Northern California High School Football Program Protects Athletes with Play It Safe Concussion Care Program

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Del Oro High School football team of Loomis, California has taken steps to further protect their athletes by implementing the Play It Safe Concussion CareSM program. Wells Fargo Insurance Services and ImPACT Applications joined forces to offer this new concussion management treatment that provides concussion medical expense benefits to athletes who sustain a traumatic brain injury.

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Northern California High School Football Program Protects Athletes with Play It Safe Concussion Care Program

California Youth Football Program Implements Play It Safe Concussion Care Program

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Jesuit Jr.

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California Youth Football Program Implements Play It Safe Concussion Care Program

Digital Chocolate Announces Launch of Three Games for the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ PLAY

SAN MATEO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Digital Chocolate Announces Launch of Three Games for the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ PLAY. New releases and platform partnership enables social gaming anytime, anywhere.

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Digital Chocolate Announces Launch of Three Games for the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ PLAY

Indian Theatre Comes to San Francisco in West Coast Premiere

The Sf Bay Area Theatre Blog — Sat Jun 26 19:05:00 UTC 2010 Mahesh Dattani is a prominent Indian playwright and screen writer, and next month one of his works will be debuting in San Francisco. While a few Indian movies have broken into the mainstream here in the States, I can’t think of another play that has d…

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Indian Theatre Comes to San Francisco in West Coast Premiere

Did Baseball Player Frank Robinson Play?

basketball at the univercity of san francisco

Will Learning to Play the Piano or Keyboard Make You Smarter?

Will learning to play a musical instument make you more intelligent? Could the brain grow larger than normal by learning to play a musical instrument? Questions such as these have been arising everywhere over the past few years and not only in science journals either. The interest of the general public in these studies involving music and the development of the brain has led to the publishing of many articles, to the delight of music-lovers everywhere. But all the information gathered, the reliable and the questionable, has left many still confused about how much importance should be put on use of musical training for brain development.

If your feeling confused about what you have learned, certain valid points considered may help clear your thinking. It seems that the most benefit is derived from early musical training when it comes to strengthening the connectors in the brain and creating new pathways. Research demonstrates the definite influence that music training has on the long-term development of specific parts of the brain. The research findings of Gottfried Schlaug, Herman Steinmetz and their associates were published in Discover magazine in 1994. They did a comparison of 27 classically trained right handed musicians with 27 right handed non-musicians using a technique called MRI, abbreviated for magnetic resonance images. Their findings revealed that the planum temporale (the brain’s auditory processor) was larger in the left hemisphere and smaller in the right in comparison with the group of non-musicians. Musicians who started training before the age of seven had even more outstanding differences. The differences were especially notable among musicians who started early training, specifically before the age of seven. Shlaug claims that the study of music also promotes enlargement of the corpus callosum, a bridge of sorts between the brain’s two hemispheres. He discovered that among musicians who began their musical education before seven years of age, their corpus callosum was thicker by 10-15% compared to non-musicians. It was suspected that a larger corpus callosum improves motor control by making a faster connection between the hemispheres of the brain.

Later research published in a 2002 issue of Science magazine showed the results of a study conducted by Dartmouth music psychologist Peter Janata which confirmed that music is one of the best stimulants for improved connectivity between the right and left hemispheres of the brain and between areas responsible for emotion and memory. A team of scientists led by Janata reports that with musicians, they have found certain areas of the brain to be 5% larger, and specifically the auditory cortex in expert musicians, up to 15% larger than people with little or no musical background. In addition, those who started studying music early in childhood have increased development of up to 15% in the brain area called the corpus callosum, which is a four-inch bundle of nerve fibers connecting the left and right side of the brain. There is growing evidence that detailed and even skilled motor functions are enhanced, besides the growing evidence from research studies that some brain region connectivity, as well as some types of reasoning functionality is improved by music training. The corpus callosum in musicians is evidently essential to the performance of such tasks as the coordination of fingers. As any muscle must grow to accommodate the tasks at hand, this portion of the brain also grows to make one more proficient at these necessary musical skills.

