Game Plan: What AI can do for Football, and What Football can do for AI

The rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning has opened unprecedented analytics possibilities in various team and individual sports, including baseball, basketball, and tennis. More recently, AI techniques have been applied to football, due to a huge increase in data collection by professional teams, increased computational power, and advances in machine learning, with the goal of better addressing new scientific challenges involved in the analysis of both individual players’ and coordinated teams’ behaviors. The research challenges associated with predictive and prescriptive football analytics require new developments and progress at the intersection of statistical learning, game theory, and computer vision. In this paper, we provide an overarching perspective highlighting how the combination of these fields, in particular, forms a unique microcosm for AI research, while offering mutual benefits for professional teams, spectators, and broadcasters in the years to come. We illustrate that this duality makes football analytics a game changer of tremendous value, in terms of not only changing the game of football itself, but also in terms of what this domain can mean for the field of AI. We review the state-of-theart and exemplify the types of analysis enabled by combining the aforementioned fields, including illustrative examples of counterfactual analysis using predictive models, and the combination of game-theoretic analysis of penalty kicks with statistical learning of player attributes. We conclude by highlighting envisioned downstream impacts, including possibilities for extensions to other sports (real and virtual)

Tectono-stratigraphic response of the Sandino Forearc Basin (N-Costa Rica and W-Nicaragua) to episodes of rough crust and oblique subduction

The southern Central American active margin is a world-class site where past and present subduction processes have been extensively studied. Tectonic erosion/accretion and oblique/orthogonal subduction are thought to alternate in space and time along the Middle American Trench. These processes may cause various responses in the upper plate, such as uplift/subsidence, deformation, and volcanic arc migration/ shut-off. We present an updated stratigraphic framework of the Late Cretaceous– Cenozoic Sandino Forearc Basin (SFB) which provides evidence of sedimentary response to tectonic events. Since its inception, the basin was predominantly filled with deep-water volcaniclastic deposits. In contrast, shallow-water deposits appeared episodically in the basin record and are considered as tectonic event markers. The SFB stretches for about 300 km and varies in thickness from 5 km (southern part) to about 16 km (northern part). The drastic, along-basin, thickness variation appears to be the result of (1) differential tectonic evolutions and (2) differential rates of sediment supply. (1) The northern SFB did not experience major tectonic events. In contrast, the reduced thickness of the southern SFB (5 km) is the result of at least four uplift phases related to the collision/accretion of bathymetric reliefs on the incoming plate: (i) the accretion of a buoyant oceanic plateau (Nicoya Complex) during the middle Campanian; (ii) the collision of an oceanic plateau (?) during the late Danian–Selandian; (iii) the collision/accretion of seamounts during the late Eocene–early Oligocene; (iv) the collision of seamounts and ridges during the Pliocene–Holocene. (2) The northwestward thickening of the SFB may have been enhanced by high sediment supply in the Fonseca Gulf area which reflects sourcing from wide, high relief drainage basins. In contrast, sedimentary input has possibly been lower along the southern SFB, due to the proximity of the narrow, lowland isthmus of southern Central America. Moreover, two phases of strongly oblique subduction affected the margin, producing strike-slip faulting in the forearc basin: (1) prior to the Farallon Plate breakup, an Oligocene transpressional phase caused deformation and uplift of the basin depocenter, triggering shallowing-upward of the Nicaraguan Isthmus in the central and northern SFB; (2) a Pleistocene–Holocene transtensional phase drives the NW-directed motion of a forearc sliver and reactivation of the graben-bounding faults of the late Neogene Nicaraguan Depression. We discuss arguments in favour of a Pliocene development of the Nicaraguan Depression and propose that the Nicaraguan Isthmus, which is the apparent rift shoulder of the depression, represents a structure inherited from the Oligocene transpressional phase

Identificación del Burdigaliense (Mioceno temprano) en ostreidos procedentes de afloramientos de la Formación Camacho de Uruguay datados con ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr

En el territorio continental del Uruguay se han descrito cuatro depocentros con sedimentos de la Formación Camacho desarrollados durante la transgresión "Paranense" y/o "Entrerriense", siendo la única unidad con asociaciones fosilíferas marinas y marginal marinas del Neógeno. Existen desavenencias sobre su edad, postulándose una depositación en el Mioceno medio o Mioceno tardío. Recientemente se identificaron secuencias del Burdigaliense en la Perforación Chuy Nº364. En concordancia, existen discrepancias sobre si la depositación fue isócrona o diacrónica. Para dilucidar tales incógnitas se procedió al análisis de las razones 8786Sr en valvas de ostreidos, identificadas como Crassostrea patagonica (d'Orbigny) y "Crassostrea rizophorae" (Guilding) procedentes de las localidades de Arazatí, Brisas del Plata y San Pedro. El material de Arazatí y Brisas del Plata es autóctono, en tanto que el de San Pedro es parautóctono. Los resultados obtenidos de las relaciones isotópicas 87Sr/86Sr en material fósil autóctono varían entre 0,7084 y 0,7087, con la mayoría de muestras arrojando 0,7086. Una conexión del paleoestuario Río de la Plata con el Océano Atlántico aún más amplia que la actual en el Mioceno indica que estos valores reflejan la composición isotópica del agua de mar. Si se compara con la curva global de variación isotópica de Sr, los valores obtenidos indican una edad Burdigaliense (Mioceno temprano) para la Formación Camacho en las localidades estudiadas, correspondiente a edades absolutas de 17-18 Ma. Ello concuerda con las razones isotópicas de Sr obtenidas en conchillas de foraminíferos Cibicides aknerianus (d´Orbigny) y Cibicides "pseudoungerianus" (Cushman) para el intervalo de 125,40 - 122,10m de la Perforación Chuy Nº 364, las cuales arrojaron 87Sr/86Sr de 0,7086 y 0,7087Simposio VII: Paleontología y biocronología del Terciario tardío de la MesopotamiaFacultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse

Interactions between environmental factors can hide isolation by distance patterns: a case study of Ctenomys rionegrensis in Uruguay

Identifying the factors responsible for the structuring of genetic diversity is of fundamental importance for biodiversity conservation. However, arriving at such understanding is difficult owing to the many factors involved and the potential interactions between them. Here, we present an example of how such interactions can preclude us from arriving at a complete characterization of the demographic history and genetic structure of a species. Ctenomys rionegrensis is a species with restricted dispersal abilities and, as such, should exhibit an isolation by distance (IBD) pattern, which previous studies were unable to uncover. It was therefore concluded that this species underwent a recent population expansion. Using a novel hierarchical Bayesian method, we show that the inability to detect the IBD pattern is due to the interaction between elevation and geographical distance. We posit that populations in low areas suffer periodic floods that may reduce local population sizes, increasing genetic drift, a process that masks the effect of distance on genetic differentiation. Our results do not refute the possibility that the populations of C. rionegrensis underwent a recent population expansion but they indicate that an alternative scenario described by a metapopulation model at or near migration-drift equilibrium cannot be excluded either