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				A Quiet Eye Keep your eye on the ball? Research reveals how an athlete's gaze helps make the plays.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: At whatever level this is I play, I really love playing tennis-- for all the reasons that most people enjoy playing sports: the exercise, the competition, the rush that comes from pulling off a difficult play. But until now, the world of sports beyond tennis hasn't interested me much. Ah! And then we became intrigued by all the science and technology that's now being focused on sports and how that's not only improving performances, it's also offering a new window into how our bodies and brains work together. And as a result, I've been in some places I never expected to be: a basketball court, the golf links, a hockey rink, even behind the plate at a major-league baseball park. And you know what? It's been fascinating. Ready? Oh, yeah. ALDA: For instance, there's the question that has long intrigued the University of Calgary's Joan Vickers. Can you get, like, CNN on this? ALDA: Joan wondered where athletes look when they're playing their sport, so she devised a way to find out. Okay. VICKERS: So now, Alan, would you look at point one... ALDA: That black spot on the screen is where my gaze is resting. VICKERS: point four, point five... ALDA: The pupil of my eye is being tracked as it scans the target with the aid of the cameras and mirrors mounted on my head. VICKERS: and nine. Excellent. Okay, here I go. ALDA: Now, my experience with putting is limited to the miniature golf courses I play with my grandkids, which makes me a perfect subject for Joan Vickers, because she wants to know if there's a difference in where a rank amateur like me looks when I'm putting as compared to someone who sinks putts for a living. VICKERS: Notice how the... your gaze actually goes with the ball? Yeah. 95% of beginning golfers do that. ALDA: David Lindsay is a golfer who doesn't hit putts for a living but plays a pretty good amateur game. And he's been working with Joan for several years now. David has been taught by Joan to use his eyes the way she's discovered the experts do: to look steadily at the target for a second or two, then look back at the ball and let his gaze rest there before and even after the stroke. Your gaze is so steady before you hit. And it's very... it's as steady after you've made contact. I just... I want to see if there's a jump at the moment of impact, if your eye flicks unconsciously. ALDA: It's steady. It didn't jump at all. LINDSAY: When I'm doing it well, there's no question in my mind my putting improves dramatically. And when my putting is starting to... you know, go out the window type of thing, it's usually because my eye movements now are starting to become erratic and I'm not following the pattern that I've established. ALDA: So let's see if any of this helps me. For starters, I'm just going to try one steady look at the target before bringing my gaze back to the ball. It's really amazing. It really works. You know, I only tried to do one thing, although I was aware that there were two other things I wanted to do. Actually you changed a phenomenal number of things. ALDA: Oh, I did? It's amazing, actually. ALDA: By changing how I looked at the target-- one steady stare-- I'd stopped my gaze from jumping around. That obviously helped, but I'm still not holding quietly on the ball as I hit it. You're still really... Jumping a little. The club's coming through, the ball's coming through and your eye wants to go with it; and it does, it just takes off. But you have to resist that, because you want that really nice solid impact. Right. ALDA: This time I'm going to concentrate on looking at the ball with what Joan calls a "quiet eye"-- before and after hitting it. On my previous tries I'd never made more than three putts out of six attempts. This time, four under pressure. VICKERS: Did you stop thinking about the mechanics of the club? I don't know if I was ever aware of the mechanics of the club. Like what? What would be an example of that? Well, so many golfers are overwhelmed with the mechanics of their stance... Oh, no, you see... and where the club is moving... I wouldn't think about that because nobody ever told me how to do it, so... You're a free man? ( laughing ): Yeah. That's the other comment that we get, is that by stressing the focus all of a sudden, then you're not completely preoccupied with the mechanics of the stroke. Yes, I can see that. And that gives people more strategies, some more things that they can actually use in order to play better. If I do anything, I think about the cup sucking the ball in. ( laughing ): Marvelous. I have bizarre ways of getting the ball in there. That's excellent. ( both laugh ) ALDA: Joan Vickers believes her quiet-eye concept can help other athletes in pressure situations. For several seasons she's worked to improve the free-throw percentage of the University of Calgary's women's basketball team. The team's coach is Shawnee Harle. HARLE: In the first three, I want you to look right where the net goes through the little ring on the front of the rim. When you look up there, I want you to say "sight focus" and then you're going to shoot. Out loud? Yes, it all has to be out loud. All right? Yep. Nothing but net. Sight focus. ALDA: The "nothing but net" mantra is to settle the player down. Saying "sight focus" ensures her gaze is steady on the target for at least one second. Okay, good. One more. Nothing but net. Sight focus. HARLE: When I watched our players shoot I was amazed at how few of them actually even looked at the rim for probably any more than 200 to 300 milliseconds. We had shooters on our team that were looking at the top of the backboard, the bottom of the net, and completely unaware that they were doing that. This was before they studied the quiet-eye technique? Yes, before we gave them the training. Shawnee's team was shooting 54% when we started working with them. During that first season they improved 12% here in this experimental setting, but it didn't show up in terms of that season of play. But the next year, what, you were, what, 13th or 14th in the nation that year. And then the next year they came second in the country and they had improved by 22%, which is unheard of. ALDA: What's happening in the brain when you do the quiet-eye thing? It seems to recognize how the body wants to really work. The mind wants to get it organized and the body wants to do it. But when you put those two things together, you're putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the whole system and it breaks down. It especially breaks down when a person is under stress. VICKERS: Okay, Alan. ALDA: And speaking of a person under stress... ( laughs ) Sorry about that. ( laughing ) Let's see if I can do that again. ALDA: The idea here is that during the quiet-eye moment, my brain is absorbing and organizing all the information it needs for taking the shot. Once my body starts the action itself, vision becomes irrelevant. In fact, according to Joan, trying to keep my eye on the hoop as I'm throwing is a harmful distraction. Boy, it's very hard to give up on it. ALDA: So, I did take my eye off it as soon as I started to shoot. VICKERS: That's what you're supposed to do. It builds up trust. Actually seeing this, I believe now that I only have to look at it two seconds and then I can let my body do what it does. Exactly. And it goes right in. I mean, it's amazing. It works. HARLE: That was sweet! I'm living proof it works. VICKERS Excellent. ALDA: Okay, good. HARLE: He's got a competitive streak! Yeah. VICKERS: Have we noticed! ( all laugh ) Well, that was really fun. Was it? Good. Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, it's... You know what I love about it is, I mean, you do what all the scientists on this program do who we interview. You find a way to look at what people haven't looked at yet and to measure it. And you just lift up the carpet and you show what's under. And we've been walking on the carpet all our lives; we don't know what's under it. Then you just take a peek at it and all of a sudden we have a whole new way to look. And it's counterintuitive. One of the things that I was thinking about when you were shooting is that you've actually changed your technique from when you began. It's a much softer shot. Right? And David, in the golf, was saying the same thing. He's changed his mechanics of his stroke, but we don't teach that. We don't actually teach a change in technique... as much as we teach a change in focus and attention. You change the way you look and when you look, hmm? And that changes the way you do things. VICKERS: Right, and then you reconfigure your body yourself in order to suit that. ALDA: Knowing my love of tennis, Joan indulged me by setting up a version of a study she's done on return of serve in volleyball. What she's interested in is how the eye tracks the ball as it comes across the net. What she found is that good players don't try to follow the ball all the way. Instead they let the ball out of their sight once it gets close, and they hold their gaze steady while they hit it. This is the ball coming through here and you know you have to hit it there. VICKERS: Then you stabilize the gaze actually in front, but the point is you don't have your eye on the ball. I track it over to here, and leave it there and hit the ball. ALDA: Well, it's nice to know I've been doing something right. Take that! I'm ready. ALDA: We obviously couldn't come to Canada for a show on sports science without including hockey. MAN: How does it feel? Something like a hockey helmet? A little heavier, but... ALDA: Becky Kellar is one of a group of young women hockey players having their gaze tracked in the stadium that housed the 1998 Winter Olympic games. These players are Canada's best, training for the 2002 Winter Olympics. The idea here is to find out where Becky is looking when she's playing defense; what she's doing to read the situation in front of her as she and a teammate skate against two opponents. To me, everything happens so fast, I can barely see the puck. VICKERS: The best players are seeing things very soon, much earlier than we ever imagined-- what, on the order of two seconds-- two seconds earlier. And that's what's separating the really skilled players from the not so skilled. ALDA: A slow-motion replay of Becky's gaze shows her checking on the positions of all the players as well as the puck as the play comes toward her and she's deciding on her move. So now she has her. Now she has to step up and move on the other one. ALDA: Watching the replay with us is the coach of the Canadian national team, Danielle Sauvageau. You know, when I was wearing the helmet, I would be surprised sometimes to find out that I wasn't looking where I thought I had been looking. Do you find that with your players, too? Do they come and tell you, "I was looking at her, I was looking at her," and you'd say, "No, you weren't. Here's where you were looking." This is an excellent point because sometimes a player is going to say, "Yes, this is where I was looking" because they know this is where they should be looking, but with that kind of analysis, we can go back and say, "Well, no, see, you were looking at that." ALDA: It's really a tool, then, not just to improve a player's ability but to improve communication among all of you so that you understand the player's experience better. You really can see it through the player's eyes. Yes, sports science helps us coaches in today's way of coaching to understand a little bit more of the player and also for them to understand a little bit more, like, how it's all about. ALDA: Before we left Calgary, I asked to wear the helmet one last time. My question was this: How does a juggler-- even an amateur-- keep track of several objects at once? I always wondered where your eye was when you saw things peripherally and now I see that you can look at something and never move your eye and be aware of all this stuff happening peripherally. It's great. You have a... a vision into stuff that's happening that nobody ever saw before.

