Duckalogue

Triad Challenge League Soccer Coaches Clinic

2006-02-21T23:50:00.000-05:00

The Triad Challenge League held their 10th Annual Coaches Clinic on Saturday, February 4th at Glenn High school outside of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It was a highly informative, fun event with dynamic and knowledgeable speakers. About 150 coaches, assistant coaches and parents from all over the area attended the free all-day program. Each of the six sessions dealt with different coaching tasks, demonstrating drills and techniques designed to help young players develop their skills.

Jim Carpenter, referee coach, opened with an overview of soccer rules featuring an in-depth presentation on the always-perplexing off-side rule. He showed FIFA’s video explaining the offside rule. For more information on the offside law, click here and scroll down to the middle of the page for the link to the flash animation.

In the “Small Sided Teams” session, Chris Little, Director of Coaching for NCYSA, described how he uses “guided discovery” – posing a question and letting his players come up with the answers. He gives them little rewards – encouraging them to practice at home – rather than making lots of rules and criticizing their performance. He demonstrated a drill that teaches them to “accelerate into space”: pass the ball, run ahead, call for the ball and receive the ball. He actively trains for better communication among the players, encouraging them to talk to each other continually.

In her “Goalkeeper & Team Training” and “Training Young Keepers”, Olympic goalkeeper and UNCG Assistant Women’s Coach, Siri Mullinix showed how she helps players hone their eye-hand coordination circling their bodies with the ball, first at the waist, then at the ankles and so on. She demonstrated a drill where players shift from side to side between cone places at goal-width, jumping up to the signal “Cross-bar!” and hitting the deck on “Down!” She showed how she coaches players to keep their hands behind the ball when catching above the waist and to slam the ball down on the ground when catching a grounder. To keep their self-confidence high, she encourages coaches to always make sure their players “end on a clean ball” before going on to the next drill.

In the “FUNdamentals” session, Chad Heinicke and Scott Wallaston of SoccerOP pointed out that it is sometimes hard for young players to move side to side – they want to push forward. They use warm up techniques like “box the ball”, push-pull and slalom dribbling to help their player develop and sense of space. And like all the other presenters they stress verbal communication among their players.

After the complementary lunch, Greensboro College Women’s Head Coach, Franco Bari presented the session on “Defending”. He suggests that coaches ‘start with technique, work up to tactics’. His players demonstrated the knee-slap game – players pair off and each tries to slap the other’s knee without letting their opponent get to their knee. Bari uses the game with his college players to sharpen their ability to stay on their toes and get into their opponent’s zone. It would be a fun and equally effective drill for all levels. Bari stresses verbal communication with his players, teaching his defenders to talk each other through the opposing lines always using the same terms when calling out, “Force to the right,” etc. Strategies include always having a first and second defender and, if possible, a balancer. Bari teaches his players to cut off space as quickly as possible. He drills them to approach at an angle, jockeying patiently till the ball is exposed for the steal.

All the presenters stressed the importance of positive reinforcement as the only really effective way to motivate players at all levels. Find what the players especially value and rewarding them with it: lots of praise and good humor. The program began and closed on positive notes. Clinic organizers stressed that “…we – parents, coaches and players – are a soccer community.” And with programs like this one every year, our community can only become stronger.

White Doves at Morning - novel by James Lee Burke

2006-01-02T16:18:00.000-05:00

I recently finished James Lee Burke's 2002 novel White Doves at Morning. I've been a fan of his writing for years, since Heaven's Prisoners. His novels include memorable characters, fascinating settings , dialogue that can be both lyrical and brutal, and addictive plots.

This is a departure for him - a historical novel. This one is set in the American South, mostly Louisiana, during the Civil War and after. It follows 4 primary characters:
Willie Burke - a working class southerner who joins the Confederate army because he's afraid of seeming a coward.
Robert Perry - from a slave-holding wealthy family and a friend of Willie's, who joins because he believes in The Cause.
Abigail Dowling - a transplanted Boston native, who is active in the Underground Railroad, and who catches the eye of both Robert and Willie.
Flower Jamison - a former slave whose ability to read is a threat and who is at the heart of much of the plot of the book.

Here's a taste:

