Kansas City, Kansas – With the predominance of male athletes featured on television and covered in the media year-round, most Americans are familiar with some of the most common injuries sustained by men in various sports. As the 2012 Summer Games approaches, female athletes will have additional opportunities to be featured, but are their potential injury risks the same as their male counterparts?

“Women are more likely to have a different set of injuries because of the types of sports they play or due to inherent differences in anatomy or muscle control and responses,” says Dr. Kim Templeton, an orthopedic surgeon at The University of Kansas Hospital and Professor of Orthopedic Surgery in the University School of Medicine.

“Women can help reduce their potential for an injury by understanding these differences and attempting to modify those factors that can be addressed, such as relative weakness of some muscles or avoiding positions that place them at higher risk for injury.”

Dr. Templeton, who is senior editor and co-author of the upcoming book “Women’s Sports Injuries,” lists the following injuries as most common for female athletes.

1. ACL Tears:  The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is a tight band of tissue that binds together the bones in the knee to keep the joint stable. While men typically tear this ligament as a result of direct contact, women are more likely to tear it due to the positions in which they land.This injury is common among female soccer and basketball players, the latter primarily due to the way they inherently land from a jump. When landing with their hips and knees straight, this forces the knee to straighten beyond its natural range, causing the ACL to pull apart.One way to help prevent this injury is to build up strong hamstrings, which will take pressure off the ACL. Another strategy is to learn different landing techniques, especially those where the hips and knees are bent.

2. Concussions: Concussions occur more frequently in women than in men, for those sports played by both genders. As with the other sports-related injuries, there are probably several factors that lead to this, including weaker neck muscles in women to absorb impact and stabilize the head, differences in inherent preparation for contact around the head and a greater difference between the size of the head and the size of the ball for sports such as soccer.Responses to concussions also differ between the sexes, with men and women showing different areas of deficits in the short and long term after the injury. The first concussion increases the risk of sustaining a second concussion. Athletes, families and coaches need to be aware of the signs and symptoms of concussions. Athletes need to be kept out of practice and competition until these signs and symptoms are resolved.

3. “Runners Knee” or Anterior Knee Pain Syndrome: This is caused by irritation of the cartilage on the undersurface of the kneecap and is more common in women due to the alignment of the pelvis and legs and also due to inherent, relative differences in muscle strength. To avoid runner’s knee, use proper running shoes with adequate support.In addition, focus on strengthening the quadriceps, the muscles in front of the thigh that straighten your knee and control your knee cap. For women, it is also important to strengthen the muscles that turn your hip out, as this will help with the positioning of the knee cap during activities.

4. Stress Fractures: They are small cracks in a bone, often developed from overuse and/or low bone mass. Stress fractures occur when bone is not allowed the time necessary to recuperate from the impact of sports activities, especially if athletes rapidly increase their training or change running surfaces.Stress fractures are also more common in women with low bone mass, as it does not respond and strengthen as quickly in response to increasing activities levels, as normal bone. Stress fractures can likely be prevented by gradually increasing activity, building strong, sturdy calves that absorb the shock around your bones, wearing well-cushioned sports shoe that are in good condition and developing healthy bone habits (e.g., taking in enough calories to support the athlete’s level of activity, adequate calcium and vitamin D intake).

5. Sprained Ankle: Ankle sprains occur more commonly in female than male basketball players.  These can be caused by simply rolling your ankle – whether by landing wrong on an uneven surface or due to increased friction between your shoes and the playing surface. Differences between men and women in terms of this injury are most likely due to differences in how the pelvis and legs are aligned, as well as differences in how loose ligaments are.Strengthening and balancing exercises can help avoid a sprained ankle. These exercises are especially important for those athletes who have had a prior ankle sprain, as this places them at higher risk of an addition ankle injury. For those with prior injuries, examine the position in which the sprain occurred and focus on maneuvers that avoid that movement.

6. Meniscus Tears: The meniscus is a rubbery, c-shaped disc that cushions your knee. The two menisci in each knee help keep your knee steady by balancing your weight across the knee. To help prevent meniscus tears, work on stretching and strengthening your legs.