				Brainy Putting It happens to the best of us. New insight into the physiology behind the all too familiar phenomenon of 'the choke.'
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: So what is this? What are you going to do to me? We're going to hook up some electrodes to your head, and we're going to look at the electrical activity in different parts of your brain, and they're going to be an indication of what state you're in. You play tennis, right? Yes. Do you play golf? No. You're going to play golf today. Well, I can tell you right now what state I'm in. ALDA: Here we go with the headgear again-- this time a brand new helmet designed to pick up my brain waves. Oh, this is a rubberized one. I've never had one like that, so I'm getting... A little softer. I know all the fashions in these caps. ( group laughing ) You do. That's a new one, isn't that right, Steve? This is probably nice for street wear. ALDA: Blinking-- one, two... ALDA: With my brain on-line, it's time to choose my putter. Well, this seems nice. I don't know what's good or not. ( chuckling ): Well, how would I know? CREWS: Feel. Feel, yes. Look and feel-- you got it. That seems nice. Is this part of it, picking your putter so I feel like I'm in touch with it? Always be in touch with your putter, folks, okay. Are you sure Tiger Woods started this way? Exactly this way. About seven. ALDA: As I make each putt, Debbie's asked me to rate how I feel about it on a scale of one to ten. That seems pretty good, like a seven or eight. Uh, another eight. Nice. Like a six. ALDA: We've come here to Arizona State University straight from Calgary and my quiet-eye training is paying off. CREWS: One, two, three, four, five... Pretty good, huh? ...six-- yeah. You know, what's... I mean, you've been keeping track, but... Six out of 20. but it feels like I ?got closer ? when I thought that... when I felt better about it, you know? There seemed to be a real correspondence there. And you smiled. And I smiled, huh? I smiled when-- before I shot? When you were getting ready. Oh, that's right, I started to notice that. I was starting to feel... In fact, I was starting to act... Toward the end, I was starting to get the feeling this doesn't make any difference. It's fun. I'm just playing. There's a hole and I'll just swing. I'll let the ball go in the hole. ALDA: It turns out that without realizing it, I'd been doing pretty much what Debbie's research suggests is the key to good putting-- getting the two halves of my brain in balance. CREWS: As you're getting ready and you're preparing and you're reading the line and you're making decisions, the left hemisphere, which is your analytic side, your verbal side, your self-talk, is going to be quite active. As you get closer and closer to actually moving the club, the left hemisphere must quiet. That's the consistent finding we've had through all the sports. It must quiet and in essence, the right hemisphere becomes a little more active. Right hemisphere is your rhythm, timing, balance, coordination, creativity, imagery. And so what you achieve in the last second before you move, which is where you're still focusing attention, you achieve a state of balance in essence between the two hemispheres. How about if I do it that way? ALDA: So the question is, how do you get your brain into a state of balance? Now, what's the idea, just to go back and forth? No, the idea is to balance. Oh, balance. Oh, balance. That isn't easy. Boy, that's impossible. Whoa! ALDA: Exactly what balancing my body has to do with balancing my brain isn't immediately obvious. But as I stop trying to figure out how to balance-- a left-brain activity-- and let my body take care of itself-- helped by a little right-brain imagery-- things get easier. No, I'm a cloud. Very good. Every time I think I'm a cloud, it balances. That's really weird. That's your imagery. That's excellent. You're done. I'm done. You're done. Very good. Okay, we're going to have you putt. Have me putt now? Yep. Okay, over down there by the hole. Um, eight. Beautiful. Also eight. ALDA: The EEG confirmed my brain was more balanced after balancing my body. Eight. And I'm giving better ratings to my putts. That felt good. Eight or nine. Now, that's a competitor. They always put the last one in the hole. That's true. ( wheel whirring ) ALDA: But Debbie isn't finished getting my brain into the right putting mode. Just as I'm getting used to the idea that relaxing and letting go is what's important, here I am on a stationary bicycle, getting all pumped up. 60 seconds. Okay, we don't give you much warm-down on this one. Putter. We're going to hook you in. It'll take a couple seconds for the signals to come in. We're on. ALDA: This time my EEG shows my brain is definitely revved up but crucially the extra activity zis still pretty well-balanced between the two hemispheres. It seemed like about a seven or an eight. Eight. Eight. That was a nice putt. That's in. 0My tape can't stop it. That's a nice putt. uUm, nine. Beautiful putt. And I knew it was nine before I saw it go in. Excellent. That was good, too. That was, like, nine. Beautiful. Last one in. That's right-- always the last one in. You should tell me that on every shot. But you know what? When we get your arousal state up, just like here if we say last putt and we get your arousal up, that means you have more activity to work with. If you focus it, which you did beautifully on that putt, the ball goes in the hole. That's true for me on the stage, too. Before I go onstage, I do a lot of exercises... That's right. ...and the audience, of course, gets you up. You know, there's an excitement and you're... It's... it's very interesting that, uh, that extra charge you get helps you concentrate sometimes. ALDA: Debbie has got me tuned up just in time for one of those little surprises the producers of the show love to pull every now and then. Also invited to Debbie Crews' lab today is a real golfer-- LPGA Tournament Player Tina Tombs. It>'s luck.v How much of the game is putting, Tina? The older I get, the more I think that putting is... is basically all of the game. I mean, it comes down to hitting a drive. I mean, I don't think you have to think as much over a drive. At least I don't. I don't think as much over a tee shot as I do over a putt. ALDA: Tina's here to add her expert brain to Debbie's EEG data... Oh! ALDA: But also, I'm just now discovering, to put me under pressure and up the ante on my newfound putting skills. I think what we'll do now is we're going to go sets of five and... and we'll look at number of putts made and... and go back and forth and maybe put a little money on the condition. TOMBS: How many did you make? Oh, I don't remember. Oh, I don't remember. I have it right here, Tina. That's all right. That's all right. I'm so competitive it's just unbelievable. Everybody thinks I'm a nice guy. Is that the hole over there? It's a little thing we developed at the institute. ALDA: Debbie has done several studies on what golfers call "choking." And you get a dollar for every one you make. I know, I know. You're trying to make me nervous. ALDA: That's when anxiety about performing under pressure means your game falls apart. One for one, but you've never played? No. ALDA: Of course I was getting a little help from the special rules of this particular green. Two for two. Do we count that even though it's the speed? If it goes through. So I can belt it and even if it goes through, it's in? Can we have a little quiet on the golf course? Sorry, but I'm trying to get it in the hole. Do you know how many years I've devoted to this game? ALDA: It feels as though with my quiet eye and newly balanced brain at work and, most importantly, with low expectations, I can do no wrong. TOMBS: See now, I think that's a made putt. That was terrible. ALDA: Tina, who clearly should be beating the pants off me, is having a hard time. TOMBS: Get in. That's how hard I'm going to start hitting them. There it is. Beautiful. CREWS: She doesn't have a chance of getting the ball in the hole in the state that she's in because the state is having the perception that she should be beating and winning, uh, the match. What Alan's doing is he's looking at the hole, going there, coming back, getting to the bottom of his breath and go. His mechanics aren't anywhere near as solid as hers, but he's putting the ball in the hole. Are we done? Actually, you can just pay him. No, I'm just teasing. Now, here's the thing: You're... You have a lifetime of experience hitting real, you know, playing real golf. This is, uh, this is a toy thing that's all chaotic. I mean, you couldn't even, uh... It was different. All the bumps were different every couple of times you hit. It doesn't matter to me. All my whole experience in golf is on this stupid rug. You know, so... But you should play. ( group laughing ) If I could take this rug out to the golf course, I'd be great. Okay, step back. ALDA: Uh, if only... I almost fell over. ALDA: Once out on the driving range, my true golfing skills are quickly exposed. What... what... now what? ALDA: But even here, apparently, things aren't hopeless. The Arizona State research program that Debbie Crews is part of is best known in golfing circles for its work on imaging. The pro golfer Phil Mickelson ascribed a recent tour win at least in part to imaging techniques he'd learned here at ASU. CREWS: What we're going to do at this point is we're going to put an image in first of what you want to have happen. There's two things you can do. You can put an image of the ball flying-- landing in that target, okay? And that's going to prep everything to set up the motor program to perform. Then the other thing is you can put an image in of how you want to swing. Do you have any idea of how you swing? Of course not. I don't think so. So we're going to skip that one. ALDA: So here we go-- a little arousal... Add a pinch of imagery. There's the ball sailing into the target. Stir in a little brain balancing and for old times' sake, top it all off with a nice, quiet eye. CREWS: Yeah! Where was it? Just in front. Just in front. Beautiful! ALDA: But enough about me. The real reason we're here is to see Tina at work out here where it counts, while Debbie is actively monitoring her brain-- something that's never been done before. So it's really exciting. We're going to look for that state the same as we did before-- a second before-- and theoretically she gets very quiet, so we should be able to get the data. She's doing full swing outside into a target. And now we have the technology that we actually can go outside and do that. ALDA: And Tina, of course, now that she's where she belongs, drops the ball right into that impossibly small square in the middle of the target. ( group cheering ) Way to go! That's it. That was a 12. That's a 12.

				Baseball Tech Missile-tracking technology help umps refine their skills, plus physicists search for the elusive 'sweet spot.'
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: Last baseball season, the Boston Red Sox were kind enough to let me spend a little time behind the plate... Strike one. ...trying my hand at what is surely one of the toughest jobs in baseball. That's a strike, huh? That was a strike. ALDA: What I'd find most alarming about the job is that you can't second-guess yourself, although plenty of other people do. That was outside the zone, wasn't it? CATCHER: That's a strike. Was that a strike? No kidding. Jeez, no, I... I would talk it over. I mean, don't we want to arrive at consensus here? We don't want to be, like, dictatorial, you know? ALDA: It's clearly time for a review of the strike zone, courtesy of baseball buff Paul Baim. From the hollow just below his knee... Oh, the... down there. okay, to about... to about here. ALDA: Paul Baim is also an engineer in an aerospace company whose specialty is tracking fast-moving objects-- usually things like missiles, but more recently baseballs. ( Alda chuckling ) BAIM: Now, where was that? Looked outside to me. ALDA: Looked outside to me. I'm just watching out for my life here. ALDA: Paul's been workingwith the company that has brought pitch tracking to television, allowing viewers a 3-D graphical view of where a pitch goes and at least a good approximation of the strike zone. It gives TV watchers yet another way to second-guess umpires. Whoa! Hey, that... that dropped in, didn't it? Yeah, that's a definite strike. This guy's doing better and better. And he's not hitting me hardly at all. ALDA: But the current commerciasystem isn't accurate enough-- especially in defining the top and bottom of the strike zone-- to be useful to umpires themselves. BAIM: No one else in the park hasas good a view of the pitch as the umpire does. And so there's really no opportunity for umpires to get any sort of feedback on what they're doing that's objective. They get lots of feedback, but most of it isn't pretty. It's kind of instantaneous, too. ALDA: So Paul Baim set out to give umpires some objective and almost instantaneous feedback by upgrading the pitch tracker already installed in major-league ball parks like Fenway. One of the interesting things about Fenway is that because it's a very old ball park and everything here is pretty much set in its ways, is finding locations for the cameras that would, number one, not get in anybody's way and number two, get the job done that we need to get done. ALDA: So where are they? Well, we have... the pair of high camerasthat actually track the ball are located up in the rafters and you can see there is a pair of cameras up there above the first base line. A pair of identical cameras are up in the rafters up off the third base line. So from the time the pitch leaves the mound here, what's happening? What we do is we concentrate on a piece of that corridor that the ball travels through, with the cameras running continuously. And what the system does is it automatically determines when a ball-sized, ball-shaped object traveling in the right direction at about a reasonable speed enters the field of view. And at that point, the system says, "Well, this is probably a pitch." ALDA: These images show both the predicted and the actual path of the ball on its way to the plate. A graphic is constructed from the images showing the ball's flight from different viewpoints. The cameras stop tracking the ball where the batter might interfere with the image, which raises an obvious question. ALDA: If the cameras can't take a picture of the ball for the last three or four feet, how are you able to give us a picture here of what happens to the ball, like when it drops off sharply and that kind of thing? Well, what we do is we use a model of the physics of a baseball in flight and apply that to the data that we actually measure. And that lets us extrapolate the path of the ball for those last three or four feet very accurately. The system is accurate to within essentially about an inch and a quarter in the sense of the commercial system. And in the case of the umpires' system, it's accurate to about half an inch. ALDA: The trickiest thing to measure accurately is the top and bottom of the strike zone. Because it's set by the batter's height and stance, it's different for every pitch. The new system uses two additional cameras, located in the dugouts, to take qa snapshot of the batter just after the pitch is thrown. This snapshot is used to define the strike zone as the pitch crosses the plate a few tenths of a second later. The Umpire Information System generates a CD-ROM within an hour of the game's ending. Popping it into his official Major League Baseball laptop, the plate umpire can check out any pitch in the game. Calls the system disagreed with are marked "N" for no. Clicking on them brings up a graphic showing the pitch's actual location as well as a six-second video clip of the play. Paul Baim and Major League Baseball are emphatic that the system isn't meant to replace umpires or publicly