KOI Karate World Cup

Malaysian Karate exponents once again returned home with a fine performance in KOI World Cup held in Italy earlier this month. Malaysia won a record 5 Gold medals (3 from kumite and 2 from kata). R.Puvaneswaran showed early promise of his coaching ability by guiding a string of young National athletes (Saharuddin, Mohd Hatta and Jeyaseelan) to clinch the coveted men's Team Kumite Gold by beating the Netherlands.

When contacted, Arivalagan (National Karate Head Coach) conveyed his satisfaction on the overall performance of the team and confirmed the ever growing influence of our exponents in European Circuits; and having achieved this without the likes of Asian Champions Lim Yoke Wai, G.Yamini and Vasantha Marial adds more weight to our preparation in clinching the much eluded Gold medal in upcoming World Karate Federation Championship.

RedScience hereby wishes our National Karate Exponents 'Best of Luck' for the upcoming World Karate Championships in Japan.

"Let the spirit in you burn for all to see"

Field Hockey on Natural Grass– A need for revival

The stick work, skills, deception, flair and beauty of field hockey that lures many young kids during the 70s’ especially in the sub continent of South Asia and South East Asia is very much fresh, even though it has been nearly 20 years since the inception of artificial turf into modern hockey.

It was the ‘Indian dribbles’, ‘Argentinean reverse’ that made me and hundreds of Andersonians, “YES” hundreds - of form one students to join our famous hockey club under the tutelage of Mr. Pritam Singh and Cikgu Shamsuri whom fueled the already burning desire to ‘whack the ball if not the man’ on the field. Well that certainly did not stop us from playing football, handball, rugby, athletics and still come home with half a dosens of A’s in public examinations to satisfy our parents.

Coming back to hockey; those stuff that we do in the grass field daily, is the soul that made us love this game so very much. Add that with the performance of Minarwan, Perry Khoo, Kaliswaran, Saiful Zaini, Shankar, Calvin at National level and the likes of Dhanaraj Pillay at International stage, one need not be a rocket scientist to figure why its’ such a beauty; even though we were occasionally hammered by Australians and other Asian giants, they were our unsung heroes with their stick work and flair.

Seeing the modern form of ‘western influenced’ hockey, there’s not much happiness or joy even if victory is ours’ for taking. The ‘soul’ is missing; lack of stick work, flair, deceptions and creativity in the game. As a sports scientist and a performance analyst, I do understand the very condition of artificial turf and the speed that ball is moved in it; does not permit a display of skill and stick work that were evident in the much slower natural grass. The Astroturf certainly suited the style of many European and East Asian countries.

Yet again, if tennis could boast of clay, court and grass champions; Football with its conventional 11’s, beach and futsal; why can’t hockey with turf and grass. I’m sure a grass hockey World Championship will have more teams in it than the World Netball Championships. The mechanics of movement, tactics, techniques and even stick engineering will be different between field and turf hockey.

If it can generate the dying culture of sports in Malaysia, why then not revive it than adhering to the whim and fancy of western influenced hockey. Turf hockey certainly adds steel to their existing sporting culture, with lack of natural grass and seasons. We instead have to brunt the cost of building hockey turfs, watering it (think of all the waste), maintenance, resurfacing it every five years and playing accessories that goes with it. Hmmm….Wonder who is getting rich?

Contract staffs!!

Need to be said that nearly 70% of National Sports Council staffs are contract staffs, ISN in the other hand have 5% of their staffs as permanent employees.

RedScience in coming articles' will detail the difficulties faced by existing contract staffs, loopsided contract for locals, and review on both the employees and employers perspective in achieving excellence in sports.

An incredible love story has come out of China recently and managed to touch the world.

It is a story of a man and an older woman who ran off to live and love each other in peace for over half a century. The 70-year-old Chinese man who hand-carved over 6,000 stairs up a mountain for his 80-year-old wife has passed away in the cave which has been the couple's home for the last 50 years.

Over 50 years ago, Liu Guojiang a 19 year-old boy, fell in love with a 29 year-old widowed mother named Xu Chaoqin. In a twist worthy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, friends and relatives criticized the relationship because of the age difference and the fact that Xu already had children. At that time, it was unacceptable and immoral for a young man to love an older woman. To avoid the market gossip and the scorn of their communities, the couple decided to elope and lived in a cave in Jiangjin County in Southern ChongQing Municipality.

In the beginning, life was harsh as hey had nothing, no electricity or even food. They had to eat grass and roots they found in the mountain, and Liu made a kerosene lamp that they used to light up their lives. Xu felt that she had tied Liu down and repeatedly asked him, 'Are you regretful? Liu always replied, 'As long as we are industrious, life will improve.' In the second year of living in the mountain, Liu began and continued for over 50 years, to hand-carve the steps so that his wife could get down the mountain easily.

Half a century later in 2001, a group of adventurers were exploring the forest and were surprised to find the elderly couple and the over 6,000 hand-carved steps. Liu MingSheng, one of their seven children said, 'My parents loved each other so much, they have lived in seclusion for over 50 years and never been apart a single day. He hand carved more than 6,000 steps over the years for my mother's convenience, although she doesn't go down the mountain that much.'

