Baseball Glove Research Articles

Chloroplasts with clefts and holes: a reassessment of the chloroplast shape using 3D FE-SEM cellular reconstruction of two species of Chlamydomonas.

Chloroplasts are usually considered spheroid organelles, but this is not the only shape of chloroplasts. The chloroplast of Chlamydomonas has been typically described as cup-shaped. However, in old studies, it was also modeled as a complex shape with "perforations" or windows. Here, we reconstructed the cellular architecture of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and C. applanata using an array tomography system installed on a field emission scanning electron microscope. C. reinhardtii chloroplasts resembled a baseball glove or a cup without a side, featuring numerous large and small holes that may facilitate the transport of metabolites and proteins produced in the Golgi apparatus fitted in the holes. In a lipid-accumulating, high-light condition, the chloroplast volume increased by filling the side cleft with an entire wall. Many accumulated large lipid droplets were accommodated within the chloroplast holes, which could have been considered as "chloroplast lipid droplets." Mitochondrial meshworks surrounded the chloroplast. C. applanata chloroplasts appeared like a folded starfish or a cup with many side clefts and a few holes. There was a single mitochondrion or two that branched in a complex form. Tight contacts of various organelles were also found in C. applanata. These reconstructions illustrate the complexity of chloroplast shape, which necessitates a revised understanding of the localization of lipid droplets and the evolution of chloroplasts: The prevailing image of the spheroid chloroplasts that reminds us of the similarity between chloroplasts and cyanobacteria is no longer tenable.

Regioisomers of singly bridged calix[6]crown-6 and their heavy alkali metal complexes: a molecular baseball glove for caesium(I).

We report the formation of heavy alkali metal complexes of bicyclic host molecules including the caesium(I) complex that catches the central metal ion with the deep pocket of the host similar to a baseball glove. For this, three regioisomers of singly bridged calix[6]crown-6 [1,2-bridged (H4 L 1,2), 1,3-bridged (H4 L 1,3) and 1,4-bridged (H4 L 1,4)] have been synthesized by alkyl-ation of calix[6]arene with penta-ethyl-ene glycol di-tosyl-ate in the presence of M 2CO3 (M = Na, K, Rb and Cs). The larger the cation size of the metal carbonate, the higher the yield of the H4 L 1,4 isomer, indicating the size-based template effect. A combination of H4 L 1,2 and RbOH allowed isolation of the mononuclear rubidium(I) complex (1) in which the metal center is six-coordinated in a loose fashion, the remaining two oxygen donors in the crown loop and two phenols in the calix rim are uncoordinated. Notably, the complexation of H4 L 1,2 with CsOH yielded the mononuclear caesium(I) complex (2), in which all possible ten binding sites on the deep and good-fit pocket participate in coordination via high cooperativity between the crown loop and calix rim, similar to a baseball glove. In dipolar organic solution, the caesium(I) complex 2 remains intact. H4 L 1,4 afforded a dicesium(I) complex (3) and adjacent complexes are linked by intermolecular cation-π interactions, giving rise to a pseudo one-dimensional coordination polymer. These results provide insight into the metal carbonate-dependent synthesis of calix[6]crowns and the influence of regioisomers on caesium(I) complexation.

Long- but not short-term tool-use changes hand representation.

Tool-use has been found to change body representation. For example, participants who briefly used a mechanical grabber to pick up objects perceived their forearms to be longer immediately after its use (e.g., Cardinali et al., Curr Biol 19(12):R478-R479, 2009; they incorporated the tool into their perceived arm size). While some studies have investigated the long-term effects of tool-use on body representation, none of these studies have used a tool that encapsulates the entire body part (e.g., a glove). Moreover, the relationship between tool-use and the body model (the representation of the body's spatial characteristics) has yet to be explored. To test this, we recruited 19 elite baseball players (EBP) and 18 age-matched controls to participate in a hand representation task. We included EBP because of their many years (8+) of training with a tool (baseball glove). The task required participants to place their hands underneath a covered glass tabletop (no vision of their hands), and to point to where they believed 10 locations (the tips and bases of each finger) were on their hands (Coelho et al., Psychol Res 81(6):1224-1231, 2017). Each point's XY coordinates was tracked using an Optotrak camera. From these coordinates, we mapped out the participants perceived hand size. The results showed that when compared to the controls, EBP underestimated hand width and finger length of both hands. This indicates that long-term tool use produces changes in the body model for both, the trained and untrained hands. We conducted a follow-up study to examine if 15min of glove use would change perceived hand size in control participants. Novice baseball players (participants without baseball experience: NBP) were recruited and hand maps were derived before and after 15min of active catching with a glove. Results showed no significant differences between the pre and post hand maps. When we compared between the two experiments, the EBP showed smaller hand representation for both hand width and finger length, than the NBP. We discuss these results in relation to theories of altered body ownership.