In a study conducted by Dr. Timo Krings and reported on in Neuroscience Letters 2000, non-musicians and pianists of the same age and gender were asked to complete a series of intricate finger movements. In this study, pianists and non-musicians of the same age and gender were asked to perform sequences of complex finger movements. Correct movements were noted by both groups, but less activity was seen in the brains of the pianists. The conclusion drawn by the researchers was that the pianists’ brains make skilled moves with less effort. There are a staggering number of ways that the human brain and its development are affected thanks to the study of music. With all this research at your fingertips, how do you decide what type of musical studies will benefit yourself or your children?

An article by N.M. Weinberger published in Musica Research Notes in 2002 made an interesting point about how the Mozart Effect, although not living up to it’s musical hype, has raised the public eye to the research being conducted in the field of music. Listening to just a few minutes of Mozart invites a whole new world of musical possibilities to the listener. The academic evidence discovered for using music study as a tool to aid brain development is compelling, even with the hype regarding the Mozart Effect. Dr. Frank Wilson from the University of California’s School of Medicine in San Francisco says his research reveals improvement in coordination, concentration, memory, eyesight and hearing when a person engages in practicing the art of music.

According to Frank Wilson’s research, learning to play an instrument brings about these benefits: better coordination, improved concentration, memory, eyesight and hearing. According to Wilson, all other activity pales in comparison to musical training which refines the entire neurological system by improving connections and motor skills in the brain. Dr. Wilson says that he believes musical instruction is vital for total brain development.

The conclusion we draw from what we’ve learned is that studying music can be an important tool to enhance various important functions of the brain. Therefore, if you are a lover of music, pick up that musical instrument you have always wanted to learn and get started today – you have much to gain.

The Sacramento Kings Play to Be Crowned As NBA Royalty

It is good to be king! You can be king of a country, king of rock and roll, king of checkers, king of a castle, king of swing, king of basketball, and king of duct tape artistry. Once you are king, you are the best of the best, the Big Kahuna, the Grand Poobah, and so on. While the Sacramento Kings have inherited a name of royalty, they hope to one day be crowned king of all the NBA: NBA Champions!

The Sacramento Kings have only played in the NBA since the 1985-1986 season. However, since 1945, they have also played as the Rochester Royals, the Cincinnati Royals, the Kansas City-Omaha Kings, and the Kansas City Kings. In 1985, the Kings earned a 37-45 record during their premiere as an NBA team. While the record was good enough to qualify for the playoffs, the Houston Rockets swept them (3-0).

How did the Kings become royalty? When the team relocated to Kansas City, it changed its name to prevent confusion. Although they were the Royals in Rochester and Cincinnati, Kansas City already had a Major League Baseball team with the name “Royals.”

Though Sacramento is the capital of California, most of us are more familiar with the California cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, etc. Here are some fascinating facts about Sacramento:

• Average January temperature: 53° F
• Average annual rainfall: 17 inches per year or .32 inches per week
• Major industries: computers/electronics, printing, glass, wood products, agriculture
• Main agricultural products: corn, rice, safflower, sugar beets, and tomatoes
• Involved history’s largest human migration after the 1848 discovery of gold

How close have the Sacramento Kings come to being crowned kings of the NBA? Since the 1985-1986 season, the Kings have won two Division titles, and have made 10 playoff appearances. Though they have never played in an NBA Finals series, the Kings advanced deep into the playoffs, during the 2001-2002 season.

Before the 2001-2002 season started, the Kings had acquired Mike Bibby (point guard). The Kings’ 61-21 record made them kings of the NBA regular season, and was their all-time best franchise record. In the playoffs, the Kings would silence the Utah Jazz (3-1), and then subdue the Dallas Mavericks (4-1). In the Western Conference Finals, the Kings would then face the mighty Los Angeles Lakers.

