Sports, physical activity and headache in the classical age: historical descriptions from the first sports textbook, "De arte gymnastica", by Girolamo Mercuriale.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The relationship between physical activity, sports and headache presents a growing interest, testified by numerous papers recently published. The correlation between headache and sporting activities or physical exercise dates back to the classical age. We aim at promoting the development of more studies focused on the relationship between headache and physical activity. METHODS: We analysed the book "De arte gymnastica", written by Girolamo Mercuriale (Forlì, Italy, 1530-1606), and considered the first "sports medical textbook". We discuss these classical literature findings in the light of the International Classification of Headache Disorders, 3rd edition. RESULTS: The Author's work derives from the systematic revision of Greek, Roman and Arabic literatures about the matter. Despite some references to inveterate headaches or cold-related pains, Mercuriale does not gather specific clinical characterisations of different types of headache. However, interestingly, he reports detailed descriptions of how the same sport, or the same physical activity, could cause or give relief from head pain, depending on the precise way of practising. Mercuriale summarises 18 sports or physical activities that can give relief from headache; conversely, running or heavy activities, such as boxing, appear among the 12 contraindicated sports for people suffering from headache. CONCLUSIONS: "De arte gymnastica", by Girolamo Mercuriale, is the first textbook on sports medicine. Headache if often cited along the treatise: different sports and physical activities, or various ways of practising the same action could produce opposite effects for people suffering from headache.

Transgender Policy in Sport, A Review of Current Policy and Commentary of the Challenges of Policy Creation.

This review starts with a brief history of sex policy in sport followed by an exploration of the current state of transgender sport policies. Transgender in sport, from the high school to the professional level, is a frequent news topic. Fairness in women's athletics is at the center of transgender sport policy deliberations and public debate. Despite a long history of policy attempts and revisions, the female category in sport is not precisely and universally established, complicating transgender athlete policy development. Scientific evidence is scant on fairness for transgender athletes. For a variety of social factors, many transgender athletes do not have a positive experience in sports and the younger is the athlete the more challenging it becomes to create inclusive rules. Challenges remain in making competition rules fair, but inclusive, so that transgender athletes participate in sport. The medical and scientific community will continue to provide key input.

An Olympic Legacy? Did the Urban Regeneration Associated With the London 2012 Olympic Games Influence Adolescent Mental Health?

Public expenditure on large events such as the London 2012 Olympic Games is often justified by the potential legacy of urban regeneration and its associated health and well-being benefits for local communities. In the Olympic Regeneration in East London Study, we examined whether there was an association between urban regeneration related to the 2012 Games and improved mental health in young people. Adolescents aged 11-12 years attending schools in the Olympic host borough of Newham in London or in 3 adjacent comparison London boroughs completed a survey before the 2012 Games and 6 and 18 months after the Games (in 2013 and 2014, respectively). Changes in depressive symptoms and well-being between baseline and each follow-up were examined. A total of 2,254 adolescents from 25 randomly selected schools participated. Adolescents from Newham were more likely to have remained depressed between baseline and the 6- and 18-month follow-up surveys (for 6-month follow-up, relative risk = 1.78, 95% confidence interval: 1.12, 2.83; for 18-month follow-up, relative risk = 1.93, 95% confidence interval: 1.01, 3.70) than adolescents from the comparison boroughs. No differences in well-being were observed. There was little evidence that urban regeneration had any positive influence on adolescent mental health and some suggestion that regeneration may have been associated with maintenance of depressive symptoms. Such programs may have limited short-term impact on the mental health of adolescents.

[Catering for client groups during the XXII Olympic winter games and XI Paralympic winter games of 2014 in Sochi].

The problems of catering control various client groups during the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games of 2014 in Sochi is one of the priorities of the sanitary and epidemiological welfare of the population during mass events. The data on the order of nutrition of guests and participants of the games, control of food items, sanitary and microbiological monitoring of drinking water, food raw materials and products are presented. It is noted that the ongoing supervisory activities contributed to the sanitary and epidemiological well-being during the Games. The purpose of this study was to lighting modern achievements in the field of nutrition and food microbiology in the period of the Olympic Games and the determination of their value to the further improvement and use at when conducting mass gatherings.

The August Krogh Institute: Capillaries and beyond.

