Howard “Hopalong” Cassady Deceased at 85

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The Ohio State University morns the loss of Howard “Hopalong” Cassady. He was a 1955 Heisman winner, two-time All-American for Ohio State’s football team. Cassady died the morning of 20 Sep. 2019. He was 85 years old.

Cassady was the third every Heisman winner for OSU which recognizes college football’s top player. He played Buckeye football with Coach Woody Hayes between 1952-55. He helped the team win the 1954 national championship.

Cassady earned his nickname during his very first game when a sports writer compared his movements on the field to the performance of Hopalong Cassidy in the movies.

Cassady’s #40 jersey was retired in 2000. He also played shortstop for Buckeye Baseball. He later had a 40+ year career working with the New York Yankees organization, mostly with the Yankee’s Triple-A Columbus Clippers team.

 

 

 

Have You Seen the Buckeye Man?

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At the next Buckeyes football game you attend keep an eye out for the man with the buckeye bag. For three years Doug Malone has been passing out buckeyes from his bag to the Ohio State players as they enter the stadium headed to the locker room. Malone is a redcoat, an aid who performs special tasks for the Dept. of Athletics and attends to guests.

Malone’s father, Ronald, lost his life to cancer three years ago. Ronald started the pregame buckeye handout tradition thirteen years ago. Malone is picking up his father’s buckeye bag to honor him and carry on the ritual.

Malone states the first time he remembers his father passing out Buckeyes was a 2005 game against the University of Texas. The Malone’s were walking by the locker room and someone made a call that the defensive coordinator Luke Fickell needed a buckeye. Ronald had one.

After that Roland turned that one incident into habit and eventually into tradition. Ronald found buckeyes at a local park before every home game and brought them to the stadium.
The idea soon became reality. Ronald would go to a local park to pick up buckeyes and bring them to every game. The last game Ronald saw was against Michigan State.

Nowadays the ritual is a team effort. Malone passes out buckeyes found by other redcoats and some vendors who make and sell buckeye necklaces.

Why Meatballs Ruin The Health Benefits of Tomato Sauce

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If you were eating tomato sauce or otherwise cooked tomatoes for the anit-cancer benefits of lycopene you might want to pay attention.

A new study at OSU concluded that the anti-cancer properties of lycopene could be nulled when combined with iron rich foods, like a meatball.

The Buckeye research team looked at the blood and digestive fluid from a small group of medical students. They examined the students’ samples after eating a tomato extract shake. One with iron, one without. In the samples’ of blood and digestive fluid lycopene levels were far lower in those who drank the extract with an iron supplement. Meaning there was less lycopene for the body to use to fight cancer.

Because iron is absolutely an essential part of our diet (it helps get rid of waste and produce energy) and it also is known to toy with other cellular processes researchers will continue to research iron’s relationship to other compounds with potential benefits.

 

New Study Finds Distractions May “Color” Reality

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Is this blog a distraction or something you intended to read? Give pause, this may be more important than we think.Researchers at OSU have been studying distractions and their effect on our minds.

A new study as found that distractions, even the smallest interruptions that pull us away from the task at hand, might alter our perception of “the real.” Perhaps even making us think we saw something different from what we actually saw.

And furthermore, we live in a sea of distractions. We wear accessories that sound social media notifications. Our phones let us know of every email and vibrate at every breaking headline.
The study suggests that it isn’t just that our perception changes, but that we might not know it and even further we might feel more confident in the fiction created by distractions than we do in reality.
So, enough with the drama. What does this really mean?

The results of the study showed that sometimes people confuse the color of an item they were instructed to remember with the color of another item presented as a distraction. Some participants even remembered a color that was far different from the distraction object and closer to the color of the of the object they were to focus on.

To study the phenomenon participants were instructed to focus on one of four colored squares on a screen. Sometimes a bright outline would appear around one of the other squares trying to distract the participant. Then, participants were presented with a color spectrum wheel and instructed to click the area that most closely matched the color of the square they were to focus on.

The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance will publish the results.

OSU 50 Year Energy Reduction Program Looking Good Two Years In

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In year two of a fifty year commitment Ohio State University has improved its energy management and its sustainability rating through real programs like lighting upgrades and using smart technology in its metering. Near future improvements like a combined heating and power plant are looking at bigger impacts.

In 2017, OSU turned over operations of HVAC and electricity to ENGIE Buckeye Operations. This included a billion dollar payment to the university and one hundred and fifty million to support academic programs.

So far the partners have made such progress as the following: converting over one hundred thousand indoor and seventeen hundred outdoor light fixtures to LED; 375 smart meters to help measure utility systems throughout the campus infrastructure; improving systems near the Oval, within the Arts District and for the Health Sciences facilities; they have started upgrade fourteen other buildings to decrease their energy use.

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