NFL Looks to Helmet Technology to Combat Concussions

When the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers face off at Super Bowl XLVII this weekend, they'll also be facing a common foe: the threat of concussion.

It's why Sunday's game will include cameras in the media box devoted to helping team trainers and physicians spot unusual behavior in players that suggests they may have suffered a head injury. (See a graphic of recorded head impacts suffered by one player over a season.)

"Imagine how controversial this would have been before," said Richard Ellenbogen, co-chairman of the NFL's Head, Neck, and Spine Committee, referring to the camera scheme. "The opposing team would have thought the other team was looking at their plays—but now the film is purely for safety."

Players' willingness to suffer those cameras is a sign of just how concerned they've become about head injuries in recent years.

Just last week, the NFL and helmet manufacturer Riddell were named in a lawsuit filed by the family of retired linebacker Junior Seau, who killed himself last year. Posthumous tests revealed that Seau had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease linked to repetitive head blows.

Seau's family alleged that his suicide resulted from CTE, which can cause neurobehavioral problems like depression.

Several thousand former NFL players and family members have already sued the NFL over head injuries. As the litigation mounts, the sports world's focus on concussions, from the youth to professional levels, has quickened the pace of related research and education on the issue.

The effort has produced scientific studies, rule changes in football and other sports, and research investments, like the $100 million grant awarded this week by the NFL Players Association to Harvard Medical School for a ten-year study of players' health.

And on Sunday, an NFL announcement is expected on a big partnership on one of the concussion war's key fronts: helmet technology.

Testing on the Gridiron

At labs in Ottawa, Canada, and outside Knoxville, Tennessee, the push to monitor hits that can cause concussions is on dramatic display: Football helmets sit on dummy heads while a piece of machinery slams into them at a set speed.

Sensors in three places—the helmet, mouthpiece, and center of the head form—measure acceleration and G forces from the impact. The goal: to ensure the sensors in the helmet and mouthpiece come up with accurate measurements.

The NFL commissioned the nearly yearlong study as a possible step toward fitting players with sensors that would flag dangerous hits in real time.

Kevin Guskiewicz, chair of the NFL subcommittee on safety equipment and playing rules, says the tests cover 12 helmet locations at five different velocities to simulate the conditions of player impacts during football games. He expects results on those tests soon.

The need is clear: More than 200 concussions have been reported in each of the last three NFL seasons, according to Ellenbogen. Last year's count—excluding postseason and including preseason—was 217.

Guskiewicz, director of the University of North Carolina Sports Concussion Research Program, has already collected data on on some 350,000 impacts sustained by football players on the college team.

For nine seasons, he has analyzed the data in hopes of cracking what he calls the concussion puzzle. The biggest hits aren't always the most damaging, he discovered; location and repetition matter too.

"Helmets are supposed to prevent catastrophic brain injury, like hemorrhages," said Guskiewicz. "They do a good job of that, but we want a helmet that does that as well as prevent concussion."

Building Better Helmets

In seeking that kind of hlmet, the NFL has sought help from the U.S. military, which has long studied head safety, since soldiers can suffer from brain injuries caused by head-rattling blasts.

A couple of years ago, the NFL and other sports leagues gathered in New York with members of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to discuss protective technology. The exchange of information between the NFL and the military continues to this day.

Accurate sensors that measure impacts in real time would be a big advancement in head-trauma protection, said Lt. Col. Frank Lozano, the U.S. Army's product manager for soldier protective equipment.

Already the Army has tens of thousands of sensors placed in the crown of certain soldiers' helmets to measure the forces exerted on their heads. "It comes down to understanding the transfer of energy through a helmet and into the head," Lozano said.

Concussion occurs when the brain is injured from shaking or slamming against the skull. The more a helmet can absorb the force of an impact, the less the brain absorbs.

Pads lining the inside of the helmet are vital to absorbing the shock. They can vary in material, stiffness, and thickness. Lozano noted that the Army looks every year at pad suspension systems in search of ways to improve their helmets.

The Army is also studying potentially new materials for making helmet shells. One special type of thermoplastic being studied, Lozano said, is many times stronger than steel but a fraction of the weight.

Driving Toward Progress

Combatting concussion isn't limited to football—or to the United States.

The NFL committee's Ellenbogen noted that he recently met with representatives from Australian rugby, British equestrians, and European soccer, who are actively trying to make their sports more concussion-proof.

