Month Of Birth Determines Success In Sports

The month of your birth influences your chances of becoming a professional sportsperson, an Australian researcher has found.  Senior research fellow Dr. Adrian Barnett from Queensland University of Technology's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation studies the seasonal patterns of population health and found the month you were born in could influence your future health and fitness.

The results of the study are published in the book Analysing Seasonal Health Data, by Barnett, co-authored by researcher Professor Annette Dobson from the University of Queensland.
Barnett analysed the birthdays of professional Australian Football League (AFL) players and found a disproportionate number had their birthdays in the early months of the year, while many fewer were born in the later months, especially December.

The Australian school year begins in January. "Children who are taller have an obvious advantage when playing the football code of AFL," Dr. Barnett said. "If you were born in January, you have almost 12 months' growth ahead of your classmates born late in the year, so whether you were born on December 31st or January 1st could have a huge effect on your life."

Dr. Barnett found there were 33 percent more professional AFL players than expected with birthdays in January and 25 percent fewer in December. He said the results mirrored other international studies which found a link between being born near the start of school year and the chances of becoming a professional player in the sports of ice hockey, football, volleyball and basketball.

"Research in the UK shows those born at the start of the school year also do better academically and have more confidence," he said. "And with physical activity being so important, it could also mean smaller children get disheartened and play less sport. If smaller children are missing out on sporting activity then this has potentially serious consequences for their health in adulthood."

Dr. Barnett said this seasonal pattern could also result in wasted talent, with potential sports stars not being identified because they were competing against children who were much more physically advanced than them. He said a possible solution was for one of the sporting codes in Australia to change the team entry date from January 1st to July 1st.


Source: Springer and Analysing Seasonal Health Data.

Swiss Team Bobbing For Gold In Vancouver

Switzerland has a long tradition of bobsledding and the Swiss Bobsleigh Federation has a remarkable record at international competitions. Currently, Switzerland even boasts two reigning world champions: Ivo Rüegg in the two-man bob and junior world champion Sabina Hafner. Moreover, pilot Beat Hefti won last year’s world cup season – also in the two-man bob.

To be better than the rest, the athletes not only need talent and experience, but also a fast bobsled. No one knows this better than former bobsledder and leader of the “CITIUS” project, Christian Reich: “for a pilot, being able to rely on a strong team and fast equipment is the key to good performance.”

Consequently, three years ago a joint venture between the Swiss Bobsleigh Federation (SBSV), researchers from ETH Zurich and Swiss industrial companies set about building a high-speed bobsled from scratch. “We wanted to build a bobsled that was faster than the competition because in bobsledding you can’t afford to sit back”, explains Peter J. Schmid, Central President of the SBSV.

The project was named “CITIUS” after the motto of the Olympic Games, “Citius, altius, fortius” (faster, higher, stronger). Last Fall, after thousands of hours of development and numerous trials in the wind tunnel and on the ice track, the developers and federation representatives handed over the new high-tech sled to the Olympic bobsled squad in front of the media.

Eliminating brake sources

As far as ETH Zurich was concerned, about two dozen researchers from the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Process Engineering and Materials Science were involved in the development of the bobsled. It was their job to refine the material whilst keeping to the specifications of the International Bobsleigh Federation and optimize the runners, aerodynamics, stability and vibrations.

Professor Ueli Suter, Program Coordinator at ETH Zurich, said that, “For a vehicle without an engine that hurtles down an ice track at 150 km/h, finding all the important brake sources, then eliminating them and still producing a safe piece of equipment for the athletes is a complex interdisciplinary undertaking.”

Extensive industrial expertise sought
The results of the research conducted at ETH Zurich were passed on to project supervisor Christian Reich, who in turn passed them on to the development, training and production workshops of the specialist industrial companies (see box). Dr. Jürg Werner, the head of V-Zug AG’s development department, said, “The industrial partners involved contributed their expertise to the project because they feel an affinity to Swiss bobsledding. The collaboration with ETH Zurich and among industrial partners resulted in a welcome transfer of knowledge. CITIUS stands for innovation, as do the industrial partners involved.”

The countdown is on!
A total of six two-man bobsleds and three four-man bobsleds of the “CITIUS” model have been constructed and are ready to compete for hundredths of a second. The final test runs are scheduled for the second half of October in Cesana/Turin before the Swiss pilots are given their first and only opportunity to train with the new bobsleds on Whistler’s Olympic bobsled track. Shortly afterwards, the world cup season gets underway with the first race in Park City.

