Explanipedia

Visual Scanning and Technique Improve Performance in a Standardized Soccer Passing Task Open

Andrew H. Hunter, Nicholas M. A. Smith, Paulo Roberto Pereira Santiago, Robbie S. Wilson · 2025

Background/Objectives: Passing is the most frequent and impactful action in soccer. It requires players to control the ball and pass accurately with either foot, make quick decisions, and scan the field while under pressure. Using a recent…

Scanning When Passing: A Reliable and Valid Standardized Soccer Test Open

Andrew H. Hunter, Nicholas M. A. Smith, Bella Bello Bitugu, Austin Wontepaga Luguterah, Robbie S. Wilson · 2025

Background/Objectives: In soccer, scanning before receiving the ball helps players better perceive and interpret their surroundings, enabling faster and more effective passes. Despite its importance, no standardized tests currently incorpo…

Dribbling and passing performances predict individual success in small-sided soccer games Open

Robbie S. Wilson, Andrew H. Hunter, Thiago Viana Camata, Charles S. P. Foster, Gabriella R. Sparkes , et al. · 2025

Our aim was to identify the underlying physical and technical skill traits associated with success in 3v3 small-sided soccer games. We quantified the sprinting, dribbling, and passing performances of 41 individual youth footballers from an…

BDNF-DT and BDNF-AS-DT: Novel Genes in the BDNF locus Open

Svitlana V. Bach, Giovanna Punzi, Nicholas M. A. Smith, Sreya Mukherjee, Joo Heon Shin , et al. · 2025

Divergent transcription from bidirectional promoters is frequently observed in eukaryotic genomes, but the biological relevance of divergent RNA transcripts (DT) is unknown. We identified and characterized BDNF-DT , a novel DT gene, and BD…

Using Age- and Size-Corrected Measures of Technical Skill to Better Assess the Performances of Youth Soccer Players Open

Thiago Viana Camata, Andrew H. Hunter, Nicholas M. A. Smith, Mathew S. Crowther, Paulo Roberto Pereira Santiago , et al. · 2025

Youth soccer academies are dominated by the older players in each annual age cohort because they are judged to be better at the time of selection. Failing to identify talented players because they are simply younger in their cohort is a pr…

Influence of Age and Body Size on the Dribbling Performance of Young Elite Soccer Players: A Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study Open

Thiago Viana Camata, Andrew H. Hunter, Nicholas M. A. Smith, Mathew S. Crowther, Marcelo Alves Costa , et al. · 2025

Background/Objectives: Dribbling is a fundamental skill in soccer, but assessing the performance of youth players in this skill is complicated by the confounded effects of age and physical development. In this study, our aim was to quantif…

Sex-specific performance, trade-offs and trait repeatability across the lifetime of the world's largest semelparous mammal (Dasyurus hallucatus) Open

Gabriella R. Sparkes, Jaime Heiniger, Nicholas M. A. Smith, Vincent Careau, Ami Fadhillah Amir Abdul Nasir , et al. · 2025

The activities that define survival and reproductive success in animals depend on their physical performance. However, performance is a complex trait, and organisms must balance competing demands of multiple underlying factors every time t…

Different Genes are Recruited During Convergent Evolution of Pregnancy and the Placenta Open

Charles S. P. Foster, James U. Van Dyke, Michael B. Thompson, Nicholas M. A. Smith, Colin A. Simpfendorfer , et al. · 2022

The repeated evolution of the same traits in distantly related groups (convergent evolution) raises a key question in evolutionary biology: do the same genes underpin convergent phenotypes? Here, we explore one such trait, viviparity (live…

Onasemnogene abeparvovec in spinal muscular atrophy: an Australian experience of safety and efficacy Open

Arlene D’Silva, Sandra Holland, Didu Kariyawasam, Karen Herbert, Peter Barclay , et al. · 2022

Objective To provide a greater understanding of the tolerability, safety and clinical outcomes of onasemnogene abeparvovec in real‐world practice, in a broad population of infants with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Methods A prospective c…

Carborane clusters increase the potency of bis-substituted cyclam derivatives againstMycobacterium tuberculosis Open

Nicholas M. A. Smith, Diana H. Quan, Gayathri Nagalingam, James A. Triccas, Louis M. Rendina , et al. · 2022

Bis-substituted cyclam derivatives have recently emerged as a promising new class of antibacterial agents, displaying excellent activity against drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis ( Mtb ). Carborane pendants enhance this activity.

Prospects in Connecting Genetic Variation to Variation in Fertility in Male Bees Open

Garett P. Slater, Nicholas M. A. Smith, Brock A. Harpur · 2021

Bees are economically and ecologically important pollinating species. Managed and native bee species face increasing pressures from human-created stressors such as habitat loss, pesticide use, and introduced pathogens. There has been incre…

Genetic variation at RAB3GAP2 and its role in exercise-related adaptation and recovery Open

Kristoffer Ström, Nikolay Oskolkov, Tugce Karaderi, Sebastian Kalamajski, Ola Ekström , et al. · 2021

Skeletal muscle fiber composition and capillary density influence physical performance and whole-body metabolic properties. ~45% of the variance in fiber type is heritable, which motivated us to perform a genome-wide association study of s…

Acknowledgements Open

Vanessa Smith, Darran Whatmore, C. P. P. Reid, Richard Hamblyn, Ava Arndt , et al. · 2021

Unique DNA Methylation Profiles Are Associated with cis-Variation in Honey Bees Open

Boris Yagound, Nicholas M. A. Smith, Gabriele Buchmann, Benjamin P. Oldroyd, Emily J. Remnant · 2019

DNA methylation is an important epigenetic modification that mediates diverse processes such as cellular differentiation, phenotypic plasticity, and genomic imprinting. Mounting evidence suggests that local DNA sequence variation can be as…

Genomic analysis of the genetic consequences of haplodiploidy in eusocial insects Open

Nicholas M. A. Smith · 2019

In this thesis I explore the reproductive biology of a subspecies of honey bee Apis mellifera capensis (hereafter, Capensis). Capensis is unusual among honey bees in that unmated workers can produce female offspring by thelytokous partheno…

Predicting the defensive performance of individual players in one vs. one soccer games Open

Robbie S. Wilson, Nicholas M. A. Smith, Paulo Roberto Pereira Santiago, Thiago Viana Camata, Solange de Paula Ramos , et al. · 2018

The aim of this study was to use technical skill and physical performance and coaches' rankings to predict the defensive performance of junior soccer players. Twenty-one male players (mean age 17.2 years, SD = 1.1) were recruited from the …

Strikingly high levels of heterozygosity despite 20 years of inbreeding in a clonal honey bee Open

Nicholas M. A. Smith, Claire M. Wade, Michael H. Allsopp, Brock A. Harpur, Amro Zayed , et al. · 2018

Inbreeding (the mating between closely related individuals) often has detrimental effects that are associated with loss of heterozygosity at overdominant loci, and the expression of deleterious recessive alleles. However, determining which…

Digest: Gene duplication and social evolution-Using big, open data to answer big, open questions Open

Brock A. Harpur, Nicholas M. A. Smith · 2017

Cytogenetic basis of thelytoky in Apis mellifera capensis Open

Miles P. Cole-Clark, Deborah Barton, Michael H. Allsopp, Madeleine Beekman, Rosalyn Gloag , et al. · 2017

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