first pitch before the July 28 Red Sox game against the Los Angeles Angels at Fenway Park.
"It was a real thrill to throw a strike in front of over 35,000 Red Sox fans, including many my students, at Fenway Park," Langer said. "I'm really honored the Red Sox selected me as a Medical All Star and asked me to throw out the ceremonial first pitch".
Before the pitch, the Red Sox public address announcer introduced Langer as "a world-renowned biomedical scientist (who) specializes in drug delivery systems and tissue engineering, while heading the largest biomedical engineering laboratory in the world at MIT".
Langer, who had to wait out a two-hour rain delay before throwing his pitch, describes himself as a big Red Sox fan and says he enjoys taking his sons, Sam and 16-year-old Michael, to games (his 15-year-old daughter, Susan, prefers to watch football). All three children, plus Langer's wife, Laura (Ph.D. 1989), attended Friday's game. The Sox lost, 8-3.........
Posted by: Jim Permalink Source
July 12, 2006, 11:49 PM CT
Luck Determines Football Managers' Tenure
This was Sven Goran Eriksson's last World Cup as England manager, but as per a recent Cambridge study his next job may not be based on his managerial ability, but on the luck of his team alone.
A manager's tenure is intrinsically associated with his team, and his reputation derives from the team's performance. However, as per the Cambridge study, reputation is not determined significantly by the manager's talent, effort or decision making skills, but mostly by pure luck. If luck plays a large part, it would question the high salaries managers are paid.
This remarkably interdisciplinary study by Drs Toke Aidt and Daniel Sgroi with the Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, Dr Bill Saslaw with the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, and Dr Bernard Leong at the Genome Institute of Singapore and the National University of Singapore, explored the qualities responsible for securing and maintaining high level jobs. Initially, it was not intended to focus on football:
"Our original idea was to look at the tenures of CEO's," said Dr Saslaw. "Unfortunately, this information is hard to come by, but football clubs are very keen on promoting their history, and so provide a wealth of information".
The scientists looked into the tenure lengths of managers in England, Switzerland, France, Spain, Gera number of and Japan, as well as in American football and baseball leagues. The data covered 7183 individuals over 130 years, revealing some interesting facts. One surprising empirical regularity that emerged from the researchers' detailed analysis of this data was that the chance of a manager keeping his job for an extra year follows an inverse power law (the longer the time served as manager, the lower the probability of the manager continuing to serve).........
Posted by: Jim Permalink Source
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