second-guess them. Rather it's to give umpires a sort of instant post-game self-analysis. BAIM: The issue here is not helping umpires get those pitches "right" that they missed by half an inch. The point is not to split hairs. The point is to give them the view of pitches that might be within the upper part of the strike zone that they're not necessarily used to calling a strike that in fact was a strike. Or pitches that curve a lot and fall through the bottom of the strike zone and get caught by the catcher down near the ground and to everyone watching, look like, "Well, that obviously must have been low," when in fact it passed through the strike zone because it's curving so much. Those are the pitches that we are trying to help the umpires get another view of. If umpires routinely start to look at the pitches again after the game, do you have any evidence that that's going to help improve their behavior when they're on the field the next time? Well, because nothing like this, nothing even faintly like this has ever been available, we don't know. ALDA: But he'll probably soon find out. As this year's baseball season gets under way, the plan is to equip most of the major-league ball parks with the system now at Fenway. That looked like a strike to me. ALDA: Then umpires around the country will not only be calling them as they see them. Later, in the privacy of their hotel rooms, they'll be able to see them as they called them. Strike! Three of them-- out. He's out, then I'm in the shower. ALDA: While in major-league parks this spring the sound will be the familiar crack of the ball on wooden bats, on college ball fields, the sound will be very different. ( high-pitched crack ) ( high-pitched crack ) ALDA: Aluminum bats replaced wood for college ball in the early 1970s to save money. Aluminum bats are essentially indestructible. But they also hit the ball much harder and faster than wood. In 1998, concerned at the increasing potency of aluminum bats as the manufacturers competed on performance, the NCAA called a bat summit meeting in Kansas City. The College World Series had just been decided by a game with a score of 21 to 14-- more like a football game as opposed to a baseball game. They were concerned about players possibly being injured from batted balls, particularly pitchers. Even though they didn't have a lot of data showing that pitchers were dropping like flies, there still was the potential for this to be occurring. So with that they said, "We're going to put a ceiling on performance and we're going to go out and study this." ALDA: Jim Sherwood's lab in Lowell, Massachusetts, is one of the few in the country equipped with a machine that can swing a bat at a ball that is at the same time being flung at the bat. We filmed both wood and aluminum bats with a high-speed camera. Much of the energy of the collision goes into squashing the ball. But the compression is less with aluminum than it is with wood. The reason is that the hollow aluminum bat itself is distorted by the impact. This stored energy flings the ball off an aluminum bat at speeds up to five miles an hour faster than it comes off a wood bat. As the NCAA struggled with how to set a ceiling on the performance of aluminum bats, Jim Sherwood came up with a simple suggestion... Taking a hit... three... ALDA: Restrict aluminum bats to hitting no better than wooden ones. SHERWOOD: And with that, the baseball research panel elected to go with a woodlike rule, and they chose to base it on the largest wood bat that a college player could potentially use. We would test that on the Baum Hitting Machine and whatever the best wood bat hit, that is what the speed limit would be. TECHNICIAN: Three, two, one... ALDA: But, as every player and fan knows, how well a bat hits depends on just where the ball makes contact. So the Lowell team adjusts their machine to hit the ball in different places along the bat, moving it a half-inch at a time. For a wooden bat, every half- inch makes a big difference. The fastest speed off the bat is typically about six inches from the tip, at what players often call the sweet spot. From tests like these, the lab established the speed limit for a ball coming off an aluminum bat. Now the lab spends much of its time checking sample aluminum bats from the manufacturers to ensure they meet the NCAA specifications for size and weight, as well as observing the speed limit when hit in the machine. Outside, on the UMass Lowell's baseball field, another key difference between wood and aluminum bats is about to be investigated. MAN: wWhat we'd like you to do is take a few hits right on the sweet spot area. Make it a good hit, really go for it, and then move the ball contact area out to the end of the bat. Do three or four hits there, really consciously trying to meet the ball on the end of the bat. And then move into the handle area and we'll pick up the acoustics for those three areas. ALDA: Bob Collier and his colleague Ken Kaliski are fascinated by the sounds of baseball. Today they're recording the sound of wood bats, which the Lowell team routinely uses for batting practice, to see how different the satisfying crack of the bat is when the hit is on the sweet spot from the sound of a hit off the end of the bat or off the bat's handle. When they hit on the end or, particularly, those last handle shots-- very, very different sound. Of course, that's compounded by the feeling, the sting. ( laughing ): The poor batter. "What did you tell me to hit it in on the handle for? Ow!" ALDA: A wood bat, like a piano string, vibrates when struck. In this exaggerated view, there's a node-- a point where the vibration is at a minimum-- near the sweet spot. A ball hit on this node meets the bat solidly, giving that satisfying sharp crack. Hits on the end of the bat or on the handle, where the vibrations are greater, make a duller thud. Some outfielders claim they can use this difference in sound to help them field the ball. ( ball cracks on bat ) ALDA: What Bob wants to know is whether aluminum bats also sound different depending on where they're hit. The question is complicated by the fact that aluminum bats are so noisy. ( ball pings ) COLLIER: And this ping that you're hearing is a good 15, 20 dB louder than the... even the crack of the bat. Wow! ALDA: The ping is made by those same vibrations that make the ball pop off the bat. What's more, the bat rings like a bell pretty much wherever it's hit. The question is, are there still subtle differences in the ping that reflect the quality of the hit? COLLIER: The analysis will show us whether we're talking a three-dB difference, which is very difficult to detect, or a ten-dB, which you can recognize very, very easily. So, just what those shades of difference are... it's interesting. And that is what is interesting as far as the ball players are concerned. MAN: With the aluminum bat I think it's definitely a lot harder to tell the difference because the ball pretty much just jumps off the aluminum bats. With the wood bat, if you get jammed, you can definitely tell because it's not that crisp crack you would get. But with the aluminum bat, it's all like the same so it pretty much... it pretty much sounds the same. ALDA: And indeed it does. ( high-pitched ping ) Bob and Ken's analysis showed the quality of the ping to be almost identical for the different hits. ( high-pitched ping ) But there were slight differences in loudness-- barely enough for the instruments to detect, and probably at the limit of a human ear's ability to discriminate. It's the human ear-brain system that's something that gains our respect, you know, and admiration. We can... there are people that can do things and understand things way beyond what our instruments can do. They can just give us an indication of what is happening and maybe lead us into some channels of thought that would be helpful. But that's why I think that human engineering-- which I like to think what I do-- is what makes life so interesting.