Chapter One

1837

The black woman's name was Sarie, and when she crashed out the door of the cabin at the end of the slave quarters into the fading winter light, her lower belly bursting with the child that had already broken her water, the aftermath of the ice storm and the sheer desolate sweep of leaf-bare timber and frozen cotton acreage and frost-limned cane stalks seemed to combine and strike her face like a braided whip.
She trudged into the grayness of the woods, the male shoes on her feet pocking the snow, her breath streaming out of the blanket she wore on her head like a monk's cowl. Ten minutes later, deep inside the gum and persimmon and oak trees, her clothes strung with air vines that were silver with frost, the frozen leaves cracking under her feet, she heard the barking of the dogs and the yelps of their handlers who had just released them.
She splashed into a slough, one that bled out of the woods into the dark swirl of the river where it made a bend through the plantation. The ice sawed at her ankles; the cold was like a hammer on her shins. But nonetheless she worked her way upstream, between cypress roots that made her think of a man's knuckles protruding from the shallows. Across the river the sun was a vaporous smudge above the bluffs, and she realized night would soon come upon her and that a level of coldness she had never thought possible would invade her bones and womb and teats and perhaps turn them to stone.
She clutched the bottom of her stomach with both hands, as though holding a watermelon under her dress, and slogged up the embankment and collapsed under a lean-to where, in the summer months, an overseer napped in the afternoon while his charges bladed down the cypress trees for the soft wood Marse Jamison used to make cabinets in the big house on a bluff overlooking the river.
Even if she had known the river was called the Mississippi, the name would have held no significance for her. But the water boundary called the Ohio was another matter. It was somewhere to the north, somehow associated in her mind with the Jordan, and a black person only needed to wade across it to be as free as the children of Israel.
Except no black person on the plantation could tell her exactly how far to the north this river was, and she had learned long ago never to ask a white person where the river called Ohio was located...
The dawn broke hard and cold, a yellow light that burst inside the woods and exposed her hiding place and brought no warmth or release from the misery in her bones. There was a dirty stench in the air, like smoke from a drowned campfire. She heard the dogs again, and when she rose to her feet the pain inside her told her she would never outrun them.
Learn from critters, her mother had always said. They know God's way. Don't never ax Master or his family or the mens he hire to tell you the troot. Whatever they teach us is wrong, girl. Never forget that lesson, her mother had said.
The doe always leads the hunter away from the fawn, Sarie thought. That's what God taught the doe, her mother had said.
She wrapped the baby in the blanket that had been her only protection from the cold, then rose to her feet and covered the opening to the lean-to with a broken pine bough and walked slowly through the woods to the slough. She stepped into the water, felt it rush inside her shoes and over her ankles, then worked her way downstream toward the river. In the distance she heard axes knocking into wood and smelled smoke from a stump fire, and the fact that the work of the plantation went on rhythmically, not missing a beat, in spite of her child's birth and possible death reminded her once again of her own insignificance and the words Master had used to her yesterday afternoon.
"You should have taken care of yourself, Sarie," he had said, his pantaloons tucked inside his riding boots, his youthful face undisturbed and serene and without blemish except for the tiny lump of tobacco in his jaw. "I'll see to it the baby doesn't lack for raiment or provender, but I'll have to send you to the auction house. You're not an ordinary nigger, Sarie. You won't be anything but trouble. I'm sorry it worked out this way."
When she came out of the water and labored toward the edge of the woods, she glanced behind her and in the thin patina of snow frozen on the ground she saw her own blood spore and knew it was almost her time, the last day in a lifetime of days that had been marked by neither hope nor despair but only unanswered questions: Where was the green place they had all come from? What group of men had made them chattel to be treated as though they had no souls, whipped, worked from cain't-see to cain't-see, sometimes branded and hamstrung?

The barking of the dogs was louder now but she no longer cared about either the dogs or the men who rode behind them. Her spore ended at the slough; her story would end here, too. The child was another matter. She touched the juju bag tied around her neck and prayed she and the child would be together by nightfall, in the warm, green place where lions lay on the beaches by a great sea.
But now she was too tired to think about any of it. She stood on the edge of the trees, the sunlight breaking on her face, then sat down heavily in the grass, the tops of her shoes dark with her blood. Through a red haze she saw a man in a stovepipe hat and dirty white breeches ride over a hillock behind his dogs, two other mounted men behind him, their horses steaming in the sunshine.
The dogs surrounded her, circling, snuffing in the grass, their bodies bumping against one another, but they made no move against her person. The man in the stovepipe hat reined his horse and got down and looked with exasperation at his two companions. "Get these dogs out of here. If I hear that barking anymore, I'll need a new pair of ears," he said. Then he looked down at Sarie, almost respectfully. "You gave us quite a run."
She did not reply. His name was Rufus Atkins, a slight, hard-bodied man whose skin, even in winter, had the color and texture of a blacksmith's leather apron. His hair was a blackish-tan, long, combed straight back, and there were hollows in his cheeks that gave his face a certain fragility. But the cartilage around the jawbones was unnaturally dark, as though rubbed with blackened brick dust, knotted with a tension his manner hid from others.
Rufus Atkins' eyes were flat, hazel, and rarely did they contain or reveal any definable emotion, as though he lived behind glass and the external world never registered in a personal way on his senses...
"She done dropped it, huh?" he said.
"That's keenly observant of you, Clay, seeing as how the woman's belly is flat as a busted pig's bladder," Rufus Atkins replied.
"Marse Jamison says find both of them, he means find both of them Rufus," the man named Clay said, looking back into the trees at the blood spots in the snow.
Rufus Atkins squatted down and ignored his companion's observation his eyes wandering over Sarie's face.
"They say you filed your teeth into points 'cause there's an African king back there in your bloodline somewhere," he said to her. "Bet you gave birth to a man-child, didn't you, Sarie?"
“My child and me gonna be free. Ain't your bidness no more, Marse Rufus," she replied.
“Might as well face it, Sarie. That baby is not going to grow up around here, not with Marse Jamison's face on it. He'll ship it off somewhere he doesn't have to study on the trouble that big dick of his gets him into. Tell us where the baby is and maybe you and it will get sold off together."
When she didn't reply to his lie, he lifted her chin with his knuckle. "I’ve been good to you, Sarie. Never made you lift your dress, never whipped you, always let you go to the corn-breaks and the dances. Isn't it time for a little gratitude?" he said.
She looked into the distance at the bluffs on the far side of the river, the steam rising off the water in the shadows below, the live oaks blowing stiffly against the sky. Rufus Atkins fitted his hand under her arm and began to lift her to her feet.
She seized his wrist and sunk her teeth into his hand, biting down with her incisors into sinew and vein and bone, seeing his head pitch back hearing the squeal rise from his throat. Then she flung his hand away from her and spat his blood out of her mouth...

