news 2017

The Football Association and the Professional Footballers' Association have appointed Dr William Stewart and colleagues at the University of Glasgow and the Hampden Sports Clinic to lead an independent research study into the incidence of degenerative neurocognitive disease in ex-professional footballers.

SNCF engineers have been using mathematical models for many years to simulate the dynamic behavior of railways. These models have not been able to take into account large portions of the track have been extremely limited at modelling ballast, the gravel layer located under railway tracks. This is why SNCF Innovation & Recherche asked for help from specialists in wave propagation for all types of media and at varied scales: CNRS and INSA Strasbourg 1 researchers.

Brittany Travers, an investigator at the UW-Madison Waisman Center, works with a study participant playing a video game designed to help youth with autism improve their balance. The game may also help improve some of their autism-related symptoms. Photo: Andy Manis Playing a video game that rewards participants for holding various "ninja" poses could help children and youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) improve their balance, according to a recent study in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A video game that enables healthy volunteers to play with patients who have physical impairments may improve their rehabilitation, suggests study. The researchers from Imperial have designed a video game called Balloon Buddies, which is a tool that enables those recovering from conditions such as a stroke to engage and play together with healthy volunteers such as therapists and family members as a form of rehabilitation.

Matching young players according to their developmental or biological age, as opposed to their chronological age, has positive effects in terms of performance, talent identification and injury reduction in football, according to a new significant new study. The paper, published in the Journal of Sports Sciences , from researchers in our Department for Health was also the first to explore athletes' experiences of competing in a 'biobanded tournament'.

What are the effects of LED lighting and the climate on different types of sports turf? At the greenhouse laboratory center Dürnast, this question is addressed by TUM researchers. Their findings serve as a basis for the development of new lighting systems for professional football. If, in the Bundesliga, a football match doesn't go too well, it is common to blame the lawn: "Der Rasen ist schuld!" - which shows how much importance the professionals attach to the turf.

Retired professional footballers are far more prone to develop knee pain and osteoarthritis and face problems with their knees earlier in life than the average person, a study has revealed. The study reported that male ex-footballers were two to three times more likely to suffer from knee pain and knee osteoarthritis and require a total knee replacement, even after adjustment for other risk factors including significant knee injury.

A University of Queensland study is helping parents and teachers understand the capacity of young children to learn independently, by providing insight into children's understanding of practice. The study, led by UQ School of Psychology PhD student Melissa Brinums, investigated the age at which children start to regulate their own learning to achieve their long-term goals.

The gentle touch of another individual soothes the effects of social exclusion, one of the most emotionally painful human experiences, according to new UCL research. The study, published today in Scientific Reports and funded by the European Research Council, tested the impact of a slow, affectionate touch against a fast, neutral touch following social rejection and found a specific relationship between gentle touch and social bonding.

How do people assign a cause to events they witness' Some philosophers have suggested that people determine responsibility for a particular outcome by imagining what would have happened if a suspected cause had not intervened. This kind of reasoning, known as counterfactual simulation, is believed to occur in many situations.

Rugby players from Aviva Premiership Rugby and Greene King IPA Championship are to take part in a major study led by the University of Birmingham as part of its work to develop a ground-breaking pitch-side test to diagnose concussion and brain injury. The study, being carried out in collaboration with the Rugby Football Union (RFU), Premiership Rugby and the Rugby Players' Association, will run throughout the 2017/18 rugby season and is the biggest of its kind to take place in the history of UK sport.

Football has long been tarnished by outbreaks of fan violence. Although media headlines often link the behaviour to 'hooliganism', the activity could stem from potentially more positive motivations, such as passionate commitment to the group and the desire to belong. Understanding the root cause of football violence may therefore help in tackling the behaviour and channelling it into something more positive, Oxford University scientists suggest.

Footballers in flashy cars, City workers in Armani suits, reality TV celebrities sipping expensive champagne while sitting in hot tubs: what drives people to purchase luxury goods' New research suggests that it may be a sense of being a 'winner' - but that contrary to expectations, it is not driven by testosterone.

An international team of researchers reports that when children are praised for being smart not only are they quicker to give up in the face of obstacles they are also more likely to be dishonest and cheat. Kids as young as age 3 appear to behave differently when told "You are so smart" vs "You did very well this time." The study, published in Psychological Science , is co-authored by Gail Heyman of the University of California San Diego, Kang Lee of the University of Toronto, and Lulu Chen and Li Zhao of Hangzhou Normal University in China.

Stanford scholar Shanto Iyengar finds that the strength of people's attachment to their political parties surpasses affiliations with their own race, religion and other social categories. The self-defining characteristics that Americans hold dear include their racial and cultural heritage, the language they speak and their choice of worship.

New research from the Faculty of Health Sciences finds that girls in primary school are just as physically capable as their male classmates. Girls in primary school are just as physically capable as their male classmates, according to  our research , taking the sting out of the insult "you play like a girl".

Who'll win at Wimbledon' Just listen to the pitch of the grunts Never mind counting aces and killer shots. If you want to predict the outcome of a tennis match, pay attention to the players' grunts. As Wimbledon prepares for another year of the on-court cacophony from the likes of Rafael Nadal and Victoria Azarenka, a new study has revealed that grunts produced by players during tennis matches they lost were higher in voice pitch than during the matches they won.

A groundbreaking study into concussion has been launched by scientists at The University of Queensland - and you could possibly play a part. The first of its kind, the study at UQ's Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) aims to recruit healthy athletes for brain scans, with follow-up at regular intervals if they experience concussion.

A 'brain training' game developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge could help improve the memory of patients in the very earliest stages of dementia, suggests a study published today in The International . There's increasing evidence that brain training can be beneficial for boosting cognition and brain health, but it needs to be based on sound research Barbara Sahakian Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) has been described as the transitional stage between 'healthy ageing' and dementia.

Hospital emergency rooms treat more than 170,000 children each year for sports-related traumatic brain injuries, including concussions, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What do parents and coaches need to know about sports concussions in order to protect their kids and players' A commentary by Dr. Christopher Giza , director of the UCLA Steve Tisch BrainSPORT program , about sports, concussions and neuroscience appears in the June 21 online edition of Neuron.