At a concussion conference in Zurich last year, he said, officials from soccer's international ruling body, FIFA, were fascinated with the idea of using cameras in the media box to focus on players from different angles and help athletic trainers spot anything unusual.

The video can also be fed to team physicians on the field, who will be carrying iPads for the first time at a Super Bowl. The device allows them to record and time players' responses to a sideline concussion test covering areas like memory, concentration, and balance.

Symptoms such as disorientation, amnesia, and double vision require disqualification; others are subtler, like the time it takes to recall words and facts such as who scored last.

"There's no perfect test," said Ellenbogen. But he cited good doctors, better communication, technology, awareness, and more penalties for unnecessary roughness as positive advances in the field.

Read More..

Hillary Clinton Says Goodbye...Until 2016?

Feb 1, 2013 6:48pm

Image Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

After four years, nearly a million miles traveled and 112 countries visited, Hillary Clinton stepped down as the 67th secretary of state on Friday. But even on this, her final day as America’s top diplomat, she could not escape the questions about what she’ll do four years from now.

Many of the 1,000 employees who gathered to see her off expressed hope that this was not the end of her political career.

“2016! 2016!” the crowd chanted as   Clinton waved and drove away. “We’ll Miss You!”

Right before her departure, Clinton gave the traditional farewell speech to staff on the steps of the State Department’s historic C street lobby. In a roughly 10 minute, often reflective speech she called the 70,000 State Department employees part of “a huge extended family.”

“I cannot fully express how grateful I am to those with whom I have spent many hours here in Washington, around the world and in airplanes,” she said, drawing laughter from the audience.

Clinton’s trademark sense of humor was on display, even as she grew emotional  speaking about how much the State Department had  meant to her over the last four years.

PHOTOS: Hillary Clinton Through the Years

“I am very proud to have been secretary of state. I will miss you. I will probably be dialing ops just to talk,” she joked to a cheering and laughing crowd. “I will wonder what you all are doing, because I know that because of your efforts day after day, we are making a real difference.”

But  Clinton also was somber when discussing the danger diplomats and foreign service officers face all over the world, using Thursday’s suicide bombing attack against the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, in which a Turkish guard was killed, as an example.

“We live in very complex and even dangerous times, as we saw again just today at our embassy in Ankara, where we were attacked and lost one of our foreign service nationals, and others injured,” said Clinton “But I spoke with the ambassador and the team there. I spoke with my Turkish counterpart. And I told them how much we valued their commitment and their sacrifice.”

Clinton was flanked by trusted deputies, Bill Burns and Tom Nides, whom she gave warm hugs to at the end of the speech. With a huge “Thank You” sign behind her she walked a rope line after finishing her speech, greeting the hordes of employees who wanted to shake her hand and say goodbye before she walked out of the State Department as secretary of state for the last time.

“It’s been quite a challenging week saying goodbye to so many people and knowing that I will not have the opportunity to continue being part of this amazing team,” Clinton said. “But I am so grateful that we’ve had a chance to contribute in each of our ways to making our country and our world stronger, safer, fairer and better.”

Read More..

Senate ethics panel reviews gift accusations against Menendez

The Senate Ethics Committee is reviewing allegations that Sen. Robert Menendez accepted inappropriate gifts from a Florida doctor who has flown the New Jersey Democrat to his estate in the Dominican Republic, a senior member of the panel confirmed Thursday.

Sen. Johnny Isakson (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the committee, said the panel saw reports of the Tuesday FBI raid on the West Palm Beach offices of Salomon Melgen, a Menendez friend and political supporter who is also in an $11 million tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service. That was followed by Menendez’s confirmation Wednesday night that he wrote a personal check of more than $58,000 to pay for flights on Melgen’s private jet to his Dominican estate — for a pair of trips there more than two years ago.

“The Senate Ethics Committee is aware of the article in the Miami Herald and other media outlets, and we are following established procedures,” Isakson said Thursday, declining to discuss any details of the review.

Menendez has denied any wrongdoing. His staff has said that most of his trips to visit Melgen in the Dominican Republic were paid for out of his own pocket and that the two trips he did not pay for were an oversight. A statement issued Wednesday also vehemently denied reports, mostly in the conservative news media, that he slept with prostitutes on the island, where prostitution is legal.

“Senator Menendez has traveled on Dr. Melgen’s plane on three occasions, all of which have been paid for and reported appropriately. Any allegations of engaging with prostitutes are manufactured by a politically-motivated right-wing blog and are false,” his office said in a statement.

