This new column features short items about sport research in progress or in print, highlights of recent or upcoming conferences, hot topics on mailing lists, and anything else of interest to the sport-science community.
Content can range from ground-breaking or gossipy.
Items will be edited and bounced back to you for approval. The Ferret was nosing around the gym recently and overheard a couple of well-cut guys enthusing about a new craze called cyclical ketogenic dieting. On the principle that sport scientists can sometimes trail the field in performance enhancement, The Ferret asked Lyle McDonald, who is writing a book on the subject, to argue the case for these diets. The word ketogenic refers to the fact that your liver makes ketones from fat as an alternative source of fuel, when you run short of carbohydrate. In the past few years, there has been a renewed interest in low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diets.