ABCDE HEALTH SCIENCE tuesday, july 27, 2010 & URBAN JUNGLE
Potent rodent The brown rat, thriving in the summer heat, is a first-rate survivor and a fast reproducer. E6
EDUCATION
Seeking scientists of color Q&A with UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski. Field of Inquiry, E3
59%
Decline in large-mammal populations in Africa’s national parks in 35 years. Science News, E3
Looking for
overlap between reality and the plot of ‘Inception.’ E6
How does he do it? The Strasburg strikeout: Story by Rachel Saslow | Graphic by Bonnie Berkowitz and Alberto Cuadra
What makes Washington Nationals rookie Ste- phen Strasburg such a great pitcher? The 22-year- old can throw triple-digit fastballs while guiding the ball to an exact spot in, or not quite in, the strike zone. His curveballs seem to fall off a cliff. His changeup — a slower pitch, meant to confuse the batter — clips along at 89 mph, the speed of some pitchers’ fastballs.
To his fans, coaches, teammates and especially his strikeout victims, Strasburg’s talent seems in- explicable, a supernatural force: “There’s no rhyme or reason. He’s just better than everybody else,” says Rob Dibble, a MASN TV commentator who once threw 99-mph fastballs of his own. “It’s a God-given talent,” says Steve McCatty, the Na- tionals’ pitching coach.
But, in truth, baseball is a game of numbers and
physical laws. Experts on pitching and biome- chanics say that Strasburg is a genius at moving energy through his body, never making a motion too early or too late, never creating an angle in his body that’s too acute or obtuse.
strasburg continued on E4 1 23 4 5 6 1. Getting started
Te motion begins as the body coils. Strasburg raises the ball to cheek level, then liſts his leſt knee above his waist, twisted in front of his trunk in a balanced position, ready to begin.
2. Stride
His legs start the chain. Te right leg pushes off the pitching rubber. Simultaneously, his arms swing below his hips and apart like pendulums as his leſt knee goes forward and down.
3. Momentum
Aſter his front foot lands, energy is transferred to his pelvis, which begins to turn to face the batter. Aſter a slight, momentum-building lag, his upper trunk follows, but his right arm is still back with the elbow flexed.
SOURCES: Glenn Fleisig, research director at American Sports Medicine Institute; “Te Physics of Baseball,” by Robert K. Adair
4. Acceleration As momentum from the trunk twist moves to his shoulder, it rotates forward at the frightening rate of 20 rotations per second. Te elbow extends and straightens.
5. Release
His wrist straightens as energy in his stretched elbow tendons whips the hand forward. His fingertips give the ball a final push and end up pointing straight down.
6. Follow-through
His leſt knee straightens more as momentum bends his trunk farther and carries his right leg forward. His trunk rotates so much that the batter can see his back, but he ends up in a balanced position.
E DM VA
Sci as well as fi DREAMS
MEDICAL MYSTERIES The tenor with a bad ear
He thought his hearing might return on its own. His doctor knew better.
by Sandra G. Boodman Special to The Washington Post
As he picked up the phone to make the call, Wayne Curtis worried that his doctor might think he was a hypochon- driac. Three weeks earlier, Curtis, then 48, had consulted Baltimore internist Charles Locke about a pulled muscle. Now the real estate agent had a new and seemingly trivial complaint: He couldn’t hear anything out of his left ear, which seemed blocked. Curtis as- sumed that his problem was related to the thick coating of tree pollen that blanketed his downtown Baltimore neighborhood. Normally Curtis, who has long bat- tled spring allergies, would have toughed it out and waited several weeks to see if his hearing returned as the pollen counts dropped. But a newly formed choral quartet of which Curtis was a member was about to have its first concert, and the tenor, who has
Curtis’s season of misery was as per- ennial as the pollen, and he was accus- tomed to loading up on antihistamines and decongestants every spring to get through it. The morning in April 2009 when he
EVY MAGES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Wayne Curtis, who enjoys listening to music, assumed that a stronger decongestant might unblock his ear.
performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was concerned that his im- paired hearing was affecting his sing- ing.
“I expected him to put me on a stron-
ger decongestant, not to tell me to come in the very next day,” said Curtis, who was taken aback by Locke’s em- phatic response. “It’s probably a classic case of ‘It’s
better to be lucky than good,’ ” Locke quipped. His sense of urgency was fueled by a memorable patient he had seen more than a decade earlier.
woke up and suddenly realized he couldn’t hear anything out of his left ear seemed like just another manifesta- tion of his severe allergies. He felt the same sensation experienced by an air- line passenger before his ear pops as the altitude changes. “I kept expecting it to pop, but it nev-
er did,” Curtis said, “but there was no pain so I didn’t worry about it.” He knew he hadn’t injured his ear or done anything unusual, so he figured it would clear up on its own. Several days passed, and during rehearsals for the upcoming concert, Curtis became aware of a new and bothersome symp- tom: loud static or “white noise” in that ear.
Five days after he first noticed the problem and the day after the phone call, Curtis sat in Locke’s office, describ- ing his condition as the doctor listened intently. He had no headaches or dizzi-
mystery continued on E4
Tally of fatalities grows in wake of summer heat wave
by Lena H. Sun It’s nature’s stealth killer. It’s not al-
ways the medical examiner’s prime suspect. And the deadly toll it exacts often becomes clear only well after it has left the scene. Stifling heat has already claimed 17 lives in Maryland this summer, as well as one in the District and nine in Vir- ginia. Those numbers are likely to grow, experts said, because the hot weather’s casualty figures are gener- ally counted days and weeks after a heat wave ends. High temperatures claim more lives in the United States than tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and lightning com- bined — about 700 a year, according to official estimates. Almost all are preventable. Better understanding can help prevent more deaths, some officials say, by encour- aging people to take measures such as drinking fluids and seeking relief in an air-conditioned building, even if for just a few hours a day. “People don’t realize the severity of
heat on health,” said George Luber, an expert on heat at the Centers for Dis-
heat continued on E5 HYUNGWON KANG/REUTERS
Washington’s temperature reached a near-record 102 degrees on July 6.
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