Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael Hales, Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Physical Education, Kennesaw State University

For athletes across all sports, few experiences are as agonizing as being forced to leave competition with a sudden muscle cramp. These painful, uncontrolled spasms – formally known as exercise-associated muscle cramps – have frustrated athletes, coaches and researchers for decades.

Scientists have traditionally attributed exercise-induced cramps to dehydration or electrolyte imbalances. However, this theory left unanswered questions. For example, many well-hydrated athletes experience cramps, while others competing in hot, humid conditions remain unaffected.

A growing body of research is challenging this explanation, pointing instead to the playing surface as a critical factor.

In my work as a sports scientist, I study how different variables affect athletic performance. Work from my team has found that specific qualities of playing surfaces can lead to early neuromuscular fatigue and unexpected muscle cramps.

Muscle cramps and playing surfaces

As muscles fatigue, the normal balance between signals in the nervous system that direct muscles to contract and relax become disrupted. Muscle spindles, which sense stretch, increase their firing rate. Meanwhile, inhibitory feedback from Golgi tendon organs – a part of the nervous system at the intersection of muscle fibers and tendons – declines.

In other words, muscles are getting mixed signals about whether to contract or relax. The result is excessive activation of motor neurons that stimulate muscle fibers into a sustained, involuntary contraction – a cramp.

Recent studies suggest that competing on surfaces with unfamiliar mechanical properties – such as stiffness and elasticity – can accelerate neuromuscular fatigue. Surfaces alter the mechanics of your muscles and joints. If your neuromuscular system is not accustomed to these demands, fatigue can prematurely set in and create the conditions for cramping.

In one study, my team and I found a 13% difference in muscle activity among runners performing on fields of varying stiffness and elasticity. Another study from my team found a 50% difference in hamstring activity among athletes performing identical drills on different types of turf.

Beyond sports-specific performance metrics, biomechanics research has long shown that altering the properties of playing surfaces changes muscle stiffness, joint loading and range of motion. These variables directly affect fatigue. Muscles crossing multiple joints such as the hamstrings appear especially vulnerable to variations in playing surfaces, given their central role in sprinting and cutting.

Preventing cramps during exercise

If playing surfaces influence fatigue, then managing how they interact with players could help prevent cramps.

Researchers have proposed developing regional databases cataloging the mechanical characteristics of competition surfaces for sports such as tennis. With this data, coaches and sports organizations could tailor training environments to mimic competitive conditions, reducing the shock of unfamiliar surfaces. It’s not necessarily the inherent properties of the surface that causes cramping, but rather how similar or different they are from what an athlete is used to.

Consider a soccer team that practices on a soft surface but competes on a more stiff surface. Without preparation, the shift in how their muscles will be used may lead to premature fatigue and cramps during competition. By incorporating drills that replicate how athletes’ muscles will be activated on competition turf could help the team better prepare for game conditions.

Similarly, a basketball team accustomed to new hardwood may benefit from training sessions on worn or cushioned courts that simulate upcoming away venues.

The key is systematic exposure. Conditioning on surfaces that replicate competitive demands acclimatizes the neuromuscular system, lowering fatigue risk and potentially reducing the risk of cramps.

Toward a holistic approach to cramps

Hydration and nutrition remain essential for performance. But accounting for conditioning, footwear traction and adaptation to different playing surfaces could help sports medicine move toward a more complete solution to exercise-associated muscle cramps.

With continued research and technology development, cramps may no longer need to be a frustrating inevitability. Instead, athletes and coaches could anticipate them, adjust training to match surface demands, and take steps to prevent them before they derail performance.

The future of cramp prevention may lie in real-time monitoring. Advances in a combination of wearable biosensors to detect neuromuscular fatigue, surface testing equipment and machine learning could help predict individualized cramp risk. Coaches might then adjust practice plans, make in-game substitutions or even adapt surface conditions when possible.

By better preparing athletes for the mechanical demands of competition surfaces, teams may protect their athletes’ health and ensure top performers are available when the game is on the line.

Michael Hales does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What causes muscle cramps during exercise? Athletes and coaches may want to look at the playing surface – https://theconversation.com/what-causes-muscle-cramps-during-exercise-athletes-and-coaches-may-want-to-look-at-the-playing-surface-262619

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sonja Fritzsche, Senior Associate Dean and Professor of German Studies, Michigan State University

In “The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI,” the futurist Ray Kurzweil imagines the point in 2045 when rapid technological progress crosses a threshold as humans merge with machines, an event he calls “the singularity.”

Although Kurzweil’s predictions may sound more like science fiction than fact-based forecasting, his brand of thinking goes well beyond the usual sci-fi crowd. It has provided inspiration for American technology industry elites for some time, chief among them Elon Musk.

With Neuralink, his company that is developing computer interfaces implanted in people’s brains, Musk says he intends to “unlock new dimensions of human potential.” This fusion of human and machine echoes Kurzweil’s singularity. Musk also cites apocalyptic scenarios and points to transformative technologies that can save humanity.

