THE CALIFORNIA AGGIE
VOLUME 133, ISSUE 15 | THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2014
SERVING THE UC DAVIS CAMPUS AND COMMUNITY SINCE 1915
CLASS
O R IGIN
Brain injuries ignite discussion of head trauma protocol Concussions, brain damage impact athletic community
KENNETH LING & VIC ANDERSON
sports@theaggie.org fr eshman
60,496
o u t - o f s tat e
t r an sf e r
203
14,413
i n t e r n at i o n a l
9,413
ca resident
46,757
c a re sid e n t
11,843
in t e rn at i o n a l
2,367
ou t -of stat e
2014 Fall UndergraduateICIT Y E T HN
203
UC Davis undergraduate applications continue to rise A P P L I C AT I O N S I N C R E A S E F O R 1 0 TH C O N S E C U T I V E Y E A R JASON PHAM campus@theaggie.org
According to the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), UC Davis received a total of 74,909 undergraduate applications for Fall Quarter 2014. Of the 74,909, freshman applications accounted for 60,496, while transfer applications accounted for 14,413. UC Davis experienced a 7.6 percent increase in total applications from 2013. admissions on 15
a fr i c a n a m e r i c a ns
4.8% asian american
unknown
c au c a s i a n
american indians
c h i c a n o l at i n o
pa c i fi c i s l a n d e r
38.7%
26.7% 25.6
3%
0.7%
0.4%
BEST’S STORY
Imagine running into a wall at full speed. Now imagine doing that 30 more times. Welcome to a week in the life of a typical running back like former Cal player Jahvid Best. While that doesn’t sound like fun, Best’s story gets worse. In a Sept. 5, 2009 game against the Maryland Terrapins, Best took a pass and tried to do what he did best: blaze past defenders with his incredible speed. However, Terrapin player Kevin Barnes had a different idea. The 190 lb. defensive back launched himself at Best, hitting him so hard that Best was sent flying. When Best landed, he rolled over and vomited on the field. Best, being the competitor that he is, still had the desire to play football after his injury. However, luck was clearly not on his side. Only a few weeks later, in a game against Arizona State, Best, in an attempt to get into the endzone, flung his body toward the goal line. Unfortunately for him, he collided with an opposing defender. The contact sent Best sprawling into the air, high above the other players, until he finally landed on the back of his head. Right on impact, Best’s helmet flew off of his head and he looked to be in agony. Thirteen minutes later, Best was strapped onto a cart en route to the Highland General Hospital in Oakland, brain on 17
UC Davis students plan mission to Mars Eclipse Rocketry enters international mission design competition NICK FREDERICI features@theaggie.org
A popular inspirational phrase suggests people “shoot for the moon,” but that’s not far enough for Eclipse Rocketry.This interdisciplinary group of UC Davis students has taken on the challenge of making possible a manned mission to Mars. Ben Holmquist, a fourth-year mechanical and aerospace engineering major, captains a team of over 20 members of various majors and ages, all with at least one thing in common: their interest in space and rocketry. This interest has inspired each of the members to come together in pursuit of designing a mission plan to send human beings on a trip around Mars for the first time. Holmquist said that this is part of an international competition put on by a foundation called Inspiration Mars. “They’re one of the few private foundations that is trying to raise funding and create a mission design for a private manned mission to Mars,” Holmquist said. The foundation’s goal is to raise money and design a plan to send a pair of humans to fly by Mars in a 501-day mission in early 2018, an important time period for the probability of a successful mission. “It’s all about alignment of the planets really. In 2018, it’s the absolute ideal alignment for this kind of mission. It’s the shortest way you can go to Mars and back,”
Holmquist said. The time limit is a major factor in the planning process, which is why the team only has until March 2014 to write a 50page comprehensive mission plan and submit it for judging. But for this fairly new team at UC Davis, the time crunch is nothing new. “Last year we participated in the NASA USLI competition, which is the University Student Launch Initiative, where university teams across the nation go to Huntsville, Alabama, [where] everyone basically designs, fabricates and flies a high-powered rocket. It’s all built and designed from the ground up. It was a really rushed time schedule because the club kind of came about halfway through the project,” Holmquist said. According to Alejandro Pensado, a thirdyear mechanical and aerospace engineering major and vice president of Eclipse Rocketry, the team had a short time to come together and finish their rocket for their first competition, but impressively managed to pull it off. “Getting there in itself was a victory. The way the project was organized was to mimic NASA’s business plan. It starts with a proposal, your idea gets picked up and then you have a series of reports you have to do to make sure your design is going to be safe, it’s going to work, you’re sticking with schedule, cost and so forth. Every
M IS H A V ELA S QUEZ / AGGIE
Eclipse Rocketry, led by fourth-year mechanical and aerospace engineering major Ben Holmquist (back row, top left), is participating in an international competition to design a manned mission to Mars.
time you do that you give a presentation to some NASA engineers, then you get approved and you move on to the next phase. So there are teams that don’t pass those phases,” Pensado said. But Eclipse Rocketry did pass, and they successfully launched their rocket in the competition. The team chose not to gear
up for another USLI competition when Inspiration Mars’ mission plan arose as an opportunity. Their ability to work well together under pressure and time constraints has paid off in big ways with their current competition. mars on 13