Fourteen-year old Cristian Avina knows all too well the devastating injuries all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) can cause. Four months ago, Cristian and his sister, Rociel, hopped on an ATV for a little innocent fun in the desert near their home. Cristian was riding tandem with his sister when a bird flew into them causing him to lose control. The ATV crashed, sending Cristian and Rociel flyingneither was wearing a helmet. Cristian suffered serious head injuries, including an amputated ear........

The outlook for air quality in Beijing during the Olympics is borderline, and there's little that the Chinese government can do to improve it. That's the conclusion drawn by a University of Rhode Island atmospheric chemist who analyzed pollution data collected regularly for the last five years by Chinese scientists........

Golfers who heed the advice of instructors to keep their heads perfectly still while putting may be hampering their game, as per a research studythat examined coordination patterns. The research appears in the recent issue of the Journal of Motor Behavior Tim Lee, professor of kinesiology at McMaster University and a golfer himselfsays the findings run contrary to conventional wisdom, or at least conventional golf wisdom........

Researchers have recently become interested in the biomechanics of a very unusual activity: skyscraper run-ups. Competitors in this extreme sport ascend the steps inside the world's tallest buildings, the winners often scaling thousands of steps in just a few minutes. Impressive, yes, but why should these people be of interest to physiologists and biomechanists? Professor Alberto Minetti, from the University of Milan, pioneered the study after prior work on walking and running at different gradients. His research has gone on to shed light on the metabolic profile of athletes, as well as having a potential impact on studies of ageing. He will be presenting his results on Wednesday 9th July at the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Meeting in Marseille [Session A2]........

Golfers who play well are more likely to see the hole as larger than their poor-playing counterparts, as per a Purdue University researcher. "Golfers have said that when they play well the hole looks as big as a bucket or basketball hoop, and when they do not play well they've been quoted as saying the hole looks like a dime or the inside of a donut," said Jessica K. Witt, an assistant professor of psychological sciences who studies perception in athletes. "What athletes say about how they see the hole and how well they play is true. We found golfers who play better judge the hole to be bigger than golfers who did not play as well........

Baseball diamonds are a left-hander's best friend. That's because the game was designed to make a lefty the "Natural," as per David A. Peters, Ph.D., the McDonnell Douglas Professor of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and über baseball fan. Peters is a mechanical engineer who specializes in aircraft and helicopter engineering and has a different approach to viewing America's Favorite Pastime........

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Well, we all thought Tiger Woods was up to his superhuman standards again when he said he felt ready to return before the U.S. Open and wanted to do so at the .........

Seve Ballesteros - now retired - was and is a man who marches to the beat of his own .........

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Race is not a factor in the firing of NBA coaches, eventhough white coaches with losing records had somewhat longer tenures before being fired than African-American coaches with more losses than wins, a new study shows. The University of Michigan study looked at differences between firing of African-American and white coaches in the National Basketball Association. The study found no difference in "technical efficiency" by race of coach, and found no evidence that there are differences in firings based on race, says lead researcher Rodney Fort, U-M professor in the Division of Kinesiology........

The standard eye chart only covers letters and numbers, but athletes need above average vision to track balls hurtling toward them at alarming speeds. To test those special skills, a University of Houston optometrist has founded the Sports Vision Performance Center, a facility where athletes perform while a strobe light is flashing, play tag with a board of lights and engage in other activities designed to improve their visual abilities........

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Sports professionals and fans get pretty emotional about their picks for the NCAA basketball tournament each year, and that emotion often clouds their judgment. But three engineering professors at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a computer ranking system, called LRMC, that consistently predicts NCAA basketball rankings more accurately than the AP poll of sportswriters and the ESPN/USA Today poll of coaches, formulas (the Ratings Percentage Index), other computer models (the Massey ratings and the Sagarin ratings), and even the tournament seeds themselves........

Robot soccer is an ambitious high-tech competition for universities, research institutes and industry. Several major tournaments are planned for 2008, the biggest of which is the 'RoboCup German Open'. From April 21-25, over 80 teams of researchers from more than 15 countries are expected to face off in Hall 25 at the Hannover Messe. In a series of soccer matches in several leagues, they will be putting the latest technologies on display. The tournament is being organized and carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS in Sankt Augustin........

Screening for cardiovascular problems in elite-level football players should begin in high school and continue throughout the lives of college and professional players. Mayo Clinic physicians based that conclusion on the results of their new study of the cardiovascular health of 233 retired National Football League (NFL) players........

Only 45 percent of baseball players were able to return to the game at the same or higher level after shoulder or elbow surgery, as per new research released recently during the 2008 American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine Specialty Day at The Moscone Center. In an ideal world, of course, we would get 100 percent of the players back to their pre-injury level or higher, says Steven B. Cohen, MD, assistant team doctor for the Philadelphia Phillies and director of Sports Medicine Research at the Rothman Institute in Philadelphia. But the fact of the matter is at this elite level of the sport, the physical demands of throwing have much higher requirements than the regular person on the street. The average person who has shoulder or elbow surgery can return to their regular activities. Throwing a baseball at the professional level puts a significant amount of stress on the shoulder and the elbow........

In an interesting article available in Biology Letters; Alastair J. Wilson and Alastair J. Wilson apply evilutionary biology to the question of whether race horse studs are worth the money. Racehorses from prized bloodlines can command stud fees upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but according to Wilson and Rambaut, stud fee is a poor predictor of offspring performance.

Using techniques developed in evilutionary biology to answer questions regarding sexual selection and quantitative genetics, Wilson and Rambaut, "test whether there is genetic variation for success on the .........