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James JP Drake

27 Jul, 5 tweets, 2 min read

@ProgressiveRug

Despite suffering a head injury during the first test last week, the Lions are still hoping to feature Welshman Dan Biggar in their next match. His participation has been called into question by @ProgressiveRug.

The Lions secured a 22-17 victory over the Springboks but 31-year-old Biggar was removed for a head injury assessment (HIA) after a heavy knock to the head, from which he didn't return.
amp.rugbypass.com/news/elephant-…

Biggar's injury comes days after the Drake Rugby Biomarker Study and isn't the first recent #concussion, after Luke Cowan-Dickie returned to play just a week after hit that left him unconscious for a minute in the Gallagher Premiership final.

Around a quarter of the elite players involved in the study showed signs of abnormalities in white matter or blood vessels, with half showing an unexpected reduction in brain volume. This is a great concern to the brain health of rugby players.

@thedrakefdn

To read the Drake Rugby Biomarker Study in full, please click here:
drakefoundation.org/professional-r…
@thedrakefdn

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More from @jamesjpdrake

James JP Drake

@jamesjpdrake

26 Jul

@DeepMind

Last year I congratulated Demis Hassabis, a former chess prodigy who went on to astound the scientific community with his algorithms. His company, @DeepMind who research and build safe #AI systems, has now made a database of human protein structures freely available online.

It is said that scientists have only decoded the structure of a fraction of human proteins in "onerous" lab work, which begun in the 1950s. However, DeepMind's AI program, AlphaFold, has claimed to have predicted the structure of nearly all 20,000 proteins expressed by humans.

“I almost fell off my chair in just excitement and amazement that this longstanding problem of how proteins fold had been solved", Prof Ewan Birney, the director of the EMBL-EBI, working in partnership with the company. theguardian.com/technology/202…

Read 5 tweets

James JP Drake

@jamesjpdrake

22 Jul

I'm delighted to announce that the Drake Rugby Biomarker Study, focussed on the association between elite rugby and changes in brain structure, has been published after years of research.
fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/pd…

This study is absolutely vital in contributing to the immediate changes needed in rugby protocols to prioritise player welfare, now and in the future. 23% of elite adult rugby players had abnormalities in brain structure, with 50% showing an unexpected reduction in brain volume.

The study has been funded by @thedrakefoundation and should represent a watershed moment for professional rugby welfare. Listen to my take on the findings here: