Daily Brief: 2006 Sept 01: Sports & Science Friday

Live Science: 100 Years Ago: Football’s First Forward Pass

They called it the “projectile pass” back then.

On Sept. 5, 1906, Saint Louis University’s Bradbury Robinson tossed a pigskin to teammate Jack Schneider. It was a remarkably creative play for the era, one that ultimately became known as the forward pass.

The game was scoreless. According to SLU archives, head coach Eddie Cochems was frustrated with the team’s inability to move the ball. For weeks, they had been secretly practicing this new art of tossing the ball forward from a starting position behind the ear.

And so the football’s first air attack began.

And it started as you might expect, with an incompletion. Under the rules then, the ball was turned over to the opponent, Carroll College.

Live Science: Anger and Hostility May Damage Your Lungs

Researchers studied 670 men age 45 to 86. Initially, they gauged anger and hostility, ranking each man on a scale of 7 to 37. Then they measured lung function—how much air could be blown out in one second—on three separate occasions over an average of eight years.

Lung function was “significantly poorer” at the outset among those deemed more angry and hostile, and it got worse with these men at each examination. The findings held up after controlling for other factors, such as smoking and education, the researchers reported yesterday in the online version of the journal Thorax.

Naturally, in a study from last year:

Anger is good for you, as long as you keep it below a boil, according to new psychology research based on face reading.

New York Times: Greece Shocks U.S. Basketball Team

Fed up with its recent failures, USA Basketball assembled a new program with a new plan and a new coach in Mike Krzyzewski.

The end result was all too familiar.

Greece used a sizzling stretch of shooting across the middle two quarters to turn a 12-point deficit into a 14-point lead, and beat the Americans 101-95 Friday in the semifinals of the world championships.

”To lose any game is a shock to us,” U.S. star Carmelo Anthony said. ”We came in with the mentality to win the game and the gold medal.”

ESPN: Andre Agassi Still Likes To Win

Agassi was not supposed to have a chance against No. 8 seed Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus. This second-round U.S. Open match was supposed to provide the perfect stage for the graying ghost of tennis’ past to yield to the flesh-and-blood of tennis’ future. The tribute speeches had been delivered and folded back into pockets. Glasses were figuratively raised for the final toast.

Seth Wenig/AP Photo Although he went the distance, Agassi improved to 59-0 at the U.S. Open when winning the first two sets.

But Agassi opted to make the evening a competition rather than a ceremonial transition. He prevailed over Baghdatis in a 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 5-7, 7-5 thriller that surely will take over No. 1 on the list of Rain Delay Replays.

NASA: NASA Chooses Lockheed Martin To Build Orion

NASA chose the prime contractor Thursday for Orion, the shuttle successor that will return astronauts to the Moon.

On Thursday, NASA tapped Lockheed Martin to build its capsule-based Orion vehicle, seen here with circular solar arrays deployed in an artist’s interpretation of a flight to the International Space Station (ISS). Lockheed beat out the joint team of Northrop Grumman and Boeing in the Orion competition.

Like NASA’s current space shuttles, Orion vehicles are expected to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS, but are the core spacecraft for the agency’s Moon goals. The crew capsule will carry four-astronaut teams to launch toward the Moon. A secondary cargo or lunar lander carrier rocket will launch separately for Orion crews to dock with before leaving low-Earth orbit.

And college football kicks into full swing this weekend: Schedule.

In Other News…

Business Week: Nightmare Mortgages

For cash-strapped homeowners, it was a pitch they couldn’t refuse: Refinance your mortgage at a bargain rate and cut your payments in half. New home buyers, stretching to afford something in a super-heated market, didn’t even need to produce documentation, much less a downpayment.

Those who took the bait are in for a nasty surprise. While many Americans have started to worry about falling home prices, borrowers who jumped into so-called option ARM loans have another, more urgent problem: payments that are about to skyrocket.

The option adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) might be the riskiest and most complicated home loan product ever created. With its temptingly low minimum payments, the option ARM brought a whole new group of buyers into the housing market, extending the boom longer than it could have otherwise lasted, especially in the hottest markets. Suddenly, almost anyone could afford a home — or so they thought. The option ARM’s low payments are only temporary. And the less a borrower chooses to pay now, the more is tacked onto the balance.

Quick and the ED: Colleges Giving Even More Financial Aid to Wealthy Students

From 1999 to 2003, private colleges increased the average aid to students from families making less than $20,000 per year from $4,027 to $5,240, an increase of $1,213, or 30%.

During the same time period, private colleges increased the average aid to students from families making more than $100,000 per year from $3,321 to $4,806, an increase of $1,485, or 45%.