Officials at the Justice Department declined to comment Thursday about the nature of its raid on Melgen’s office, which went on for several hours overnight.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has stood behind the embattled senator. “First of all, Bob Menendez is my friend. He’s an outstanding senator,” Reid told reporters Thursday, directing any detailed questions to Menendez’s office.

The investigations come at a particularly troubling time for Menendez and Democrats, just as Menendez steps into a new role as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
That makes him the top diplomat on Capitol Hill, someone tasked with greeting heads of state visiting Washington, and affords him the kind of public profile that prompts regular appearances on the Sunday morning political talk shows. Last week, Menendez presided over outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s testimony about the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attack on a mission in Libya and the confirmation hearing for Kerry.

The only Latino among Senate Democrats, Menendez was chosen to participate in a bipartisan group of senators who unveiled a strategic framework for comprehensive immigration reform amid much fanfare Monday.

Reid’s gesture signaled that Democratic leaders were not abandoning Menendez as he begins what could be a long legal and ethics process. Two days earlier, Reid rejected out of hand any suggestion of wrongdoing by Menendez, telling reporters to “consider the source” because the reports first emerged on the Daily Caller, a conservative Web site that published the stories just before Election Day.

The issue was originally regarded as a partisan dispute just before Menendez’s election. But the seriousness of the allegations heated up with the FBI raid and the revelations that repayments to Melgen were made so long after the trips occurred.

Senate rules and federal law forbid expensive gifts unless the lawmaker has a longtime friendship with the person giving the gift. Otherwise, the rules require a prompt repayment for the thing of value, according to ethics experts. If a lawmaker accepts the gift from a friend, it would have to be revealed as such in annual financial disclosure forms that are made public every June.

Menendez did not pay Melgen until two months after New Jersey Republicans first asked the ethics panel to investigate, and the trips were not reported on his disclosure forms.

Menendez, 59, who is divorced, is one of the most prominent Cuban Americans, with deep support in his home town of Union City, sometimes called “Little Havana North,” and in South Florida. He has two grown children active in politics. Elected to the House in 1992, he served in Democratic leadership there until he was appointed to the Senate in late 2005 and has since won two full terms.

Read More..

14 dead in Mexico City skyscraper blast: government

MEXICO CITY: At least 14 people died and 80 were injured in a blast that rocked the Mexico City skyscraper that houses the headquarters of oil giant Pemex on Thursday, Mexico's interior minister said.

"We have 13 dead at the scene and one more at the hospital. There are more than 80 wounded and we continue to look for survivors in the debris," Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told reporters.

Read More..

TOI Social Impact Awards: When an IT mind took the organic route to farming

BORIAVI (ANAND): Devesh Patel, 30, graduated in computer applications in 2005. But the idea of flying off to the US didn't attract him. He followed in his father's footsteps and became a farmer, returning to the land of his forefathers — Anand's Boriavi village.

Until recently, Devesh's father Ramesh, 56, suffered from chronic breathing problems induced by the chemical fertilizers he used. Nausea and headaches were part of life. "Only when his health worsened did my father realize that increasing yield wasn't everything. There's no point making money if one can't enjoy it. We switched to organic farming," Devesh says. They shifted to Anand Agricultural University's newly developed liquid biofertilizer (LBF). That changed their lives.

"Dharti maa chhe (Earth is our mother)," Devesh says. "A farmer should give her what she deserves. My father doesn't fall sick now. Hundreds of farmers in Gujarat are living healthier lives, largely because of AAU." Devesh uses 70 litres of LBF a year on his 4ha. "The health of the soil has improved. Chemical fertilizers cost up to Rs 28,000 per ha for crops such as sweet potato and ginger. LBF has cut my cost to below Rs 4,000/ha," he says. Proprietor of an organic brand, he supplies potato chips, turmeric and ginger powder to retail stores, earning Rs 30-40 lakh annually.

Read More..

Sinkhole Swallows Buildings in China

Photograph from AFP/Getty Images

The sinkhole that formed in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (pictured) is, unfortunately, not a new occurrence for the country.

Many areas of the world are susceptible to these sudden formations, including the U.S. Florida is especially prone, but Guatemala, Mexico, and the area surrounding the Dead Sea in the Middle East are also known for their impressive sinkholes. (See pictures of a sinkhole in Beijing that swallowed a truck.)

Published January 31, 2013

Read More..

What If Undocumented Immigrants Had Voted?

