Finding efficient strategies in 3-versus-2 small-sided games of youth soccer players

Most existing game analysis attempts do not consider situational context information sufficiently for the assessments of tactical behaviour. The purpose of this case study was to apply a new analysis approach, so far only used for 1-versus-1 analyses in soccer, to small-sided games and to identify and analyse therewith the efficiency of tactical patterns in 3-versus-2 game play. Therefore, 279 games, performed by an elite youth soccer team, were recorded by video and a position tracking system. The data was processed by the new approach, including unsupervised machine learning routines and artificial intelligence methods. Two crucial moments were used to analyse the occurring tactical patterns for the specific game: T0 (time instant of the shot) and T1 (time instant of the last action before the shot). For both moments typical tactical patterns, considering the spatio-temporal context of the situations were found. By combining the patterns of both moments, hidden tactical strategies were identified and their efficiencies calculated. The most significant result is that offence attempts have the highest scoring probability when played via the wings near to the goal line and the final pass, before the shot, is given against the playing direction into the centre of the field

IL-6 trans-signaling promotes pancreatitis-associated lung injury and lethality

Acute lung injury (ALI) is an inflammatory disease with a high mortality rate. Although typically seen in individuals with sepsis, ALI is also a major complication in severe acute pancreatitis (SAP). The pathophysiology of SAP-associated ALI is poorly understood, but elevated serum levels of IL-6 is a reliable marker for disease severity. Here, we used a mouse model of acute pancreatitis–associated (AP-associated) ALI to determine the role of IL-6 in ALI lethality. Il6-deficient mice had a lower death rate compared with wild-type mice with AP, while mice injected with IL-6 were more likely to develop lethal ALI. We found that inflammation-associated NF-κB induced myeloid cell secretion of IL-6, and the effects of secreted IL-6 were mediated by complexation with soluble IL-6 receptor, a process known as trans-signaling. IL-6 trans-signaling stimulated phosphorylation of STAT3 and production of the neutrophil attractant CXCL1 in pancreatic acinar cells. Examination of human samples revealed expression of IL-6 in combination with soluble IL-6 receptor was a reliable predictor of ALI in SAP. These results demonstrate that IL-6 trans-signaling is an essential mediator of ALI in SAP across species and suggest that therapeutic inhibition of IL-6 may prevent SAP-associated ALI

Local Positioning Systems in (Game) Sports

Position data of players and athletes are widely used in sports performance analysis for measuring the amounts of physical activities as well as for tactical assessments in game sports. However, positioning sensing systems are applied in sports as tools to gain objective information of sports behavior rather than as components of intelligent spaces (IS). The paper outlines the idea of IS for the sports context with special focus to game sports and how intelligent sports feedback systems can benefit from IS. Henceforth, the most common location sensing techniques used in sports and their practical application are reviewed, as location is among the most important enabling techniques for IS. Furthermore, the article exemplifies the idea of IS in sports on two applications

Integrating protein-protein interactions and text mining for protein function prediction

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Functional annotation of proteins remains a challenging task. Currently the scientific literature serves as the main source for yet uncurated functional annotations, but curation work is slow and expensive. Automatic techniques that support this work are still lacking reliability. We developed a method to identify conserved protein interaction graphs and to predict missing protein functions from orthologs in these graphs. To enhance the precision of the results, we furthermore implemented a procedure that validates all predictions based on findings reported in the literature.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using this procedure, more than 80% of the GO annotations for proteins with highly conserved orthologs that are available in UniProtKb/Swiss-Prot could be verified automatically. For a subset of proteins we predicted new GO annotations that were not available in UniProtKb/Swiss-Prot. All predictions were correct (100% precision) according to the verifications from a trained curator.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our method of integrating CCSs and literature mining is thus a highly reliable approach to predict GO annotations for weakly characterized proteins with orthologs.</p

Motion tracking and analysis systems

No Abstract Available

Defensive pressure affects basketball technical actions but not the time-motion variables

Background: Novel player tracking technologies can change the understanding of performance determinants in team sports by allowing to accurately measuring the activity demands. The aim of this study was to identify how the defensive pressure affects the time-motion variables and the technical actions in basketball. Methods: Twenty international male players (age: 16.05 ± 2.09 years, weight: 73.13 ± 8.10 kg, height: 183.10 ± 5.88 cm) played two 10 min basketball quarters, where they used a man-to-man 1/4-court defense until the 4th min (F1/4), changed to man-to-man full court (FULL) for 3 min and, from the 7th to the 10th min returned to 1/4-court defense (S1/4). A computerized notational analysis was performed using Simi Scout and positional data were captured with the Ubisense Real Time Location System (mean sampling rate 3.74 ± 0.45 Hz per transmitter/player). Results: The time-motion variables presented similar results between defensive conditions, showing a total distance covered around 90 m/min. However, results suggested possible vertical jump impairments in S1/4 periods. There was more distance covered while jogging in the offensive court (38.15 ± 12.17 m/min offensive court vs. 32.94 ± 10.84 m/min defensive court, p < 0.05) and more distance covered while running in the defensive court (16.41 ± 10.27 m/min offensive court vs. 19.56 ± 10.29 m/min defensive court, p < 0.05). Conclusion: These results suggest how to improve task representativeness during specific conditioning or game-based training situations and also to help coaches' strategic decisions during the games