				No Limit The world champion 'free diver' reveals his special techniques for reaching amazing depths.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: Meet Loic Leferme, the first of our superpeople and a superstar in a rapidly growing new international sport. In a deep dive contest called "No Limit" he's just pulled off a new world record-- 452 feet without taking a breath. Loic is a member of the French National Apnea Team-- "apnea" means not breathing. Today they'll be using the same underwater sled Loic broke the record with. It's the team's regular Saturday morning training session four months after the record dive. As they practice the team members will also be supporting Loic who today is preparing for a 300-foot training dive. Man: If you want to be great at that discipline, you have to be more quiet to relax and to have a psychological preparation as he does. Alda: Relaxation is essential. Exertion just consumes the precious single lungful of air. Loic's companions practice an event which requires swimming directly down. They move slowly and deliberately. Loic starts breath-holding exercises. Learning how to stay under like this is the basic skill that deep divers have to develop. The best in the team can do seven minutes while most people can manage a minute or less. How long will they stay like that? I've heard here now only one minute and a half. Only a minute and a half. ( chuckling ): Yeah. Man: Five, four, three, two, one. Okay, Alan, try to relax your face and your neck here. Alda: I tried several dives using Loic's relaxation techniques and my breath-holding did begin to improve. You close your eyes. Alda: These techniques can be very powerful. We're actually liable defeat our body's own signals to breathe-- and then black out and drown. That's why teams like these always train in a group and always watch each other like hawks. Oh, that was worse. Oh, no, it was longer, wasn't it? One minute and five. I stayed under about ten seconds longer. Alda: Surface breath-holding is a competitive event and I could see the fun in it but it has to be done with others who know the very real risks. Alan: It's possible to black out and not realize that you're blacking out. Man: Of course, you never realize... You never notice it... you never realize. So you need somebody else there with you to read the signs-- you need an experienced person. Alda: This little finger clip detects Loic's heart rate and oxygen level in the blood. His low-70s heart rate with 99% blood oxygen saturation, are about normal. ( tone sounding ) Loic is going to perform a long breath-hold while we monitor his heart and blood. He's going to be down for four minutes. The secret to these amazing performances is in something called the "dive response. " It's a primitive reflex triggered when our faces are plunged into water and it's found in all mammals. One consequence is a dramatic drop in heart rate. Afriat: You see, he has lost from ten to 15 beats per minute after one minute of breath-holding. He's okay. Alda: Loic's heart rate continues to drop. He's taking a natural reflex and amplifying it through his well-practiced and profound relaxation. Afriat: Two minutes and 15 seconds. The O2 saturation is perfect. Alda: The dive response also contracts blood vessels in Loic's limbs concentrating blood in the vital heart, lungs and brain. Afriat: Three minutes, 30 seconds. Alda: By 3½ minutes his blood oxygen is way down. Again, Loic's mental discipline prevails. The concentration of oxygen in his body is really decreasing even in his tissue in the heart, in the brain. But you see that he can bear it. Me, I can't bear it, but he can. Okay, put it on your nose. What you're doing now is just to get a baseline? Yes, just to get a base. Alda: Loic is not only mentally disciplined but he trains to keep his body physically very flexible. Okay, breath normally. Alda: That's so he can use a technique for increasing lung capacity which we're just about to measure. Third time... Then after, it will be up to you. Take your air in max... take it, take it and then blow very fast, blow, blow, blow. Keep on, keep on, go on, go on, go on. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, it's good. Fine. Alda: Loic scores 5. 9 liters-- normal for his body size. For the second test, Loic uses a special pumping technique. Then, look... what his technique does is to increase that capacity. Alda: The pumping blows up Loic's lungs, literally like a balloon. ( Loic exhales ) Okay. Blow, blow, blow, blow, keep on... Alda: The result is dramatic. So he went up a whole liter. He went up from 5. 9 to 6.9. 5. 99 to 6.99. Cinq, quatre, trois, deux, un. Top... whenever you want. Alda: Back at the team's training session Loic is still warming up for his 300-foot-- or 100-meter-- dive. Actually, we should say, he's slowing down. He's relaxing to heighten the dive response while minimizing exertion. Afriat: For that first attempt, he is going very slowly. Usually it doesn't take a lot of time. You can go to 20 meters very fast. Alda: This is just a 20-meter-- or 60-foot-- warm-up but the 100-meter dive Loic's going to do today would have broken the record in the 1970s; and now techniques like Loic's are allowing divers to aim for 150 meters. That's nearly 500 feet. Loic drifts back to the group at the surface satisfied that his dive response is fully functional. That was good. ( divers chatting in French ) Loic: The training is always like this. It's not like, uh, Zen and yoga. But it's another way to relax yourself because... then your head is with the group and you have time to relax, you have time to play. Man: Allez. Alda: Now the group checks out the weighted sled that will carry Loic down. Loic: It's the team which is the most important because the team makes someone go down very deep. And without the team you don't do anything. Alda: The sled is raised with an airbag inflated from a scuba tank that's attached to it. Loic will bring himself up from his deep dive in the same way. Okay. Alda: Everything is in order. While safety divers stand by, Loic prepares himself. He gets his face wet to stimulate the dive response. His heart rate now starts to drop. The safety divers head down to wait at 100 feet. Although Loic is going below normal scuba limits they may be needed when he comes up. Loic breathes deeply, then pumps to expand his lungs. The safety divers flash past. Afriat: 40 seconds, he's 50 meters. It takes more than one minute-- one minute 15 seconds-- to go up to 100 meters. Almost at the bottom. We will see perhaps the rope-- it will pull down... In ten seconds. One minute. Alda: At this depth Loic feels great-- the pressure has collapsed his lungs to one-tenth their size at the surface forcing most of the available oxygen into his blood. Afriat: He has taken one minute and four seconds, and now he's going up. Alda: Now comes the dangerous part. Loic's lungs rapidly re-expand pulling oxygen back out of his blood. He could black out. 30 feet down he releases the air bag. Afriat: We see the balloon and there is a safety free-diver with him and they are coming up very slowly. He's here, we can see him now. Okay. Alda: The last 15 feet when the lungs expand the most, are the riskiest. Everyone's relieved to see Loic in good shape. Well, I'm not diving to 100 meters but I am going to try extending my breath-holding performance. You try to relax your arms... your neck... Three, two, one. Alda: I'm about as relaxed as I can manage with an underwater camera pushed into my face. But it's totally relaxing to know Loic is watching me every second. He's okay. Relax your neck. Okay, you feel good. You feel good. Close your eyes. Good. Wasn't much longer. W-what, probably the same? What was it? Afriat: What do you feel? A minute and 32. A minute and 32? A minute and 45. Really? Yeah. Oh. So, okay, that's better. Alda: After just a few hours training I had almost doubled my breath-holding and that was no surprise to Loic. Loic: In training one month perhaps you will do four or five minutes. And sometimes people, they say, "Oh, it's impossible. " Yes, it's possible, you just have to train and you have to put your mind in the way of apnea, that's all. And that's simple. Alda: Shuffle the deck thoroughly... set aside ten cards...

