Wexner Medical Center Develops Procedure to Scan Student Athletes for Myocarditis

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Cardiac MRI has been found effective in finding inflammation of the heart muscle in athletes and thus help determine when those athletes who have recovered from Covid-19 can return safely to practice and play in competitive sports.

This method was researched by the Wexner Medical Center at OSU and the research was published in JAMA.

Researchers examined 26 Covid-19 positive male and female student athletes who play college sports. The were looking for myocarditis—a rare disease that can cause sudden cardiac death and heart failure. It is typically caused by viral infection in young adults and tends to affect more males than females.

Recent studies have found myocarditis in patients who recover from Covid-19. In the OSU research 12 of the student athletes showed signs of mild Covid symptoms while the others were asymptomatic.

The Wexner Center calls of a combination of clinical tests to make sure student athletes can safely return to practice and play. This includes a heart ultra sound, electrocardiogram (recordings of the heartbeat) and a blood test to check for myocarditis prior to athletes continuing with competitive play.

 

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People Prefer Seeing Individuals Excel Over Teams, New Study Finds

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A new study by researchers at OSU found that people like to see talented people excel, whether in sports or business. They like an individual’s winning streak. But don’t care to see that happen with teams or groups.

People would love to see Usain Bolt win another gold medal but far fewer are interested in seeing the New England Patriots win another Super Bowl, researchers said.

Researchers stated the reason for the phenomenon is that people are inspired by extraordinary individual success in a way team success doesn’t. If Usain Bolt wins another gold medal (and another in a row) it expands what we considered to be the limit of human ability. We do not see team success in the same light. The study found people are simply more moved by individual success.

In one part of the study many more people were excited bout Bolt’s winning a third in a row gold medal in the 100-meter dash than they were by his shared gold medal on the 4×100-meter relay team. Result also showed people would rather see him win a forth gold medal on his own rather than as part of a team.

In one study, they examined people’s views on the success of Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter who won the 100-meter dash in the last three Olympics. Bolt was also a member of a team that won the gold medal in the 4×100-meter relay at those same Olympic games.

The study was published in the “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.”

 

OSU and NASA to Search Milky Way for Rogue Planets

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OSU researchers and study authors think during a new NASA mission they may find there are as many starts in the Milky Way as there are “rogue planets” which float in space without orbiting a sun.

The mission will provide a whole new viewpoint of what is out there in space. The researchers stated: imagine our rocky world floating freely in space, this is the kind of thing we hope to find.

Researchers hoped that NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope would find hundreds of these free-floating rogue planets in the Milky Way. By identifying and counting those rogue planets scientists think they can then extrapolate an estimate of how many there maybe in the galaxy.

Rogue, free-floating, planets are isolated objects Their masses are similar to a planet and the origin of objects is unknown. Some believe they used to have a host start that no longer exists.

Researchers said that the universe could be swarming with such objects and we don’t know it and that without the new NASA mission involving the microlensing survey the Roman Space Telescope is going to do they wouldn’t be able to complete their research.

 

OSU Researchers Make Virtual Classroom Suggestions

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With many schools going online the Ohio State University has gone through some of their research to find some tips for students and teachers who will be using virtual classrooms.
Researchers found that developing a relationship between teachers and students is very important.

This is something we take for granted when we say hello as we enter the classroom or give each other a eye five or even direct eye contact.

Even though software like Zoom can recreate a sense of “face to face” conversation and lesson plans (and additional digital tools can enhance these meetings) it still feels a little impersonal.

What we usually consider frivolous on the internet is actually what helps us connect over the digital platform. Pictures, audio clips, emojis, videos, animated GIFs and even well placed (but dreaded) meme can help us make a more personal connection.

Students also benefit from spending time with one another away instruction and for older students group projects where the work takes place away from the “watch” of the teacher can be beneficial.

OSU Collaboration Finds “Fluting” Fascinating for New Reasons

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New research on 8,000 year old Arabian stone tools suggests that the elaborate stone weapons made by artisans where not designed just for battle or hunting but to show off the tool-making abilities for the artisans.

The Ohio State University Collaborated with the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History to excavate and study these projectile points, like arrow and spearheads, that were crafted during the Neolithic period from what is now Yemen and Oman.

The findings showed that Arabian artisans independently discovered a process called “fluting” to create projectile points. This method had been discovered by North American tool makers thousands of years earlier.

The researchers found though that there is a major difference between how it was used in ancient Arabia versus North America. In North America fluting was used functionally while in Arabia it was meant to show off the technical ability of the artisan.

Fluting had a higher risk of failure when crafting a projectile point so any artisan that could do it well demonstrated their skill level by doing so.

The research was published in the journal ”PLOS ONE.”