Horizon, Host: Ted Simons

June 27, 2011

Host: Ted Simons

Cause of the “Yips”

  |   Video
  • Dr. Charles Adler - Mayo Clinic
Category: Medical/Health   |   Keywords: yips, golf, health,

View Transcript
Ted Simons: They're notorious among golfers. They can ruin a perfectly good round with one little twitch. They're the yips, and they can really mess up your mind and your golf game. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have been looking into what causes the yips. Here to talk about the study is Dr. Charles Adler, a Mayo Clinic neurologist and researcher. Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Charles Adler: Thanks for having me.

Ted Simons: Lets defines terms here. What are the yips?

Dr. Charles Adler: Yips are people who putt or chip and get an involuntary movement. Usually they describe it as a twitch, a jerk or sometimes a tremor.

Ted Simons: You said putting and chipping. Some people think they have the yips was a driver, possible?

Dr. Charles Adler: I think possible, but traditionally, people talk about it mainly with putting and chipping.

Ted Simons: Ok. Yips, traditionally, it's another word for choking. Accurate?

Dr. Charles Adler: I think it's accurate in many golfers that performance anxiety and that's one of the cause of yips. Our research is geared at looking at whether everybody is more of a psychological or neurological type of yip. We believe there are a number of golfers who have a golfer's cramp, much like musician’s cramp or writer's cramp. It's a neurologic disorder.

Ted Simons: So it's not the kind of thing if you're walking down the street, your hand goes like this. Only when you're holding a putter and -- why then?

Dr. Charles Adler: If you saw someone whose hand shook.

Ted Simons: Yes.

Dr. Charles Adler: Just as they're sitting here then you wouldn't be surprised if their hand shook when golfing.

Ted Simons: Yes.

Dr. Charles Adler: The research we're doing, people, like you said, don't have a movement disorder when they're just walking around and it's just during that task. We call it a task-specific movement dystonia or a task specific movement disorder. Again, musician's cramp, people who play the violin and people who write, and only when they're writing, no other activity, typing, only when writing do they get a twitch or involuntary movement of their hand.

Ted Simons: That suggests overuse. Do you think do you understand the musician with the cramp and the writing so much your hand freezes up? Overuse here in terms of putting.

Dr. Charles Adler: There's a lot of discussion about it being due to overuse. Nobody has proven whether these task specific dystonias are truly due to overuse. It may be a genetic predisposition. And in the setting of overuse, that’s when they get it. And then we all write but don't all get writer's cramp. Many people play instruments and yet don't get a musician’s cramp. Same with golf.

Ted Simons: Talk to us about the study. What you did and how the research was conducted.

Dr. Charles Adler: We did a study where we took 10 people who complained of the yips and 10 who didn't. We had them in the lab at Mayo clinic and we studied hand movements and forearm movement. This study was done at ASU at the practice green at Carson golf course with my colleagues both in Mayo and in ASU and studied 25 golfers who complained of yips and 25 golfers who did not. And we videotaped them and had surface EMG, which is an electrical recording device to look at movements of the muscles and contraction of the muscles. And then had their wear a glove which measured joint position at the fingers as well at the wrist. It also measure the rotation at the wrist.

Ted Simons: Did you find that they gripped tighter, change throughout the putting stroke? I'm trying to get this neurological situation down here. Because again, some folks think the yips -- I actually read this once, where a putting instructor thought that with the yips - when you're taking the putter back, you're thinking you're aiming too far in one direction and your mind says compensate, compensate, compensate. And by doing that you start poking at it.

Dr. Charles Adler: I have read that as well and can't say it's incorrect. In the research, we've done, we've identified a number of individuals that have an excessive amount of rotation around the wrists. Some have co-contractions, so their wrist flexors and extensors contract at the same time. People who don't complain about yips mainly do not have that. We think there's a percentage of people, 10, 15, 20 percent, maybe higher that have a neurologic cause as opposed to a performance anxiety or choking cause as you described.

Ted Simons: And it seems as though you don't hear about young people having the yips. Always the older guys and complaining and they've got the belly putter because they just can't do it. If it's neurological, why don't we see more young folks out there with this?

Dr. Charles Adler: This was followed in line with all of these other sort of movement disorders. They occur as one ages. Think about tremor, think about Parkinson's disease, think about people who have writer's cramps and musician's cramps. Similar pattern usually occurs in their 40s and 50s and maybe 60 in terms of the onset. So same thing here.

Ted Simons: What kind of treatment are we talking about? I know it's early in the study and this of course is looking at golf. But as for the golf aspect, what do these folks do?