Take a look at these related stories from the Frontiers Archive:

				Looping the Loop Sports physiologists study the physics of the lasso. Their computer analysis helps a rising rodeo star refine her skills.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: WHISPER ALEXANDER HAS BEEN TENDING CATTLE ON HER FAMILY'S MONTANA RANCH SINCE SHE WAS A TODDLER. GO! Alda: THE SKILLS SHE NEEDS GO BACK CENTURIES AND THEY'VE BEEN REFINED OVER THE GENERATIONS INTO THE WEST'S HOMEGROWN SPORT, RODEO. Alexander: GO, GO, GO! Alda: AND WHEN THE CHORES ARE DONE IT'S THE RODEO WHISPER LIVES FOR. Alexander: I LOVE IT. IT'S JUST THE ADRENALINE RUSH AND THE COMPETITION. I LOVE THE COMPETITION. Alda: BUT WHISPER, A TOP-NOTCH RIDER, HAS A WEAK POINT. ( sighs ) AND ROPING IS A KEY RODEO EVENT. Alexander: I JUST NEED TO THROW IT OUT THERE. I'M KIND OF SOFT LOOPING IT AND NOT... THROWING IT BAD. I'LL GET IT, THOUGH. Alda: BUT TRY AS SHE MIGHT, PRACTICE IS NOT MAKING PERFECT. ( Alexander sighs ) WHICH IS WHY WHISPER IS A VOLUNTEER SUBJECT IN A BRAND-NEW PROGRAM AT MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY. THE PROJECT IS BEING RUN BY SPORTS PHYSIOLOGIST AND FORMER RODEO RIDER MIKE MYERS. Myers: WHAT WE WANT YOU TO DO IS NOT MAKE ANY PRACTICE THROWS. WE WANT THIS TO BE A REAL RODEO RUN. SO ACT LIKE THIS IS THE LAST CALF, FINAL PERFORMANCE, LAST RUN. IT'S TAKING OFF LIKE A ROCKET. Alda: THE BRIGHT LIGHTS AND HIGH-SPEED CAMERAS THAT WILL TRACK THE REFLECTIVE MARKERS ON WHISPER'S BODY AND ROPE ARE NOW FAMILIAR TOOLS IN ESTABLISHED SPORTS. EVEN THOUGH RODEO'S BEEN AROUND FOR A LONG TIME IT'S REALLY CONSIDERED A NONTRADITIONAL SPORT AND SO A LOT OF THE SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE USED IN OTHER SPORTS HAVE NOT BEEN UTILIZED IN THIS FIELD. WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO DO IS FIND OUT HOW THESE ATHLETES ARE REALLY OPERATING. WE'RE TRYING TO DEFINE BASICALLY WHAT THEIR SPORT IS. JUSTIN DAVIS IS ANOTHER VOLUNTEER IN THE NEW PROGRAM. HE'S BROUGHT ALONG HIS FAVORITE ROPING DUMMY FOR THE EXPERIMENT BUT THE REFLECTIVE TAPE IS NEW. Davis: NOBODY'S EVER TOUCHED MY ROPE LIKE THIS BEFORE OR PUT ANY TAPE ON IT OR ANYTHING. BUT IT SHOULDN'T, YOU KNOW AFFECT MY SWING OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. Alda: THE SWING PRODUCES A SPINNING LOOP. THE FASTER AND TIGHTER THE SPIN, THE BETTER BECAUSE WHEN THE ROPE IS RELEASED THE LOOP'S CENTRIFUGAL FORCE IS WHAT KEEPS IT FROM COLLAPSING IN ON ITSELF AS IT FLIES TO THE TARGET. THE MONTANA STATE RESEARCH TEAM IS STILL FINDING OUT IF THE METHODS USED IN OTHER SPORTS WILL WORK IN THIS NEW ARENA. INITIALLY, IT LOOKS GOOD. I'M NEEDING TO SEE THESE DIFFERENT POINTS STANDING OUT AGAINST THE BACKGROUND AND THEY DO LOOK PRETTY GOOD. Alda: A COMPUTER IS ABLE TO TAKE THE REFLECTIVE POINTS AND CONNECT THE DOTS TO CREATE A 3-D STICK FIGURE OF THE ROPER AND THE ROPE. NOW JUSTIN'S THROW CAN BE ANALYZED IN DETAIL. IT SHOWS NEAR-PERFECT FORM EACH HIGH-SPEED LOOP CREATING A PATH ALMOST IDENTICAL TO THE ONE BEFORE IT. NOW IT'S WHISPER'S TURN. AND THE COMPUTER ISN'T KIND. Alexander: OH, MY GOSH. Alda: IT REVEALS SOMETHING NEITHER SHE NOR HER COACH HAD SUSPECTED. WOW. Myers: WE'RE GETTING A LOSS OF ROPE VELOCITY BY LOOKING AT HOW THE ROPE DIPS IN THE FRONT AND IT'S ACTUALLY THE ROPE IS DYING BEFORE YOU DRAW IT BACK. Alda: THE DISC TRACED BY THE LOOP IS WARPING BECAUSE WHISPER'S NOT SPINNING IT AT A CONSTANT SPEED. IF YOU COULD INCREASE THE CENTRIFUGAL FORCE OR INCREASE THE ROPE'S VELOCITY DURING THE SPIN, WE'LL SEE A NARROWER LOOP PATTERN. NOTICE HOW WIDE THE PATTERN IS. Alda: A COMPARISON BETWEEN JUSTIN AND WHISPER'S FORM REVEALS THAT SHE'S WASTING ENERGY SPINNING A BIG LOOP. WHERE JUSTIN'S LOOP IS TIGHT AND FLAT WHISPER'S IS WIDE AND UNEVEN. Alexander: I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT I AM MAKING THESE MISTAKES. I THOUGHT... I THOUGHT THAT EVERYTHING WAS PRETTY CONSISTENT BUT I'M READY TO GO OUT AND MAKE THINGS RIGHT. ( applause and cheering ) Alda: TWO MONTHS LATER, THE SUMMER RODEO CIRCUIT IS IN FULL SWING. Announcer: ... RODEO TIME, FINALS. Alda: IT'S WHISPER'S FIRST COMPETITION SINCE THE LAB VISIT. Announcer: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE CHUTES ARE SHAKING. IT'S TIME FOR THE BULL RIDING. ( cowbell clinking ) Man: WHOO! Announcer: HOLY SHIT. COME ON, STEADY. YEAH! COME ON! GO FOR IT. ( crowd groans ) GARY CICERO COMING AT YOU. YA! YA! YA! Alda: THE WOMEN'S ROPING EVENT IS NEXT AND WHISPER'S GETTING FOCUSED ON HER SWING. IN WOMEN'S ROPING, THE ROPE BREAKS AWAY ONCE THE CALF HAS BEEN SNARED. BUT TODAY, MOST CONTESTANTS ARE MISSING ALTOGETHER AND WITH ONLY ONE THROW ALLOWED, THERE'S NO ROOM FOR ERROR. Announcer: WHISPER ALEXANDER, MONTANA COWGIRL. Alda: FOR WHISPER ALEXANDER TWO MONTHS OF WORKING ON HER TECHNIQUE ARE ABOUT TO BE TESTED. ( crowd cheering ) Alexander: MY TECHNIQUE FELT REALLY GOOD. I GOT MY LOOP UP FAST AND GOT MY TIP DOWN AND WENT AHEAD AND EXTENDED MY ARM AND IT FELT REALLY GOOD TODAY. Alda: SEEING HERSELF AS A COMPUTERIZED STICK FIGURE HELPED WHISPER'S ROPING ENOUGH TO EARN HER SECOND PLACE OVERALL IN THE WOMEN'S EVENTS-- HER BEST FINISH EVER. Announcer: BRING HER HOME, WHISPER. HERE'S AN IMAGE RIGHT OUT OF THE WILD WEST: THE LONELY CAMPFIRE THE ONLY SIGN OF HUMAN LIFE IN MILES OF EMPTY PRAIRIE

				Handmade Humans What separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom? It could be as simple, or as complex, as the way we pitch a baseball.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: But of those billions, only one-- so far as we know-- wonders about how and even why it's here. Which poses, perhaps, the biggest of life's big questions: What happened some five million years ago that set us off on our unique journey and strode away on two legs, freeing its hands to become... Well, that's what our next story is going to explore. Man: Make a fist. Point at something. Alda: I'm returning to the Stone Age equipped with a cyberglove able to measure every subtle movement of my fingers and hand. the very latest in high tech , being used to study the oldest tech of all-- tools one. ( rocks clicking ) Mm-hmm... Ah, there, I got a nice piece there. Man: I think we have natural. Oh, now I have two. Here, you want to cut some? ( people laughing ) I'll go halves with you on that antelope. Well, how did I do with this? I think we're quite impressed with how you did with that. Very effective and, uh... removed a lot of flakes. Alda: So that must mean it must be innate, right? Alda: That's the idea we're exploring in this story: that our hands were designed for making stone tools-- that they were, in fact, designed by making stone tools. You've got quite a cutting edge here so you'd be quite competitive. So you can move up 100,000 years in evolution. ( chuckling ) Alda: Of course the hands of our ancestors got a great start. This is Tujo the orangutan, one of the stars of the Phoenix Zoo. Orangs and humans last shared a common ancestor about 12 million years ago. While we've both been evolving ever since Tujo's hands give us a glimpse of what ours may once have been-- extremely dexterous, but shaped by a life in the trees. Woman: You notice that he's carrying it in his foot. When they're moving around, they have two hands that they're moving on the branches with. the fruit with them And the onp is to carry it in the foot. And the feet act very much in coordination with the hands in manipulating foods. Alda: Tujo uses his feet not just to carry the grapefruit but to help eat it, too. And he needs at least both of his hands to help resist the pull of his teeth. Marzke: Possibly we would do that for a big piece of fruit but as it gets smaller we are able to get a good purchase on it by our thumb and fingers which adapt to the shape of the grapefruit. Alda: To Mary Marzke, this is an important clue as to what makes our hands different and far more capable. But before our hands could change they had to be free and that meant standing on our own two feet. Is that Lucy there? This is Lucy. This is actually a copy of her bones. Alda: Our most famous ancestor, Lucy lived about 3.2 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia. How do you know she was an adult? Well, we have her lower jaw. And we can see that the last molar tooth-- the so-called wisdom tooth-- is erupted and was being used for chewing. And we can actually see that because the tips of the little cusps on top of the teeth are polished and worn meaning that she was using them to chew. That's full adulthood. 