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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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 '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.

Getting young rugby players to complete new balance, strength and movement exercises before matches and in training can reduce injuries by over 70%, according to a benchmark study released today (Thursday 18 May 2017). Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine , the findings of the School Injury Prevention Study - which was led by the University's Department for Health and the Rugby Football Union (RFU) from 2013-16 - show the dramatic effect of a newly-devised exercise programme in reducing overall injuries for youth rugby.

Mortality rates for women undergoing surgery for abdominal aortic aneurysms are nearly twice those for men, a new study has found. The findings, published in The Lancet, show women fare worse than men at every stage of treatment, leading to the study's authors to call for urgent improvement in how the condition is managed in women.

Multiple artificial intelligence (AI) agents have learned to work together to play StarCraft, a science fiction combat video game, by using two-way communication according to a team from UCL and Alibaba Group. Previously, single AI agents learned to play Go and card games, beating the most accomplished human players, but in this study, multiple AI agents have learned to collaborate to defeat multiple enemies in a real-time strategy game.

His Royal Highness Prince Harry today visited the Rugby Football Union Injured Players Foundation (IPF) at the University to discover how the IPF-funded research can help improve player welfare and reduce players' injury risk. Visiting in his capacity as IPF Patron, Prince Harry met researchers from the University who have led advances over the past decade in developing new injury prevention techniques and protocols for rugby union.

A single dose psychological intervention, which includes using the computer game Tetris, can prevent the unpleasant, intrusive memories that develop in some people after suffering a traumatic event. Researchers have been able to demonstrate how the survivors of motor vehicle accidents have fewer such symptoms if they play Tetris in hospital within six hours of admission after also having been asked to recall their memory of the accident.

Evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a potential cause of dementia caused by repeated blows to the head, has been found in the brains of former association football (soccer) players examined at the UCL Queen Square Brain Bank. The study, funded by The Drake Foundation and published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica , looked at 14 retired footballers with dementia who were referred to the Old Age Psychiatry Service in Swansea, Wales, between 1980 and 2010.

Scientists from the Universities of Bristol and Groningen, in The Netherlands, have created a computer game style experiment which sheds new light on the reasons why starlings flock in massive swirling groups over wintering grounds. A mumeration can hold many thousands of starlings but the reasons why they put on these amazing displays are not well understood.