Dr. Charles Adler: The first -- first of all, the study was not a treatment study. We didn't actually look at any treatment modality. That's the point of what I hope will be the next study. The first treatment option as with the other type of cramp, change your grip. Use a longer putter. People say doesn't that prove it's not neurologic? And the answer is no. If you have a writer's cramp patient, we often change the size of their pen and how they grip the pen to get them to compensate. Various oral medications can be tried and depending on the patient, there are a couple of other options. Toxin injections used for writer's and musician's cramp and there's even surgical intervention with deep brain stimulation surgery. I'm not saying that should be used on golfers.

Ted Simons: That’s what I was going to say.

Dr. Charles Adler: There's one golfer who has had that. A professional golfer. That's something that would need a lot more study. But that's way down the line.

Ted Simons: Quickly, if someone has the yips, is that a concern, a health concern?

Dr. Charles Adler: I think the answer is no.

Ted Simons: Very good. Well, thank you. This is fascinating.

Dr. Charles Adler: Thanks for having me.

DPS Computer Hack

  |   Video
  • Ken Colburn, the CEO of Data Doctors, discusses the recent breach of the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s computer system.
  • Ken Colburn - CEO of Data Doctors
Category: Government   |   Keywords: computer, public safety,

View Transcript
Ted Simons: A computer hacking group that's targeted the CIA and the U.S. senate turned its attention to Arizona last week. Lulz security, or Lulzsec, claimed responsibility for hacking into and stealing files from the state department of public safety's computer system. Here to talk about all of this is Ken Colburn, CEO of valley-based data doctors. Ken, it's always a pleasure.

Ken Colburn: Good to see you, Ted.

Ted Simons: When they say they hacked into the computer system, that's not correct.

Ken Colburn: DPS actual computer systems were never breached. What happened was a handful of I think seven to eight actual email accounts that belonged to officers were compromised. So there's a huge difference between the whole system getting hacked and these guys having their emails exploited.

Ted Simons: When DPS says the larger computer, the larger system – that’s still safe? Lock, stock and barrel? That’s true?

Ken Colburn: That's true. Everything we've seen in the evidence - the forensic team went through the files to see – did it jive with what they were saying. And they're consistent with these being email attachments, primarily because each file's author, we can dig into the metadata to see who actually created the file. And it was a myriad of people unrelated to the people who got hacked, which is very consistent with you receiving emails attachments from others.

Ted Simons: Basically, talking about emails, this -- one of these, I didn't change my password enough? How did they get into these emails?

Ken Colburn: We don't know for sure. DPS might know, but they are obviously not yet discussing that. But one of things we saw was that the passwords were pretty weak and a weak password makes it real easy. We posted something on our facebook page to show you how easy it is to break into something with a weak password.

Ted Simons: What's a weak password?

Ken Colburn: Six characters, either all numbers or all letters. Takes about 10 minutes for the software that the hackers use to “guess”. There's the dictionary attack where they can just try every word in the dictionary. If you use those common mistakes, they'll get into your accounts so fast it's not funny.

Ted Simons: These were rural officers – kind of out in the sticks who may not had the latest up-to-date computer equipment as well. Did they target these people? Find these people?

Ken Colburn: They're making it look like S.B. 1070 was a cause and everything what's happened. They've shut down and so many things have happened. From the beginning, I have said it's a cause taken up because of a hack. So inadvertently came across information and look what we have here and then it took up the sick S.B. 1070 cause because if it was hack based on a cause -- now was that the cause that drove the hack? They wouldn't have gone after the rural officers. They would’ve literally gone after the DPS system and would have seen a treasure trove of information being released.

Ted Simons: How do you inadvertently come across like this?

Ken Colburn: The hacking community, the way they take advantage and make use of computers all over the world is that they create what are called BOTnets. These are robot computers and unfortunately a lot of people watching this, they're unwittingly participating in these BOTnets right now because they sell for a trick that allowed a piece of software to sneak into their computer. And this person can use it along with 10,000 other pieces of computers that have all been compromised and say, at 2:00 in the morning, attack the PBS website. And that's what happened when PBS.org was taken down. It's a denial of service attack. It's a complexity. They have to compromise a bunch of average Joe computers, and this is my hypothesis, they ran across one or two DPS agents’ computers and saw they were DPS agents and had these attachments and said, let's run with this.

Ted Simons: We keep hearing don't open attachments you're not familiar with and don't go to websites you're not familiar with. Because these things can infiltrate. If -- one of these officers simply open an attachment they shouldn't have or -- ?

Ken Colburn: It's quite likely, especially when you consider they're rural officers. I've contended that were probably compromised at home or on an unsecured computer they own or had access to. You think about the fact that email is so accessible and can be accessed from so many places. There's not enough time to talk about all the potential ways they were compromised. If they went into an internet café that has key login software, or if they clicked on a file that allowed something to get in or keeping their security software up to date, there's a million things that can take you anywhere you want by clicking on a link.

