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Science &Technology
wednesday, March 14, 2012
Youth football — not so innocent
Aggie Staff Writer
Of the 5 million Americans who play football in a given year, 3.5 million of them are children ages seven to 13. Despite this, little is known about the effects of the constant head-to-head impact players frequently incur during a typical game. But Stefan Duma, a biomedical engineering professor and researcher at Virginia Tech University, is beginning to shed light on this mystery. Duma discussed his recent research on concussions in young football players and his new ranking system for football helmets this past week, as part of the UC Davis biomedical engineering department’s Distinguished Seminar Series. As Duma explained, concussions are often a hidden injury. Unlike other injuries such as breaking an arm or tearing a muscle, a concussion will not always show outward symptoms, even though the damage inside can be very severe. Further, it’s not a type of injury that forces a player off the field like a broken arm does, and players never want to leave the game. “Nobody knows exactly what a concussion is. A hit that knocks one player down may cause another player to just shake off,” Duma said at his lecture last Thursday. “What we do know is the higher the acceleration of the impact, the more likely you are going to have a concussion.” Over the course of one season, the Virginia Tech football team,
the Hokies, wore helmets outfitted with impact sensors to measure the amount of forces sustained by players during head-to-head impact, both in practice and during games. Duma did the same analysis on youth football, children aged seven to eight years old, at a local football league near the university. He later expanded his study to multiple college football teams and high schools. Duma and the other researchers were surprised by the data they received. They found that many of the impacts that children endured were at the same level as those suffered by college players. This finding, as Duma explained, is very concerning, not only because that amount of impact is known clinically to cause concussions but also because the effect of this impact on developing brains is unknown. “It shows that concussions have been underreported. Based on this we want to better understand head impact in children and develop methods to better identify injuries,” said Steve Rowson, an assistant research professor at Virginia Tech and co-author of the study. The study also revealed that the majority of the high impacts were incurred during practice, rather than during the actual games. This finding could potentially cause coaches to rethink practice methods. “These kids are already in great shape. They don’t necessarily need to have constant head-to-head impact to get better,” Duma said. Based on this research, Duma and his team have come up with a five-
(DUI). Part of the problem with alcohol is that there is such a wide variation between people in how well it’s metabolized, and thus how Amy quickly they can get drunk Stewart and how quickly they will then recover. Body weight is usually a good indicator (it tends to take more alcohol for a heavy person to get drunk compared to a lighter weight person) but other factors include gender, other drugs that the person is taking and even how much any of us are gothey have eaten beforeing on trips to see hand. family and old The first skills to go friends for spring break. In when people get drunk are the process, many of you their reasoning, depth perwill probably be drinking ception and concentraalcohol. tion. This can happen af This column is going to ter about one to two drinks be half science, half pubwithin an hour for a 120 lic service announcement. pound individual (again, Knowing what happens to keeping in mind that I’m the body and brain when using very rough estimates; you consume alcohol can inform you when the drunk- the amount of alcohol to reach these points can vary enness has gone from having a good time to needing a widely). A BAC of 0.1 to 0.19 pertrip to the hospital. cent, which for a 120 pound The kind of alcohol that person is you drink between is more A person who has merely four and specifically called ethfallen asleep will wake up if six drinks in about an anol, also they have to vomit ... hour, ofcommonly ten results known as in slurred grain alcospeech, loss of motor conhol. There are many differtrol, slowed reflexes and ent types of alcohol, such temporary erectile dysfuncas wood alcohol (methation. A BAC of 0.2 to 0.29 nol), but most are not safe percent is when a person to drink. can have a memory black Alcoholic drinks can be out; 0.3 to 0.39 percent is very broadly classified by when people tend to comwhether they are fermentpletely lose consciousness. ed or distilled. When yeast At 0.4 percent and beyond, metabolizes some kind of the drinker is risking coma food source, ethanol is one or death. of the byproducts. Beers come from fermented cere- The most important al grains and other starches, thing to remember is that wines and ciders come from falling asleep is not the same thing as passing out. fermented fruit juices and meads come from ferment- A person who has merely fallen asleep will wake up ed honey. When fermented products are distilled (mak- if they have to vomit; a person who is unconscious will ing the ethanol more connot. If a friend has passed centrated), the result can out and doesn’t respond to be whiskey, brandy, rum or you lightly shaking them, vodka, depending on what refrain from drawing penisthe starting product was. So, you drink alcohol and es on their faces. Instead, turn them over onto their it goes down the esophaside so that they won’t ingus into the stomach. The hale any vomit. Next, call alcohol then goes into the an ambulance and tell bloodstream. How does them that your friend may that make you drunk, and have alcohol poisoning: how much alcohol does it other signs to watch for intake? The very simplified clude slow breathing (fewer answer is that if you drink alcohol faster than your liv- than eight breaths per minute), cold or clammy skin er can process it into other compounds, you will feel and confusion. the effects of drunkenness. Assuming no one has experienced alcohol poison Let’s slow down a bit. ing, you can wake up the Once ethanol is in the morning after a fun parbloodstream, it travels through the body and even- ty with the last souvenir — the dreaded hangover. tually reaches the brain. Hangovers are caused by a Exactly what it does in the combination of factors, inbrain is still not fully uncluding the byproducts of derstood, but in general it is considered a central ner- alcohol metabolism in the liver as well as dehydravous system depressant. tion. Most hangover “cures” Blood alcohol content don’t really work other than (BAC) is measured by the percentage of blood, by vol- through the placebo effect. ume, that is alcohol. For ex- Get some rest, drink plenty of fluids (especially if you ample, a BAC of 0.08 perwere vomiting the night becent means that 0.08 perfore) and lay off the booze cent of that person’s blood for a few nights. is alcohol. If someone is driving with that BAC, they will receive a citation for AMY STEWART can be reached at driving under the influence science@theaggie.org.