***************************

Sarie's mother and a wet nurse with breasts that hung inside her shirt like swollen eggplants walked along the banks of the slough until late afternoon. The sun was warm now, the trees filled with a smoky yellow light, as though the ice storm had never passed through Ira Jamison's plantation. Sarie's mother and the wet nurse rounded a bend in the woods, then saw footprints leading up to a leafy bower and a lean-to whose opening was covered with a bright green branch from a slash pine.
The child lay wrapped in a blanket like a caterpillar inside a cocoon, the eyes shut, the mouth puckered. The ground was soft now, scattered with pine needles, and among the pine needles were wildflowers that had been buried under snow. Sarie's mother unwrapped the child from the blanket and wiped it clean with a cloth, then handed it to the wet nurse, who held the baby's mouth to her breast and covered it with her coat.
"Sarie wanted a man-child. But this li'1 girl beautiful," the wet nurse said.
"She gonna be my darlin' thing, too. Sarie gonna live inside her. Her name gonna be Spring. No, that ain't right. Her name gonna be Flower," Sarie's mother said.

Princes of Ireland - novel by Edward Rutherfurd

2006-01-02T16:15:00.000-05:00

I'm a sucker for good historical fiction. It's fun to compare what I think I know with the characters, places and events in a novel. It's a way to get the sense of how people lived during times of historical upheaval. And it's a painless way to brush up on the facts.

Edward Rutherfurd (that is the correct spelling, incidentally) has written several sweeping epics, including Sarum, based on the history of Salisbury and Stonehenge; Russka; London; and The Forest.

The Princes of Ireland follows the saga of several families from the pre-Christian era through the arrival and ascendency of Christianity to the coming of the British. The characters are well-drawn and complex. As are their surroundings. The origins and development of family and place names is one of the interesting little tidbits that the novel throws in, eg. Goibniu (metal-worker or Smith) to Mac Goibnenn to MacGowan; Dubh Linn to Dyflin to Dublin.

The author goes to some lengths to outline what is and is not accurate historically. And he provides a pronuciation key - through a listing in the back of the book and by working many phonetic explanations into the text.

Here's a taste:

Lughnasa. High summer. At the ceremonies, the druids would make the harvest offerings to Lugh; the women would dance. And she, quite possibly, would be given to a stranger then and there and, perhaps, never return to Dubh Linn again…

She supposed she should at least be grateful for this slight delay. "And what can you tell me about the man?" she enquired. "Is he young or old? Is he a chief's son? Is he a warrior?"
"He is," her father said contentedly, "satisfactory in every way. But it's Goibniu who really knows him. He'll tell you everything this evening." And with that he was off, leaving her to her thoughts.
She had been standing quietly by herself for a little time when Finbarr and his hound came towards her….

"… isn't it true that for generation after generation, the High Kings have tried to kick the Ostmen out of Dyflin?" He pronounced the Norse name sullenly.
"They did, Father."
"But last year, when the High King won a great battle at Tara and came down to the Liffey-when he could have kicked them out, and they could have done nothing about it at all-he let them stay and took tribute instead. Why would he do that, do you think?"
"I suppose because it suited him," his son suggested. "He'd be better off taking their tribute than kicking them out."
"That is true. A port is a valuable thing. The Ostmen's ports bring in wealth. You're better off keeping them than destroying them." He paused. "I will tell you something else. Is the power of the O'Neill as great today as once it was?"
"It is not."
"And why is that?"
"They quarrelled amongst themselves." Up to a point this was true. Long ago, the mighty royal house had split into two branches, known as the Northern and Southern O'Neill. Generally these two had skilfully avoided dissension by alternating the High Kingship between them. But in recent generations there had been bickering. Other powers on the island, especially the kings of Munster in the south, had been chipping away at the authority of the O'Neill in the time-honoured manner. One young Munster chief, named Brian Boru, seemed ready to stir up trouble with scant respect for any of the settled kingships. The O'Neill were still strong-hadn't they just defeated the Vikings of Dyflin?-but the lesser Irish kings were watching. Like a huge bull, the great power in the north was showing signs of age.

Ouch! Managing injuries in youth sports

2006-01-02T15:59:00.000-05:00

We all want our children, grandchildren and ourselves to have a safe, fun sports experience. It's no fun playing hurt, and it's downright dangerous to do so. But it wouldn't be any fun if there were no risks! So how do we provide the best sports environment and handle injuries that occur? Here are some suggestions:

Preparation and Planning for Prevention
According to the ACC
"Being able to provide care for an injury requires having knowledge of basic first aid, access to adequate first aid supplies and equipment at all practices and games, and having a basic emergency plan of action outlined in advance.
A well stocked first aid kit (can be obtained at most medical supply houses or sporting goods stores) is a good start.
It should include the following:
- first-aid manual
- sterile gauze
- adhesive tape
- adhesive bandages in several sizes
- elastic bandage
- antiseptic wipes
- eye wash or saline
- disposable instant cold packs
- soap
- antibiotic cream (triple-antibiotic ointment)
- antiseptic solution (like hydrogen peroxide)
- hydrocortisone cream (1%)
- acetaminophen and ibuprofen
- tweezers
- sharp scissors
- safety pins
- calamine lotion
- alcohol wipes or ethyl alcohol
- plastic gloves
- flashlight and extra batteries
- thermometer
- mouthpiece for administering CPR (from the Red Cross)
- list of emergency phone numbers
- blanket (stored nearby)
- anti-diarrhea medication
- antacid (for upset stomach)
- insect repellent"

Coaches carry first aid kits, but it's a good idea for parents to carry them, too, and to include prescription medications for each child (in their original bottles).

