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About Wallowa County chieftain. (Enterprise, Wallowa County, Or.) 1943-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 19, 2020)
A10 SPORTS NEWS Wallowa County Chieftain Wednesday, February 19, 2020 One, possibly two Outlaws’ grapplers headed to state By Steve Tool Wallowa County Chieftain The Outlaws traveled to Union for the 1A / 2A special district 4 Wrestling Champion- ships on Feb. 14-15. The tournament decides which wrestlers will compete at the state championships in Portland. Enterprise took nine wrestlers to the meet and placed eighth of 12 teams. Trace Evans won the 138 pounds bracket and a spot at state after defeating Levi Roath of Crane by fall, followed by a 7-0 decision over Anthony Hood of Culver. “The first match was a kid he’d beat before,” Fent said. “His last match against the Culver kid could very easily be the state championship match. Trace went out and wrestled his match and it turned out really well for him.” Charlie Evans at 182 pounds possibly also earned a state berth with a third-place finish. Evans first defeated Isaac Andres of Culver by fall and notched a 9-8 decision over Ronnie Morello of Joseph. “I’m pretty optimistic the Charlie will get pulled in the state and his weight class,” coach Court Fent said. “He wrestled so well this weekend, it was probably his best tour- nament. He’s put in the work the last several weeks and his mindset and fire to perform were very fun to watch.” Courtesy photo/Teah Jones Outlaws wrestler Charlie Evans takes down Joseph wrestler Ronnie Morello for the fall in the 182 pound category at Union during the District tournament on Feb. 14-15. Evans placed third in the meet and is waiting to hear if he earned a state berth for his performance. Ronald Bond/LaGrande Observer Trace Evans dominates yet another opponent in the 138 pounds bracket at District wrestling. Evans defeated all comers at the event, earning a trip to state. Other wrestlers with wins included Cody Fent at 132 pounds with a victory by fall over Anthony Melchoir of Culver. Senior Drew Widener locked down fourth place at 220 pounds. Coach Court Fent said he was proud of the team’s performance and the next weeks would be spent preparing both of the Evans’ wrestlers for state while hoping Charlie Evans gets the nod for the tournament. “I’m very optimistic that Charlie will get in,” he said. “I’ll be super excited for him if he does.” The state tournament takes place in Port- land at Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Feb. 28-29. Joseph to send two to state grapplers tournament By Steve Tool Wallowa County Chieftain MORE THAN YOUR HANDS FULL — Union Bobcats wrestler, Michael Day, looks like he may have had second thoughts about wrestling Joseph Eagles standout, Jonah Staigle. Staigle pinned Day a mere 2:24 into the match to win the 220 pound bracket at 1A/2A Special District 4 tournament. Staigle will go on to state. The Joseph Eagles sent nine wrestlers to the land of Union for the 1A/2A Special Dis- trict 4 tournament on Feb. 14-15. Grapplers Zeb Ramsden at the 145 pound bracket and Jonah Staigle at 220 pounds, earned state berths at the meet while the Eagles placed seventh of 12 teams. Ramsden placed second in his bracket, beating Carter Blackburn of Union by deci- sion. Staigle first won by fall over Wylie Johnson of Culver and followed that vic- tory with another fall, over Michael Day of Union. Other wrestlers who won on the mat included Kennison Knifong who won by fall over both Isaac Coopman of Grant Union and Jake Doman of Crane, also in the 145 pound slot, ensuring Knifong a sixth- place finish. Harley Miller, wrestling at 160 pounds, won by decision over Noah Blood of Grant Union and also felled Tatin Ott of Crane for an eighth-place finish. Ronnie Morello wrestled to a fourth- place finish at 182 pounds. He bested Aidan Henlin of Culver by fall and the same went for Issac Andres of Culver. The state championships are held on Feb. 28-29 at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland. WWI helmet protects soldiers against blasts better than modern military helmets, say engineers Ken Kingery Duke University DURHAM, N.C. — Bio- medical engineers from Duke University have demonstrated that, despite significant advancements in protection from ballistics and blunt impacts, modern military helmets are no bet- ter at protecting the brain from shock waves created by nearby blasts than their World War I counterparts. And one model in partic- ular, the French Adrian hel- met, actually performed bet- ter than modern designs in protecting from overhead blasts. The research could help improve the blast protection of future helmets through choosing different materi- als, layering multiple mate- rials of different acoustic impedance, or altering their geometry. The results appeared online Feb. 13 in the journal PLOS ONE. “While we found that all helmets provided a sub- stantial amount of protec- tion against blast, we were surprised to find that the 100-year-old helmets per- formed just as well as mod- ern ones,” said Joost Op ‘t Eynde, a biomedical engi- neering PhD student at Duke and first author of the study. “Indeed, some historical hel- mets performed better in some respects.” Researchers have only recently begun to study the brain damage a shock wave can cause on its own — and for good reason. Helmets were originally designed to protect from penetrat- ing objects like bullets and shrapnel, and blast waves will kill through pulmo- nary trauma long before they cause even minor brain damage. With the advent of body armor, however, soldiers’ lungs are much more pro- tected from such blasts than they used to be. This has caused the incidence of pul- monary trauma following a blast to drop far below that of brain or spine injuries in modern military conflicts, despite the difference in blast tolerance. While there have been studies that suggest mod- ern helmets provide a degree of protection from shock waves, no currently deployed helmet has