If every undocumented immigrant had cast a vote for President Obama in 2012, he would have won Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, and he would have beaten Mitt Romney by nearly 11 percentage points nationally, instead of three.

Only citizens can vote, however, and 11.2 million unauthorized residents didn't get the chance.

But with immigration overhaul on the table, legalizing new Democratic voters looms as a threat for conservatives who don't want to hand their political foes a potential windfall of 11.2 million new voters with the creation of a pathway to citizenship -- and to voting rights -- with a comprehensive bill.

"The fear that many people have is that the Democrats aren't interested in border security, that they want this influx," Rush Limbaugh griped during his Tuesday interview with overhaul champion Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. "For example, if 70 percent of the Hispanic vote went Republican, do you think the Democrats would be for any part of this legislation?"

New immigration policies could mean in influx of new voters, but Republicans needn't worry about it in the short term.

See Also: Gang of Eight Accelerates Immigration Reform Pace

"Under almost any scenario, it's pretty far in the distance," Jeff Passell, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, said of the prospect that unauthorized immigrants' gaining voting rights would pump up numbers significantly enough to meaningfully change the U.S. electorate.

Whitney Curtis/Getty Images

And yet, the "influx" wouldn't be negligible: "Realistically, we're talking about potentially adding probably 5 million potential voters or so in 10 years," he said.

Hispanic voters broke 71 percent for Obama in November, and Republican strategists recognize that the party has failed to court Hispanic voters effectively. But depending on how slowly the citizenship line moves, the Republican Party will have a decade or so to shake its anti-Hispanic stigma.

See also: A Glossary for Immigration Reform

"It's a long time coming. You're talking about 15 to 20 years before we're talking about a whole slew of new voters coming into the electorate," said Jennifer Korn, executive director of the Hispanic Leadership Network, who served as Hispanic outreach director for George W. Bush's presidential campaign.

"If Republicans can map out and change their positions with things that Hispanics do support -- on less government, lower taxes, less regulations on small businesses -- then they can really compete for the Hispanic vote over the next 20, 30 years."

There are 11.2 unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, according to the Pew Hispanic Center's estimate. While most are of voting age (Pew estimates just 1 million younger than 18), the deluge of new Democratic voters might not be as substantial as Limbaugh implied.

In other words, it's not as if Democrats will gain 11.2 million votes in the next few years. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Not All Hispanics Vote for Democrats. Most do, but not all, and voter preferences vary from state to state. In Florida, 60 percent of Hispanic voters backed Obama, according to 2012 exit polls; in Arizona, 74 percent voted for the president. Even if all 11.2 million had voted in 2012, Obama would only have picked up North Carolina if they simply hewed to Hispanic voter trends. Romney still would have carried Arizona, Georgia and Texas, although he would have won Georgia by less than 1 percentage point. (Note: There were no exit polls in Texas or Georgia, and here the national rate provides rough estimates of how results would have changed.)

Read More..

Japan December factory output up 2.5% on-month

TOKYO: Japan on Thursday said the nation's factory output for December rose 2.5 per cent from the previous month thanks to brisk production of cars and semiconductors.

The gain -- still worse than a 4.0 per cent expansion expected by the market -- came as Japan's new government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vows to breathe new life into the world's third-largest economy with huge stimulus and easing aimed at tackling long-running deflation.

"Industrial production shows signs of having bottomed out," said a statement from the economy ministry.

The ministry added that a survey of manufacturers found they expected another output increase for January and February of 2.6 per cent and 2.3 per cent, respectively.

Annual industrial output figures were not immediately released, but on a quarterly basis the country's factory output was down 1.9 per cent from the previous three months.

And the rosy monthly data comes just a week after Japan said it logged a record trade deficit for 2012 as exports were hit by a bitter diplomatic spat with its biggest market China and plunging demand in debt-wracked Europe.

Japan's economy contracted in the third quarter, meeting the technical definition of a recession.

The figures underscored the size of the task ahead for the new government which has heaped pressure on the Bank of Japan for aggressive easing measures to boost the country's fortunes.

- AFP/ck

Read More..

Don’t curse the darkness, light a lamp instead: Vineet Jain

Following are excerpts from Times Group managing director Vineet Jain's welcome address:

We emerged into the New Year in a somber mood — our hearts broken by the brutal death of a 23-year-old girl right here in Delhi. But it has been inspirational to see so many young people rise up and decide that this girl's death must never be forgotten.