First Aid classes are available at several venues in every community, including the Red Cross.

The Mayo Clinic's website says,

"An emergency plan of action should outline individual responsibilities in the event of an accident or injury: who would provide first aid, who would call 911 if needed, who would meet and direct the paramedics, and who would contact parents if they were not present..."

R I C E is an acronym for the most important elements--REST, ICE, COMPRESSION and ELEVATION--in first aid of contusions, sprains, strains, dislocations or uncomplicated fractures.
REST
Stop ... and rest as soon as you feel an injury. After medical treatment, the injured part may require immobilization with splints or a cast.
ICE
Ice helps stop internal bleeding. Sudden cold causes small blood vessels to contract, speeding healing time. Ice can be safely applied in several ways:
 For small area injuries - finger, toe, foot, or wrist - immerse in a bucket of ice water. Ice cubes will keep the water cold.
 For larger areas, use ice packs (crushed ice, a disposable "cold-pak", or even a package of frozen vegetables). The pack may sit directly on the injured part, or it may be wrapped in place with a towel, cloth, or one or two layers of an elasticized compression bandage between the ice pack and the skin.
 Ice the injured area for about 30 minutes
 Remove the ice to allow the skin to warm for 15 minutes. No need to apply extra heat at this point.
 Reapply the ice.
 Repeat the icing and warming cycles for 3 hours, and follow the instructions below for compression and elevation. If pain and swelling persist after 3 hours, consult your doctor (if you have not already done so). Regular ice treatment is often discontinued after 24 to 48 hours. At that point, heat is often more comfortable.
COMPRESSION
Compression decreases swelling by slowing bleeding and limiting the accumulation of blood and plasma near the injured site:
 Use an elasticized bandage (Ace bandage) for compression, if possible. If you do not have one available, any kind of cloth will work for a while. Wrap the injured part firmly, wrapping over the ice, beginning below the injury site and extending above it. Not too tight - signs of impaired circulation include pain, numbness, cramping, and blue or dusky-colored nails.
 Remove the compression bandage immediately if too tight. Leave the bandage off until all signs of impaired circulation disappear. Then rewrap the area less tightly.
ELEVATION
Elevating the injured part above the level of the heart is another way to decrease swelling and pain at the injury site. Elevate the iced, compressed area in whatever way is most convenient. Prop an injured leg on solid objects or pillows. Elevate an injured arm by lying down and placing pillows under the arm, or placing them on the chest with the arm folded across. The whole upper part of the body may be elevated gently with pillows, a reclining chair, or by raising the top of the bed on blocks.

Read more:
Be careful when heading a ball. Go to Duckalogue "To head or not to head (a soccer ball)..." to read the latest research into head injuries and soccer.

Health News: Medical update: key steps in managing sports injuries

In case of an injury, parents who don't know first aid or are themselves injured, should probably get out of the way and let people who DO know do the work on an injured child.

And best of all, PLAY SAFE!

Email me!

Lions and Tigers and Elephants - oh, why?!

2005-08-25T14:00:00.000-04:00

Does anybody else think this sounds like a really, really bad idea? I'm talking about a plan to reintroduce lions and other "megafauna" to the American Great Plains. In an article published August 2005 in Nature, a group of conservationist researchers are suggesting what they call "Pleistocene re-wilding" - supposedly a proactive approach to conservation. They maintain that this will help restore the balance of biodiversity destroyed my human hunting and habitation-encroachment.

Okay, I'm all for conservation and for keeping species from disappearing, but didn't these guys see Jurassic Park or The Ghost and the Darkness ?! There's a good reason that humans killed these large critters: not only did they taste really good, but they were damned dangerous to live with.

Imagine for a moment, you're on a family outing. You're about to settle down for a nice picnic at a quiet rest area in, say, Kansas. When out of nowhere, a half a ton of lion comes out of the bushes and grabs one of the kiddies for his own picnic. Or maybe you're driving along at night when an elephant steps in front of your car. If you survive the encounter, your insurance premiums are going through what's left of the roof.

The proponents of this idea say the 'precautions will be taken' to prevent encounters like the above. Personally, the best precaution I'd take (besides calling Ted Nugent) would be to not do this!

Stop the insanity - Is obesity really an "epidemic"?

2005-07-13T20:49:00.000-04:00

An article in Scientific American, entitled Obesity: An Overblown Epidemic? cites a "growing number of dissenting researchers accuse government and medical authorities--as well as the media--of misleading the public about the health consequences of rising body weights." Seems that there may NOT be as iron-clad connection between obesity and illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension. Maybe our pudginess is not as damaging as we've been taught to believe.

Have we been dieting, exercising, undergoing possibly dangerous surgeries for nothing?

In a related article, Dr. Arthur Frank and Dr. Domenica Rubino have decided that people need an implanted pacemaker-like device that tells people they're full.
Not certain how it works, the docs think the stimulation expands the stomach a bit and the patient gets the feeling of being full. Drs Frank and Rubino think that may help people lose upt to 10 percent of their body fat

And of course, it ain't cheap: the procedure will cost about $15,000, and the batteries need to be replaced about every five years.

Okay, enough already!

Red teams win?