A Silent Spring

A Silent Spring

Philip Roth, Trick E. Dixon, and Curt Flood: Baseball as Satire in the Tradition of Jonathan Swift

Philip Roth, Trick E. Dixon, and Curt FloodBaseball as Satire in the Tradition of Jonathan Swift Ron Briley (bio) Prolific novelist Philip Roth, who died from congestive heart failure on May 22, 2018 at age eighty-five, was a celebrated chronicler of the American experience during the twentieth century. Although the Nobel Prize in Literature eluded Roth, his work was honored with two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, three PEN/Faulkner Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Man Booker International Prize.1 Nonetheless, Roth's writing also elicited considerable criticism, and the Jewish writer was accused of promoting anti-Semitism as well as exhibiting misogyny in his depiction of women. Often incorporating autobiographical elements into his fiction, Roth explored themes of Jewish identity, sexuality, literature, growing up in Newark, New Jersey, and, yes, even his favorite sport of baseball. Roth seemingly brought these themes together when his Jewish protagonist Alexander Portnoy in the controversial Portnoy's Complaint (1969) relates to his psychiatrist a youthful experience about masturbating into his baseball mitt while fantasizing upon an attractive young Gentile woman ("a shiksa") during a nocturnal Newark bus ride. Alexander Portnoy, however, does employ his baseball glove for other purposes, and he waxes poetically about the beauty of playing center field where one is finally able to break free from the clutches of one's family background and baggage—"Oh, to be a center fielder, a center fielder, and nothing more."2 Indeed, homages and references to baseball show up in much of Roth's work, and with The Great American Novel (1973), he even devoted an entire book to the subject, using the national pastime to interrogate post-World War II America and the Red Scare in a humorous but insightful satire.3 When he was asked why he selected baseball as a metaphor to explore American literature and history, Roth in a tribute to Herman Melville quipped, "Whaling has already been used."4 Roth, however, was much more enamored with baseball than this bit of dismissive humor might indicate, and his understanding [End Page 142] of the role played by baseball in American culture is well exhibited in the oft ignored satirical Our Gang (1971), which followed the blockbuster Portnoy's Complaint.5 Written in the satirical style of Jonathan Swift, Our Gang concentrates upon the presidency and character of President Richard Nixon, but Roth's clever introduction of baseball's Curt Flood into the narrative indicates his grasp of how American culture and significant institutions within the culture were changing amid the stresses and strains of the turbulent 1960s. Before examining the satirical Our Gang in greater detail, it is worth expanding a bit on the relationship between Roth and baseball. In a piece for the New Yorker following Roth's death, Kathy Woldman discussed the author's vision of baseball, concluding that for Roth, "The sport embodied the country's unattained ideals."6 Thus, Woldman argued that Swede Levov, the main character of Roth's American Pastoral (1997), was a gifted high school baseball player who symbolized the assimilationist dreams of Newark's Jewish community. Life, however, is complicated, and Levov's vision of a pure and pastoral America was destroyed during the havoc of the 1960s. The Vietnam War, political assassinations, and urban and campus unrest demonstrated the fragility of the American dream when confronted with the realities of life in the post-World War II United States. Even institutions such as Major League Baseball (MLB) exhibited the corruption of the American ideal and became the target of Roth's satire.7 In an essay written for the New York Times on the eve of the 1973 MLB season, Roth emphasized the important role played by baseball in his youth. He grew up watching the Newark Bears play the New Jersey Giants, listening to the games of his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers on the radio, and reading the baseball adventure stories of John Tunis. Roth wrote that during his college years a love affair with literature came to somewhat replace his infatuation with baseball. Roth, nevertheless, insisted, "Baseball with its lore and legends, its cultural power, its seasonal association, its native authenticity, its...