3½ feet tall, however, which is, you know when down on the ground is not much bigger than a good-sized umbrella, you know when you put its tip on the ground. So she's very tiny. Her brain... Although we don't have too much of her skull, unfortunately what we do have suggests a bra Although we don't have not much bigger skull, And that really drives home one of the most important points about Lucy and that icontrast between her anatomy beneath the neck which is fully consistent with an upright, two-legged walking and the anatomy above the neck with a very primitive, apelike jaw and teeth and a very tiny brain. Alda: One of the below-the-neck features suggesting Lucy walked upright is her pelvis-- short and wide when compared to the pelvis of a chimp. Here we see, for example... Alda: Then there are the leg bones themselves. You can see, here's the hip and here is the knee. And there's a very pronounced angle as the thighbone runs from the hip joint to the knee with the knees being much closer together. Alan: Yeah, I can see that over here, too. Very obvious, very obvious in a human. And in a chimpanzee when it stands uprat's . The thighbone is more or less perpendicular to the ground. Alda: This combination of a tall pelvis and upright thighs gives chimps their characteristic waddle when they walk on two legs-- not an efficient way of getting around especially when you're in a hurry. But Lucy was probably quick on two legs and she had bipedalism's most useful spin-off-- genuine hands rather than modified feet. Is this Lucy's hand or one of her relatives'? This is a composite set of hand bones from Lucy's relatives-- beautifully preserved, very nice joint surfaces. And some of the interesting things are at the base of the index finger where there are three joint surfaces and these surfaces all are oriented in the way that they are in modern humans. And they are all different from the way they are oriented in chimpanzees. And the different orientation would have allowed a little bit of rotation of the index finger. "Rotation," meaning what? Rotation toward the thumb. And when you rotate the index finger toward the thumb this helps you to grasp. Alda: Lucy's ability to pick up and firmly grasp an object like a round stone opened up a whole new way of earning a living. Chimpanzees throw stones, but underhand and not very accurately. Lucy's ability to hurl a rock hard and on target brought her into a different league. Would Lucy have been able to pitch? She could have. She had the anatomy to do it. And if she had practiced she would have been able to pitch. She had a hand that could have grasped the ball and controlled it. And she had a pelvis that allowed for balance of the trunk on the hind limbs. So she could have used her trunk as leverage in pitching. As we watch these pitchers, they're rotating their trunk and then they're putting on the brake with their gluteus maximus muscle so that their arm accelerates in a whiplike way. And she had both of those features both in the hip region and in the hand. So it takes a lot of practice but she could have done it. Alda: Of course, Lucy's strikes weren't on batters but small game and they could have significantly increased her food supply. We're back in the lab again where Mary has assembled a team of experts to delve more deeply into the link between anatomy and the technological breakthroughs that set our ancestors apart from everything that had lived before. Ouch. Alda: Dr. Ronald Linscheid is a retired hand surgeon. Nick Toth is an archaeologist. The needles in Nick's arm and hand are implanting thin wire electrodes into his muscles to measure how vigorously they contract. Linscheid: You're going to feel a little stick right about there. May have felt that hit the bone a little bit. Alda: Nick will also be wearing the cyberglove I was modeling earlier. And you'll understand now why my participation in the experiment ended right there. Marzke: All right, Nick, imagine there's an animal there and thatt. Alda: Mary's purpose in organizing this little party is to closely monitor the hand and its muscles then his wife, Kathy Schick , start behaving like Stone Agers. Our ancestors from the time of Lucy-- 3. 2 million years ago-- may have been hot on the mound. But they would have had problems at the plate. Here's a chimpanzee letting off steam with a stick. He's swinging it with great determination but his grip is quite different from that used by a baseball batter. Our old friend Tujo the orangutan uses the same grasp as the chimp with all four fingers curled into his palm. Neither modern orangs nor chimps or, it turns out, even Lucy can do what we can do-- rotate our little finger across the palm to touch the thumb. Marzke: Thxe advantage of having this rotation can be seen óp when you hold something cylindrical, like this bone where you grasp things in a trough, across the palm with the little finger and the thumb strongly opposed. And this allows you to bring the tool down in line with your arm. That's interesting. I was taught in tennis to squeeze these last two fingers as I hit the ball and that gives control. Yes, yes. And that's what they were able to do when they shifted over to this kind of a finger. Yes. Alda: It was a shift that didn't take place for a few hundred thousand years after Lucy's time. But when it did our ancestors would certainly have made the most of it. After stunning, say, an antelope with a well-aimed stone the tennis racquet grip would have made finishing it off much easier. Of course, not everything was easy to kill. So what did it take-- about a million years-- for people to find out you couldn't kill a pillow? ( people laughing ) Alda: But look at this: As Steve Shakley takes his turn with the glove and the electrodes while making a stone tool you can see he's relying on the flexibility of his hand to manipulate and grip the stone he's hitting. There's so much attention paid to the opposable thumb. But the opposable pinkie-- it turns out to be really valuable. I mean, if I hit this stone without that little finger giving me pressure this stone would just come right out of my hand, right? I can really manipulate it and keep it right where I need it with strength. Alda: So while Lucy could have gripped the hammer stone like a baseball only her descendants could have cradled the stone being struck firmly enough to have fashioned it into something useful. ÷ñ Mary Marzke plans to use the data she's getting from her volunteer Stone Agers to help her interpret the fossil bones that are all that remain of our ancestors. Kathy Schick, meanwhile, has rediscovered the one inescapable consequence of making stone tools. So, what have you left yourself with here? Tourniquet. ( laughing ) You don't want to see this. Oh, God! You know, this is heroic what you're doing for science. In all the years we've been doing this show I've never seen people bleed for science like this. It's only a flesh wound. Alda: From the time our still nonhuman ancestors started making stone tools 2½ million years ago until just a few thousand years ago this is how we fashioned the tools and weapons we used gradually to dominate our planet. With grips we use today to hold a bat and ball our hands helped make us human. Alan: I get the impression from talking to both of you that we can do amazing things with our hands now because of what these... these people did a couple of million years ago with stones. We can work the keys of a computer. But I also get the impression that the very invention of a computer-- the way we use our minds to come up with a computer-- is, in a way, an outgrowth of this stone work. Very much so. Trace that for me a little bit. You may not be able to document every step along the way but what's your thinking on that? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with we as humans' ability... And I think that really separates us much from the animal world-- ability to look into the future to build something today that will make our lives easier tomorrow. Now, some might argue that computers don't necessarily do that-- they make our lives more complicated. But I think in general that's why computers were invented was to make our lives easier in the future easier to get through the day. And stone tools were no different. And somebody 2. 5 million years ago must have discovered and thought and invented this piece, this flake to make his or her life easier in the future. Alda: Evolution may have created