2005-05-20T05:15:00.000-04:00

My grandson insists that his daddy's car is faster than mine because it's red. His father, my son, agrees, (with tongue planted firmly in cheek), "Why even question it?! Red cars ARE faster!"

Well, I don't know about cars, but athletes who wear red may actually have an advantage. In a May 18, 2005, article "Red is the colour if winning is your game", featured in NewScientist.com, Mairi Macleod writes that "the Washington Redskins, Manchester United and the Welsh rugby team have all been playing with an unfair advantage. Just seeing their red kit is seemingly enough to cow their opponents into submission even before a ball is kicked."

Research by Robert Hill and Robert Barton of Durham University in the UK, shows that red uniforms seem to provide their wearers with an evolutionary leg-up on the comptetition. They speculate that the wearing of the red triggers a testosterone surge in those outfitted in the color and causes their opponents to feel unconsciously submissive.

They may be on to something. Why do people prefer the taste of Pepsi in blind tests, but prefer Coke when they're aware of the brand? In an October issue of the journal, Neuron (quoted in the New York Times) researchers published that they "...monitored brain scans of 67 people who were given a blind taste test of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. More people preferred the taste of Pepsi. But when the same people were told what they were drinking...three out of four said that they preferred Coca-Cola." The study has since been replicated by others.

I wonder if anyone considered the color of the can. Do people like to drink Coke because it comes in a red can? And if red is such a winning color, why is Dale Earnhardt, Jr., having such a dismal year?! Inquiring minds want to know...

To head or not to head (a soccer ball)...

2005-05-17T20:12:00.000-04:00

Soccer is said to be the most popular team sport in the world. Millions of people world-wide regularly play or watch "the beautiful game." Parents love soccer because it involves little contact and is a relatively safe sport. Most injuries involve, not surprisingly, the legs and feet.

But much attention has recently focused on head injuries in soccer. Many have suggested that heading the ball is a problem for players at all levels. According to an August 2004 publication by the SGMA (Sporting Good Manufacturers Association) and CPSC (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission), "...concussions (in youth soccer) make up 2-3% of all injuries. This is the same rate as for American football!"

What about the pros? It has been suggested that professional soccer players (especially forwards and defenders) may even have cognitive problems possibly stemming from head trauma. In a 1998 article, Dutch researchers wrote that professional soccer players' performance on memory, planning, and visual-perceptual tasks declined as their number of concussions and frequency of heading the ball increased [Neurology 1998;51:791-796].

Scary, huh? But is it really - how much should we worry about head injuries and what's causing them?

An article on the Neuroscience for Kids website, points out that, "The most common cause of the concussions was when one player's head struck the head of another player...The second most common cause of concussions occurred when a ball struck a player's head. These head-to-ball concussions happened when a player was hit in the head by a ball kicked from close range. In many cases, the ball traveled so quickly the player did not have time to react. NONE of the concussions were caused by proper heading of the ball." In other words, the same kind of contact most kids get in their own back yard.

How about protective headgear for young soccer players? Not so fast! Gary Green, M.D., writes in The NCAA News, "At a minimum, studies need to assess the reduction in forces with specific types of headgear in relation to heading a ball. There is no evidence to date demonstrating that the use of headgear would reduce brain injuries in soccer." The US Soccer Federation, thinks headgear may even cause more problems than it alleviates. It may give players, parents and coaches a false sense of security, causing players to play more aggressively, and to fail to learn proper heading technique, or to go back out on the field when they have already sustained a concussion.

According to Active.com, "...non-concussed soccer players have no real differences in cognitive function (which) would suggest that purposeful heading is not a concern." Even so, some raise the alarm. Dr. Lyle Micheli, chair of the Sports Medicine Department at Children's Hospital in Boston, declares, "No child under the age of 14 should head the ball!".

Well, maybe...but most children under the age of 14 don't even try to head the ball and if they do, they rarely connect - with the ball, that is. Still, it seems reasonable for coaches to teach the proper method. Active.com sums it up well, "There is no scientific evidence to suggest that heading in soccer is unsafe for soccer players. Concussions in soccer are rare compared to other popular sports and most likely occur from accidental head-ball contact or when the head contacts a hard object like the ground, post, head, foot, knee, or elbow."

So play on - and watch your head!

He calculates, she calculates - just how different are men & women at math and science?

2005-05-13T21:27:00.000-04:00

The president of Harvard said it, so it must be right, no? In January, Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, made the grave tactical error of suggesting that inborn differences in the architecture of the male and female brain might be a factor contributing to the relative scarcity of women in the scientific fields. BAM! Let the screaming begin!

Women's groups were, of course, upset by his comments and he subsequently apologized, without retracting his statement. The comment generated a deluge of newspaper articles and letters to the editor. On January 21, 2005, The New York Times printed 6 letters one of which was signed by 100 academics and scientists, including Sally Ride - who, besides being a former astronaut, is a professor of space science, University of California, San Diego. The Boston Globe (in Harvard's own back yard), also lambasted Summers.

But is there any scientific basis for Summers' comments? Maybe. In the May 13, 2005, issue of Scientific American.com, Larry Cahill discusses "His Brain, Her Brain". He writes, "...no one has uncovered any evidence that anatomical disparities might render women incapable of achieving academic distinction in math, physics or engineering... Nevertheless...investigators have documented an astonishing array of...variations in the brains of males and females."