If an injury does occur, Dr. Templeton recommends discussing this with your health care professional. For minor injuries of the legs, the commonly used RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation) protocol may be all that is needed. Continued pain after a few days suggests a follow-up with your local doctor. More significant injuries will need additional evaluation and treatment.

Image Courtesy of   krutenyukoxana / Shutterstock.com

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Washington, U.S.A. – The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency announced that it will no longer initiate enforcement actions against deportable aliens identified by the Secure Communities program who have committed “minor” criminal offenses.

This represents the Obama administration’s latest assault on immigration enforcement, charges the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The new policy is the next step in the Administration’s effort to ensure that only aliens who have been convicted of violent crimes will be subject to deportation.

Secure Communities cross-checks the fingerprints of every person arrested by state and local police against a variety of federal databases, including a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) database of immigration law violators. Deportable aliens who are identified through the Secure Communities program are turned over to ICE, rather than released on bail. The new policy will dramatically limit the number of deportable aliens in state and local jails who ICE takes action against.

“Today’s action is clear evidence that this administration will not quit until most immigration enforcement apparatus in the U.S. is shut down and should be a clear signal that this administration believes the violation of immigration laws is entirely inconsequential. The removal of violent criminal aliens only has been the lone factor in the Administration’s ability to maintain the pretense that it is enforcing our immigration laws,” noted Dan Stein, president of FAIR.

“Programs which rely on local law enforcement, like Secure Communities and 287(g) – a congressionally established program that trains local police to identify and detain illegal aliens – have provided ICE with a pipeline to identify deportable aliens,” continued Stein. “The Administration is phasing out 287(g) entirely, and now they are limiting the use of Secure Communities so that non-criminal aliens are ultimately released back onto the street.”

The latest ICE announcement is part of the Administration’s effort to prevent state and local authorities from playing a role in immigration enforcement. The Administration has made it abundantly clear through lawsuits and other actions that it does not want to enforce most U.S. immigration laws and it will not tolerate state and local policies that get in the way of their political objectives.

“We are rapidly approaching the point where violent criminal aliens will be the only people who will be subject to immigration enforcement,” Stein concluded.

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The government recently unveiled a new set of rules outlining better care for immigrants and asylum seekers detained while waiting for their deportation hearings.

The guidelines, issued by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service (ICE), have been assailed by congressional Republicans, who say they amount to coddling illegal immigrants.

The controversy heated up last week in a hearing called “Holiday on ICE,” held by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who has referred to the new rules as “a hospitality guideline for illegal immigrants.” He pointed in particular to a new federal facility in Texas that the administration has held up as an example of a less penal approach to non-criminal immigration detainees.

The guards there don’t wear uniforms, and the facility has, as Smith pointed out, a soccer field, volleyball court and cable TV. The $32 million center was built by a private contractor, and ICE claims it will cost less per day to house detainees there than in other facilities.

Smith, as well as the head of the union representing ICE agents, says the new guidelines are too loose on security, and that the government’s focus should be on deporting undocumented immigrants faster. Meanwhile, immigrant rights advocates say detainees who aren’t criminal offenders shouldn’t be treated as such.

So, what are the new guidelines, and what prompted the changes to ICE’s policy?

The government detains about 400,000 illegal immigrants each year. On a given day, roughly 32,000 people are held, about half of them in jails rather than immigrant detention facilities. (PBS’ “Frontline” provides a useful history of changes to U.S. detention policy and an interactive map of ICE detention centers.)

The rules, which are gradually taking effect, are meant to address areas of detention that have long been problematic.

Access to medical care: More than 100 immigrants in detention have died since 2003, many from lack of access to medical care or proper medication. The New York Times reported in 2010 that immigration officials covered up many deaths and that few safeguards for transparency were in place. The new guidelines promise better regular medical care, including mental health and separate standards for women’s health.

Protection against sexual abuse: The American Civil Liberties Union found 185 reported incidents of sexual abuse between 2007 and 2010. Immigration detention centers are not covered by legislation aimed at reducing prison rape, and the new guidelines are supposed to improve supervision of detainees as well as the process for reporting sexual abuse.

Access to family and legal help: Because detainees are spread across hundreds of facilities, often in isolated areas, and frequently transferred, it was difficult for family members or lawyers to remain in close contact with them. A Human Rights Watch report found that 46 percent of detainees were moved at least twice, and 3,600 detainees were transferred 10 times or more.

