The era of sports specialization at a young age is upon us, despite alarm bells sounded by medical professionals who say we are putting young athletes at risk of burnout and overuse injuries at ever younger ages. Their young bodies rebel.

. . .

The irony in the sports specialization trend, according to Joe Baker, a professor in 91ŃÇɫ’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science in the Faculty of Health, is that there’s simply no evidence to suggest specialization at a young age improves an athlete’s chance of success, wrote the Vancouver Sun Oct. 16. In fact, the evidence is that the majority of successful athletes come from what he calls a “sampling background,” meaning they have played a variety of sports.

Baker said he’s talked to elite coaches around the world who have told him that athletes who don’t have exposure to a variety of sports and unstructured play lack fundamentals.

“They are good at performing motor skills associated with their sport, but they can’t creatively experience or creatively demonstrate something novel.”

Indeed, research suggests that playing a sport in an unstructured way improves one’s chances of excelling at it later on. A German study comparing soccer players who were involved exclusively in structured training to those involved in unstructured play found the latter group to be more creative on the field.

“If you look at hockey players and the types of training they do when they are really young, they play a lot of structured hockey. But if you look at the bulk of their time, it’s road hockey, it’s pond hockey, it’s pickup scrimmage games with the neighbourhood kids,” Baker said.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Denning will be one of four co-presenters appearing in six one-hour-long episodes of the show "Beast Legends" which will involve her “romping around the world to study tales of legendary creatures.” The information gathered is then brought to the show's Beast Lab, where the creature is created in 3-D computer imagery before being unleashed in the modern world. “Beast Legends” is produced by Yap Films and will premiere on beginning tomorrow at 10pm and running for six weeks. In the fall, the series will air on Syfy.

Left: Kathryn Denning with the skull of an Australopithecus

As one of the show's “beast seekers”, Denning found herself scuba diving in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Fiji with dozens of bull sharks – one of the top three shark species prone to attacking humans – in search of clues to the Fijian shark god Dakuwaqa. Despite the risk of being attacked, she dove with locals without the use of a shark cage. She also tracked stories of the Navajo bird monster in New Mexico, and in France she recorded a recent eyewitness account by a sailor whose boat had been attacked by a giant squid, evoking the medieval tale of the kraken, a fierce multi-tentacled sea monster thought to crush ships and scoop men from ship decks.

The show poses questions like: If these beasts were here today, what would they be doing or eating and where would they be living? says Denning. “Then we bring the data together and create the beast as it would look and act if it was here today.” Bringing the ancient into the present and understanding the linkages between the two is a particular interest of Denning’s, which, to her delight, she got to exercise while on assignment. "I'm interested in how people think of the ancient world and how that gets used in the modern world." She also had the opportunity to explore what she calls a highly innovative yet traditional culture by staying with Fijians in their homes while shooting. She got to experience their culture first-hand and better understand their rapidly changing religious beliefs and how those connect with modern phenomena like ecotourism.ec

The local people believe the Fijian shark god, a former chief who became a god after his death, protects and watches over them. Dakuwaqa not only sees all, but can change shape at will, although his most prominent shape is that of a bull shark. In recent years, a local Fijian operation began regularly diving down to feed the bull sharks by hand without cages to allow spectators to see the animals barrier-free. “I got an astoundingly close look at these beautiful, majestic killing machines,” says Denning. The local shark-feeding specialists have no fear of being attacked. In fact, Denning says, “they have named many individual sharks, and in turn, the sharks seem to recognize these individual humans by smell.” So far there have been no incidents in 15 years of feedings.

Right: Kathryn Denning when she's not chasing legendary beasts

“Some of the beast legends we explored are very old, some more recent. There are many different versions of these myths and they evoke very different images for different people and in different regions,” says Denning. “That’s the really interesting part, the variations from region to region. What the beast does in the stories speaks more to the culture that believes in it than to the beast itself.” These ancient societies had an encyclopedic knowledge of their natural environment but didn’t necessarily know what was over the distant ridge, and that could lead to unexplained tales of beasts.

At the same time, there is still much “we don’t know about the sea” and “there’s a tremendous delight in thinking we haven’t civilized the whole world yet.” That there might actually be beasts out there that humans haven't gotten a hold of yet. “The idea that there are still things that elude us is delicious,” she says.

Denning is joined on the show by Scott Edwards, a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and curator of ornithology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University; Stephen Leonard, an adventurer and veterinary surgeon based in Bristol, England; and Francis Manapul, a Philippines-born, Toronto-based comic book artist. Together they explored the remote jungles of Vietnam looking for the Wildman, a giant, hairy, bloodthirsty beast similar to Bigfoot, and the Navajo lands of New Mexico for a giant bird predator said to be the size of a small plane. They travelled to Mongolia’s Altai Mountains searching for the griffin, a massive, legendary creature with the head of an eagle, razor-sharp talons and the body of a lion. They also ventured deep into the primeval forests of Poland to find the truth behind ancient legends of a terrifying, fire-breathing dragon known as Smok.