This is, of course, not the first time academics have squared off over the issue of whether gender differences in the sciences are nature, nurture or baloney. In her 1992 book "The Mismeasure of Woman", Carol Tavris wrote that, "...the male 'superiority' in math is an example of a 'fact' that is not powerful at all, because it does not help us predict how an individual boy or girl, man or woman, will do." Stephen Goldberg fired back, "To see how little sense this makes, simply replace "math" with "height" (or "weight" or "physical strength"). No one thinks that, when we say that "men are taller than women", this means we can predict in better than probabilistic terms the height of a specific man or woman."

Women's groups point to cases like that of Rosalind Franklin, whose work using x-rays to create images of crystalized solids paved the way for the discovery of DNA, to show gender bias within academe. Watson, Crick & Wilkins got a Nobel prize - Franklin, who had died ealier received no mention. In fact, Watson called her "frumpy, hostile and unimaginative". Don't know about that - photos show her as a rather attractive woman, looks a bit like a brunette Paris Hilton, but with a spark of intelligence.

Is the prevalence of men in the sciences a result of nature or nurture? Who knows! Scientists have known for decades that in elementary schoool, girls get better grades than boys. And an intriguing study of Brown University undergraduates led by a graduate student of psychology found that those women performed as much as 12% better on math problems when tested in a setting without men.

Why the career difference, then? In a May 11, 2005, Science Daily article, Jacquelynne Eccles, of the University of Michigan discusses "Why Women Shy Away From Careers In Science And Math." Eccles writes, "...to increase the number of women in science, we also need to make young women more interested in these fields, and that means making them aware that science is a social endeavor that involves working with and helping people." It seems clear that encouraging interested young women to pursue careers in the sciences would have to qualify as a 'good thing', both for the women themselves and for the scientific disciplines.

Gender differences would seem to be fading somewhat, with more young women entering scientific and mathematical fields. Universities are actively recruiting math-loving women. Brochures extol the virtues of a career in computer science: "If you enjoy your math classes, you will probably also enjoy computer science and engineering. If you enjoy helping others solve problems, learning about new ideas, challenging yourself, or just dreaming up new situations, products, or ideas, computer science or engineering may be the right career choice for you."

We've come a long way, baby, since the days when Rosalind Franklin and her fellow women scientists were not allowed to eat in the same King's College dining hall as the men.

And so it goes...it's doubtful that the debate will be resolved any time soon. At least as long as there are Paris Hiltons and Rosalind Franklins in the world!

"Guns, Germs & Steel" - how did we get here from there?

2005-03-20T15:33:00.000-05:00

How did it happen that the Spaniard Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa instead of Atahualpa sailing to Europe and capturing King Charles I of Spain? Why did some societies have the upper hand in the conquest adventure while others were the losers?

Jared Diamond attempts to answer those questions in his engaging book - "Guns, Germ and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies". Diamond, a biologist, began wondering about those questions while studying historical bird migration patterns in New Guinea. He lived among hunter-gatherer societies and observed that they were on average at least as intelligent as Europeans or Americans. A local politician asked how Europeans were able to dominate his people.

This sparked a study of the archaeology and biology of the march of human history from our East African hunter-gatherer ancestors to the present sprawling cities of the world. Diamond takes a scientific approach: using archaeology, paleontology, historical climatology and geology he highlights the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals as the driving forces behind a "Great Leap Forward" enabling the progress of cultural evolution.

Eurasia – and especially the area historically known as the Fertile Crescent in southwestern Asia (present-day Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey) – had all the components for successful agriculture: suitable climate and soil, and wild plants that could be turned into the early crops. These early crops had mutations that were maybe bad for the propagation of the plants by themselves, but good for people. These mutations included pea pods that did not pop open to enhance the spread of peas but stayed closed allowing humans to harvest the protein-rich parts of the plant.

The area also saw the beginning of the domestication of animals. Why there and not at home in Africa? The answer is that Eurasia was the home of several of the most important big animals (Diamond identifies 14 species, divided up into a “Major 5 and Minor 9”) that could be domesticated. Animals such as wild boars, sheep and the now extinct aurochs – ancestor of today’s cows and oxen – are generally herbivorous, and of a temperament and hardiness that allowed our ancestors begin to use them for food and transportation.

On the other hand, Africa, Australia and the Americas were not abundant in docile animals. Rhinos, hippos, giraffes and zebras have yet to be domesticated. They startle easily, don’t imprint on a pack or herd leader (which can be replaced by a human) and/or are generally difficult or dangerous. The same is true of kangaroos. Only the ancestor of the llama and alpaca was a candidate in the Americas.

The twin developments of agriculture and animal domestication gave the residents of the Eurasian landmass a head start in creating settlements, villages, cities, states and empires. People in villages and cities can support a non-food producing (or hunting and gathering) class: artists and craftsmen, clergy, bureaucrats and warriors. Those classes in turn create food storage devices, rituals, laws, writing and weapons. The Fertile Crescent was home to this first cultural and technological explosion.

The advances in crops, domestic animals and population density gave rise to another factor in Eurasian dominance: epidemic diseases. People who have critters living closely among them develop diseases that jump species – witness today’s problems with avian flu. Some humans have genetic mutations enabling them to develop immunities; some do not. Those who do, live to pass those genes on. Eurasian societies developed those immunities.

We are now familiar with the role disease played in the colonizing of Africa, the Americas and Australia. Diseases that European explorers were immune to devastated the societies and states in those areas. That paved the way for the conquest and enslavement of those peoples. However, the role that disease played in weakening “native” populations in the Americas is controversial: many historians maintain that disease was secondary to genocide, especially during the Spanish era of expansion in the New World.