Many fans of the NBA consider the 2002 war between the Kings and the Lakers, to be one of the greatest playoff series in the league’s history. Ahead in the series 3-2, the Lakers won Game 6, during which they shot a whopping 40 free throws! Game 7 was yet another battle, which included an amazing 19 lead changes and 16 ties. In overtime, the Lakers outlasted the Kings, winning the game 112-106 and the series 4-3.

Each season, the Sacramento Kings strive to advance to their first NBA Finals series. Use Sacramento Kings merchandise to cheer on the team as they battle to become NBA royalty and earn their first NBA Championship crown!

Live In North Cali~looking For A Compative Basketball Team For My 13year Son To Play On. How Do I Find One?

My son has played basketball for a couple of years now for school teams and has the love for it. His new school’s team isn’t challanging enough. He has talent and I would like some information on getting him on challanging teams. We live in North California, 45 min from San Francisco. Please help. Thank you!

OnLive – Technology enable Everybody to play Any Game at Any Platform – Anywhere !

OnLive was presented at the game developers conference GDC in San Francisco on March 24th 2009. This service enable you to stream the content of the game as you play it. Simply explained you will see live a HD-Video of the ongoing gaming performed on a server miles away from you. This means you can play big and powerful games that you usually need a monster PC with the best graphic performance available to you. Even a small laptop PC, Mac or even through a small gadget connected to your TV, you can play any game on your TV. The need for very expensive gaming PC’s is gone with the wind. You will not need to upgrade your PC just because the game demands more graphic power or CPU performance. All you need is internet connection and a normal computer. The news about this service can mean a revolution to how games are distributed and were received with enthusiasm at the conference. How is it possible to perform streaming of highly interactive games, when YouTube service is struggling with their performance of online videos? The question was raised and answers given through demonstration of this service. OnLive has been developed over 7 year’s time now, and for the first time shown to the public on March 24th on heir pres conference in San Fransisco. It gives us a chance to revolutionize the way we do gaming, how developers pulish games, and how the consumer will use the games. It will change things says Steve Perlman, the man behind OnLive service concept. Perlman developed the streaming solution for QuickTime when he worked at Apple, and has with him the former Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey on the OnLive service. You will have immediate access to all the latest high technological games available to any consol or PC, just by your fingertips. They will make the games accessible immediately and you only need to press on the game button you want to play, and there you go. There will not be need for any downloading or need to patch anything. There will be no physical media at all. You will have access to the games through your web browser or TV and you will no longer need a special machine for the purpose of playing your favorite game. Whether you use OnLive on a cheap PC without any graphic card, or on a cheap Mac, does not matter as long as you have a web browser and a plug-in on your browser on under a Megabyte, you are gaming. If you have a TV, all you need is a cheap box attached to the TV and you are gaming here as well. In theory all this sounds great and potentially easy to do, but how is it working in practical terms? The only that is needed of your computer or box at home is the power to decompress the video that arrives home at your place from the game server where the OnLive service is located. These servers are special made for the purpose of computing the highly advanced graphic games presented to you at home. The video will reach home to without any experience of latency and to be experienced as if you played it on your local machine. OnLive has developed a special streaming technology for interactive media different from the linear streaming technology which is used in ordinary video transfers. This new technology has according to Perlman minimized the latency to a level not recognizable to a human. The latency will be around one millisecond, and you really have to see it before you believe it. The demand to the broadband you have will depend upon what kind of screen you have on your equipment at home. For an ordinary screen you will need 1,5 Mbps, while for a HD TV you will need maximum 5 Mbps, dependant upon the game itself. This of course eliminates those who still are on ADSL or similar bandwidths. Perlman and McGarvey played the game called “Crysis” together on a big screen at the conference. McGarvey used a cheap Dell laptop that would never be able to play this game in the quality seen on the screen.. Perlman played via a micro consol connected to a TV, and both these units talked nicely together via the OnLive server around 80 kilometers away from where the demonstration took place. McGarvey also demonstrated a baseball game on a Mac Book, a machine which was hardly meant to play any game on it, but through the web browser plug-in on the OnLive service played the game which usually needs a PC with a graphics card for thousands of dollars. The service opens up for purchase and rental business models of absolutely all stored games, videos of game plays and other things stored on these servers. This enable you to continue a game anytime from anywhere you want to. It also eliminates the piracy problem which haunts the gaming industry today. Ten developers like EA, THQ, Ubisoft and Atari has supported this development from the start and has made 16 games available at the moment. All these games will be demonstrated at the GDC for people to see how they are experienced at the conference floor. The service is planned launched in North America at the end of 2009, and will secure the gaming industry from piracy at a larger extent than before. It also makes it possible to make games available at a less cost than before as distribution costs should go down. However, it remains to see how these servers will resist the hackers and their attempts to disrupt these services. There has not been set any launch date for the service outside North America, but its promised to be launched as soon as possible after the North American launch. The cost of this service is not mentioned, but the goal is to reduce the cost to the game consumer, as he or she will not need to buy expensive hardware which has become expensive and a constant need for upgrade at a certain cost as well. This service will transfer the money use of gamers from hardware to software.