Baseball Catching Patterns Differ According to Task Constraints

We investigated the effect of task constraints on movement patterns and sought to confirm the finding that the combined movement involved in the transition between catching and throwing emerges through self-organization. We conducted two experiments. In Experiment 1, four participants were required to perform two tasks: catch a launched baseball (catching task) and catch the launched baseball and immediately throw it to a target (catching and throwing task). The balls were launched from five spatial positions, and the participants were instructed to catch the balls with their left hand using a baseball glove. We found that the catching movement differed according to the task and spatial constraints. When the ball was launched close to the body in the catching and throwing task, the shoulder and hip segment angles rotated in the direction of the throw, which resulted in combining the terminal phase of catching with the preparatory phase of throwing. In Experiment 2, two participants were asked to complete the catching and throwing task using the same procedure as in Experiment 1, to investigate the sequence effect. Our findings showed that the spatial position at which the trunk rotation switched direction, that is, hysteresis, differed according to the sequence of positions, suggesting that the combination of two movement patterns, such as catching and throwing, emerged through self-organization.

Rapid Linguistic Ambiguity Resolution in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Eye Tracking Evidence for the Limits of Weak Central Coherence.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have often been reported to have difficulty integrating information into its broader context, which has motivated the Weak Central Coherence theory of ASD. In the linguistic domain, evidence for this difficulty comes from reports of impaired use of linguistic context to resolve ambiguous words. However, recent work has suggested that impaired use of linguistic context may not be characteristic of ASD, and is instead better explained by co-occurring language impairments. Here, we provide a strong test of these claims, using the visual world eye tracking paradigm to examine the online mechanisms by which children with autism resolve linguistic ambiguity. To address concerns about both language impairments and compensatory strategies, we used a sample whose verbal skills were strong and whose average age (7; 6) was lower than previous work on lexical ambiguity resolution in ASD. Participants (40 with autism and 40 controls) heard sentences with ambiguous words in contexts that either strongly supported one reading or were consistent with both (John fed/saw the bat). We measured activation of the unintended meaning through implicit semantic priming of an associate (looks to a depicted baseball glove). Contrary to the predictions of weak central coherence, children with ASD, like controls, quickly used context to resolve ambiguity, selecting appropriate meanings within a second. We discuss how these results constrain the generality of weak central coherence.

How Much are Harry Potter's Glasses Worth? Children's Monetary Evaluation of Authentic Objects

Adults attach special value to objects that link to notable people or events—authentic objects. We examined children's monetary evaluation of authentic objects, focusing on four kinds: celebrity possessions (e.g., Harry Potter's glasses), original creations (e.g., the very first teddy bear), personal possessions (e.g., your grandfather's baseball glove), and merely old items (e.g., an old chair). Children ages 4 to 12 years old and adults (N = 151) were asked how much people would pay for authentic and control objects. Young children consistently placed greater monetary value on celebrity possessions than on original creations, even when adults judged the two kinds of items to be equivalent. These results suggest that contact with a special individual may be the foundation for the value placed on authentic objects.

Who Owns the Color “Gold”? Fielding the Case ofRawlings Sporting Goods Company vs. Wilson Sporting Goods Company

The legal issues addressed in this case are based upon a lawsuit filed in 2012 by Rawlings Sporting Goods Company against Wilson Sporting Goods Company. The lawsuit was initiated after Wilson provided a baseball glove with metallic gold-colored webbing and stitching to a Major League Baseball player who had won a 2011 Rawlings Gold Glove Award but was an endorser of Wilson rather than Rawlings. Although the case was eventually settled on confidential terms, the lawsuit provided a number of intriguing trademark law issues that are examined here. One of the key legal issues revolves around the concept of trade dress, and specifically the basis on which a single color can be deemed protectable as a trademark. After examining the legal history of various colors as trademarks, the authors then introduce the concepts of functionality and secondary meaning to provide a context in which readers can analyze the merits of Rawlings’ legal claim with respect to its “ownership” of the color gold within the baseball gl...

MY “OTHERS”

3 1 R M Y ‘‘O T H E R S’’ R O B E R T B O Y E R S In 1954 I met ‘‘the other.’’ Like me, he was then twelve years old, a student at John Marshall Junior High School in the BedfordStuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Like me – this I learned some months after our initial encounter – he was exceptionally good at hitting and fielding baseballs. The first time he approached me he announced his name and commanded me to take o√ my shoes. When I hesitated and backed a few steps away, he rushed forward and smacked me hard on the cheek, then smacked me again when I tried to get up o√ the playground asphalt. Though I was stunned, it occurred to me to be grateful that this Negro boy had hit me with an open hand, had not used a fist or a weapon. It also occurred to me that the expression on his face did not betray anger. If I was not mistaken, he was but barely suppressing a smile, and I imagined that he would like nothing better than for me to get up so that he might smack me again. Would he be satisfied with the money my mother had deposited in my right shoe so that no bully would take it from me? I resolved, with not a little fear and misgiving, to test him, and reached, without saying a word, to pull o√ my shoe. Punk, was what he said. You’re a punk. And with that he himself stepped back and ordered me to stand up. Now run to 3 2 B O Y E R S Y your mother, punk, he further commanded, and get the fuck out of my sight. I didn’t know what to make of this boy, no bigger than I was, but I thought him no doubt finished with me. When I pictured him, as I did often in that year, I tried to reconcile that incipient smile with the sense of something implacable in his demeanor. Might I have found words to please him? I didn’t think so. He was as little interested in my thirty-five cents as in the leather baseball glove strapped to my book bag. He was interested in me, a wellbehaved white boy enrolled in a ghetto school, segregated in a ‘‘special’’ class of students doing three junior high school years in two. Smug, he would have thought me. Intolerably secure in my whiteness, my thin long nostrils, and my elite academic status. Interested in me the way you might be interested in someone you know to be irrevocably alien to what you are and hope to become. Wanting only to confirm, so that neither of us might have any doubt on this score at least, that nothing could conceivably be done to close the gap between us. I suppose I have always felt that we live, all of us, among ‘‘others’’ who do not wish to join hands and dance with us in a circle, who have no desire to make nice. Often we are told to mistrust the evidence of our senses and to think more optimistically , even about those who clearly have no use for us. But I have found infinitely more compelling the testimony of those who see little reason for a comprehensive optimism, who can accept that often the other is, in every important respect, beyond us. Consider, as but one brief example, this passage from Ryzsard Kapuscinski’s Travels with Herodotus: ‘‘I am witness in Tehran,’’ Kapuscinski begins, ‘‘to the last weeks of the Shah’s regime . . . tra≈c is paralyzed by endless daily demonstrations . . . every now and then armored trucks dive into the streets and squares and fire at the demonstrators . . . sometimes, white clad girls and boys march at the front of the columns, their foreheads encircled by white headbands . They are martyrs – ready to meet their deaths. It is so written on their headbands. On occasion, before the procession starts to move, I walk up to them, trying to understand what their faces express. Nothing – in any event, nothing that I would...

B21 3D-CTを用いたグラブ内手指の非破壊検査(野球・陸上競技)

This paper introduced a new non-destructive procedure for visualizing a hand in a baseball glove using a 3-D computed tomography. Glove surface, hand in the glove and bone in the glove were visualized clearly. Furthermore, intra-examiner and inter-examiner reliabilities of joint angles and distances were comparatively high evaluated by the intraclass correlation coefficient.

Anatomy of Baseball (review)