That brings us back to the question of why Atahualpa was the loser and not Charles I. Diamond maintains that Charles and his people had an overwhelming head start. “Guns, Germs and Steel” is a “page-turner” of a book that helps explain why.

And of course, the victors write the history books…
***************
Other books by Jared Diamond include "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004)", "The Third Champanzee (1999)" and "Why is Sex Fun (1998)". They are available at Amazon.com, your local bookstore and at your public library.

Information-seeking behavior - exactly how do we find what (we think) we need to know?

2005-02-21T11:33:00.000-05:00

The other night I did a search for my grandson's paper on Saturn's moon, Titan, which has been in the news recently. My son talked about how the boy needs to learn to use the library to find books on his subject. This was, of course, music to my little ex-librarian's ears. Kids DO need to learn to use both the library and the internet for information. But their first step will undoubtedly be a websearch. Will it give them the info they need? Maybe, maybe not...

A recent article in Scientific American, "Seeking Better Web Searches", talks about "Googling" as the information-seeking process of choice for most of us these days. The article describes several new search engines that make the common keyword search more precise, yielding fewer or more precise results.

Wanting to try it out, I did a search using "information-seeking behavior" (using the quotation marks to narrow the search to titles with exactly those words in that order) on Google, Yahoo, and several other seach engines. On Google, I got 25,900 hits - way too many to go through. One of the new search engines mentioned, Mooter, is supposed to display results in a cluster format, allowing the searcher to refine the search further. Mooter must have gotten too much publicity, because their site has been down since that article came out. Probably too many people "mooting".

The first few articles on Google included a bibliography, several papers by librarians and library-science students, and other scholarly works. Yahoo got me 23,700 of the same or similar results. Dogpile gave me the same as did several other search engines. Another search engine, Feedster, gave me some really irrelevant, but interesting results - like an employment ad for a "Director of Information Technology.

The articles I turned up in my search discussed how people look for information and gave links to other articles. In other words, they gave me some information and then showed me where to look for more information. This could go on forever.

Are we really searching for information or do we forage for it, as Stuart K.Card and Peter Pirolli suggested in "Information Foraging"

I think we trundle about with our noses to the 'information forest' floor, snatching up whatever catches our eye to hoard in our info-stash. The goodies we happen upon may or may not give us the answers we set out to find.

The articles hinted at, but did not really discuss one fact that librarians - especially public librarians - have known for years. That people rarely, if ever, come into a library knowing exactly what questions to ask to find the answers they need. People often come to the reference desk asking for books on "dog shows", when what they really want is a history of the American Kennel Club or Madison Square Garden or how to train their dogs to stop barking at the mailman. Reference librarians are trained to conduct a reference interview to cut through the extraneous ideas to get to the real issue. Some librarians are better at it than others, but most know that it is critical.

In a previous life, I spent my days either working the reference desk or training college students (and faculty) how to use a modern library. I also held classes in how to search the internet. The students learned to ask at least some of the right questions to get the information they needed.

Search engines don't do that. A search engine is, after all, merely an index of webpages. Its software searches the database and returns the results, sorted in order of relevance, amount paid for the listing or date. The webpages listed may or not answer our questions.

It's almost like you have to know the answers before you ask the questions!!

As Daniel Rose says in his article, "Reconciling Information-Seeking Behavior
with Search User Interfaces for the Web", , "It is clear that there is a discrepancy between the rich and varied search behavior of users and the simplistic, one-size-fits-all approach of web search engines."

Let's hope search engine companies hire enough experienced librarians to create more "human" ways for us all to search.

Whew! That's some centerfold!

2005-02-12T17:46:00.000-05:00

What do readers of Playboy or People Magazine and rhesus monkeys have in common? Seems they both are willing to pay a lot for pictures of attractive females and other celebrities. According to a study quoted in the February 2 issue of Scientific American Science News http://www.sciam.com, Robert Deaner and Michael Platt of Duke University Medical Center and his colleagues studied the “reading” habits of male rhesus macaques. The monkeys studied were willing to give up quite a bit of their yummy fruit juice for the privilege of viewing pictures of high-ranking male monkeys or the hindquarters of females. Deaner and Platt “…believe that similar processes are at work in these monkeys and in people…” Well, du-uh! Hugh Hefner is a VERY wealthy man!

Free or cheap really, really good software!!

2005-02-05T22:40:00.000-05:00

AnswersThatWork.com is a great website that gives lots of valuable info on all those programs that run on our machines - that we may or may not know about. They have a library that lists each program and what it does, and tells if it is really needed or not.

They have a great little utility called The Ultimate Troubleshooter that you can download for free (trial version) or you can get the fully operational version for $25. It takes a look at what's running on your computer and marks each program with a color code for it's potential danger to your machine or annoyance to you. The full version on the program tells you how to get rid of it.

My machine was running v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y as a result of some spyware I had picked up. I used The Ultimate Troubleshooter and got rid of all that mess. It took about 4 hours, but it was worth it. Now my machine runs like it supposed to! Here's the link:
http://www.answersthatwork.com/

Another free or inexpensive software package is AVG. It is one of the best virus-protection programs going and it's free for home users and only $33 for business users. They also have a nice little utility called vCleaner (free) that will clean all the viruses off your machine. It took about 20 minutes to run on the 6gb machine at work, but it, too, is worth it.
Here's the link:
http://www.grisoft.com

I'm also sold on Evrsoft's 1st Page. It's a fully functional webpage creator and it's free. It has all the scripts you could want, templates, a "Teach Me HTML" tutorial, and links to their website reference.
Here's the link:
http://www.evrsoft.com/download.shtml

Keep a cool head

2005-02-05T01:12:00.000-05:00

According to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, moderate cooling of the brain is the first new treatment shown to be effective for severe brain trauma. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that lowering the body temperature about 10 degrees for 24 hours improved patient outcomes. After six months, those patients (73%) who were treated with cooling showed marked improvement.