Play review: Spiritual drama played in North Berkeley by Actors Ensemble–rewarding production, by Peter Menkin

The problems of living in community were dramatized for this rewarding play, “As it is in Heaven” from Actors Ensemble of Berkeley. On a cool night Linda and I visited the comfortable theatre that is part of a recreational center, getting there via directions by MapQuest that led us directly to the foot of the location we wanted to be: Live Oak Theatre, Berkeley, CA USA.

Known better as Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, and well said since the all woman cast of this “Spiritual Drama” was polished and practiced, that their rehearsal and study paid off shown well in the performance we attended on a Saturday night.

The able and even dramatically imaginary directing by Jeremy Cole in his last production of the 2009 season played so well that without nary a hitch the dance and singing, the dialogue and drama moved ahead and movingly in a coreographed series of conversation, angel sightings, character dialogue of a revealing kind on the backgrounds of these dedicated Shaker women. The women were afterall both entertainingly and skillfully played as their 19th Century simplicity of lifestyle and faith in God in Christ at their Kentucky village in Pleasant Hill.

Written with obvious compassion and feeling by playwright Arlene Hutton, this sometime comic and amusing portrayal is a two-act pleasure. As we expected, the evening was a good one as both Linda and I became involved in the lives of these devout and dedicated women of special character and conviction. The musical singing was soothing, melodic enough without being harmonic (appropriately so for Shakers, we learned), and all in all the event was worth the 50 minute drive from where I live in Mill Valley, CA (north of San Francisco).

The North Berkeley location is well lit, and the man behind the ticket counter amusing as he took our money or did the will-call ticket check-in with a little story or a few words to each patron in line. An hospitable experience by the young man who wore a fashionable hat while keeping the line going.

The theatre house blurb notes of the play: “Based on actual events from the Era of Manifestations in the late 1830′s, “AIIIH” interprets a time when reports came to light of young Shaker girls experiencing unusual trancelike activities, communication with angels, and descriptive journeys to heavenly places.”

Let me note that the Deacon was well played and with a fierceness that was convincing and effective. The elder of the Shaker village women showed her steadfast willingness to keep the community stable and long lasting, though required to make tough decisions about the lives of her flock. An admirable and mature performance by the actress was obvious. In fact, the entire range of performance was mature in outlook and rendering, no small feat given the various emotions and situations of a living kind the women practiced in their work of getting along, living together in religious community.

In conclusion, let the playgoer know that this ensemble play acting will entice and even bring joy with some edification to the fortunate theatre goer who takes the extra measure of checking out Actors Ensemble of Berkeley’s very good production of “As It is in Heaven.” Certainly, this is a theatre that gives value for the price of admission judging by this show, the first Linda and I have attended.
 

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