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Saturday, February 16, 2013
Robbie Rogers Gay: U.S. Soccer Player Comes Out, 'Steps Away' From Sport
Robbie Rogers #16 of the United States celebrates his second half goal during the game against Mexico at Lincoln Financial Field on August 10, 2011 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In a poignant post entitled "The Next Chapter..." on his personal website, U.S. soccer player Robbie Rogers has come out as gay and also stepped away from professional soccer.
The 25-year-old midfielder from California played in 18 games for the U.S. men's national team and starred for the Columbus Crew before leaving the MLS for Europe.
Although he described his playing career as giving him "more joy than I could have ever imagined," the pain in Rogers' writing is palpable at times.
Secrets can cause so much internal damage. People love to preach about honesty, how honesty is so plain and simple. Try explaining to your loved ones after 25 years you are gay. Try convincing yourself that your creator has the most wonderful purpose for you even though you were taught differently.
According to Goal.com, Rogers is now "one of the few professional soccer players to openly declare his homosexuality."
CLICK HERE to read the full statement.
Rogers shared the heartfelt post on Twitter on Friday afternoon.
Among the many responses were notable messages of support from some of his peers.
Chris Pontius Much respect . Nothing but support for you
Rogers played for Leeds during the 2011-2012 season and saw limited action with Stevenage during the 2012-2013 campaign.
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Astrophile: Evaporating planet shows how worlds vanish
Astrophile is our weekly column on curious cosmic objects, from the solar system to the far reaches of the multiverse
Object: Evaporating exoplanet
Distance: 1500 light years
1. Preheat star to 2000 kelvin.
2. Take one Mercury-sized rocky world and place in a 16-hour-long orbit.
3. Bake for 10 billion years or until obliterated.
It's a recipe that won't win any culinary awards, but when turned into a computer model, it could explain the strange sighting last year of a rapidly disappearing exoplanet around the small sunlike star KIC 12557548. The model hints that this world is now about the size of Earth's moon and may even be down to its naked iron core, which would make it the smallest known exoplanet. If true, the tiny remnant could help us better understand what's inside our home world.
Dubbed KIC 12557548b, the planet was discovered using NASA's Kepler space telescope. Kepler spots exoplanets by looking for the regular dimming of stars caused by orbiting planets that transit them ? pass in front of their star ? as seen from Earth. The more light is blocked, the larger the planet.
KIC 12557548b is small and so close to its star that its year lasts just 16 hours. But the dimming caused by the planet varies wildly, suggesting it is surrounded by a gigantic, ever-changing cloud of material.
"It basically looks like a comet that's very erratic, with a long trailing tail of dust," says Eugene Chiang of the University of California, Berkeley, who was part of a team that found the planet last year. The team thinks the rocky surface is being evaporated away by the intense heat of its star.
Chiang and colleague Daniel Perez-Becker have now come up with a general model of how rocky planets evaporate, based in part on Kepler data. Assuming KIC 12557548b started out about the same size as Mercury, they found it should take roughly 10 billion years to vaporise completely, and that the process happens at different rates over time.
Bubbling away
"If you start with a Mercury-sized object, it can sit there very happily for billions of years, very slowly bubbling away," says Chiang. Eventually though, enough of the planet is vaporised into space that its gravity is greatly reduced, making it even easier for material to escape and speeding up its destruction.
This runaway phase lasts for the last one per cent of the planet's life, and it's thought KIC 12557548b has just 70 million or so years left. "When you compare it to the age of the star, almost certainly billions of years, it's just a blink of an eye," says Chiang.
If the planet is already stripped to its core, it should be possible to look at the surrounding cloud and identify its components, adds Ignas Snellen of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, who was not involved in the work. "This would be the first time we can see a core, which is exciting," he says.
Chiang and Perez-Becker's model also suggests that some ancient planets were vaporised before we could ever observe them, while other Mercury-sized worlds are just teetering on the edge of destruction. Spotting such doomed planets will prove difficult ? we only see KIC 12557548b because its dust cloud covers an area about the size of Jupiter.
Saul Rappaport of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the original discovery of the evaporating world, thinks Kepler is up to the task. The real trick is proving an object is an evaporating planet rather than a fainter star that orbits the target star, and which can look like a transiting world.
Rappaport's team have just completed new observations of KIC 12557548b with the Hubble Space Telescope and are analysing the data to try and rule out this scenario. But he thinks the new model makes the case for an evaporating planet much stronger: "It seems better and better."
