NFL players will wear RFID chips this season to track their movements – The sensors will collect on-field location data for deeper stats

Surprisingly the Cowboys’ stadium isn’t going to be part of this program.

This year’s football season is set to begin in September, and for the first time 17 National Football League stadiums will employ radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to better track how players move on the field during games. The league has partnered with Zebra Technologies to use its quarter-sized RFID sensors inside the shoulder pads of players. These sensors will track not just where players are on the field, but also how fast they get going, and what their acceleration was like on the way there — all in real-time.

All this information could show up as part of information shown on TV or in stadiums during games, and on second-screen game apps. Imagine something like the lines TV sportscasters draw on the screen to track a receiver’s route, but done using the tags instead. The NFL also plans to hand the data over to teams so that they can analyze it, but not initially. USA Today notes that the league plans to do some testing on the data it’s gathered before making it available to teams, and that all NFL players agreed to wear sensors as part of their collective-bargaining agreement in 2011.

The first set of stadiums that are a part of the program include Atlanta, Baltimore, Caroline, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Detroit, Green Bay, Houston, Jacksonville, Miami, New England, New Orleans, Oakland, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Washington. Some, including San Francisco and Detroit, used the technology as part of a live test last season, as did the University of Washington’s football team. In its current iteration, the technology is accurate up to 6 inches, which means it can’t be used by officials to help measure plays. However, next year’s model will be able to measure things like heart rate, temperature, and even lung capacity.

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Pope Francis issues top 10 tips for happiness – including don’t try to convert other people

1. “Live and let live.” Everyone should be guided by this principle, he said, which has a similar expression in Rome with the saying, “Move forward and let others do the same.”

2. “Be giving of yourself to others.” People need to be open and generous toward others, he said, because “if you withdraw into yourself, you run the risk of becoming egocentric. And stagnant water becomes putrid.”

3. “Proceed calmly” in life. The pope, who used to teach high school literature, used an image from an Argentine novel by Ricardo Guiraldes, in which the protagonist — gaucho Don Segundo Sombra — looks back on how he lived his life.

4. A healthy sense of leisure. The Pope said “consumerism has brought us anxiety”, and told parents to set aside time to play with their children and turn of the TV when they sit down to eat.

5. Sundays should be holidays. Workers should have Sundays off because “Sunday is for family,” he said.

6. Find innovative ways to create dignified jobs for young people. “We need to be creative with young people. If they have no opportunities they will get into drugs” and be more vulnerable to suicide, he said.

7. Respect and take care of nature. Environmental degradation “is one of the biggest challenges we have,” he said. “I think a question that we’re not asking ourselves is: ‘Isn’t humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature?’”

8. Stop being negative. “Needing to talk badly about others indicates low self-esteem. That means, ‘I feel so low that instead of picking myself up I have to cut others down,’” the Pope said. “Letting go of negative things quickly is healthy.”

9. Don’t proselytise; respect others’ beliefs. “We can inspire others through witness so that one grows together in communicating. But the worst thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyses: ‘I am talking with you in order to persuade you,’ No. Each person dialogues, starting with his and her own identity. The church grows by attraction, not proselytising,” the Pope said.

10. Work for peace. “We are living in a time of many wars,” he said, and “the call for peace must be shouted. Peace sometimes gives the impression of being quiet, but it is never quiet, peace is always proactive” and dynamic.

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