Ted Simons: One employee who can check their work email from home, that person slip up there, a house of cards comes down?

Ken Colburn: It's possible. Depending on the access level they have. In this case, based on the evidence, because all they have are email attachments, they didn't get any further than those email attachments. If they had, they could have had this huge database, they're releasing all kinds of information from our organizations much more damaging. Fortunately for DPS it was mostly benign email attachments and certainly disconcerting files but nothing dramatic like a true break-in.

Ted Simons: These things raise the question: How protected is sensitive government information, how protected is my sensitive information?
Ken Colburn: Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a 100% secure system. Other than the really high end, nobody knows about military grade networks we don't have access to. When it comes to the public internet, it's not very secure and it's -- it behooves all of those folks that run websites, you know, this is a wakeup call, anyone could be the next target. Despite the claims of being political and what have you, they're just anarchists and primary hack for the adulation of their friends and Lulz -- doing it for the fun. That's the name of that organization. Fortunately, they've closed up shop, but it's not over.

Ted Simons: How difficult is it to find suspects? Do they leave -- if someone is coming into your system, you would think someone would leave a trail. They don't leave trails?

Ken Colburn: Not at all. There's a number of different ways where you can't get into the technical aspects but the movies where you see they take over a computer and this computer takes that computer -- that's the way they can blend things. They're going to take advantage of the folks I'm talking about out there that are infected and used as a zombie, using those computers to do the hacking and damage. It's real easy to be anonymous on the internet if you know what you're doing, unfortunately.

Ted Simons: Last question: Are we more at frisk our own P.C.s or someone else we exchange email with or our work? I mean where is the greatest risk?

Ken Colburn: The biggest problem everybody watching this has is themselves. The human being is the biggest security risk. Because all it takes is one trick email, one thing, no matter how well you've protected yourself, if you fall for a trick. A common one was, Ted, I can't believe you got caught on video doing this. You get an email, oh, my goodness, and you are just clicking around, you're not thinking about security. You're thinking, I got to see this video. When you get there, you have to update your video player, and -- boom! You've let them in.

Ted Simons: If someone wants your banks account number or social security, because you have to do this or the other. Red flag.

Ken Colburn: And teenage household with high speed internet. Highest risk group out there. And if you're a parent of a teenager, better do your homework.

Ted Simons: Ken, good stuff, good to see you.

Ken Colburn: Thank you, Ted.

Supreme Court

  |   Video
  • Hear from a constitutional law expert on the recent ruling on the Clean Elections Law
Category: Law   |   Keywords: supreme court, elections,

View Transcript

Ted Simons: Good evening and welcome to "Horizon." I'm Ted Simons. The U.S. Supreme Court today struck down a key part of Arizona's Clean Elections law. That's the law that provides public funding to help candidates run for office. Here to talk about how the high court ruled is attorney Dan Barr, a constitutional expert from the Phoenix law firm of Perkins-Cooey. Thanks for joining us
Dan Barr: Thanks for having me.
Ted Simons: What did the court rule and why did they decide in that fashion?

Dan Barr: Well, the court ruled exactly what people thought it was going to rule from the oral arguments back in March. You had five justices led by the chief justice, holding that the matching funds provision of the Clean Elections law violated the first amendment. The court was looking at it from the perspective of a candidate who refuses or declines to participate in the Clean Elections Public money. And saying that those candidates are faced with sort of a Hobson’s choice, you reach a point where if you spend any more money on your campaign, that triggers matching funds from the state and by raising money for yourself, you're actually raising money for your opponent.

Ted Simons: And matching funds means if you and I are both running and you're private and I'm public, and I get to X. And what you spend beyond X. So what you spend beyond X I get? And the court said that's an infringement on your free speech rights?

Dan Barr: Infringement of free speech rights because I have the choice of if I spend the money then you get more money from the state up to a certain level, and I shouldn't be put to that choice. If I want to spend my own money on the campaign, I should be able to do that without fear that the state of Arizona is going to give you money and then allow you to run ads or do whatever that will harm my campaign.

Ted Simons: Basically says you would have to limit your free speech in order to not benefit my campaign?

Dan Barr: Exactly.

Ted Simons: Ok.

Dan Barr: Exactly.

Ted Simons: Is that -- is that -- does that make sense?