Journal reference: arxiv.org/abs/1302.2147
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Friday, February 15, 2013
Lovers' hearts beat in sync
Feb. 13, 2013 ? When modern-day crooner Trey Songz sings, "Cause girl, my heart beats for you," in his romantic ballad, "Flatline," his lyrics could be telling a tale that's as much physiological as it is emotional, according to a University of California, Davis, study that found lovers' hearts indeed beat for each other, or at least at the same rate.
Emilio Ferrer, a UC Davis psychology professor who has conducted a series of studies on couples in romantic relationships, found that couples connected to monitors measuring heart rates and respiration get their heart rate in sync, and they breathe in and out at the same intervals.
To collect the data, the researchers conducted a series of exercises, sitting 32 heterosexual couples a few feet away from each other in a quiet, calm room. The couples did not speak or touch.
"We've seen a lot of research that one person in a relationship can experience what the other person is experiencing emotionally, but this study shows they also share experiences at a physiological level," Ferrer said.
The couples, in one of the exercises, were asked to sit across from each other and mimic each other, but still not speak, and researchers collected very similar results.
The researchers also mixed up the data from the couples. When the two individuals were not from the same couple, their hearts did not show synchrony, nor did their breathing closely match.
Additionally, both partners showed similar patterns of heart rate and respiration, but women tended to adjust theirs to their partners more. This was true not only for physiological but for day-to-day emotional experiences as well.
"In other words, we found that women adjust in relationship to their partners," said Jonathan Helm, a UC Davis psychology doctoral student and primary author of the study. "Her heart rate is linked to her partner's. I think it means women have a strong link to their partners -- perhaps more empathy."
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California, Davis.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal References:
- Jonathan L. Helm, David Sbarra, Emilio Ferrer. Assessing cross-partner associations in physiological responses via coupled oscillator models.. Emotion, 2012; 12 (4): 748 DOI: 10.1037/a0025036
- Emilio Ferrer, Jonathan L. Helm. Dynamical systems modeling of physiological coregulation in dyadic interactions. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.10.013
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/zcNp9KWyUKY/130213093220.htm
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Why Ezekiel Ansah Is the Most Unlikely Success Story in Entire 2013 NFL Draft
Ezekiel Ansah played his first football game in 2010. Less than three years later, the BYU defensive end is a potential first-round pick in the 2013 NFL draft.
The typical NFL draft prospect starts his football career in elementary school, becomes a standout by the time he is in high school, is recruited by major college football programs and starts his college football career with NFL dreams.
Ansah?s journey has been much more complicated, and makes it all the more remarkable that he is on the verge of being an early NFL draft selection.
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Before Football
Ansah was born and raised in the country of Ghana, where the word football means association football, not American football. There, he attended Presbyterian Boys? Secondary School and had dreams of playing professionally in another sport?basketball.
"I always wanted to play pro basketball when I was a kid," Ansah told Sports Illustrated. "Coming to America, I had an idea I would have a chance to play in the league.?
Ansah was right that he had a chance to play professional sports. He just didn?t know yet that it would be in a sport that he had never played before.
After converting to the Mormon faith as a high school senior, Ansah came to BYU in the fall of 2008 hoping to become a Division I basketball player. According to SI, he tried out for the Cougars? basketball team in both 2008 and 2009 in an attempt to make his basketball dreams a reality, but failed to make the cut both times.
Ansah first found athletic success at BYU in track and field, walking on the team in 2009 according to the Deseret News. Ansah?s fastest time that season in the 200-meter dash was 21.9 seconds?a time not quite fast enough to contend nationally at the NCAA level, but an incredibly fast time for a 6'6" athlete built more like a discus thrower than a sprinter.
This video by BYU Sports TV from 2011 looks at Ansah's journey from Ghana to playing football at BYU.
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From Walk-On To Superstar
It takes a rare athlete to make a Division I football program having never played the game before, let alone become one of the best players in the nation and an NFL prospect. At 6?5?, 274 pounds with sprinter speed, Ansah is that rare athlete.
According to SI, Ansah was 250 pounds when he walked in BYU head football coach Bronco Mendenhall?s door in the fall of 2010. Yet although he had never played football, he caught onto the game quickly enough to see action in six games that season.
Ansah?s fast development from his first football practice to seeing action at a Division I football program says a lot about his ability to learn quickly and his work ethic, but also indicates his natural athleticism.
But even coming into his senior season, Ansah was an unknown outside of BYU. A linebacker who notched only seven tackles as a junior, Ansah was on no one?s draft radar heading into his senior season.
It didn?t take long for him to emerge in 2012.
Ansah began making a name for himself in his first game of the season, coming up with two tackles for loss and a pass breakup in BYU?s season opener, a 30-6 victory over Washington State. Through six games, Ansah already had eight tackles for loss, three sacks and three pass breakups, and was starting to get his name tossed around by draft media as a potential early draft pick.
