Serving the University of Texas at Austin community since 1900
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
@thedailytexan | thedailytexan.com
Volume 118, Issue 22 CITY
Harvey causes influx of pets at animal shelters By Reagen Ritterbush Senior Reporter
SPORTS SCIENCE
Detecting the damage By London Gibson Senior Reporter Texas Athletics adds EYE-SYNC technology to detect concussions in the blink of an eye UT Athletics is one of only six college athletics programs in the country to implement a new portable technology that can detect concussion signs in a player in less than a minute. The technology, called EYE-SYNC, is the first objective concussion detection technology on the market and was picked up by the UT sports medicine staff in August, just before the start of the fall football season. The athletics department was unavailable for comment about the new technology at this time. Before EYE-SYNC, clinicians relied on subjective reports to determine whether athletes were fit to return to play, said Scott Anderson, chief customer officer for SyncThink, the start-up company behind EYE-SYNC. Anderson ran the Stanford University sports medicine program for a decade and used the EYE-SYNC technology with the athletics program there for two and a half years. He said the technology gathers hard data that can prove a player
is unfit to return to the field, preventing further injury. “Being able to prove hard data to clinicians and patients is really groundbreaking,” Anderson said. “The concussion space has never had an objective measure before.” Evidence of the relationship between concussion-related brain diseases and football players has surfaced in recent years. A July study found evidence of a disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in the brains of 48 out of 53 deceased former college football players. Furthermore, 110 of the 111 brains of former NFL players showed CTE. UT psychology professor David Schnyer has studied concussions in football players. He said they are especially susceptible to head injuries because of the nature of the sport. “The issue with football is that the primary goal is essentially colliding with other people,” Schnyer said. “Aside from something like boxing, football is probably a game for which there’s the greatest experience of concussions.” Iowa State University picked up the EYE-SYNC technology in July. Mark Coberley, associate athletics director for
sports medicine at ISU, said the technology has proven helpful in the month they’ve had it in place. “The fact that we can actually get some hard data to look at, that gives us a lot more peace of mind,” Coberley said. “Other (athletics programs) are just starting to use it, just starting to figure out what its capabilities are.” The FDA-cleared technology is similar to a modified virtual reality headset with built in cameras that track eye movement, Anderson said. Data revealing concussion symptoms can be transferred to on-site clinicians within seconds via a bluetooth tablet. “The combination of the rapid testing and the portability … there really isn’t anything like that,” Anderson said. “I believe that it’s just such a game changer.” Schnyer said researchers have tried for years to improve safety for football players. For players to be truly safe from head injuries, the rules of the game may have to change and the equipment may need to be modified, he said. “There are a number of (proposals) out there that are being pushed onto the sport,” Schnyer said. “Whether or not the sport accepts them is the issue.”
When Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston-area animal shelters in early August, Austin-based rescue shelter Austin Pets Alive answered a cry — and a bark — for help, tripling its number of foster dogs. More than 2,000 animals from the Houston area are now members of the APA community due to overflooded shelters from Hurricane Harvey. The number of fosters for dogs tripled and the number for cats doubled, reaching over 1,000 total foster animals, a record high, according to Mary Heerwald, APA director of marketing and communications. APA reached out to shelters in the Houston region to help evacuate animals before Harvey touched ground. Heerwald said the rescue sent teams out all over Texas, from Corpus Christi to Houston, to evacuate the animals from the coming storm. “A lot of shelters don’t have evacuation plans in place and don’t expect storms like Harvey to hit, so we were proactively helping those who needed it,” Heerwald said. “When the storm actually hit, we got a lot of pleas from not only shelters, but people who had found abandoned animals in the flooding.” Both the Town Lake and Tarrytown APA locations are at full capacity, Heerwald said. Many no-kill shelters, or shelters against euthanization, around the country are stepping up to help rescue some of the animals. Heerwald also said although APA has never cared for this number of animals, people from all over the country are coming out to help them. “There are volunteers from California and New York coming to help us,”
APA page 3 NATIONAL
UT alumna makes headlines as Miss Texas
CRIME
APD issues arrest warrant for suspect in road rage assault
By Danielle Leighninger Issue Reporter
By Reagan Ritterbush Senior Reporter
Austin Police Department has issued an arrest warrant for the suspect who allegedly shot and killed a man during an apparent road rage incident near the intersection of Parmer Lane and Dessau Road. The warrant names 18-year-old Juan de Dios Carbajal-Jaimes as the suspect who allegedly shot Alfred Lockett, a 48-year-old UT employee according to school officials, on Tuesday afternoon. Lockett was a journey lineman for ITS Networking at the University. Responding to the scene around 4:30 p.m., APD found Lockett on the ground, where bystanders had removed the man from his vehicle in an attempt to save him. Austin-Travis County EMS medics resumed rescue efforts when they arrived on the scene, but Lockett died about 20 minutes later, APD said. “The University community deeply mourns the loss of our employee
ROAD RAGE page 2
zoe fu | daily texan file
UT receives No. 56 ranking from US News By Wesley Story News Desk Editor By Lisa Nhan News Desk Editor UT was ranked the second best college in the state and tied for 56th in the nation by the U.S. News and World Report, which announced their 2018 Best Colleges rankings Thursday. First in state went to Rice University, with an overall national ranking of 14th. Southern Methodist University — previously tied for 56th with
UT in last year’s ranking — received third in state and 61st nationally, while Texas A&M University trailed with fourth in state and a 69th overall ranking. The U.S. News ranks colleges and universities based on hundreds of data points and up to 15 measures of academic quality, such as graduation and freshman retention rates.
Miss Texas Margana Wood made national headlines Sunday night for her response to a question about President Donald Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville protest in mid-August. Wood, a UT alumna, made it to the top five finalists of the Miss America pageant and reached the final question round. During that round, Wood was asked to respond to the president’s statement that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville protest, which turned violent and began a national discussion on white supremacy. “I think that the white supremacist issue, it was very obvious that it was a terrorist attack,” Wood said in her response. “And I think that President Donald Trump should’ve made a statement earlier addressing the fact and in making sure all Americans feel safe in this country. That is the number one issue right now.” Wood’s response drew applause from the crowd and has since been shared widely on
MISS TEXAS page 2
NEWS
OPINION
LIFE&ARTS
SPORTS
SCI&TECH
Healthy self-image campaign MasculinUT debuts on campus. PAGE 2
Elected officials from UT discuss the upcoming year. PAGE 4
Austin Asian cuisine gets a boost with Far East Fest. PAGE 8
Texas soccer looks to build on its best start in program history. PAGE 6
Natural disasters like hurricanes can affect mental health. PAGE 5
UT Athletics Front Strip; Process color