Want to get under par? Perhaps some Charlie Parker will help. Maybe smooth out your swing? Try some Sonny Rollins. Really, any jazz will do, because a new study shows that listening to it will improve your golf game.

“The purpose of this study was to determine whether the use of selected genres of music could influence golf putting accuracy over no music, and to determine whether one genre of music elicited superior performances,” the authors wrote in the study. “With the exception of rock music, participants performed significantly better in all musical trials compared to a no music condition. Further jazz resulted in the best performances, and there were no significant differences by gender.”

Twenty-two participants with at least eight years of golf experience took part in the experiment, which consisted of six trials of putting at pre-designated locations around a hole. They listened to different genres of music (or no music) while putting.

“Other research has shown that country music improves batting, rap music improves jump shots, and running is improved by any up-tempo music,” said study co-author Ali Boolani, an assistant professor of physical therapy and physician assistant studies at Clarkson University in New York. “But the benefit of music in fine motor control situations was relatively unknown. Hopefully, this is the first step in answering this question.”

The researchers were unable to clearly explain why jazz helps one with a golf game but they have some ideas.

“Jazz is derived from improvisation, which appears in similar arts such as the theatre,” the authors wrote. “Although speculative, listening to jazz may encourage greater improvisation from the listener. Thus, participants in the present study may have better observed the grain and slope of the green and were more open to creativity in the putt.”

To learn more, please read “The Influence of Musical Genres on Putting Accuracy in Golf: An Exploratory Study” published in the Journal of Athletic Enhancement.

(photo credit: Severin Sadjina via photopin cc)

A lot of food will be eaten this holiday season, and much of it will contain trans fat. Eater beware, though, because high trans fat consumption is linked to a decline in memory in working-age men, according to recent researched unveiled last month at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2014.

“Trans fats were most strongly linked to worse memory, in young and middle-aged men, during their working and career-building years,” said Beatrice A. Golomb, M.D., PhD, lead author and professor of medicine at the University of California-San Diego. “From a health standpoint, trans fat consumption has been linked to higher body weight, more aggression, and heart disease. As I tell patients, while trans fats increase the shelf life of foods, they reduce the shelf life of people.”

Golomb and her colleagues studied 1,000 healthy men 20-years-old or older. They had the participants fill out dietary questionnaires, from which they estimated trans fat consumption. The researchers then had the participants take memory tests involving words on cards.

They discovered that men under age 45 who ate more trans fat showed notably the worse performances on the memory tests. This finding remained even after accounting for age, education, ethnicity, and depression. They also discovered that approximately 0.76 fewer words were correctly recalled for each additional gram a day of trans fat consumed.

“Foods have different effects on oxidative stress and cell energy,” Golomb said. “In a previous study, we found chocolate, which is rich in antioxidants and positively impacts cell energy, is linked to better word memory in young to middle-aged adults. In this study, we looked at whether trans fats, which are prooxidant and linked adversely to cell energy, might show the opposite effect. And they did.”

So, for the record, “chocolate…is linked to better word memory.” Duly noted.

(Image: American Heart Association) 

Please welcome our newest members who joined IAVM in August through November—a total of 344 new members. Our network of professionals is growing and we are reaching record numbers. Thank you for being a part of the association!

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The beacon life cycle has evolved. That’s right, technology moves fast, and what’s next is uBeacons. Whereas iBeacons speak at you (or more specifically, your phone), uBeacons converse with you. Consider it the Web. 2.0 of beacons.

VentureBeat writer Barry Levine offers a good, informative article on the new development. Here’s a taste:

Unlike standard beacons, Ubudu’s uBeacons — which also support the iBeacon standard — can receive a few kilobits per second of data back from customers’ smartphones without pairing, and they can each talk via Bluetooth to other mesh beacons. If one of the mesh beacons is connected to the Internet, the mesh network can communicate with the cloud.

This means, for instance, that a customer standing in an aisle could send a very brief message via her smartphone app to the store, asking for assistance. Customer phones would need to have Bluetooth 4.0, which is supported by a majority of phones.

uBeacons aren’t relegated to retail; they can be implemented in large venues, too.

“uBeacon Mesh can also power large venues,” Ubudu said in the video below. “In a stadium, you could broadcast a hot dog flash promotion to all fans at once.”

For more information about uBeacons, please read VentureBeat’s article.

(Image: Ubudu)

Our long, 160-year nightmare of rope-dependent elevators is now over, claims a German elevator company.

“Now, the long-pursued dream of operating multiple cabins in the same elevator shaft is made possible by applying the linear motor technology of the magnetic levitation train Transrapid to the elevator industry,” the company, ThyssenKrupp, said in a statement. “MULTI will transform how people move inside buildings.”

The MULTI design can include different self-propelled elevator cabins per shaft running in a loop. Through this, a 50 percent reduction in the elevator footprint in a building can be achieved.

“Using no cables at all, a multi-level brake system, and inductive power transfers from shaft to cabin, MULTI requires smaller shafts than conventional elevators, and can increase a building’s usable area by up to 25 percent,” the company said. “The overall increase in efficiency also translates into a lower requirement for escalators and additional elevator shafts, resulting in significant construction cost savings as well as a multiplication of rent revenues from increased usable space.”

A test tower will be completed in Rottweil, Germany, in 2016.

“As the nature of building constructions evolve, it is also necessary to adapt elevator systems to better suit the requirements of buildings and high volumes of passengers,” said Andreas Schierenbeck, CEO of ThyssenKrupp Elevator AG. “From the one-dimensional vertical arrangement to a two-dimensional horizontal/vertical arrangement with more than one or two cabins operating in each shaft, MULTI represents a proud moment in ThyssenKrupp’s history of presenting cutting-edge transport technologies that best serve current mobility needs.”

(Image: ThyssenKrupp)