Fit gamers challenge 'fat' stereotype, new esports research

QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

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VIDEO: A QUT-LED STUDY FINDS ESPORTS PLAYERS ARE UP TO 21 PER CENT HEALTHIER WEIGHT THAN THE GENERAL POPULATION, HARDLY SMOKE AND ALSO DRINK LESS. view more 

CREDIT: QUT

Esports players are up to 21 per cent healthier weight than the general population, hardly smoke and drink less too, finds a new QUT (Queensland University of Technology) study.

The findings, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, were based on 1400 survey participants from 65 countries.

• First study to investigate the BMI (Body Mass Index) status of a global sample of esports players.
• Esports players were between 9 and 21 per cent more likely to be a healthy weight than the general population.
• Esports players drank and smoked less than the general population.
• The top 10 per cent of esports players were significantly more physically active than lower level players, showing that physical activity could influence esports expertise.

QUT eSports researcher Michael Trotter said the results were surprising considering global obesity levels.

"The findings challenge the stereotype of the morbidly obese gamer," he said.

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QUT researcher Michael Trotter

Mr Trotter said the animated satire South Park poked fun at the unfit gamer but the link between video gaming and obesity had not been strongly established.

"When you think of esports, there are often concerns raised regarding sedentary behaviour and poor health as a result, and the study revealed some interesting and mixed results," he said.

"As part of their training regime, elite esports athletes spend more than an hour per day engaging in physical exercise as a strategy to enhance gameplay and manage stress," he said.

The World Health Organisation guidelines for time that should be spent being physically active weekly is a minimum of 150 minutes.

"Only top-level players surveyed met physical activity guidelines, with the best players exercising on average four days a week," the PhD student said.

However, the study found 4.03 per cent of esports players were more likely to be morbidly obese compared to the global population.

Mr Trotter said strategies should be developed to support players classed at the higher end of BMI categories.

"Exercise and physical activity play a role in success in esports and should be a focus for players and organisations training esports players," Mr Trotter said.

"This will mean that in the future, young gamers will have more reason and motivation to be physically active.

"Grassroots esports pathways, such as growing university and high school esports are likely to be the best place for young esports players to develop good health habits for gamers."

The research also found esports players are 7.8 per cent more likely to abstain from drinking daily, and of those players that do drink, only 0.5 per cent reported drinking daily.

The survey showed only 3.7 per cent of esports players smoked daily, with player smoking frequency lower compared to global data at 18.7 per cent.

Future research will investigate how high-school and university esports programs can improve health outcomes and increase physical activity for gaming students.

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The study was led by QUT's Faculty of Health School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences and in collaboration with the Department of Psychology at Umeå University in Sweden.

The wily octopus: king of flexibility

MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY

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VIDEO: EXAMPLES OF ARM DEFORMATION TYPES IN AN OCTOPUS (O. BIMACULOIDES). FROM: E.B. LANE KENNEDY, KENDRA C. BURESCH, PREETHI BOINAPALLY, AND ROGER T. HANLON (2020) OCTOPUS ARMS EXHIBIT EXCEPTIONAL FLEXIBILITY. SCIENTIFIC... view more 

CREDIT: ROGER HANLON LAB/MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY

Octopus Arm Movements [video] | EurekAlert! Science News

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- Octopuses have the most flexible appendages known in nature, according to a new study in Scientific Reports. In addition to being soft and strong, each of the animal's eight arms can bend, twist, elongate and shorten in many combinations to produce diverse movements. But to what extent can they do so, and is each arm equally capable? Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) filmed 10 octopuses over many months while presenting them with a variety of challenges, and recorded 16,563 examples of these arm movements.

Amazingly, all eight arms could perform all four types of deformation (bend, twist, elongate, shorten) throughout their length. Moreover, each type of movement could be deployed in multiple orientations (e.g. left, right, up, down, 360º, etc.). Especially noteworthy was the clockwise and counterclockwise twisting that could occur throughout each arm during bending, shortening or elongating. This twisty strong arm is exceptionally flexible by any standard.

"Even our research team, which is very familiar with octopuses, was surprised by the extreme versatility of each of the eight arms as we analyzed the videos frame-by-frame," said co-author and MBL Senior Scientist Roger Hanlon. "These detailed analyses can help guide the next step of determining neural control and coordination of octopus arms, and may uncover design principles that can inspire the creation of next-generation soft robots."

Engineers have long wished to design "soft robotic arms" with greater agility, strength and sensing capability. Currently, most robotic arms require hard materials and joints of many configurations, all of which have limitations. The octopus presents a novel model for future robotic designs. Octopus arms are similar in function to the human tongue and the elephant trunk; they are muscular hydrostats that use incompressible muscle in different arrangements to produce movement. The current study provides a basis for investigating motor control of the entire octopus arm. Soft, ultra-flexible robotic arms could enable many new applications, e.g., inspecting unstructured and cluttered environments such as collapsed buildings, or gentler medical inspection of alimentary or respiratory pathways.