Bengt Saltin knew very well the history and work of the giants whose shoulders he was standing upon, such as August Krogh and Johannes Lindhard. He was basically a physiologist interested in physical activity and exercise, particularly in the cardiovascular and muscular responses. Some of his major original contributions were (a) the human muscle model in terms of the one-legged, knee extensor quantifying work by the high-precision Krogh ergometer and, using this, challenging Krogh's proposed autoregulation of capillary blood flow during exercise; (b) the electrolyte fluxes quantification on an intra- and extra-cellular level in human muscle during exercise to reveal such changes as possible fatigue mechanisms; and (c) the evidence presented that underlined the health-enhancing effect of physical exercise training from bedside to workplace.

Early evidence of the ballgame in Oaxaca, Mexico.

As a defining characteristic of Mesoamerican civilization, the ballgame has a long and poorly understood history. Because the ballgame is associated with the rise of complex societies, understanding its origins also illuminates the evolution of socio-politically complex societies. Although initial evidence, in the form of ceramic figurines, dates to 1700 BCE, and the oldest known ballcourt dates to 1600 BCE, the ritual paraphernalia and ideology associated with the game appear around 1400 BCE, the start of the so-called Early Horizon, defined by the spread of Olmec-style symbols across Mesoamerica. Early Horizon evidence of ballgame paraphernalia both identical to and different from that of the Gulf Coast Olmec can be seen on figurines from coastal Chiapas and the central highlands of Mexico, respectively. The Mexican state of Oaxaca, however, has yielded little data on early involvement in the ballgame. The discovery of a ballplayer figurine in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca demonstrates the early participation of this region in the iconography and ideology of the ballgame. In lieu of an actual ballcourt, the focus may have been on the symbolic component of ballplayers and their association with supernatural forces, as part of emerging leaders' legitimization strategies.

Performance-Enhancing Drugs I: Understanding the Basics of Testing for Banned Substances.

Whenever athletes willfully or accidentally ingest performance-enhancing drugs or other banned substances (such as drugs of abuse), markers of those drugs can be detected in biological samples (e.g., biofluids: urine, saliva, blood); in the case of some drugs, that evidence can be apparent for many weeks following the last exposure to the drug. In addition to the willful use of prohibited drugs, athletes can accidentally ingest banned substances in contaminated dietary supplements or foods and inadvertently fail a drug test that could mean the end of an athletic career and the loss of a good reputation. The proliferation of performance-enhancing drugs and methods has required a corresponding increase in the analytical tools and methods required to identify the presence of banned substances in biofluids. Even though extraordinary steps have been taken by organizations such as the World Anti-Doping Agency to limit the use of prohibited substances and methods by athletes willing to cheat, it is apparent that some athletes continue to avoid detection by using alternative doping regimens or taking advantage of the limitations in testing methodologies. This article reviews the testing standards and analytical techniques underlying the procedures used to identify banned substances in biological samples, setting the stage for future summaries of the testing required to establish the use of steroids, stimulants, diuretics, and other prohibited substances.

The machine body metaphor: From science and technology to physical education and sport, in France (1825-1935).

The long history of the conception of physical exercise in France may be viewed as a function of a series of changes in understanding the body. Scientific concepts were used to present the body in official texts by authors specializing in the subject, or to describe them, as did Michel Foucault, as epistemic changes. A departure occurred during the 19th century that is clearly demonstrated in the writings of Gustave Adolphe Hirn. This breakthrough concerned the idea of considering the organism as an energy-generating machine. This metaphor was employed in describing the body during physical exercise from the 17th to the 19th centuries, when the body was thought of as mechanical. Such metaphors were used by the most relevant figures writing at the end of the 19th century in the rationale that is examined in this paper. It shows how Hirn, Marey, Lagrange, Demenij, Hebert, and Tissié saw the body and how they employed machine metaphors when referring to it. These machine metaphors are analyzed from the time of their scientific and technological origins up to their current use in physical and sports education. This analysis will contribute to the understanding of how a scientific metaphor comes to be in common use and may lead to particular exercise practices.

[Women's physical and sporting activities in the beginning of the 20th C.: a technical way maintaining a normative definition of the body, the example of menstruation]. / La pratique physique et sportive féminine a l'aube du XXe siècle: moyen technique de maintien d'une définition normative des corps, l'exemple de la menstruation.

