OBJECTIVE To compare the incidence, nature, severity and cause of training injuries sustained on new generation artificial turf and grass by male and female footballers. METHODS The National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance System was used for a two-season (August to December) prospective study involving American college and university football teams (2005 season: men 52 te...

Space limitation leads to competition between benthic, sessile organisms on coral reefs. As a primary example, reef-building corals are in direct contact with each other and many different species and functional groups of algae. Here we characterize interactions between three coral genera and three algal functional groups using a combination of hyperspectral imaging and oxygen microprofiling. W...

Field experiments evaluated the effects of nematicide and fertility on performance of 'Tifway 419' bermudagrass parasitized by the sting nematode (Belonolaimus longicaudatus). Plot treatments were nontreated or nematicide (1,3-dichloropropene) treated combined with different nitrogen (N) fertilizer levels. Effects of treatments on numbers of B. longicaudatus and turf performance were compared. ...

BACKGROUND Data on the incidence, nature, severity and cause of match football injuries sustained on dirt field are scarce. The objectives of this study was to compare the incidence, nature, severity and cause of match injuries sustained on dirt field and artificial turf field by amateur male football players. METHODS A prospective two-cohort design was employed. Participants were 252 male fo...

BACKGROUND Studies comparing the types and severity of trauma and injuries caused by different types of field surfaces have been conducted. However, there have been no studies on sports injuries caused by temporal deterioration of long-pile artificial turf fields and related decreases in the rubber chip and silica sand infill. PURPOSE To investigate the influence of an artificial turf field o...

Ronstar® herbicide is one of the most effective preemergent herbicides available to professional turf managers. Unfortunately, in the South, it can sometimes be difficult to apply granular fertilizer plus Ronstar® products without causing injury to the turf. Tire tracking, discoloration and thinning turf are all symptoms that can be encountered when it is applied during the growing season, espe...

Water shortage worldwide mandates minimum use of irrigation water with maximumefficiency and productivity in all agricultural crops, landscape plants and turf. The objective inthis experiment was to study the effect of two levels of evapotranspiration-based (ETc) droughtin combination with two levels of nanosilicon dioxide (SiO2; NanSi1=1 mM and NanSi=2 mM),two levels of digoxin (Dig1=0.25 mg.l...

To reduce maintenance costs, municipalities and schools are starting to replace natural grass fields with a new generation synthetic turf. Unlike Astro-Turf, which was first introduced in the 1960s, synthetic field turf provides more cushioning to athletes. Part of this cushioning comes from materials like crumb rubber infill, which is manufactured from recycled tires and may contain a variety ...

So-called sulfur-turf microbial mats, which are macroscopic white filaments or bundles consisting of large sausage-shaped bacteria and elemental sulfur particles, occur in sulfide-containing hot springs in Japan. However, no thermophiles from sulfur-turf mats have yet been isolated as cultivable strains. This study was undertaken to determine the phylogenetic positions of the sausage-shaped bac...

The aim of this research was to evaluate the influence of the mechanical properties of artificial turf systems on soccer players' performance. A battery of perceptive physiological and physical tests were developed on four different structural systems of artificial turf (System 1: Compacted gravel sub-base without elastic layer; System 2: Compacted gravel sub-base with elastic layer; System 3: ...