The bobsled competition at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver will be held from February 20 – 27 2010. By then at the latest, we should know whether the big efforts of all those involved in the “CITIUS” project have paid off and whether Switzerland can add to its medal collection as a bobsledding nation.

Source: ETH Zuerich

Exercise May Help Schizophrenia Patients

Potentially beneficial brain changes (an increase in the volume of an area known as the hippocampus) occur in response to exercise both in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The findings suggest that the brain retains some plasticity, or ability to adapt, even in those with psychotic disorders.

Schizophrenia is known to be associated with a reduced volume in the area of the brain known as the hippocampus, which helps regulate emotion and memory, according to background information in the article. "In contrast to other illnesses that may display psychotic features, such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia is often characterized by incomplete recovery of psychotic symptoms and persistent disability," the authors write. "These clinical features of illness may relate to an impairment of neural plasticity or mechanisms of reorganizing brain function in response to a challenge."

The formation of new neurons is one component of plasticity; previous studies have shown that neuron growth in the hippocampus of healthy individuals can be stimulated by exercise. Frank-Gerald Pajonk, M.D., of The Saarland University Hospital, Homburg, and Dr. K. Fontheim's Hospital for Mental Health, Liebenburg, Germany, and colleagues assessed changes in hippocampal volume in response to an exercise program in both male patients with schizophrenia and men who had similar demographics and physical characteristics but did not have the condition.

Eight participants with schizophrenia and eight controls were randomly assigned to exercise (supervised cycling) three times per week for 30 minutes, whereas an additional eight patients with schizophrenia instead played tabletop football for the same period of time. The game enhances coordination and concentration but does not affect aerobic fitness. All participants underwent fitness testing, magnetic resonance imaging of the hippocampus, neuropsychological testing and other clinical measures before and after participating in the program for 12 weeks.

Following exercise training, hippocampal volume increased 12 percent in patients with schizophrenia and 16 percent in healthy controls. "To provide a context, the magnitude of these changes in volume was similar to that observed for other subcortical structures when patients were switched from typical to atypical antipsychotic drug therapy," the authors write. Conversely, patients with schizophrenia who played tabletop football instead of exercising experienced a 1 percent decrease in hippocampal volume.

Aerobic fitness also increased among all who exercised, and improvement in test scores for short-term memory was correlated with increases in hippocampal volume among patients and healthy controls.
"Further clinical studies are needed to determine if an incremental improvement in the disability related to schizophrenia could be obtained by incorporating exercise into treatment planning and lifestyle choice for individuals with the illness," the authors conclude.

Sources:  JAMA and Archives Journals  and  Hippocampal Plasticity in Response to Exercise in Schizophrenia

Soccer Referees Biased Against Tall Players

In this World Cup year, when football (soccer) passions are running high, supporters might be forgiven for objecting to every decision to award a foul against their team, made by referees. But they might also have a point. Researchers at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University have researched all recorded fouls in three major football competitions over seven years. They discovered an ambiguous foul is more likely to be attributed to the taller of two players.

Dr. Niels van Quaquebeke and Dr. Steffen Giessner, scientists at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University began their research by transferring their insights from decision making in business into the arena of sports. Specifically, they wanted to investigate whether people consider the available information in such ambiguous foul situations in an unbiased, i.e. subconsciously unprejudiced, way.

Based on evolutionary and linguistic research which has revealed that people associate the size of others with concepts such as aggression and dominance, Van Quaquebeke and Giessner speculated that ambiguous fouls are more likely to be attributed to the taller of two involved players. Results indicate that respectively taller people are more likely to be perceived by referees (and fans!) as foul perpetrators and their respectively smaller opponents as foul victims.

To put their assumption to a test, the scientists analysed all fouls recorded by Impire AG in seven seasons of UEFA Champions League (32,142 fouls) and German Bundesliga (85,262 fouls), the last three FIFA World Cups (6,440 fouls) as well as data from two additional perceptual experiments with football fans. For all seasons, leagues, and data collection methods, their analyses revealed the same picture confirming their initial assumption: taller people are indeed more often held accountable for fouls than shorter ones -- even when no actual foul was committed.

An article based on their research will be published in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology in February 2010.

Van Quaquebeke said, "We chose football as the context of our studies because the sport often yields ambiguous foul situations in which it is difficult to determine the perpetrator. In such situations, people must rely on their 'instincts' to make a call, which should increase the use and thus the detectability of a player's height as an additional decision cue. Furthermore, the use of referee assistance technology and adequate referee training is frequently debated in association football. Thus, by providing scientific insights on potential biases in refereeing, our work might help officials weigh the options."

