In sports, the old saying goes that you can fire a coach but you can't fire the whole team. This doesn't mean the coach has all the blame but you still do what you can do. Sometimes a coach with the wrong style for the players is clearly a wrong fit but most of the time the coach is a scapegoat, according to a new study.

Bringing in a new coach rarely solves the problems, regardless of when it is done, according to a study from Mid Sweden University about hiring and firing coaches in the Swedish Elite Series ice-hockey league during the period 1975/76-2005/06. Despite this fact, coaches are nevertheless very publicly fired. The study shows that it is often a mistake to just replace the coach.

Muscle weighs more than fat and that's why it's sometimes the case where you can maintain the same weight but end up a lot less healthy. In the elderly, this effect becomes even more pronounced and the reverse is true. But the 'take home message' remains as always: diet helps but exercise is going to lead to better overall health.

A group of sedentary and overweight older people placed on a four-month exercise program not only became more fit, but burned off more fat, compared to older sedentary people who were placed on a diet but did not exercise.

The superior colliculus has long been thought of as a rapid orienting center of the brain that allows the eyes and head to turn swiftly either toward or away from the sights and sounds in our environment. Now a team of scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has shown that the superior colliculus does more than send out motor control commands to eye and neck muscles.

Two complementary studies, both led by Richard Krauzlis, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Systems Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute, have revealed that the superior colliculus performs supervisory functions in addition to the motor control it has long been known for. The results are published in the Aug. 6 and Sept. 17 issues of the Journal of Neuroscience.

"Beyond its classic role in motor control, the primate superior colliculus signals to other brain areas the location of behaviorally relevant visual objects by providing a 'neural pointer' to these objects," says Krauzlis.

One of Britain's best-known species of seabird is increasingly attacking and killing unattended chicks from neighboring nests due to food shortages.

Researchers at the University of Leeds and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology observed a dramatic increase in the number of adult guillemots deliberately attacking chicks of the same species in the last year. Hundreds of such attacks occurred, and many were fatal, with chicks being pecked to death or flung from cliff ledges.

These disturbing findings, published online today in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, indicate that social harmony – even in long-established colonies – can break down when conditions get tough, for example if starvation looms. The study highlights a previously unsuspected parental dilemma: should both leave their chick unattended and spend more time feeding, or should one of them remain to protect the chick from attacks from neighboring birds even if it gets less food?

Imagine taking a picture of your favorite hockey team as a child and then again as an adult today. Looking back over a quarter of century, the changes you'd see are significant.

Researchers in the University of Alberta Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation looked at an NHL team over a 26-year cycle and discovered players have become bigger ... and fitter.

They studied 703 players from a Canadian-based NHL team from 1979 to 2005. The physiological profile derived from their research shows that over the 26 seasons, defensemen became taller and heavier as body mass increased; forwards got younger and had higher peak aerobic power outputs for cardio-respiratory endurance, while goalies were shorter and more flexible and had lower peak aerobic power outputs. All players combined (defence, forwards and goaltenders) increased body mass, height and anaerobic power over the 26 years.

A team of researchers at Michigan Technological University is harnessing the computing muscle behind the leading video games to understand the most intricate of real-life systems.

Led by Roshan D'Souza, the group has supercharged agent-based modeling, a powerful but computationally massive forecasting technique, by using the graphic processing units which drive the spectacular imagery beloved of video gamers. In particular, the team aims to model complex biological systems, such as the human immune response to a tuberculosis bacterium.

Agent-based modeling simulates the behaviors of complex systems. It can be used to predict the outcomes of anything from pandemics to the price of pork bellies. It is, as the name suggests, based on individual agents: e.g., sick people and well people, predators and prey, etc. It applies rules that govern how those agents behave under various conditions, sets them loose, and tracks how the system changes over time. The outcomes are unpredictable and can be as surprising as real life.