CAPTION

An octopus (O. bimaculoides) extends an arm to explore its environment.

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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery - exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.

Gene therapy gives man with sickle cell disease the chance for a better future

Experimental treatment at UCLA has given one patient reason for optimism

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES HEALTH SCIENCES

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IMAGE: EVIE JUNIOR view more 

CREDIT: UCLA BROAD STEM CELL RESEARCH CENTER

For Evie Junior, living with sickle cell disease has been like running a marathon.

"But it's a marathon where as you keep going, the trail gets rockier and then you lose your shoes," the 27-year-old said. "It gets harder as you get older. Things start to fail and all you can think about is how much worse it's going to get down the road."

In sickle cell disease, a genetic mutation causes the blood-forming stem cells -- which give rise to all blood and immune cells -- to produce hard, sickle-shaped red blood cells. These misshapen cells die early, leaving an insufficient number of red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body. Because of their sickle shape, these cells also get stuck in blood vessels, blocking blood flow and resulting in excruciating bouts of pain that come on with no warning and can leave patients hospitalized for days.

The disease affects 100,000 people in the United States and millions around the world, the majority of whom are of African or Hispanic descent. It can ultimately lead to strokes, organ damage and early death.

As a child growing up in the Bronx, New York, Junior had to have his gall bladder and spleen removed due to complications from the disease, but he refused to let his condition limit him. He played football, basketball and baseball during the day, even though on some nights he experienced pain crises so severe he couldn't walk.

"It was just really routine if I had a sickle cell crisis," he said. "Going to the emergency room, staying in the hospital, coming out in a few days and then getting back to normal life."

'I want to create a better future'

When he was 24 and living in Portland, Oregon, Junior began working as an emergency medical technician. He adopted the same mentality -- trying to treat his pain episodes the best he could, and hoping they would resolve overnight so he could get back to work. Around that time, though, the crises became harder to manage. He developed pericarditis, an inflammation in the layers of tissue around his heart, and needed six weeks to recover.

"The big worry with sickle cell disease is that you're going to die young from some type of complications or damage to your organs," he said. "In the last couple of years, I've been seeing that slowly happen to me and I can only suspect that it's going to keep getting worse. I want to create a better future for myself."

In July 2019, in pursuit of that future, Junior enrolled in a clinical trial for an experimental stem cell gene therapy for sickle cell disease. The study is led by UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center physician-scientists Dr. Donald Kohn and Dr. Gary Schiller and funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

The therapy, developed by Kohn over the past 10 years, is intended to correct the mutation in patients' blood-forming stem cells to allow them to produce healthy red blood cells. Kohn has already applied the same concept to successfully treat several immune system deficiencies, including a cure for a form of severe combined immune deficiency, also known as bubble baby disease.

But sickle cell disease has proven more difficult to treat with gene therapy than those other conditions. Junior volunteered for the trial knowing there was a chance the therapy wouldn't cure him.

"Even if it doesn't work for me, I'm hoping that it can be a cure later down the road for millions of people," he said.

In July 2020, Junior received an infusion of his own blood-forming stem cells that had been genetically modified to overcome the mutation that causes his disease.

"The goal of this treatment is to give him a future, let him plan for college, family or whatever he wants without worrying about getting hospitalized because of another pain crisis," said Kohn, a distinguished professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, pediatrics, and molecular and medical pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Reason for optimism

Three months after his treatment, blood tests indicated that 70% of Junior's blood stem cells had the new corrected gene. Kohn and Schiller estimate that even a 20% correction would be enough to prevent future sickle cell complications. Junior said he hasn't had a pain crisis since undergoing the treatment and he has more energy and feels out of breath less often.

"I noticed a big difference in my cardiovascular endurance in general -- even going for a light jog with my dogs, I could feel it," he said.

Junior and his doctors are cautiously optimistic about the results.

"It's too early to declare victory, but it's looking quite promising at this point," Kohn said. "Once we're at six months to a year, if it looks like it does now, I'll feel very comfortable that he's likely to have a permanent benefit."

After a lifetime of dealing with the unwelcome surprises of the disease, Junior is even more cautious than his doctors. But as the weeks pass, he's slowly allowing a glimmer of hope that he could soon be someone who used to have sickle cell disease. For him, that hope feels like "a burst of happiness" that's followed by thoughts of all the things he could do with a healthy future: pursue his dream of becoming a firefighter, get married and start a family.

"I want to be present in my kids' lives, so I've always said I'm not going to have kids unless I can get this cured," he said. "But if this works, it means I could start a family one day."