been specifically designed for blast protection. And because soldiers today experiencing shock waves while wearing body armor aren’t all that different from soldiers 100 years ago expe- riencing shock waves while in the trenches, Op ‘t Eynde decided to see if those old designs offered any lessons to be learned. “This study is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to assess the protective capabil- ities of these historical com- bat helmets against blasts,” Op ‘t Eynde said. Working with Cam- eron “Dale” Bass, associ- ate research professor of biomedical engineering at Duke, Op ‘t Eynde created a system to test the perfor- mance of World War I hel- mets from the United King- dom/United States (Brodie), France (Adrian), Germany (Stahlhelm) and a current United States combat variant (Advanced Combat Helmet). The researchers took turns placing different hel- mets on a dummy’s head outfitted with pressure sen- sors at various locations. They then placed the head directly underneath a shock tube, which was pressurized with helium until a mem- brane wall burst, releas- ing the gas in a shock wave. The helmets were tested with shock waves of varying strength, each corresponding to a different type of Ger- man artillery shell exploding from a distance of one to five meters away. The amount of pressure experienced at the crown of the head was then compared to brain injury risk charts created in previous studies. While all helmets provided a five-to-tenfold reduction in risk for moderate brain bleeding, the risk for someone wear- ing a circa-1915 French “Adrian” helmet was less than for any of the other hel- mets tested, including the modern advanced com- bat helmet. “The result is intrigu- ing because the French hel- met was manufactured using similar materials as its Ger- man and British counter- parts, and even had a thin- ner wall,” Op ‘t Eynde said. “The main difference is that the French helmet had a crest on top of its crown. While it was designed to deflect shrapnel, this feature might also be deflecting shock waves.” It also might be that, because the pressure sensor was mounted directly under the crest, the crest provided an additional first layer for reflecting the shock wave. And the French helmet did not show the same advan- tage in pressure sensors at any other location. For loca- tions such as the ears, perfor- mance seemed to be dictated by the width of the helmet’s brim and just how much of the head it actually covered. As for the modern helmet, Op ‘t Eynde theorizes that its layered structure might be important in its perfor- mance. Because a shock wave is reflected every time it encounters a new mate- rial with a different acous- tic impedance, the layered structure of the modern hel- met might contribute to its blast protection. But no matter which hel- met was tested, the results clearly indicated that helmets might play an especially important role in protecting against mild blast-induced brain trauma. According to the researchers, this find- ing alone shows the impor- tance of continuing this type of research to design helmets that can better absorb shock Modern tumor found in dinosaur Bruce Rothschild Tel Aviv University Duke University The French Adrian helmet’s crest may be part of the reason it offers better protection from blasts than modern military helmets according to Duke University researchers. The helmet shown above is a French artillery helmet. The helmet was also adopted by American Field Service forces and bore a U.S. insignia on the front. Alexander and Sons Restorations WWI U.S. officer adopted a French Adrian helmet. The helmets were the official headgear of the U.S. American Field Forces, and were frequently worn by other American forces, especially officers who had to purchase their own uniforms and helmets. waves from nearby overhead explosions. “The difference a sim- ple crest or a wider brim can make in blast protec- tion, shows just how import- ant this line of research could be,” said Op ‘t Eynde, who initially came to Duke on a scholarship from the Belgian American Educational Foun- dation, which was estab- lished with funds from Amer- ican relief efforts in Belgium during World War I. “With all of the modern materials and manufactur- ing capabilities we possess today, we should be able to make improvements in hel- met design that protects from blast waves better than helmets today or 100 years ago.” The fossilized tail of a young dinosaur that lived on a prairie in southern Alberta, Canada, is home to the remains of a fossil- ized 70-million-year-old tumor. That type of tumor, LCH (Langerhans cell histiocytosis), is a mod- ern-day rare and some- times painful disease that still afflicts humans, par- ticularly children under the age of 10. This type of tumor is benign. Researchers at the Tel Aviv University and Indi- ana University made the discovery. Professor Bruce Roth- schild and Darren Tanke spotted an unusual struc- ture in the vertebrae of a tail of a young dinosaur of a grass-eating herbi- vore species, common in the world 66 million to 80 million years ago. There were large cavities in two of the vertebrae segments, which were unearthed at the Dinosaur Provincial Park in south- ern Alberta, Canada. It was the specific shape of the cavities that attracted the attention of researchers. “They were extremely similar to the cavities pro- duced by tumors associ- ated with the rare disease LCH that still exists today in humans,” Tanke said. “Most of the LCH-re- lated tumors, which can be very painful, sud- denly appear in the bones of children aged 2 to 10 years. Thankfully, these tumors disappear with- out intervention in many cases.” “The micro-CT pro- duces very high-resolu- tion imaging, up to a few microns,” Hilla May said. “We scanned the dinosaur vertebrae and created a computerized 3D recon- struction of the tumor and the blood vessels that fed it. The micro and macro analyses confirmed that it was, in fact, LCH. This is the first time this disease has been identified in a dinosaur.”