Reviewed by: Anatomy of Baseball Scott Peterson Lee Gutkind and Andrew Blauner, eds. Anatomy of Baseball. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2008. 232 pp. Cloth, $22.50. As contributor Stefan Fatsis puts it, this anthology is "about the gorgeous minutiae of baseball" (15), and as any fan of the game will attest, it's all about the small stuff. Back while the Red Sox were still loveable losers, I attended [End Page 143] a game at Fenway with a colleague from England and thought I might teach him some of the finer points of baseball by showing him how to keep score. Well, Johnny Damon batted three times in the first inning and was three-quarters of the way to hitting for the cycle as the Red Sox set a record by scoring 10 runs before the first out was recorded by the Marlins (who went on to win the World Series that year). All of the beautiful minutiae that went by the boards that summer night can be found in Anatomy of Baseball, which has the same effect as being in a roomful of storytellers who are swapping, matching, and extending each other's baseball tales long into the night. While fans of baseball writing will find plenty to enjoy and anticipate as they make their way through the selections, writing students will also find strong examples from each part of the creative nonfiction spectrum: traditional biography and autobiography, immersion essays, memoir, personal essays, meditative essays, and lyrical essays. The twenty essays fall into two broad categories: baseball history and personal narrative. The historical topics one would expect to find are present, along with some heavy-hitting veteran baseball writers: a paean to baseball caps by Frank Deford, Roger Angell's take on pitching and pitchers, and John Thorn's musings on the origins of the game's true creators, the spectators. Michael Shapiro's father-and-son biography of the Southworths, set during World War II, proves that The Last Good Season was not a one-hit wonder. Another standout is Warren Goldstein's meditative piece about his motivations as a forty-two-year-old player and the realization that the informal softball game on one of the Isles of Shoals (off the coast of New Hampshire) is actually recreating baseball history. According to Sue William Silverman, literary memoir is "much more than mere confessional or 'navel gazing'" (The Writer's Chronicle, March 2008, 8). In the same interview, she says that she writes "to understand the world around her" and that literary memoir "seeks a path from the self to the world-family, society, history" (8). The personal narratives in Anatomy of Baseball seek similar understanding with regard to the small points of baseball-and they avoid the navel-gazing trap by following the number-one precept of all baseball literature-which is to be about more than just the game. On the individual level, personal essays by George Plimpton and Matt Wood examine the effects of aging on their ability to play the positions of their choice, while Susan Perabo writes about her imagined career in the major leagues and honestly explores whether women will one day "make the grade." Moving on to family and society, Jeff Greenfield looks at father-and-son bonding at Yankee Stadium while Philip F. Deaver's memoir treats God and the game in a piece about a priest, a wooden Louisville Slugger, [End Page 144] and a county courthouse-which could be a symbol of American art comparable to James Joyce's cracked looking glass from Ulysses. The collection also includes immersion essays by Stefan Fatsis and Jake Young, which provide extensive information about the manufacturing of baseball gloves and spring training stadium lighting. J. D. Scrimgeour uses the second person to encourage readers to identify with his lyrical ode-or is it an elegy?-to the outfield and the outfielder. Moving beyond the shores of America, three writers treat the game from the expatriate perspective. Katherine A. Powers offers a meditation on growing up and going abroad with a baseball glove. Rick Harsch proves that umpire-baiting is just as effective in Slovenia and that baseball has its own...

Crystal Structure of VioE, a Key Player in the Construction of the Molecular Skeleton of Violacein

Violacein and the indolocarbazoles are naturally occurring bisindole products with various biological activities, including antitumor activity. Although these compounds have markedly different molecular skeletons, their biosynthetic pathways share the same intermediate "compound X," which is produced from L-tryptophan via indole-3-pyruvic acid imine. Compound X is a short-lived intermediate that is spontaneously converted to chromopyrrolic acid for indolocarbazole biosynthesis, whereas VioE transforms compound X into protodeoxyviolaceinic acid, which is further modified by other enzymes to produce violacein. Thus, VioE plays a key role in the construction of the molecular skeleton of violacein. Here, we present the crystal structure of VioE, which consists of two subunits, each of which forms a structure resembling a baseball glove. Each subunit has a positively charged pocket at the center of the concave surface of the structure. Mutagenesis analysis of the surface pocket and other surface residues showed that the surface pocket serves as an active site. We have also solved the crystal structure of a complex of VioE and phenylpyruvic acid as an analogue of a VioE-substrate complex. A docking simulation with VioE and the IPA imine dimer, which is proposed to be compound X, agreed with the results from the mutational analysis and the VioE-phenylpyruvic acid complex structure. Based on these results, we propose that VioE traps the highly reactive substrate within the surface pocket to suppress CPA formation and promote protodeoxyviolaceinic acid formation caused by proximity and orientation effects.