The new guidelines improve access to bilingual interpreters, and call for better communication with families and legal counsels about transfers. (ICE also issued a directive this year to minimize transfers.) Facilities are “encouraged to provide opportunities for both contact and non-contact visitation.”

Advocates have pointed out that many aspects of new guidelines and the new Texas facility, such as increased freedom of movement and contact visitation, bring the ICE guidelines in line with the standards at many federal correctional facilities, especially low-security ones.

The government plans to build more facilities like the one in Texas, though most detainees will still find themselves housed in less plush environs. Only about 14 percent are expected to be held in new facilities like the one in Texas.

The administration has continued a policy begun under President George W. Bush in which asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants are detained until their court dates. Arrests and deportations have risen steadily since Obama took office.

The administration is billing the rules and new construction as part of a shift in focus away from non-criminal immigrants to catching and deporting criminal immigrants.

by Cora Currier, ProPublica, April 3, 2012, 1:35 p.m.

Image  Courtesy of   CREATISTA / Shutterstock.com

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Geophysical Research Letters reports that scientists have confirmed the presence of oxygen in the upper atmosphere of Dione, one of Saturn’s many moons.  The international team responsible for the announcement reported that it noticed the trace amounts of the element from data collected by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

A sensor on the Cassini spacecraft, named the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer, picked up signals that indicated oxygen ions were present in an area of space where Dione had just been during a pass by the moon in 2010.  After another recent run, the team was able to verify that oxygen does in fact exist in Saturn’s moon, although not in large amounts.

According to Team Leader Robert Toker: “It’s not enough to sustain life, but–together with similar observations of other moons around Saturn and Jupiter–these are definitive examples of a process by which a lot of oxygen can be produced in icy celestial bodies that are bombarded by charged particles or photons from the Sun or whatever light source happens to be nearby.”

The amount of oxygen present in Dione is roughly the equivalent of what is present in the Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of 300 miles. Dione was discovered in 1684 by the astronomer Giovanni Cassini, who lends his name to the aforementioned spacecraft.  Dione is one of 62 known moons that orbit Saturn.  It is small, clocking in at only 700 miles wide.  Its surface exists only as a thick layer of watery ice that bears marks and scars from an innumerable number of asteroid collisions, inside of which lies a hard, solid core.

Although Dione and the Earth’s moon both orbit their respective planet at around the same distance, Dione completes its orbit in roughly a tenth of the amount of time Earth’s moon does, coming full circle in about 2.7 days.

As it circles Saturn, Dione is assailed by ions, or charged particles, from Saturn’s magnetosphere.  These hit Dione’s icy surface with enough strength to violently throw up molecular oxygen ions into the moon’s small atmosphere, in a process that is known as sputtering.  The oxygen particles are then pulled away from Dione by Saturn’s magnetosphere.

Although the announcement has disproven the idea of life existing on Dione, showing its oxygen levels are much too low, it has opened the door for different possibilities.  Other icy worlds and moons not thought to have oxygen could now be shown to harbor the element within their atmospheres, and with such discoveries comes the tantalizing idea of oxygen-based life forms.  Hopefully more research can shed light on the subject.

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The Toronto Maple Leafs had a very busy 40 minutes of play on Wednesday, scoring five times to beat the New Jersey Devils 5-3. After a fight between Mike Brown and Brad Mills only five minutes into the first period, Leafs forward Joey Crabb started off with the scoring by putting a pass from Matthew Lombardi past Devils goalie Martin Brodeur a couple minutes later.

The Devils retaliated after four minutes with a power-play goal from Dainius Zubrus. Mikhail Grabovski helped the Leafs secure the lead before the end of the period by scoring off a pass from Jake Gardiner. The second period is where all the action happened. Patrik Elias tied up the game for the Devils by scoring a power-play goal three minutes in.

However, Joffrey Lupul got the lead back for the Leafs again three minutes later off a pass from Mike Komisarek. The Devils tied the game up yet again off a goal from David Clarkson, who scored two minutes after the last goal. Lupul put the puck in the net two more times, once nine minutes into the period and again three minutes later, to complete his hat-trick and secure the victory for the Leafs.