End of the 19th century France is characterized by a wave of hygiene campaigns corresponding to a dominant depopulation phenomenon. It is in this context that a law is introduced in 1880 which stipulates that gymnastics should be taught in all boy's schools: the "loi George", whose provisions are soon extended to girls. Female physical and sports practice is thus structured politically and scientifically as a project of quantitative and qualitative regeneration of "race", based on the Lamarckian idea according to which health and physical improvement of the individual is transmitted to their descendants. This paper describes the socio-historical conditions of the construction of medical discourses about female physical and sports practice as well as their plurality and foundation, from 1880 to 1920, when the First Medical Congress on child and female Physical Education took place. Ambiguities, tensions, and contradictions of the politics of health and regeneration of the female body through physical and sports practice are analyzed.

Laughter in popular games and in sport. The other health of human play.

Hurling in Cornwall, la soule in Britanny, Shrovetide football in England: Popular games have normally been treated as forerunners of modern sport, sport having regulated the space and the time of the game, the (non-) violence of behaviour, the control of results, the planning, strategy, tactics, techniques and evaluation of the competitive action. This is told as a story of social improvement and progress--and about turning unhealthy wildness into civilized 'healthy' sport activity. What sociological analysis of game-playing tended to ignore was the laughter of the participants. With the seriousness of modern sport, as it was established in the nineteenth century, a culture of laughter disappeared. This study tries to counter this mainstream by a phenomenology of laughter in popular games. A contrasting attention is turned towards the seriousness of sporting competition, the smile in modern sport and fitness, and the 'underground' dimension of laughter in modern sports. By comparative analysis, laughter reveals as a bodily discourse about the imperfect human being. It tells an oppositional story about the perfectionism in the order of Western thinking--in sports as well as in health. The bodily 'physiology' of laughter, the exploding psychical energy, and the inter-bodily social relations in laughter and play and game point towards the multi-dimensionality of health, as it was formulated by WHO: as "physical, mental, and social well-being".

Out of bounds? A critique of the new policies on hyperandrogenism in elite female athletes.

In May 2011, more than a decade after the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) abandoned sex testing, they devised new policies in response to the IAAF's treatment of Caster Semenya, the South African runner whose sex was challenged because of her spectacular win and powerful physique that fueled an international frenzy questioning her sex and legitimacy to compete as female. These policies claim that atypically high levels of endogenous testosterone in women (caused by various medical conditions) create an unfair advantage and must be regulated. Against the backdrop of Semenya's case and the scientific and historical complexity of "gender verification" in elite sports, we question the new policies on three grounds: (1) the underlying scientific assumptions; (2) the policymaking process; and (3) the potential to achieve fairness for female athletes. We find the policies in each of these domains significantly flawed and therefore argue they should be withdrawn.

Is chess the drosophila of artificial intelligence? A social history of an algorithm.

Since the mid 1960s, researchers in computer science have famously referred to chess as the 'drosophila' of artificial intelligence (AI). What they seem to mean by this is that chess, like the common fruit fly, is an accessible, familiar, and relatively simple experimental technology that nonetheless can be used productively to produce valid knowledge about other, more complex systems. But for historians of science and technology, the analogy between chess and drosophila assumes a larger significance. As Robert Kohler has ably described, the decision to adopt drosophila as the organism of choice for genetics research had far-reaching implications for the development of 20th century biology. In a similar manner, the decision to focus on chess as the measure of both human and computer intelligence had important and unintended consequences for AL research. This paper explores the emergence of chess as an experimental technology, its significance in the developing research practices of the AI community, and the unique ways in which the decision to focus on chess shaped the program of AI research in the decade of the 1970s. More broadly, it attempts to open up the virtual black box of computer software--and of computer games in particular--to the scrutiny of historical and sociological analysis.

[Adolescence yesterday and today: care issues]. / L'adolescenza ieri e oggi: aspetti assistenziali.

