INDIANAPOLIS -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. indicated Friday he is feeling a little better as he battles balance issues and nausea believed to be from concussions.Earnhardt, who has been working with doctors for the past 10 days, will miss his second consecutive race this weekend.Today is the 1st day in many that I sensed improvement, Earnhardt tweeted Friday morning. Seen small gains during my physical therapy as well. Light at the end of the tunnel.Earnhardt, 41, initially thought his symptoms were from a sinus infection or allergies. Having been in wrecks June 12 at Michigan and July 2 at Daytona -- as well as having missed two races in 2012 after suffering two concussions in a span of six weeks -- spurred Earnhardt to see a neurologist last week.The tweet from Earnhardt, who visited the shop Wednesday, was encouraging for team owner Rick Hendrick.I want him to be healthy and right when he gets in the car and the doctors are going to dictate that, Hendrick said. The news has been really good. The tweet this morning was really good. He looks good. Hes sharp.Im excited about getting him back, but Ive tried to leave him alone. ... He misses this. He misses his team. He came to see his team [Wednesday]. He saw the guys and it really lifted them.Earnhardt was replaced by one his Xfinity Series drivers, Alex Bowman, last week at New Hampshire and will be replaced by four-time Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon this weekend at Indianapolis and next week at Pocono. There is no timetable for Earnhardts return.They can give me a lot of exercises that retrain my brain to handle what I need to handle -- its just going to take a lot of patience, Earnhardt said Monday on his The Dale Jr. Download podcast. I take my health and quality of life as a top priority. ... I am going to take this slow and strictly take the advice of my doctors.On the podcast, Earnhardt said his ImPACT test -- a test that measures cognitive function such as memory and reaction time -- matched a previously taken test that is used as a baseline to determine effects of a concussion. Earnhardt is seeing doctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Sports Medicine Concussion Program.Dr. Mark Lovell, who developed the ImPACT test and is the chief science officer of ImPACT applications, said it is encouraging that Earnhardts recent results have matched his baseline. Lovell is not treating Earnhardt.You can have other symptoms of concussion that are not specifically cognitive -- not related to memory -- [so] we dont just look at the cognitive scores, Lovell said. We look at, is their balance OK? Do they have headaches? Do they have other signs or symptoms that arent purely of the cognitive variety?Lovell said an athlete typically would undergo an exertion test to determine if the balance and nausea symptoms return. He said when he was treating athletes, he would want to see someone undergo the exertion test for a few days without symptoms.The brain undergoes a physiological change, Lovell said. So there are actual chemical changes that take place. You want that process to settle down before somebody goes back in to [avoid] risk of another injury.By doing the exertional exercises, youre basically stressing the system. Its kind of like a stress test for the brain ... to make sure they are OK before they go back in.Lovell added that there is no expected timetable for an athlete to recover.The brain is complicated, Lovell said. Its not like any other injury. Its complicated by the fact that it can look differently in different people. ... 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The nimble-footed quarterback got his wish, dashing through the snow and a weary defence all the way into the NCAA record book. Los Angeles Lakers Shirts . LOUIS -- Roman Polak was celebrating even before Alexander Steen scored the winning goal in Saturdays 4-2 win over the Carolina Hurricanes. On the first two days in Brisbane, Pakistan watched Australia pile up runs, then suffered a pile-up of their own. The road of a pitch was safe enough during the daylight hours, oncoming traffic easy to see. But as dusk and then evening arrived and the pink ball swung under lights, carnage ensued. Pakistans batsmen crashed and burned on Sunset Boulevard.So, when the third evening arrived and Australia declared at the dinner break, nobody knew quite what to expect. Could the match be over tonight? Would Younis Khan, the ageing star of yesteryear, be ready for his close-up? Or were there genuinely starring roles still in his future? By stumps he had at least completed an entertaining cameo, with more to come.To look at the scorecard from the final session of play would tell you nothing of the gripping contest that it was. Pakistan