”I wouldn’t say we’re loosey-goosey,” Ron Wilson said in a post game interview with Fox Sports. ”But it’s like being in a sidecar of a motorcycle and not knowing where the driver is going. I’m happy we won, don’t get me wrong, but we’re starting to get picky about the way we win.” Leafs goalie Jonas Gustavsson made 19 saves throughout the game, with most of the shots coming in the second period.

Devils goalie Brodeur, in his second start of the season, only saw 23 shots in the game, making the five goals he allowed in to an uglier statistic. The Toronto Maple Leafs (8-3-1) travel to Ohio to face the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday, while the New Jersey Devils (4-5-1) travel to Pennsylvania to face the Philadelphia Flyers.

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Immigrants have often been discriminated against in the United States.  Never more clearly seen is this than in immigration court.

Immigration court in the United States, unfortunately, is no different.  Locking up “undocumented” aliens for months, treating them as untouchables, and not helping them understand the legal system is all just part of the game.  Americans may claim equality while really endorsing an ancient caste-like system where immigrants and people that are poor make up the bottom two rungs.  Many immigrants sit in jail or are required to put their lives on hold for 11 months or more while awaiting deportation.  The judges that work immigration court are protected by an obscure agency.  As long as adjudicators process a high volume of cases, the agency will ignore and even cover up serious misconduct, including deportations of US citizens or people who have other avenues of relief.  Due process is not a concern for immigration court.  Often times, immigrants are present at hearings without a lawyer or a translator.  They are confused about the process as most of us would be.

The national backlog has grown by 40 percent since 2008.  The number of immigration cases awaiting resolution reached an all-time national high of 261,083 in fiscal year 2010, which ended on September 30. Partly to blame is the Secure Communities, a new federal program that requires local law enforcement officers to send fingerprints of everyone booked into jail to the Department of Homeland Security, which then compares the fingerprints to others  in its databases. If officials find that the suspect is in the country illegally, or is a noncitizen with a criminal record, they may pursue deportation.  Federal officials say the program will protect the public and streamline enforcement efforts. But critics protest that it will sweep up immigrants who have not been convicted of or even charged with serious crimes, and will discourage immigrants from going to the police as victims or witnesses, for fear of deportation.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records obtained by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network through a Freedom of Information Act request, 79 percent of individuals deported through the Secure Communities program from October 2008 through June 2010 had no criminal record or were arrested for minor offenses like traffic violations.  “The Department of Homeland Security can inform the local enforcement agency that they should not release that person, even if there are no charges or the charges have been dropped, so that they can start deportation proceedings,” said Angela Fernandez, executive director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights.

Undocumented immigrants may be a convenient scapegoat, but we need to exercise caution.  The United States still operates as being some champion for human rights.  Deporting our own citizens is not a way to demonstrate any type of great civil rights.  Despite how the United States tries to dehumanize immigrants, they are still people.  And, whether they are here illegally or not, deportation is a very traumatic event, causing disruption in the life of the deported, their families, and their friends.  We have to make sure that deportation is warranted and that the immigrant can understand what is happening.

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Jaime Jorge Zapata, a 32 years old US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agent, was killed on February 15th during a drug gang attack in Mexico.

He and his colleague, Victor Avila, were driving on a Mexican highway on the way between Monterrey and Mexico City, in the state of Saint Luis Potosì, when their vehicle was forced by the members of the Mexican drug cartel known as Los Zetas, which opened fire against the ICE agents in an ambush. Agent Avila was only injured at the leg while Jaime Zapata, shoot five times in the chest, died.

He joined ICE in 2006 and was temporary assigned to the ICE attaché office of the US Embassy in Mexico City, to the human smuggling and trafficking unit. About 30 are the ICE agents in Mexico, and they are not authorized by the Mexican Government to carry firearms.

The Los Zetas drug gang members have been identified as the liable of the ambush and have been arrested by the Mexican authorities right after the attack. They are .Julian Zapata Espinoza, the gang’s leader, Jesus Ivan Quesada Pena, Ruben Diario Venegas, both of Honduras; Armando Alvarez Saldana, Mario Dominguez Realeo and Martin Barcenas Tapia, all of Mexico.