This spirit of looking at the injustices that surround you and deciding, that from you the change will begin — is a deeply Indian one. It's what drove the fight for our Independence ... ... Our winners tonight drew strength and inspiration from this spirit of protest, and then harnessed this energy to drive real change. They drew inspiration from an old saying, that it is better to light a lamp than to curse the darkness ...

... Tonight, we have gathered a group of remarkable Indians who have lit numerous lamps and brightened the lives of millions...

... Our winners from Corporate India acknowledged that not everything should be government's problem. Our NGO awardees used protests to draw attention, but also did the hard work of policy change, quietly. Our winners in the government category demonstrated that some in the administration take pride in going beyond the call of duty when they could have just gone home at 6 every day...

These are times of great cynicism. Too many people have decided that no good exists and no good will come of this country. The Times of India knows that this is not true. As a newspaper, it is our duty to highlight the decline of governance and probity in public life. But we also need to reach beyond the present climate of negativity and tell people that there are still many good women and men who are working honestly and tirelessly to bring about lasting change.

Read More..

Deer Antler Velvet—What Is It, How Does It Work?

It may sound warm and fuzzy, but deer antler velvet is at the center of a new sports controversy involving Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis.

Lewis, who's headed to the Superbowl in New Orleans this weekend, looked into using a nasal spray made of deer antler velvet to heal his torn right triceps, Sports Illustrated reported in their February 4 issue. Lewis denies the story, calling the rumor a "trick of the devil," according to USA Today.

Made from the soft fuzz that grows annually on male deer antlers, the unproven performance enhancer is often used by athletes who believe it helps heal cartilage and tendon injuries more quickly and boosts strength and endurance.

However, it's not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and is banned by the National Football League.

Even so, it's a big business, especially in New Zealand, a major exporter of deer velvet, which ships tens of millions of dollars worth of the substance to Asia and the U.S. each year, according to the New York University Langone Medical Center.

Deer farming is a huge industry in the country, with about 2,800 farmers that own approximately 1.1 million deer, most of them red deer, elk, and red deer-elk hybrids, according to the company New Zealand Deer Velvet.

Before removing the velvet from a stag's antlers, certified veterinarians or farmers give the animal stag a local anesthetic to minimize stress.

We asked a few medical experts to give us the facts on deer antler velvet.

What Is It?

Deer antler velvet is essentially a growth hormone called "insulin-like growth factor 1," or IGF-1.

Growth hormones, which are naturally produced by the liver, regulate how our bodies grow. If the body doesn't produce enough growth hormones, dwarfism can occur; too much, and a person may get acromelagy, a type of gigantism. (See a human-body interactive.)

Doctors give growth hormones to young people with stunted growth, but they don't recommend it for athletes or bodybuilders, according to Spyros Mezitis, an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

That's because many athletes take several times the recommended dosage, which can result in adverse effects, Mezitis said. For example, too much IGF-1 may cause tendons to become too tight and break or may disrupt how the body metabolizes fats and sugars.

What Does It Do?

Early research shows that IGF-1 may be effective in healing some cartilage and tendon injuries, noted Leon Popovitz, an orthopedic surgeon and founder of New York Bone & Joint in Manhattan.

A recent study found that taking IGF-1 supplements is linked to improving cartilage damage in joints due to repetitive trauma, Popovitz said.

Even so, such studies are still very preliminary, and growth hormone research is still unproven, he cautioned. At the moment, deer antler velvet is available as an unregulated supplement.

"What often happens is these supplement companies grab these promising [hormone] factors, jump on them, and market them before the entire medical community has the ability to know the real detrimental effects," Popovitz said.

How Does It Work?

IGF-1 affects how the body repairs itself. First, the hormone aids in building up a matrix or base—essentially a building block of protein—that's needed for cells to grow.

Then, the substance increases the number of new cells that accumulate on that base, which get busy healing the injury.

What's the Bottom Line?

IGF-1 has shown promise for helping kids with stunted growth or people with dwarfism, as well as for healing cartilage or tendon injuries. It should not be used without a doctor's care, especially as a performance enhancer.

But as far as linebacker Lewis goes, since he's "looking to improve his recovery, I don't think he's necessarily doing anything wrong," noted Popovitz.

That said, "we have to be mindful that professional athletes are not typical athletes," Popovitz said, noting some are known for taking extreme measures.

For your average weekend warrior, he said, "it's a little too soon to be rushing to use it."

Read More..