Dan Barr: Well, to the defense it doesn't make sense, Justice Kagan writing for the defense says wait, we're not forbidding anyone from saying anything. All that's happening are we have more speech. If someone wants to spend more money, great, but the publicly funded candidate will get to respond, get more speech. Chief Justice Roberts says, no, the state of Arizona is putting its thumb on the scale and the person who wants to speak more and spend his own money shouldn't be faced with the prospect of having then to combat other candidates. It's not just one candidate. The Supreme Court gives the example of what happened in the fourth district of Arizona. The fourth legislative district. Where you had one candidate running as a privately funded candidate against two -- two publicly funded where you get -- I forgot the term. The Multiplier Effect. In the multiplier effect - If I'm going to spend one dollar of my own money, the state is going to give one dollar to each of my opponents, therefore, increasing the opposition to me.

Ted Simons: If I get this correctly, what Justice Kagan was saying, this wasn't necessarily an infringement on free speech, its subsidizing speech and that's not the same as first amendment right or a first amendment damage, correct?

Dan Barr: Exactly. She went through a bunch of cases in the past where subsidizing speech is not a violation. You're actually promoting free speech.

Ted Simons: Independent Expenditure Groups were mentioned by Justice Roberts. Talk to us why Chief Justice Roberts said this would be a problem on speech rights on their accounts.

Dan Barr: Because the Independent Expenditure Group wants to, say, support your candidacy but put to a choice. If they say, I'm going to run an ad in favor of Ted Simons, then that will trigger the matching funds for candidates A and B who are running against him. So I have a choice. I can do that or instead of running an ad in favor of Ted Simons, I am going to run an ad supporting some position he's in favor of or I have a choice not to speak at all. And Chief Justice Roberts said when you're put to that choice that violates the first amendment. The independent expenditure group shouldn't be put to the choice of running an ad for Ted or for a cause he supports or not speaking at all.

Ted Simons: And there are limitations as well if the independent expenditure group doesn't want to donate to my ideas, whatever the situation is, that's limited. The matching funds to my opponent, those aren't limited?

Dan Barr: Correct.

Ted Simons:-- in how they're used?

Dan Barr: And chief justice Roberts also says, you know, if you're the beneficiary of an independent expenditure group, you may not want their help.

Ted Simons: Uh-huh.

Dan Barr: Ok. You may disagree with their views or view what they're doing is not assisting your campaign. The problem is with the matching funds, the state of Arizona would then give the amount the independent expenditure group to your opponent who could then use it directly for his benefit. So that goes, according to Chief Justice Robert's view, the benefit of your opponent and not you.

Ted Simons: I noticed in the dissent, Justice Kagan says it's a good and legitimate way to deal with the cancerous effect of corruption on campaigns and like Chief Justice Roberts said, maybe but that's not what we're dealing with. We're dealing with an infringement on free speech rights.

Dan Barr: And he addressed the rationales. Burdening a candidate's ability to spend his or her own money doesn't impact on corruption. If I spend my own money on my campaign, I'm not being corrupted by that.

Ted Simons: Uh-huh.

Dan Barr: He also noted that public financing does nothing to prevent politicians from taking bribes. Interesting, somebody commented today that many of the politicians caught up in the Fiesta Bowl scandal are publicly financed candidates.

Ted Simons: Mm.

Dan Barr: So Chief Justice Roberts was saying that the state hasn't really proven the matching funds help in combating public corruption.

Ted Simons: And according to Justice Kagan, and you mentioned this before we got on the air, did she refer to the Goldilocks rule?

Dan Barr: The system that the state of Arizona set up, the Goldilocks solution. That's when faced with public financing, you don't want to give too much to the candidate which would burden the state. And would be wasted money and you don't want to give too little because you don't have candidates participate. So the Goldilocks solution is where you're giving the just right amount. And Chief Justice Roberts said, the Goldilocks solution, whatever it is, can't be dependent on someone exercising their free speech rights.

Ted Simons: Last question: Obviously, Clean Elections survives the matching funds has been ruled unconstitutional and yet, if you and I are running and I'm a publicly funded candidate I can only go to X. You can go to X plus one. I can't go to X plus one at all.

Dan Barr: Or X plus 100.

Ted Simons: Yeah.

Dan Barr: Or X plus 1,000. So that's the current state of the law. You're going to get a lump sum from Clean Elections and you're stuck with that.

Ted Simons: What do you think as far as setting precedent for other laws, similar efforts around the country? Is this a biggy in terms of that?

Dan Barr: There are seven other states that have matching fund provisions like Arizona's and clearly they're laws are probably infirm now. But the future of public financing, the state is free -- public financing is that the state is free to give -- there's no Goldilocks solution. Going to have to figure out if the sum is adequate enough at the beginning of the campaign to make the candidate competitive.

Ted Simons: Dan, thanks for joining us.

Dan Barr: Thanks for having me.

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