Drinking and you
Research shows impact of head injuries in professional and youth football alike By CLAIRE MALDARELLI
The california aggie
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Stegan Duma
courtesy
star ranking system for football helmets, which they believe are at the root of the problem. “Prior to this, helmets had never been ranked. They were either considered safe or unsafe,” Rowson said. Much like the five star ranking system in a car, this system tells how well a helmet will perform during a head on collision. Surprisingly, they found no correlation between cost and helmet performance. In fact, as Rowson noted, “one of the cheaper helmets was actually a four star helmet.” Duma and his researchers believe this new ranking system, paired with further research to understand how exactly these young players sustain their head injuries, will significantly improve the safety of football. CLAIRE MALDARELLI can be reached at science@ theaggie.org.
Sensing heat and pain Researchers uncover the details of under-appreciated sensations
Evan Davis / Aggie
Second year aerospace engineering major Otelo Contreraz feels the Sun’s heat on the Quad.
By HUDSON LOFCHIE Aggie Science Writer
Every time we go to sleep, our bodies turn off our senses of sight, sound and smell. However, there is another sense that always remains active, that is affected by almost no diseases and is more crucial to our survival than any other: pain. Without pain, we would never know when we were injured, which could be a potentially fatal oversight. Past research at UC San Francisco was focused on identifying the pain transmitters in humans. They experimented by injecting capsaicin, the compound in peppers that makes them spicy, into animals. What they found was that the pain receptors are also responsible for transmitting sensations of heat. UC Davis researchers are now further investigating that link. “These proteins work like the thermostat in your room,” said Jie Zheng, leader of the current research and an associate professor of physiology and membrane biology at the UC Davis School of Medicine. “Once temperature deviates slightly from where it should be, it sends a signal to the hypothalamus [the part of the brain that controls many automatic functions] to either produce more heat through metabolism or trigger heat dissipation through sweating.” What the researchers found is that there are six proteins responsible for transmitting temperature sensations. Some of those proteins sense increases in temperature and others sense drops in temperature. “Other proteins that sense cold also respond to menthol, giving us the cooling sensation,” Zheng said. “Vanilla and cinnamon give us a warm feeling because they activate other sensors. All of these [sensors] contribute to our body being able to maintain at 98.6 degrees.” Even though there are only six proteins responsible for temperature sensation, they can activate in many possi-
ble combinations. At a certain temperature, the proteins activate in a certain combination, sending a specific temperature sensation to the brain. “Each [combination] is activated at a different temperature,” said Fan Yang, a graduate student in physiology and membrane biology working with Zheng. Now that researchers understand how these sensations are transmitted, they are looking for ways to selectively interfere with the transmission of these signals to the brain. Unfortunately, there are severe side effects to inhibiting our heat and pain sensitivity. “These are the sensors that regulate body temperature,” Zheng said. “When we cut those out, we see extreme cases of hypothermia [extreme chilling] or hyperthermia [extreme overheating].” There are multiple genetic diseases that deteriorate our sight and hearing over time, but there is only one known genetic disorder that removes sensitivity to pain and heat. According to Zheng and Fang, that fact indicates that the heat and pain senses are fundamental necessities for human survival, and any disease affecting them has been removed over time through natural selection. Upon closer inspection, the researchers found that although heat and pain senses function the same at the cellular level, they function differently at the molecular level. This means that there is the potential to turn off either pain or heat. Medications could potentially alleviate pain in specific areas while maintaining other sensory functions or cut off the heat sensations in burn victims. “Understanding temperature is crucial to human life,” said Peter Cala, chair of the department of physiology at UC Davis. “[We are] looking at the sense in enough detail that will allow us to fully understand how it all works.” HUDSON LOFCHIE can be reached at science@theaggie.org.
Tech Tips
Quick bites on Apple’s new product
By ERIC C. LIPSKY Aggie Science Writer
It’s March, and that means that it’s Apple time. Just like with the iPad 2 last year, Apple has once again chosen March as the month to reveal its newest iPad version. Interestingly, Apple has not named the newest iteration, iPad 3; instead, it’s just being called the new iPad. It certainly has some new features, but whether it’s worth a purchase will depend on the buyer’s tablet history. How does it compare with the iPad 2? The biggest difference between the two iPads seems to be the screen resolution. The new iPad’s screen resolution is 2048x1536 at 264 pixels
per inch, while the iPad 2’s resolution is half of that. This makes the display of the new iPad the best resolution of any current tablet. What other specifications are important about the new iPad? Apple claims that the A5X processor is capable of a graphics performance four times greater than NVIDIA’S Tegra 3 chip, which can be found on many Android tablets. The new iPad will also have a new quadcore graphics processor, which will make playing games on the iPad look even better, and will support 4G LTE for faster networking.
See TECH, page 5