Both researchers say, however, that it is not their call how to derive conclusions for football practice.

Sources:   Erasmus University Rotterdam and "How embodied cognitions affect judgments: Height-related attribution bias in football foul calls"

Stroke Patients Benefit From New Brain And Motor Skills Research

Bioengineers have taken a small step toward improving physical recovery in stroke patients by showing that a key feature of how limb motion is encoded in the nervous system plays a crucial role in how new motor skills are learned.

Published in a recent issue of Neuron, a Harvard-based study about the neural learning elements responsible for motor learning may help scientists design rehabilitation protocols in which motor adaptation occurs more readily, potentially allowing for a more rapid recovery.

Neuroscientists have long understood that the brain's primary motor cortex and the body's low-level peripheral stretch sensors encode information about the position and velocity of limb motion in a positively-correlated manner rather than as independent variables.

"While this correlation between the brain's encoding of the position and the velocity of motion is well-known, its potential importance and practical use has been unclear until now," says coauthor Maurice A. Smith, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Center for Brain Science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Smith and colleagues showed that the correlated neural tuning to position and velocity is also present in the neural learning elements responsible for motor learning. Moreover, this correlated drive can explain key features of the motor adaptation process.

To study and record motor adaptation, the researchers had subjects grasp a robotic arm. The device was programmed to simulate novel physical dynamics as subjects made reaching motions. In addition, the team used a newly developed measurement technique called an "error-clamp" to tease apart the resulting data.

The method measures motor output during learning, allowing learning-related changes in motor output over the course of a movement to be dissociated from feedback adjustments that correct motor errors that happen simultaneously.

"Conceptually, this error-clamp is analogous to a voltage-clamp, commonly used in electrophysiology to measure how ions move through a neuron's membrane when it fires," explains lead author Gary C. Sing, a graduate student at SEAS. "The general idea is that devising an experimental method to clamp and control the key variable in an experiment can allow for greater insight into the underlying physiology."

Analysis of the data extracted by the error-clamp technique led to the creation of a computational model that identifies a set of vectors that characterize the principal components of motor adaptation in the state space of physical motion. While such analysis is commonplace in systems engineering -- for example, in evaluating how a bridge might react to high winds or earthquakes -- the method has only been recently applied to how motor output evolves.

"We observed that the initial stages of motor learning are often quick but non-specific, whereas later stages of learning are slower and more precise," says Sing. "Further, we saw that some physical patterns of movement are learned more quickly than others."

By understanding what types of motor adaptations are easier to learn, the researchers hope to design rehabilitation activities that will encourage patients to use an affected limb more.

"In stroke rehabilitation, patients who make a greater effort to use their impaired limbs can achieve better outcomes," says Smith. "However, there is often a vicious cycle, as a patient is far less likely to use an impaired limb if his or her other limb is fine. This pattern slows recovery and leads to greater impairment of the affected limb."

Smith and his colleagues are beginning studies with stroke patients to determine whether training them with such optimized patterns will, in fact, improve their rate of motor learning and speed up recovery.
More broadly, untangling the algorithms the brain uses for motor learning could help improve a wide range of neural and muscular rehabilitation programs. The researchers also anticipate that such findings could be one day be adapted for enhancing the brain/machine interfaces increasingly used for those with amputated limbs.

Sources:  Harvard University and "Primitives for Motor Adaptation Reflect Correlated Neural Tuning to Position and Velocity"

For Exercise, Kids Do As Parents Say Not As They Do

According to a new study, there is no direct link between parents' own level of physical activity, and how much their child may exercise. In fact, parents' perceptions of their children's athleticism are what have a direct impact on the children's activity.

The study by Oregon State University researchers Stewart Trost and Paul Loprinzi, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, studied 268 children ages 2 to 5 in early childhood education centers in Queensland, Australia. Of these children, 156 parents or caregivers were surveyed on their parental practices, behaviors related to physical activity and demographic information.

What they found is that parents' level of physical activity is not directly associated with their children, but instead that the direct link was between parental support and a child's level of physical activity.

"Active parents may be more likely to have active children because they encourage that behavior through the use of support systems and opportunities for physical activity, but there is no statistical evidence that a child is active simply because they see that their parents exercise," Trost said.

Trost, who is director of the Obesity Prevention Research Core at the new Hallie Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families at OSU, is an international expert on the issue of childhood obesity.

His study found that parents who think their children have some sort of athletic ability were much more likely than other parents to provide instrumental and emotional support for young children to be physically active.