Ansah finished his senior season with 13 tackles for loss (4.5 sacks), 10 passes defended and 62 total tackles.
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Why Ezekiel Ansah Could Be Drafted Very High
If not for a rare combination of size, length, quickness and speed, Ansah?s transition from football newcomer to star defensive lineman likely never would have been possible. Now, Ansah enters the 2013 NFL draft with one of the highest upsides of any prospect in the draft class.
Ansah fits the textbook definition of a boom-or-bust prospect.
With very little football experience, Ansah?s game is understandably raw, and if he is going to make it at the next level, his pass-rush technique needs to become much more developed.
Ansah?s lack of experience, however, could actually help his draft stock. There is reason to believe that Ansah has only scratched the surface of his football potential, considering his vast improvement in his senior season, which gives an NFL team the possibility of taking advantage of his raw ability and molding him into a star for their defense.
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Breaking Down Ansah?s Game
Ansah has great length with 34 5/8-inch arms and an 82-inch wingspan, and he is a terrific athlete. With very good speed, he can bring heavy pressure when he has a lane into the backfield, and he can track down runners in space and downfield. He has good lateral quickness and great leaping ability for a defensive end.
As a pass-rusher, Ansah is very much a work in progress. He does not have a particularly explosive first step, but when he gets past his blocker(s), he can bring heavy pressure because he is often faster and quicker than the opposing quarterback.
Ansah has the strength to bull-rush his opponents, and the quickness to make blockers miss. He can rush both around the edge and inside, and although he often drew double-teams as a senior at BYU, he was often to split them and bring penetration.
His hand technique as a pass-rusher, however, is undeveloped, and he will not be able to have the same success he did in college beating blockers on his size, speed and strength alone.
While it would be a massive stretch to project Ezekiel Ansah as the next J.J. Watt, one skill he does have in common with Watt is his ability to bat down passes. Ansah has great vertical leaping ability, and does a great job timing his leaps at the line of scrimmage to get his long arms and big hands on passes. His 10 passes defended in his senior season tied Michigan State?s William Gholston as the most for a defensive lineman during the 2012 season.
As a run defender, Ansah is inconsistent. Although he has the strength to drive back linemen and set the edge, he is too often taken out of the play by his blockers. When he gets past his blockers, he can chase down runners with his speed, but he needs to become a more sure tackler, especially if he were to convert to outside linebacker in a 3-4 defense.
In addition to his contributions on defense, Ansah also played on special teams, and has the speed to continue being an asset there at the next level.
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Where Ansah Should Be Drafted
Ansah is very enticing because many of his flaws are coachable and learnable, and he has the natural athletic gifts that can only be inherited. But if Ansah ends up as an early first-round draft pick, it will be because a team becomes overly enticed by his potential and ignores his flaws.
There is certainly a lot to like about Ansah. His success story is remarkable and heartwarming, and could not have been accomplished without work ethic, intelligence and natural ability. His ceiling is among the highest of all draft prospects in the 2013 class, and he has the potential to be a three-down difference-maker at the next level.
Many of Ansah?s flaws are correctable. Even with a lack of pass-rushing moves and a stance too upright, he was among the nation?s most productive defensive linemen in his senior season.
Where should Ezekiel Ansah be drafted?
-
Top 10
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Top 20
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Late first round
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Second round
-
Third round
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Day 3
Where should Ezekiel Ansah be drafted?
What Ansah isn?t, however, is the next Jason Pierre-Paul some make him out to be. While he has the speed, explosive leaping ability and length that help to make JPP great, he lacks the first-step quickness of an elite pass-rusher.
Ansah is best suited to play on a 4-3 defense, where he can rotate in and out at defensive end and also have the ability to line up as an inside pass-rusher. Given his measurables, he will certainly draw interest from 3-4 teams as well, but would have to become stronger at the point of attack to play as a 5-technique defensive end, and would have to become a more consistent tackler in space to play outside linebacker.
Given the potential he has shown and the physical upside he has, Ansah is well worth taking a chance with on Day 2. But although the deficiencies in his game make him a very risky first-round pick, there is a strong likelihood that a team will be intrigued enough by his success story and his potential to draft him very early.
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Biographical information on Ansah used in this story derived from profiles published in Sports Illustrated (Dec. 3, 2012) and Deseret News (Oct. 10, 2012).
Dan Hope is an NFL draft featured columnist at Bleacher Report.
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Video: Couple bound by ex-cop fugitive shares their story
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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/50816172/
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