“When we look at these things that seem exotic, they help us to understand ourselves and other cultures better at the end of the day,” says Denning. She admits it's a little different from some of her other academic work at 91ŃÇÉ«, although she was also a part of a documentary that aired in 2007 that looked at the natural history and folklore of vampires. "Tales of the undead are ubiquitous, ancient and always changing," she says, similar to tales about fantastical beasts. Denning hopes viewers of "Beast Legends" will gain a better understanding of animals in their natural environment, as well as other cultures.

Is there any truth to the legends behind these beasts? You’ll have to watch the show to find out.

For more information, visit the "" Web site. The first episode will be the search for the Wildman, followed by the kraken, Dakuwaqa, the griffin, the Navajo bird monster and, in the final episode, Smok the dragon.

The series was covered by the and July 7 via the Canwest News Service:

This is the time of year when young ’uns and oldsters alike gather around the campfire and swap ghost stories – “Bloody bones behind the barn!” – and other tall tales, wrote Canwest News Service July 7. The mythological creatures of the subconscious have a literature all their own. And yet, as the engaging and timely docuseries “Beast Legends” reminds us, in some cultures around the world, mythical beings are not just imaginary, but are believed to exist.

“Beast Legends”, a kind of “Ghost Hunters” for the Beowulf set, follows an eclectic group of experts in their field to far-flung corners of the earth, from the rain-soaked jungles of Vietnam to the mountains of Mongolia.

The experts include 91ŃÇÉ« anthropologist Kathryn Denning, a professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

For more information about when the show will be aired, visit the Web site.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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He spoke to the Calgary Herald April 24 about how in conflicts defined by the number of our dead:

As Canada’s role in Afghanistan approaches its final year, the number of injured soldiers is more than 10 times the fallen.

“Fatalities do draw the most attention, because there’s a finality to it,” says Martin Shadwick, a military analyst in the 91ŃÇÉ« Centre for International & Security Studies. “It’s a clichĂ©, but it’s the ultimate sacrifice. Even though our number of wounded is quite high, it doesn’t resonate. That’s disquieting, because some of these guys are horrifically injured for the rest of their lives.”

The Canadian Forces say they simply don’t want Taliban insurgents to know.

Shadwick points out that security concerns are somewhat valid because information can travel the globe in moments. However, Canada’s suppression of their numbers is far greater than other countries, such as Australia, which makes a public announcement every time a soldier is seriously wounded.

“A yearly release of the numbers seems overzealous. There must be a compromise in there somewhere. In comparative terms, we seem to be relying very heavily on the side of caution,” Shadwick says.

April 18 about the Canadian Forces' plan to cut back on recruiting staff now that the armed forces are nearing their targets:

Defence analyst Martin Shadwick said the end of the military mission in Afghanistan in July 2011 takes some of the pressure off the Canadian Forces in terms of the need for new recruits.

But he questioned whether cutting back on recruiting staff was the right approach, considering that some services such as the navy have significant problems getting personnel.

"Can you really let all those folks go considering the navy is hurting?" he asked.

Shadwick also spoke to DefenseNews about :

Canada's Army is emerging as the clear winner in equipment purchases. It has received approval to spend more than 5 billion Canadian dollars ($4.9 billion) on several new fleets of armored vehicles, while an Air Force program to buy search-and-rescue planes and the Navy's efforts to spend billions on new vessels are in limbo.

The ongoing war in Afghanistan, and the fact that the service has become the main force called on by government for both international and domestic deployments, has bolstered its support, say analysts and officers.

"The Army is the major beneficiary of money available for equipment, largely because of Afghanistan and presumably because of an expectation they'll be called up more in the future for other missions," said defense analyst Martin Shadwick, a strategic studies professor at 91ŃÇÉ« in Toronto.

Shadwick said the Army has been high profile over the last decade. It has been in Afghanistan, and is the first service the Canadian government usually turns to for international missions, as well as domestic deployments to deal with natural disasters such as forest fires and flooding.

Military officers privately agreed with that assessment, noting that although the Air Force has received new aircraft in the last three years, those planes have a transport role that would be used largely to support Army deployments. Canada has purchased and received four C-17s and is receiving the first of its new fleet of C-130Js starting in May.

. . .

Shadwick said one advantage that the Army has over the other two services is that the equipment it needs is readily available, unlike the construction of vessels that can take up to a decade.

"The lead time on acquiring a Close Combat Vehicle is relatively fast compared to purchasing ships or even compared to some Air Force projects," Shadwick said.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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