"I think this underscores the need for parents to provide emotional support, as well as opportunities for activity," Trost said. "Regardless of whether a child is athletic or is perceived to be physically gifted, all children need opportunities and encouragement of physical activity."

However, Trost said parental support of physical activity did not translate to a child's behavior once they were not in the home and were in a childcare setting. He said this adds to the body of research showing that both parents as well as childcare providers must provide support for physical activity.

Sources:  Oregon State University and Parental influences on physical activity behavior in preschool children, Preventive Medicine

For Rock Climbers, Endurance Is Key To Performance

The maximum time an athlete is able to continue climbing to exhaustion may be the only determinant of his/her performance. A new European study, led by researchers from the University of Granada, the objective of which is to help trainers and climbers design training programmes for this type of sport, shows this to be the case.


Until now, performance indicators for climbing have been low body fat percentage and grip strength. Furthermore, existing research was based on the comparison of amateur and expert climbers. Now, a new study carried out with 16 high-level climbers breaks with this approach and reveals that the time it takes for an athlete to become exhausted is the only indicator of his/her performance.

Vanesa España Romero was the first author of the work and is a researcher at the University of Granada.

The study, published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, analyses the physiological parameters that determine performance in this sport at its highest level. The participants, eight women with an average rating of 7a (the scale of difficulty of a climbing route is graded from 5 to 9, with sub-grades of a, b and c) and eight men with an average rating of 8a, were divided into an "expert group" and an "elite group."

The researchers assessed the climbers with body composition tests (weight, height, body mass index, body fat %, bone mineral density, and bone mineral content), kinanthropometry (length of arms, hands and fingers, bone mineral density and bone mineral content of the forearm), and physical fitness tests (flexibility, strength of the upper and lower body and aerobic capacity measured at a climbing centre).

The results show there to be no significant differences between expert and elite climbers in any of the tests performed, except in climbing time to exhaustion and in bone mineral density, both of which were higher in the elite group. "Therefore, the maximum climbing time to exhaustion of an athlete is the sole determinant of performance," the researcher confirms.

Sport climbing began as a form of traditional climbing in the mid 80s, and is now a sport in its own right. The International Federation of Sport Climbing is currently requesting its inclusion as an Olympic sport.

The increase in the number of climbers and the proliferation of climbing centres and competitions have contributed to its interest in recent years, although there is limited scientific literature on climbing effort.

The most important research relates to energy consumption (ergospirometry, heart rate and lactic acid blood concentrations), the designation of maximum strength and local muscular resistance of climbers (dynamometry and electromyography), and to establishing anthropometric characteristics.

According to experts, a fundamental characteristic of sport climbing is its "vertical dimension," making it unique given its postural organisation in space, and from a physiological point of view, the effect a gravitational load has on movements.

In short, to complete a climb successfully, athletes should maintain their effort for as long as possible to improve their chances of reaching the ultimate goal.

Sources: FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology and Climbing time to exhaustion is a determinant of climbing performance in high-level sport climbers. European Journal of Applied Physiology.

Virtual Reality Lab Proves How Fly Balls Are Caught

While baseball fans still rank "The Catch" by Willie Mays in the 1954 World Series as one of the greatest baseball moments of all times, scientists see the feat as more of a puzzle: How does an outfielder get to the right place at the right time to catch a fly ball?


Thousands of fans (and hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers) saw Mays turn his back on a fly ball, race to the center field fence and catch the ball over his shoulder, seemingly a precise prediction of a fly ball's path that led his team to victory. According to a recent article in the Journal of Vision ("Catching Flyballs in Virtual Reality: A Critical Test of the Outfielder Problem"), the "outfielder problem" represents the definitive question of visual-motor control. How does the brain use visual information to guide action?

To test three theories that might explain an outfielder's ability to catch a fly ball, researcher Philip Fink, PhD, from Massey University in New Zealand and Patrick Foo, PhD, from the University of North Carolina at Ashville programmed Brown University's virtual reality lab, the VENLab, to produce realistic balls and simulate catches. The team then lobbed virtual fly balls to a dozen experienced ball players.

"The three existing theories all predict the same thing: successful catches with very similar behavior," said Brown researcher William Warren, PhD. "We realized that we could pull them apart by using virtual reality to create physically impossible fly ball trajectories."

Warren said their results support the idea that the ball players do not necessarily predict a ball's landing point based on the first part of its flight, a theory described as trajectory prediction. "Rather than predicting the landing point, the fielder might continuously track the visual motion of the ball, letting it lead him to the right place at the right time," Warren said.