Ideas like those of Kurzweil and Musk, among others, can seem as if they are charting paths into a brave new world. But as a humanities scholar who studies utopianism and dystopianism, I’ve encountered this type of thinking in the futurist and techno-utopian art and writings of the early 20th century.

Techno-utopianism’s origins

Techno-utopianism emerged in its modern form in the 1800s, when the Industrial Revolution ushered in a set of popular ideas that combined technological progress with social reform or transformation.

Kurzweil’s singularity parallels ideas from Italian and Russian futurists amid the electrical and mechanical revolutions that took place at the turn of the 20th century. Enthralled by inventions like the telephone, automobile, airplane and rocket, those futurists found inspiration in the concept of a “New Human,” a being who they imagined would be transformed by speed, power and energy.

A century ahead of Musk, Italian futurists imagined the destruction of one world, so that it might be replaced by a new one, reflecting a common Western techno-utopian belief in a coming apocalypse that would be followed by the rebirth of a changed society.

One especially influential figure of the time was Filippo Marinetti, whose 1909 “Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” offered a nationalistic vision of a modern, urban Italy. It glorified the tumultuous transformation caused by the Industrial Revolution. The document describes workers becoming one with their fiery machines. It encourages “aggressive action” coupled with an “eternal” speed designed to break things and bring about a new world order.

The overtly patriarchal text glorifies war as “hygiene” and promotes “scorn for woman.” The manifesto also calls for the destruction of museums, libraries and universities and supports the power of the rioting crowd.

Marinetti’s vision later drove him to support and even influence the early fascism of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. However, the relationship between the futurism movement and Mussolini’s increasingly anti-modern regime was an uneasy one, as Italian studies scholar Katia Pizzi wrote in “Italian Futurism and the Machine.”

Further east, the Russian revolutionaries of 1917 adopted a utopian faith in material progress and science. They combined a “belief in the ease with which culture could be destroyed” with the benefits of “spreading scientific ideas to the masses of Russia,” historian Richard Stites wrote in “Revolutionary Dreams.”

For the Russian left, an “immediate and complete remaking” of the soul was taking place. This new proletarian culture was personified in the ideal of the New Soviet Man. This “master of nature by means of machines and tools” received a polytechnical education instead of the traditional middle-class pursuit of the liberal arts, humanities scholar George Young wrote in “The Russian Cosmists.” The first Soviet People’s Commissar of Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, supported these movements.

Although their political ideologies took different forms, these 20th-century futurists all focused their efforts on technological advancement as an ultimate objective. Techno-utopians were convinced that the dirt and pollution of real-world factories would automatically lead to a future of “perfect cleanliness, efficiency, quiet, and harmony,” historian Howard Segal wrote in “Technology and Utopia.”

Myths of efficiency and everyday tech

Despite the remarkable technological advances of that time, and since, the vision of those techno-utopians largely has not come to pass. In the 21st century, it can seem as if we live in a world of near-perfect efficiency and plenitude thanks to the rapid development of technology and the proliferation of global supply chains. But the toll that these systems take on the natural environment – and on the people whose labor ensures their success – presents a dramatically different picture.

Today, some of the people who espouse techno-utopian and apocalyptic visions have amassed the power to influence, if not determine, the future. At the start of 2025, through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Musk introduced a fast-paced, tech-driven approach to government that has led to major cutbacks in federal agencies. He’s also influenced the administration’s huge investments in artificial intelligence , a class of technological tools that public officials are only beginning to understand.

The futurists of the 20th century influenced the political sphere, but their movements were ultimately artistic and literary. By contrast, contemporary techno-futurists like Musk lead powerful multinational corporations that influence economies and cultures across the globe.

Does this make Musk’s dreams of human transformation and societal apocalypse more likely to become reality? If not, these elements of Musk’s project are likely to remain more theoretical, just as the dreams of last century’s techno-utopians did.

Sonja Fritzsche does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Techno-utopians like Musk are treading old ground: The futurism of early 20th-century Europe – https://theconversation.com/techno-utopians-like-musk-are-treading-old-ground-the-futurism-of-early-20th-century-europe-259367

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Tom Langen, Professor of Biology, Clarkson University

When I started bird-watching as a teenager, a few years after the first Earth Day in 1970, several species that once thrived in my region were nowhere to be found.

Some, like the passenger pigeon, were extinct. Others had retreated to more remote, wild areas of North America. In many cases, humans had destroyed their habitat by cutting down forests, draining wetlands and converting grasslands to agriculture. Pesticides such as DDT, air and water pollution, and the shooting of birds added to the drop in numbers.

Birds are still declining across the continent. A recent study of 529 species found their numbers fell nearly 30% from 1970 to 2017. In 2025, nearly one-third of all North American bird species are declining; 112 bird species that have lost over half their population in the past 50 years.

Yet, half a century after I started birding, I am starting to see a few long-missing species reappear as I ride my bike from my home through the village and surrounding farmland in rural New York.