A16 捕球時の手の動きに追従した野球グラブの開発(野球1)

A16 捕球時の手の動きに追従した野球グラブの開発(野球1)

Ligand pathways in myoglobin: A review of trp cavity mutations

The pathways for ligand entry and exit in myoglobin have now been well established by a wide variety of experimental results, including pico- to nano- to microsecond transient absorbance measurements and time-resolved X-ray crystallographic measurements. Trp insertions have been used to block, one at a time, the three major cavities occupied by photodissociated ligands. In this work, we review the effects of the L29(B10)W mutation, which places a large indole ring in the initial 'docking site' for photodissociated ligands. Then, the effects of blocking the Xe4 site with I28W, V68W, and I107W mutations and the Xe1 cavity with L89W, L104W, and F138W mutations are described. The structures of four of these mutants are shown for the first time (Trp28, Trp68, Trp107, and Trp 138 sperm whale metMb). All available results support a 'side path' mechanism in which ligands move into and out of myoglobin by outward rotation of the HisE7 side chain, but after entry can migrate into internal cavities, including the distal Xe4 and proximal Xe1 binding sites. The distal cavities act like the pocket of a baseball glove, catching the ligand and holding it long enough for the histidine gate to close and facilitate internal coordination with the heme iron atom. The physiological role of the proximal Xe1 site is less clear because changes in the size of this cavity have minimal effects on overall O(2) binding parameters.

The wake of a red sox fan

The wake of a red sox fan

Profile of Russell F. Doolittle, Ph.D.

Profile of Russell F. Doolittle, Ph.D.

The Letter

tries to find perspective on her suspicion that her husband is having an affair, she is herself tempted. Although clearly more serious that its predecessor, this book includes the same zany townspeople who enliven Ave Mari's pharmacy and has a similar appeal. This series begs for comparison to the best-selling Mitford series by Jan Karon. Trigiani's characters inhabit a very different Appalachia, in the coalfields of Southwest Virginia, than Karon's who dwell in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, an enclave for the rich, near the Blue Ridge Parkway. Nevertheless, this more traditional setting is still basically used for popular, feel-good, fiction. The author grew up in Big Stone Gap, but now lives in New York, where she is making her first novel into a Hollywood movie. The Letter Brown and brittle, the note lay atop my palm. Scribed on the flip side of an old Coal Town Commissary receipt. The receipt reading: ham samwich, sodie pop, tobácea plug, and a baseball glove. Written in great haste, mostly illegible. A letter from my Papa. Coal-stained fingerprints marked the surface with smearing of pencil lead. Found floating in a slurry ditch after the shaft was unsealed. The writing rough, as if written on a rock. Papa said, "Take good care of your mother." —Brad Middleton 122 ...

Mapping the Pathways for O2 Entry Into and Exit from Myoglobin

The effects of mutagenesis on geminate and bimolecular O2 rebinding to 90 mutants at 27 different positions were used to map pathways for ligand movement into and out of sperm whale myoglobin. By analogy to a baseball glove, the protein "catches" and then "holds" incoming ligand molecules long enough to allow bond formation with the iron atom. Opening of the glove occurs by outward movements of the distal histidine (His(64)), and the ligands are trapped in the interior "webbing" of the distal pocket, in the space surrounded by Ile(28), Leu(29), Leu(32), Val(68), and Ile(107). The size of this pocket is a major determinant of the rate of ligand entry into the protein. Immediately after photo- or thermal dissociation, O2 moves away from the iron into this interior pocket. The majority of the dissociated ligands return to the active site and either rebind to the iron atom or escape through the His(64) gate. A fraction of the ligands migrate further away from the heme group into cavities that have been defined as Xe binding sites 4 and 1; however, most of these ligands also return to the distal pocket, and net escape through the interior of wild-type myoglobin is <20-25%.

1S 野球グラブ内における捕球時における指の圧力分布に関する研究

The purpose of this study was to investigate the hand movement during the baseball catching motion. Finger and palm pressure distributions in the baseball gloves were measured during the catching motion by using Glove Scan system. Results showed that grasp motion was initiated with high pressure on the fingertip, then it was completed by the pinching motion with high pressure on the thumb and little and/or ring fingers. Player do not initiate grasp motion when feedback the force on the band, but initiate it with prediction of ball motion into the baseball glove.