Because the researchers were able to use the virtual reality lab to perturb the balls' vertical motion in ways that would not happen in reality, they were able to isolate different characteristics of each theory. The subjects tended to adjust their forward-backward movements depending on the perceived elevation angle of the incoming ball, and separately move from side to side to keep the ball at a constant bearing, consistent with the theory of optical acceleration cancellation (OAC). The third theory, linear optical trajectory (LOT), predicted that the outfielder will run in a direction that makes the visual image of the ball appear to travel in a straight line, adjusting both forward-backward and side-to-side movements together.

Fink said these results focus on the visual information a ball player receives, and that future studies could bring in other variables, such as the effect of the batter's movements or sound.
"As a first step we chose to concentrate on what seemed likely to be the most important factor," Fink said. "Fielders might also use information such as the batter's swing or the sound of the bat hitting the ball to help guide their movements."

Sources:  Catching fly balls in virtual reality: A critical test of the outfielder problem and Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology

Boomer Brains Need Exercise

Moderate physical activity performed in midlife or later appears to be associated with a reduced risk of mild cognitive impairment, whereas a six-month high-intensity aerobic exercise program may improve cognitive function in individuals who already have the condition, according to two reports in the January issue of Archives of Neurology.

Mild cognitive impairment is an intermediate state between the normal thinking, learning and memory changes that occur with age and dementia, according to background information in one of the articles. Each year, 10 percent to 15 percent of individuals with mild cognitive impairment will develop dementia, as compared with 1 percent to 2 percent of the general population. Previous studies in animals and humans have suggested that exercise may improve cognitive function.

In one article, Laura D. Baker, Ph.D., of the University of Washington and Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, and colleagues report the results of a randomized, controlled clinical trial involving 33 adults with mild cognitive impairment (17 women, average age 70). A group of 23 were randomly assigned to an aerobic exercise group and exercised at high intensity levels under the supervision of a trainer for 45 to 60 minutes per day, four days per week. The control group of 10 individuals performed supervised stretching exercises according to the same schedule but kept their heart rate low. Fitness testing, body fat analysis, blood tests of metabolic markers and cognitive functions were assessed before, during and after the six-month trial.

A total of 29 participants completed the study. Overall, the patients in the high-intensity aerobic exercise group experienced improved cognitive function compared with those in the control group. These effects were more pronounced in women than in men, despite similar increases in fitness. The sex differences may be related to the metabolic effects of exercise, as changes to the body's use and production of insulin, glucose and the stress hormone cortisol differed in men and women.

"Aerobic exercise is a cost-effective practice that is associated with numerous physical benefits. The results of this study suggest that exercise also provides a cognitive benefit for some adults with mild cognitive impairment," the authors conclude. "Six months of a behavioral intervention involving regular intervals of increased heart rate was sufficient to improve cognitive performance for an at-risk group without the cost and adverse effects associated with most pharmaceutical therapies."

In another report, Yonas E. Geda, M.D., M.Sc., and colleagues at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., studied 1,324 individuals without dementia who were part of the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging. Participants completed a physical exercise questionnaire between 2006 and 2008. They were then assessed by an expert consensus panel, who classified each as having normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment.

A total of 198 participants (median or midpoint age, 83 years) were determined to have mild cognitive impairment and 1,126 (median age 80) had normal cognition. Those who reported performing moderate exercise—such as brisk walking, aerobics, yoga, strength training or swimming—during midlife or late life were less likely to have mild cognitive impairment. Midlife moderate exercise was associated with 39 percent reduction in the odds of developing the condition, and moderate exercise in late life was associated with a 32 percent reduction. The findings were consistent among men and women.

Light exercise (such as bowling, slow dancing or golfing with a cart) or vigorous exercise (including jogging, skiing and racquetball) were not independently associated with reduced risk for mild cognitive impairment.

Physical exercise may protect against mild cognitive impairment via the production of nerve-protecting compounds, greater blood flow to the brain, improved development and survival of neurons and the decreased risk of heart and blood vessel diseases, the authors note. "A second possibility is that physical exercise may be a marker for a healthy lifestyle," they write. "A subject who engages in regular physical exercise may also show the same type of discipline in dietary habits, accident prevention, adherence to preventive intervention, compliance with medical care and similar health-promoting behaviors."

Future study is needed to confirm whether exercise is associated with the decreased risk of mild cognitive impairment and provide additional information on cause and effect relationships, they conclude.

Sources:  JAMA and Archives Journals, Physical Exercise, Aging, and Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Population-Based Study  and Effects of Aerobic Exercise on Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Controlled Trial.