What has brought these species back while others are disappearing?

In some cases, like the bald eagle, state wildlife officials have reintroduced the birds. But others have returned on their own as habitat protection and restoration, the elimination of certain pesticides, and a shift away from shooting raptors and other large birds made the region less threatening for them.

As a wildlife biologist, I believe their return is a testament to conservation and the positive effect of reversing harms to the natural environment. Here are three examples.

Merlin: Pesticides’ collateral damage

The merlin is a falcon, a little smaller than a pigeon, that eats other birds.

Until the 1970s, merlins primarily bred in the vast coniferous forests of the far north. But in the early 1970s, they began nesting in Saskatoon, in Saskatchewan, Canada. Twenty years later, the city had 30 nests. Soon, merlins were breeding in towns across Canada’s prairie provinces, then spreading east into the cities and towns of eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S.

In Ontario, merlin populations have increased 3.5% per year over the past half-century, an explosive rate of increase.

Where I live in the Saint Lawrence Valley of New York, nearly every village has a pair nesting in an old crow nest at the top of a tall Norway spruce tree today. The loud ki-ki-kee of a territorial pair becomes a familiar sound when they’re in the area.

Why did merlin populations grow and spread so rapidly?

Exposure to the pesticide DDT in the 1960s weakened the shells of eggs laid by merlins and other raptors, and fewer of their chicks survived. Their numbers plummeted as a result. When the U.S. and Canada began restricting DDT in the early 1970s – and other pesticides – it was possible for merlins to successfully breed once again in areas with extensive agriculture.

The indiscriminate shooting of birds of prey like the merlin has also declined. In the late 1800s, with farmers upset about losing poultry to raptors, Pennsylvania offered 50-cent bounties for the heads of merlins and other hawks and owls, and paid $90,000 over two years. People gathered at migratory passages, such as Hawk Mountain, to shoot birds of prey.

Ending bounty programs and enforcing laws prohibiting shooting helped stop this. More importantly, people became aware of the ecological value and beauty of raptors and turned against killing them. Today, Hawk Mountain is a site for bird-watching rather than bird-shooting.

Merlins may have also gotten some help from a large increase in urban-breeding crows. Merlins do not build their own nests but instead move into old crow nests. And it appears that merlins have adapted to the presence of humans, as well.

Pileated woodpecker: The need for big trees

Another bird that has dramatically increased in population and range is the pileated woodpecker. These black-and-white woodpeckers, recognizable for their bright red crest, are large – about the size of a crow.

The two other large woodpecker species in North America – the ivory-billed and imperial woodpeckers – are likely extinct today.

In the early 20th century the pileated woodpecker appeared to be on the same trajectory, as forest clearing took away their habitat. These woodpeckers rely on large dead or dying trees where they can excavate nesting cavities and feed on carpenter ants and wood-boring beetle larvae.

The regrowth of forest in eastern North America boosted their population – as did protection from shooting.

They now forage in large trees in suburban yards, visit bird feeders, nest in parks with substantial tree cover, and are not shy around people.

Their return is good for other species, too. The pileated woodpecker is a keystone species: Several birds and mammals benefit from the large tree cavities that the woodpeckers excavate.

Sandhill crane: A Clean Water Act success story

It’s not every day that you see a 4-foot-tall (1.2-meter) bird in rural New York, but it’s happening more often. Sandhill cranes were once almost extinct in the eastern U.S. Today, they’re making a comeback.

These large waterbirds disappeared across much of their breeding range in the early 20th century as wetlands were drained for agriculture. They were also shot to prevent crop damage and heavily hunted for meat and were referred to as “ribeye of the sky.”

By the 1930s, there were only about three dozen pairs in the eastern half of the U.S., mainly in remote marshes of northern Wisconsin. Laws such as the Clean Water Act, and programs that protect and restore wetlands and grasslands, such as the USDA Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, have played an important part in this species’ recovery.

Hunting regulations and migratory bird treaties have also been key. Probably because of reduced shooting, cranes now tolerate the presence of people. They’re spotted foraging on golf courses and even breeding in suburban wetlands near Chicago.

Today, over 90,000 sandhill cranes exist in the U.S., and they can be found breeding across the Great Lakes states, New England and eastern Canada. They aren’t beloved everywhere, however – in some areas, the cranes cause crop damage in cornfields.

Lessons for the recovery of other species

Other bird species that are now breeding in my area, but weren’t in 1970, include the Canada goose, turkey, trumpeter swan, great egret, bald eagle, osprey, peregrine falcon and raven.

All have benefited from habitat protection and restoration, less shooting of birds and, in the case of the raptors, bans of certain pesticides such as DDT.

While other bird species are declining, these recoveries show that when habitat is restored and protected, when people remove harmful substances from the environment and address harms caused by human infrastructure such as lights at night and reflective windows, some species that are currently rare and found only in remote places may return to the places we live.

Tom Langen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The surprising recovery of once-rare birds – https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-recovery-of-once-rare-birds-263595