batted for two-and-a-half hours and made 2 for 70. One-sixth of their runs came in a single over, the antepenultimate of the evening, as Jackson Bird served up three half-volleys that Azhar Ali dispatched through cover for boundaries.The rest of the session was a good old-fashioned Test battle, insofar as pink-ball Test cricket under lights can be called old-fashioned. Standard & Poors rates Australias economy AAA with a negative outlook; here Australian crickets economy earned a AAA rating with a positive outlook. They will win this Test, it is just a matter of when.There were more dots than in a dictionary of Morse code. Josh Hazlewood bowled 66 deliveries from which only three runs were scored: a pair of singles from Azhar and a three driven past mid-on by Babar Azam. Among the big crowd of 20,915 would have been countless children - it wasnt a school night - raised on the BBL. There, dot balls are cheered, so they must have loved the 166 Australia bowled tonight.Australias discipline was hard to fault, but Pakistans too was a great improvement from the second evening. Sami Aslams concentration was impeccable, until a piece of rubbish flew across the ground at the Vulture Street End, right behind Mitchell Starc, who was steaming in to bowl. Perhaps it snapped Aslams focus, maybe he should have pulled out. Instead, he drove outside off and edged to slip.But if garbage flew across the outfield, none was delivered by Australias bowlers. They built and built and built the pressure, and Aslams lapse came during a string of six consecutive maidens. Would it spark the kind of chaos that came the previous evening, when Pakistan lost 8 for 61 in 30 overs? Not this time. Azhar will just sleep on that pitch, Waqar Younis said while commentating on radio, and indeed a few fans might have done so in the crowd while watching him bat. Only two months ago, Azhar batted for nearly 11 hours in a Test innings against West Indies in Dubai, also against a pink ball, and scored a triple-century. Had Misbah-ul-Haq not declared he would probably still be batting.dddddddddddd.So it was that Azhar learnt from his first-innings error of poking half-heartedly outside off. On the rare occasion when his concentration waned in the second innings - as when he pushed at a Hazlewood delivery that whizzed past the edge - he visibly chastised himself. Otherwise, Azhar bedded down for the night.If his lack of strokeplay allowed the crowds attention to wander, Nathan Lyon snapped them back out of it. Such has been the adoration of the Brisbane crowd for Lyon this Test that youd think he was a born-and-bred maroon, not a cockroach from south of the border. Why? Perhaps his underdog status played a part, for Lyon was perilously close to being dropped for this Test.At stumps Usman Khawaja, the Queensland captain, joked that Lyon had become Queenslands favourite son. So you can imagine the roars when Lyon struck, and Babar Azam edged his straight ball to slip. Adelaide Oval is Lyons most productive Test venue, but the Gabba might quickly have become his favourite.Perhaps the only man happy to see Babar fall to Lyon might have been Younis, for it meant that he walked to the crease on a king pair facing a spinner, not a fast bowler. Last time Australia saw Younis in Tests he scored 106, 103*, 213 and 46 against them in the UAE in 2014. By stumps here he had 0 from 19 balls, but it was every bit as riveting as any of those hundreds.Younis faced up to Lyon with two leg slips, short leg, and one slip. Australia tried to apply pressure, but Younis can handle offspinners in his sleep. When he faced Hazlewood the battle truly began. A bouncer was fended away in front of his eyes, a yorker kept out by a bat slammed on the pitch. Every ball seemed to pose a threat.Younis has nearly 10,000 Test runs, but here was battling for survival as had the rookie Nic Maddinson earlier in the day. Never in 113 Tests has Younis scored a pair, but the run he sought did not come tonight. And yet he survived. Hazlewood had 15 deliveries at Younis: every one was a dot, and with every one Hazlewoods frustration grew.It was rousing Test cricket, and both teams should have been proud of their work in that final session. Australias bowlers offered nothing, until Birds half-volleys. Pakistans batsmen learnt from their errors and focused on getting through the night, much as Khawaja and Matt Renshaw had for Australia during a challenging floodlit session in Adelaide.On the third evening, Pakistan crawled along Sunset Boulevard. There were a couple of fender benders but no major accidents, and certainly no speeding fines. A long two-day journey awaits if they are to avoid defeat in this Test, and many obstacles will be in their path. But for now, at least they reached their waypoint. ' ' '