In ancient Greece, the chronological boundaries of the stages of life hinged upon Solon's theory of human life as divided into ten seven year stages. At the peak of Latin civilization, the chronological limits of the infant, pueritia and adulescentia were respectively 0-8 years, 8-16 years and 16-17 years, when in a ceremony the adolescent (a term derived from adolescente (m) present participle of the Latin verb adolescere = to grow) wearing the "toga of manhood" is declared an adult (teenager adult) and up to 30 years later iuventus. Throughout the following centuries, the chronological boundaries of the various ages came to acquire only a theoretical worth, since the child, once introduced to the world of work, used to suddenly become an adult. Only in the wave of Humanism in the XVI-XVII century, people started to rediscover the Greek 'paideia' (education), the Latin Humanitas' (recognition and respect towards manhood in every man), and, through the Christian 'caritas' (to recognize and to love the son of God in every man) begins a moral vision of childhood, of his weakness and innocence, a reflection of the 'divine purity'. In this evolution, the twentieth century identifies itself with adolescence, so that history moves from an era devoiced of adolescence to an age in which adolescence appears to be the privileged age: the adolescent is the hero of the twentieth century. Several and many important institutions have proceeded to recognize the essential rights of adolescent care in pediatric departments, but many are still admitted to adult wards with suboptimal therapeutic results, particularly for blood-cancer. The pediatrician, both the family one and the one in the hospital, must be the referees for the health of the adolescent, especially in cases of chronic diseases or in those of psychosocial relevance, following her in the path of the disease especially if other specialists are involved with a view to further investigation, and establishing, since early childhood, communication, dialogue and compliance with her and the whole family. One of the greatest philosophers and sophists of Magna Graecia, Gorgia of Lentini, used to state that the word has tremendous power: it can instill the joy, eliminate pain, enhance compassion, put an end to fear: then be medicine for the suffering. The doctor is in fact, in certain situations of life, a drug for his patient. He is the most widely used drug because drugs are not the only thing that matters: the soul of medicine lies in the relationship, in the communication between the healer and the healed.

Impact of air pollution control measures and weather conditions on asthma during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

The alternative transportation strategy implemented during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing provided an opportunity to study the impact of the control measures and weather conditions on air quality and asthma morbidity. An ecological study compared the 41 days of the Olympic Games (8 August-17 September 2008) to a baseline period (1-30 June). Also, in order to emphasize the impact of weather conditions on air quality, a pollution linking meteorological index (Plam) was introduced to represent the air pollution meteorological condition. Our study showed that the average number of outpatient visits for asthma was 12.5 per day at baseline and 7.3 per day during the Olympics-a 41.6% overall decrease. Compared with the baseline, the Games were associated with a significant reduction in asthma visits (RR 0.58, 95%CI: 0.52-0.65). At 16.5 visits per day, asthma visits were also significantly higher, during the pre-Olympic period (RR 1.32, 95% CI: 1.15-1.52). The study also showed that the RR of asthma events on a given day, as well as the average daily peak ozone concentration during the preceding 48-72 h, increased at cumulative ozone concentrations of 70 to 100 ppb and 100 ppb or more compared with ozone concentrations of less than 70 ppb (P < 0.05). We concluded that along with "good" weather conditions, efforts to reduce traffic congestion in Beijing during the Olympic Games were associated with a prolonged reduction in air pollution and significantly lower rates of adult asthma events. These data provide support for efforts to reduce air pollution and improve health via reductions in motor vehicle traffic.

[Britton Chance (1913-2010)--from sailing to biophysics and biochemistry and back]. / Britton Chance (1913-2010)--od zeglarstwa do biofizyki i biochemii i z powrotem. Z historii biochemii.

A short CV of Britton Chance, an outstanding American biophysicist and biochemists, who has passed away in November 2010, is presented. Chance invented and applied in biochemical research fast recording of difference spectra during chemical reactions. Due to this technique he discovered and studied formation of enzyme-substrate complexes as exemplified by the peroxidase reaction. He also described spectral changes of electron carriers of mitochondrial respiratory chain that accompany transition from the resting to the active (phosphorylating) states. Applying vibrating platinum electrode, he recorded changes in the rate of oxygen uptake by isolated mitochondria in resting and phosphorylating states and defined the so-called respiratory states, called after his name. He was the first to describe formation of reactive oxygen species by mitochondria. Britton Chance was a devoted yachtsman and won a gold medal for the United States in sailing at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki.

Fritz Heitmann: Hunter, dentist, hardware baron, and Houston leader.

Frederick (Fritz) A. Heitmann was a Houston business and civic leader in the late 1800's and early 1900's. He succeeded his father in the family hardware business, was hugely successful, and was known for helping establish the Houston Ship Channel among other large projects. His great success obscured his earlier contribution to the frontier as a dentist in the gold fields of Colorado. His father insisted he learn a skill independent of fluctuations in the business world. He apprenticed himself to a dentist and used those abilities, along with others, to gain a large stake to build the business. Also, he had strong opinions, and liked to talk. He told his story to his grandson, and his grandson's buddy, the co-author of this article.