However, according to a January 28, 2005, Lancet article, head cooling may not always be helpful for neonatal encephalopathy, according to the results of a randomized trial.

So, if somebody knocks you over the head, ask for some ice - maybe...

This ain't exactly brain surgery...no, wait it is!

2005-01-30T18:00:00.000-05:00

There are some really exciting things happening in neuroscience these days - new possibilities for diagnosing and treating Alzheimer's, new insights into the causes and treatment of depression, new procedures to treat Parkinson's Disease and Essential Tremor.

Deep Brain Stimulation to treat ET is a subject near and dear to my heart. Literally. I have two pulse generators implanted in my chest that fire electrodes in my head. They help control the Essential Tremor that has been the bane of my existence since childhood.

I was diagnosed with ET in my 40's and put on various meds - some of which worked, some did not. But since about 5 years ago the meds were just not doing the trick.

This is a common feature of ET, which, like Parkinson's Disease, is progressive. ET is not usually as debilitating, although some ET patients can be fairly incapacitated by it, unable to hold their hands or heads steady enough to feed themselves, etc. I was getting to that point before the DBS surgery, in December 2003.

Now my left hand it totally steady, my right hand is much improved and my head tremor is somewhat improved. It's a fascinating but not very pleasant procedure involving having holes drilled in your skull and wires run under your scalp. And it often take many months to get the settings right on the pulse generators, with odd side affects like slurred speech and a "gravelly" throat.

But all in all, I'd say that DBS was worth it and has improved my life. Can't head a soccer ball anymore, though!

Here are a few links:
"It ain't television, it's brain surgery!"
"The heart of the (gray) matter"
Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center(where I had my surgery)

The Science (or lack thereof) of green tea...

2005-01-26T01:43:00.000-05:00

Are you drinking your green or black tea? That's nice, dear. To quote US News & World Reports, January 24, 2005 - Helen Fields, "Wouldn't it be nice if tea lived up to the medical hype?" Can tea cure all our ills? "Well...maybe."

Green tea as a curative is as natural as, say, graham crackers. We are forever trying to wring miracles out of food. And like many other "health foods", tea looks good on paper. It seems to be pretty good at curing and preventing cancer in lab rats, but its benefits to humans are not quite as clear-cut.

It's hard to separate genetic, environmental and cultural factors in populations that seem to benefit from large consumption of green tea or any other food. For myself, I'll take some sweet (iced) tea with lemon, y'all!

Low-carb vs low-cal? The physics of it all

2005-01-24T16:45:00.000-05:00

Another article in the January 2005 issue of Discover Magazine caught my eye (probably because I'm 15-20 lbs. overweight):

"The Physics of Atkins" by Jocelyn Selim. Biochemists Richard Feinman and Eugene Fine of SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York argue that dimissing low-carb diets may be a mistake. They invoke the second law of termodynamics: that energy tends to dissipate over time. In their opinion a calorie is not just a calorie. Protein calories take longer to turn into glucose than carbohydrate. So more protein calories are converted into heat, while carbohydrate calories will hang around as glucose and be stored in the fat cells.

Feinman and Fine don't make any judgments about the long-term health effects of the Atkins diet (after all, Dr. Atkins himself was overweight and died of heart disease). But, based on physics alone, it looks like the low-carb may be a better bet. Now if they could only get the low-carb ice creams to taste as good and put them on sale more often...

Science gives us the answers - a little bit at a time

2005-01-24T11:49:00.000-05:00

I found the following on The Edge website http://www.edge.org/ (taken from a Times of London article):

"If there are any answers to life's greatest questions, or if there are other questions that we should be asking instead, it is science that will provide them."

Hear, hear! I would also include historians. The study of science and history will give us the chance to advance as a species.

Science stories

2005-01-19T01:20:00.000-05:00

The January issue of Discover Magazine listed the 100 Top Science Stories of 2004. I love this magazine! Sort of a Scientific American lite, it's easily readable - both from a content and a layout standpoint.
The top 100? They include
- Hobbits - ancient itty-bitty homonids
- Global warming
The furor over stem cell research
Teleporation - it actually works, at least on the atomic scale
NASA's Rover finds ancient sea on Mars
View the rest on the web at www.discover.com.

Of course, the ultimate scientific story of 2004 was the lack of a warning system that might have alerted hundreds of thousands of people in southern Asia and Africa before the tsunami slammed into them. Last night on the history channel there was a program on tsunamis, obviously recorded before this one. It told, rather smugly, of the many advances in tsunami research and the warning systems in Japan and Hawaii.

Among the articles that did not make the top 100, though, was one in the "Emerging Technology" section, entitled "Share the Internet Wealth". How to make money - not a lot, maybe - by writing a weblog and allowing Google to advertise on it. Don'tcha love it?!

Well, guess what?! That's just what this is. This is the first article in my new blog. And I'll submit it to Google to see if they'll put ads on it. Then evey time somebody clicks on an ad, I get paid a little. How's that for making money in your pj's?!