				Finding Her Voice Technological innovations help a young woman with cerebral palsy speak to her family and friends, and live out her dream of writing.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: Our final story is about a young vwoman who, like Kelly Flynn has always wanted to speak. In her case, it was cerebral palsy that robbed her of a voice of her own. But as we've seen as we've followed Kara Johansen over the years her inability to speak hasn't stopped her from talking. (Kara chuckling) WOMAN: I-L-O-O-K... ALDA: I first met Kara when she was 12. Her mother, Pam, spoke aloud what Kara had to say by reading the letters Kara looked at on a plastic alphabet board. PAM: A-N-D and K and S-0. "And someone... someone says it." ALDA: I appreciated Pam Johansen's skill at translating for Kara even better when I tried it myself. Right in the middle here, should I be able to do it? What was the play about? S... E... W. No? Uh, X, "Sex?" No. (both laughing) Well, it's the letter I saw. (laughing) ALDA: Kara's family and close friends were almost as skilled as Pam Johansen at using the board. The communication it allowed was central to the bond that exists between Kara and her sister, Melinda. G-R... MELINDA: Kara and I are really close and we have been that way ever since she was little. And a lot of times people categorize her-- she can't do this, she can't go on a roller coaster she can't go off a diving board-- and that's never been a barrier between us because she has done all of that and that's what keeps us together most of the time because we have overcome so much together. I don't want to do this! ALDA: But when Kara was 14, Melinda started boarding school and sisterly chats became much more difficult. It's hard for us to communicate. It has to be over a phone and there needs to be a person communicating with Kara just to be able to tell me what she's saying. If there was a way that I could talk to her directly it would be perfect. ALDA: No one better appreciated Kara's need to talk directly than the person who had always been her principal voice her mother. PAM: Kara loves Melly and Melly loves Kara. And Kara would love toprivately talk with her sister without any other person there, without an adult without a mother there to censor what was being said. She just loved to communicate with Melly on her own very privately and talk their secret stuff that they have to share. Yes. (giggles) WOMAN: Okay, just keep it back. ALDA: In 1994, an attempt was made to give Kara a voice of her own by fitting her with a device that would track the gaze of her eyes. But Kara made no secret of her opinion of its practicality. PAM: "It's..." O, O, "It's too..." B-U-L-K... "It's too bulky"? ALDA: But the eye tracker did allow the researchers at Boston's Children's Hospital to confirm that Kara's gaze was steady enough to control some sort of communication device. PAM: It's sliding down over her eyes. ALDA: Over the spring and summer of 1994 Kara and Pam Johansen made many visits to Children's. Work on the new system was going slowly. And Pam Johansen was acutely aware that Kara's need for independent communication was becoming more urgent. Got that wish down? Okay, make a third wish. ALDA: Pam Johansen had begun to lose her own battle with cancer. She died in October 1994. WOMAN: You want me to leave it in like that? ALDA: A few months later, a new system was ready to be tested. This time a custom-fitted helmet held Kara's head still while the eye-tracking system was mounted separately. From it, an infrared beam shone at her eye. The eye was tracked by two cross hairs. One of the cross hairs centered on the reflection of the infrared beam. The other cross hair centered on the pupil itself. By comparing the position of the two cross hairs a computer could tell precisely where her eye was pointed. The system was calibrated by having Kara look at numbered squares on a screen. When her eye fixed on a square, it lit up. The plan was to replace the numbered squares with letters of the alphabet so she could spell out words that could be spoken aloud by a voice synthesizer. MAN: If you don't think it's right there just look around that area until it highlights. ALDA: Or, so that she could trigger pre-recorded phrases. MAN: That's great, Kara. MECHANICAL VOICE: It's great to see you again. Hey, what a nice reception! Hiya, Kara. It's great to seeyouagain, too. ALDA: Kara had prepared several phrases in anticipation of my visit including a reminder of the first time we met. MECHANICAL VOICE: I haven't done any more plays about sex. (laughing) ALDA: Have you been spending a lot of time trying to get this machine to work right? MECHANICAL VOICE: Yes. Would it be okay if I try this? MECHANICAL VOICE: Yes. ALDA: I got to try out the test version of what was intended to become an alphabet board like the one her mother taught her to use. But this one would be linked to a word processor that would allow her to write, as well as a voice synthesizer that could read aloud what she had written. MECHANICAL VOICE: Hello, Dr. Watson. ALDA: In January 1995 almost a year after the work on the eye-tracking system began Melinda Johansen, away at her boarding school in Maine received a telephone call from her sister. (telephone ringing) Hello? MELINDA: Hello? MECHANICAL VOICE: Hi, Melly, it's Kara. Hi, Kara. I'm using the I-Scan computer system for this phone conversation. That's good. Do you like it? Yes. Did you have fun in school today? No. Why not, because it was a Friday and you had to go? (laughs) When you played basketball, did you win? Of course not, we never win. I scored eight points. And the other eight points, I assisted. Kara, how is school going? Good, but very stressful. Excited about coming up next weekend? Yes. Good, I'm really excited about you coming up, too. Okay, kiddo, I got to go... ALDA: This was the first time Melinda and Kara had ever talked by phone without someone else, usually her mother, speaking for Kara. ...When you come up, okay? ALDA: Of course, this conversation was hardly private or spontaneous but in spelling out her final message Kara was taking the first step toward the independent voice her mother had so wished for her. I love you, Melly. I love you. Bye-bye. (laughs with delight) ALDA: By the summer of 2001 both Kara's and Melinda's lives had changed. Melinda is now married and a teacher. Kara lives at the Massachusetts Hospital School on weekdays and with Melinda and her husband on weekends. And a few days ago Kara got a new communication system to try out. Kara, hi, how are you? MECHANICAL VOICE: Hi, Hawkeye. How you do... (laughs) It's great to see you. What's up? I'm sorry, would you say that again? ALDA: This device no longer tries to track her gaze. What's up? (laughs) ALDA: Instead it allows her to use her head. Now this little dot you have on your forehead this thing is reading where you look, huh? ALDA: Mounted on top of her computer is a camera that tracks the dot on her forehead and uses this information to control the position of the cursor on the screen. It's almost like watching a mouse cursor but your head is the mouse. (computer clicking) Yes. Right. When we first talked you were interested in writing. Have you been writing? ALDA: The system is far simpler than the one Kara first found her voice with six years ago. And it's commercially available-- no longer a cumbersome experimental device. I still am very interested. Do you have to work hard all the time on... on communicating learning different ways to communicate? Does it seem like hard work to you or is it part of your life and you just take it in stride? (computer clicking) Just do it, and it's hard; but I just remember how my mother told me never give up. Boy, that's terrific. That's really terrific. You know, there's nothing you can't do. That's what my mother told me and it got me in a lot of trouble because I believed it. The funny thing is... you really can do probably anything you want to do. I mean, you have this ability to stick to it like this. And you take so much pleasure out of life. That's the secret, I think. ALDA: With her sister Melinda still at her side and with the help of enthusiastic volunteers and a dedicated staff at her school Kara daily demonstrates the spirit and determination of all the kids we've seen in this program who are growing up different. Come visit us at PBS Online.