Other two alleged leads Sergio “El Toto” Mora and Luis Miguel Rojo have been arrested one week later with the charge of been also connected with the killing. During the raid on four safe houses in the San Luis Potosì area were seized five rifles, a handgun, an indeterminate amount of cash, ammunition clips and five vehicles, including a bulletproof one. In addition were seized also payroll forms for the gunmen who belonged to the gang.

The leader of the gang, Julian Zapata Espinoza nicknamed the “Tweety bird”, declared that the attack was just a case of mistaken identity,they thought the two US Immigration agents belonged to a rival drug cartel gang of Mexico, he officially said. The incident remains under investigation, but officials have said that the team of gunmen opened fire after Zapata showed his US government identification.

Anyway the announcement of the arrests made by the Mexican authorities have been welcome by the US authorities as a sign of collaboration and development.

“We are encouraged by this action and appreciate the efforts by Mexico to bring Special Agent Zapata’s killers to justice” said the ICE Director John Morton .“ It is important to remember that this is an ongoing investigation, and we will continue to work closely with our law enforcement partners in Mexico and in the United States as it unfolds. We continue to hold the Zapata family in our thoughts and prayers, and look forward to a swift resolution of this case,” he added.

Mexico and USA will keep working together to solve the case. President Obama thanked the Mexican President Felipe Calderon for the efforts that his country is doing to bring to justice the murders of the US agent Zapata.

The fact that the two countries can work so closely is a good demonstration of the collaboration of ICE and the Mexican authorities in the struggle to smuggling and drug traffic,which has meant the death of an agent who was there to do his hard work.

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Since the late 2008,when the program Secure Communities initiated,there has been confusion about its enforcement and its interpretations.

Documents containing hundreds of messages, mostly copies of emails sent between officials of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and public relations advisers from early 2009 and the present time,show all the uncertainty and the misunderstanding created by this obscure and vague program.

“I’m totally confused now. I’ve got so many versions of the opt-out language I don’t know what’s current and what’s not. It seems like we have different language for different purposes and it’s confusing. Can we put this on today’s agenda to talk about?”

This is one of the emails,written on June 2010 by a member of the ICE staff who expressed his perplexity on the question,and it is just one of the many collected by the National Day Labourers Organizing Network with the help of the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Cardozo School of Law.

Secure Communities is a program wanted by the Obama administration to enforce the laws of immigration and crime and,by 2013 it should be spread to all local jurisdictions in any states. It consists of a collaboration between the state and the local police. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases are put at their disposal to check either the criminal records and the immigration history of those immigrants who are arrested.

Since the program started in 2008 has led to the deportation of about 58.300 immigrants with criminal convictions but, groups of immigrants advocacy opposing to the program say that in reality it has led to the unjust deportation of thousands of illegal immigrants with no criminal records or of people arrested just for minor traffic infractions, tearing established families apart.

According to ICE are 39 the states where Secure Communities is at the present time. Still many states are opposing the enforcement of the program. New Jersey, the state with the nation’s sixth largest immigrant population, is one of those refusing to join it and also supporting the protest against the inefficiency of Secure Communities.

The confusion is mostly related to the fact that it’s not clear whether the program is voluntary or mandatory. Can the local law enforcement agencies opt out of it or not?

Over these years the responses of ICE have been different and conflicting, changing every time. There isn’t any legal and official mandate that indicates the program enforcement is mandatory, but DHS decided in October 2010 that local jurisdictions could not opt out of Secure Communities, giving no clear explanations about the legality of this imposition. Thus the doubts about the constitutionality of making the program mandatory are still strong.

Moreover even at the technical level it is totally confusing how exactly should the criminal identification process work. The FBI databases are shared with the DHS databases now,so apparently there is no way, technically, to limit the ICE’s filtering by the local jurisdiction, even if those refuse to participate to the program.

Highlighting all these problems due to the conflict and the obscurity of the program,the immigration advocates oppose strongly Secure Communities, pointing the question that immigration is a federal problem and any state should enforce specific federal laws and, especially should be free to opt out of the program.

So can a state law so vague and confusing be enforced obligatory by every local jurisdiction?

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