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(Note to reporters: Watch a video about Evie's treatment with an experimental gene therapy for sickle cell disease here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmQJpuLx07Y)

Football-loving states slow to enact youth concussion laws

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

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PULLMAN, Wash. - States with college teams in strong conferences, in particular the Southeastern Conference (SEC), were among the last to take up regulations on youth concussions, according to a recent study. The study, which investigated the association between youth sport participation and passage of concussion legislation, uncovered the importance of SEC affiliation, and found a similar connection in states with high rates of high school football participation.

In contrast, states with higher gender equality, measured by the number of women in the labor force, were early adopters.

Washington State University sociologists Thomas Rotolo and Michael Lengefeld, a recent WSU Ph.D. now at Goucher College, analyzed the wave of youth concussion laws from 2007 to 2014, specifically looking at return-to-play guidelines: a mandated 24-hour wait period before sending a player with a possible concussion back on to the field.

"We explored a lot of different ways of measuring college football presence, and the thing that just kept standing out was SEC membership," said Rotolo, the lead author on the study published in the journal Social Science & Medicine. "Every college town thinks they have a strong college football presence, but the SEC is a very unique conference."

Co-author Lengefeld, a former high school football player from Texas, knows first-hand how important the sport is throughout the South, but the data showed a specific correlation between resistance to youth concussion regulations among SEC states in particular.

"This SEC variable was similar to the South effect, but not all southern states have an SEC school--and in SEC states the resistance to concussion laws was a bit stronger," he said.

Lengefeld added that the SEC also stands out since it has the largest number of viewers and brings in more profits than any other conference.

Scientists have known for more than a century that youth concussions were a serious health issue, but the movement to create concussion health policies for youth sports did not gain any ground until a Washington state middle school player was badly injured. In 2006, Zackery Lystedt was permanently disabled after being sent back onto the field following a concussion. The Seattle Seahawks took up the cause in the state, followed by the NFL which took the issue nationwide.

Even though the NFL advocated for youth concussion policy changes, the states responded differently. Washington state, Oregon and New Mexico were among the first to adopt the new return-to-play guidelines, while states like Georgia and Mississippi were among the last.

"There's clearly something culturally going on that was different in those states," said Lengefeld.

The researchers also investigated the role of gender equity in concussion adoption since football is often viewed as hyper-masculine. They used women's participation in the labor market as a rough indicator of a state's gender egalitarian views and found a statistically significant difference showing that states with higher levels of women's labor market participation enacted the concussion legislation more quickly.

Lengefeld said the methodology they used in this study can also be applied to analyze how many other health policies are enacted across different states.

"As we were submitting this research for publication, COVID-19 was just starting, and we noticed all the differences in the way states are behaving," Lengefeld said. "It's not new for sociologists to study the diffusion of laws at the state level, but this is another way of doing that that incorporates a set of ideas about culture."

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"THE THING DREAMS ARE MADE OF..."
Owner of missing diamond-covered eagle loses latest round in insurance fight

© Provided by The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — A legal battle over a missing diamond-encrusted eagle statue valued at nearly $1 million will continue, more than four years after the artwork was stolen during a robbery in Delta, B.C.

In a unanimous ruling issued Monday, the B.C. Court of Appeal has sided with Lloyd's Underwriters and agreed that a default judgment against the insurer should be set aside.

Ron Shore, president of a company called Forgotten Treasures International, won the judgment in 2018 requiring Lloyd's to pay a claim for the loss of the sparkling statue.

Court documents show Lloyd's denied Shore's claim, arguing he violated conditions of the insurance policy, including that the statue be constantly safeguarded by two people.

The eight-kilogram gold creation studded with 763 diamonds and appraised at $930,000 was going to be the final prize in an international cancer fundraiser.

Justice Peter Voith agreed with a B.C. Supreme Court decision that set aside the default judgment, saying the insurer appears to have solid evidence to oppose the claim.

On its website, the Supreme Court says default judgments can be filed against defendants if they fail to respond to the notice of a civil lawsuit, do not comply with the rules or a response to a civil claim is withdrawn.

With the default judgment set aside, the matter may return to Shore's civil claim filed in May 2018, alleging breach of contract and failure to investigate the insurance claim in a timely manner, among other things.

The statue remains missing after Shore reported it was taken in May 2016 by what the court describes as "unknown assailants'' as he placed a knapsack carrying the statue in the trunk of his car.

Shore made an emotional plea for the return of the statue at a news conference shortly after it was taken, saying two men ambushed him, hit him over the head with a large flashlight and stole the eagle, plus a less-valuable decoy.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 30, 2020.

Canadian actor Elliot Page announced that he's transgender in a heartfelt, sincere social media post on Tuesday.