The couple had lived in peace for over 50 years until last week Liu, now 72 years, returned from his daily farm work and collapsed. Xu sat and prayed with her husband as he passed away in her arms. So in love with Xu, was Liu that no one was able to release the grip he had on his wife's hand even after he had passed away. 'You promised me you'll take care of me, you'll always be with me until the day I died, now you left before me, how am I going to live without you?' Xu spent days softly repeating this sentence and touching her husband's black coffin with tears rolling down her cheeks.

In 2006, their story became one of the top 10 love stories from China, collected by the Chinese Women Weekly. The local government has decided to preserve the love ladder and the place they lived as a museum, so this love story can live forever.

Raptor 4

Motion Analysis Corporation today announced the introduction of the Raptor-4 high-performance mocap camera. It features massive on-board throughput processing power for real-time processing of up to 5,000 markers at 600,000 markers per second, making it the industry's most powerful video processing camera. The Raptor-4 automatically measures focus and adjusts brightness for optimal performance. As with other MAC digital cameras, the Raptor-4 is field upgradable via email, compatible with other MAC digital cameras and supported with their new generation Cortex software.

"The limitation of most mocap cameras is their limited bandwidth and throughput capacity. At four mega-pixel resolution, the Raptor-4 processes in real-time full grey scale images, image analysis and centroid calculations for 5000 markers. Most motion capture cameras are limited to 100-200 markers." said Shel Fung, Senior VP of Engineering.

"The Raptor-4 provides for large volume data capture while requiring only small markers. In today's large capture volume environment, one-quarter inch markers provide enough light reflection for robust real time tracking. The reflectivity of the markers drops off as the square of the distance from the camera. Higher resolution cameras, brighter ringlights or smaller markers will not solve this limitation. The real limitation has always been camera throughput." Mr. Fung added.

"Our new Cortex real time tracking software leads the industry by at least four years. Users can now do high resolution facial capture with the performer forty feet from the camera. The Raptor-4 camera design eliminates the last barrier to large volume high marker count real-time motion capture. " said Tom Whitaker, CEO of Motion Analysis Corporation. buttons that can be conveniently placed on the interface. It also utilizes drag-and-drop editing, syntax highlighting, embedded function documentation, shared network folders for scripts and automatic startup scripts.

"Our existing EVaRT real time tracking software leads the industry by at least two years. Introduction of the new Cortex real time performance now puts us four years ahead of the industry" said Tom Whitaker, CEO of Motion Analysis Corporation.

Source www.motionanalysis.com

Motion Analysis Cortex 1.0 replaces EvART

Motion Analysis announces the release of Cortex 1.0, the industry’s first mocap tracking software tailored to both a 32-bit and a 64-bit operating system for use with high-throughput multi-processor environments. Cortex replaces the company’s current core software, EVaRT and includes support for the new Raptor class of high-performance digital cameras. This next generation of 3D real-time motion capture software comprises tracking, editing, scripting and modeling functions in a single integrated package.

"Cortex is built on Microsoft's .NET Framework", said Shel Fung, Senior VP of Engineering. "The .NET framework maximizes the productivity for our programmers, which translates into more features delivered at a faster rate to our customers. Due to the success and emulation of EVaRT's ease-of use and customer familiarity, Cortex, by design, maintains a strong resemblance to the successful EVaRT user interface and functionality.", Mr. Fung added.

For biomechanics customers, Cortex features new kinematics and kinetics features, including user selectable bone axis and Euler angle sequence, linear and rotational velocities and accelerations for each segment, and linear and rotational acceleration of the center of mass.

For video production and pre-viz customers, Cortex features the new camera tracking module, CamTrack, which automates the process of aligning the virtual scene coordinates with those of the production studio. Laborious surveying of the production studio is not required. The production studio camera is tracked along with the performers to provide a live stream of animation viewed precisely from the position of the production studio camera. The data, including the principal point information, can be simultaneously streamed to animation software to provide the same special effect.

Cortex runs under the Windows Vista and WinXP operating systems. Many of the tabular menu controls found in EVaRT have been replaced with more modern icons. The icon tool tray can be re-configured to the user's preference, resulting in easier navigation and a 30% increase in screen display. Other new Cortex features include a new and improved QuickFiles (file management) feature, wireless data triggering, a 2D zoom function and improved 3D calibration accuracy reporting. Backwards compatibility with existing data files and projects is maintained to ensure existing workflows.

Cortex's installation is Windows registry independent, allowing cleaner side-by-side execution of different versions of Cortex. Cortex's internal plug-in architecture has been simplified through templates, making it easier for third party developers to create plug-ins to Cortex using free Microsoft Visual Studio express versions. Existing external software programs and plug-ins that use the MAC exclusive simultaneous-connection SDK2 environment will run without changes under Cortex.Cortex contains a new embedded "Single Touch" Sky scripting interface with access to hundreds of pre-programmed scripts that can be quickly and easily modified for custom operation. Sky now has user definable

source www.motionanalysis.com