© Amanda Edwards/WireImage 

Elliot Page attends the 'There's Something in the Water' premiere during the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2019.


Before transitioning, the 33-year-old was one of the most vocal and actively "out" gay members of Hollywood.

"Hi friends, I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot. I feel lucky to be writing this. To be here. To have arrived at this place in my life. I feel overwhelming gratitude for the incredible people who have supported me along this journey. I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self. I’ve been endlessly inspired by so many in the trans community. Thank you for your courage, your generosity and ceaselessly working to make this world a more inclusive and compassionate place. I will offer whatever support I can and continue to strive for a more loving and equal society," he wrote.

Elliot Page: Canadian actor announces he’s transgender

He asks for "patience" while he embarks on his journey, and proceeds to list disturbing statistics about transgender murders in the U.S., as well as astronomically high suicide rates in the trans community.

"I love that I am trans," he continued. "And I love that I am queer. And the more I hold myself close and fully embrace who I am, the more I dream, the more my heart grows and the more I thrive. To all the trans people who deal with harassment, self-loathing, abuse, and the threat of violence every day: I see you, I love you, and I will do everything I can to change this world for the better."

Page emerged onto the scene in 2005 in Hard Candy, and was then nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the much-beloved independent film, Juno.

His other notable roles (as of this writing) include Kitty Pryde in X-Men and a supporting role in Christopher Nolan's Inception. He also appeared in Netflix's The Umbrella Academy.

Read more: Eric Clapton, Van Morrison under fire for anti-lockdown song, ‘Stand and Deliver’

As of late, Page has been heavily involved in environmental issues. His documentary There's Something in the Water, released on Netflix in March of this year, highlights the stories of Indigenous and Black Nova Scotian communities that have been disproportionally affected by decisions to place hazardous waste sites near their homes.

Page would end up pouring approximately $350,000 of his own money into the project in order to get it off the ground and completed as soon as possible.

"What's happened in these communities for decades and decades has caused extraordinary trauma and illness and loss and pain and the change needs to happen right now," said Page to Global News at the time.

— With files from Alexander Quon

Review finds no evidence of alcohol game at B.C. ERs, but vast Indigenous profiling

VICTORIA — A former judge says she found widespread systemic racism in British Columbia's health-care system where extensive negative profiling of Indigenous patients affects treatment and care.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond said Monday she could not confirm allegations of an organized game to guess the blood-alcohol level of Indigenous patients in B.C. emergency departments, but found extensive harmful profiling of patients based on stereotypes about addictions and parenting.

The former Saskatchewan provincial court judge and one-time children's advocate in B.C. was appointed by Health Minister Adrian Dix in June to investigate the guessing-game allegations and conduct a broader examination of Indigenous racism in provincial health care.

"Indigenous people consistently told us, and this was confirmed by the health-care workers who responded and the cases, that they are subjected to negative assumptions, negative assumptions based on prejudice, based on racism, based on beliefs that should not exist in our health-care system," Turpel-Lafond said at a news conference.

She said 84 per cent of the review's Indigenous respondents reported some form of discrimination in health care and 52 per cent of Indigenous health-care workers said they experienced racial prejudice at work, mostly in the form of comments.

"Among the top negative assumptions that are circulating in our health-care system today is that Indigenous patients and people are less worthy," Turpel-Lafond said. "That they are alcoholics. That they're drug seeking."

These negative assumptions lead to the denial and delay of patient services, and cause some people to stay away from hospitals to avoid further incidents of discriminatory treatment, she said.

Video: Report released on investigation into B.C. health-care racism (Global News)

Indigenous people told the review they feared hospitals and would rather face uncertain health than return to get care, said Turpel-Lafond.

The review heard from nearly 9,000 Indigenous patients, family members, third-party witnesses and health-care workers. It also examined the health-care data of about 185,000 First Nations and Metis patients.

Turpel-Lafond's report makes 24 recommendations. They include bringing in measures and legislation to change behaviour and the appointment of three new positions to focus on the problem, including an Indigenous health officer and an associate deputy minister of Indigenous health.

The report also said the government should work with Indigenous organizations to improve the patient complaint processes to address individual and systemic racism specifically experienced by Indigenous people, as well as create a new school of Indigenous medicine at the University of British Columbia.

Dix said B.C. will work to implement the recommendations and the review's findings will be felt across the country.

"Racism is toxic for people and it's toxic for care," he said. "I want to make an unequivocal apology as the minister of health to those who have experienced racism in accessing health-care services in B.C., now and in the past."

The First Nations Leadership Council, comprising several B.C. Indigenous organizations and Metis Nation B.C., called on the government to act.

"These are the voices of our families and our relatives and they have to be heard," Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs said in a statement. "They can no longer be silenced by a narrative of indifference and negligence and a culture of low expectations."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 30, 2020.

Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press