Pitt Romps Rutgers, 41-21

Pitt scored two straight touchdowns to pass Rutgers 14-7 in the first half, but the Scarlet Knights blocked a punt and converted just before halftime to tie the game at 14.

After Pitt recovered a Rutgers fumble to start the second half, quarterback Tino Sunseri found tight end Mike Cruz in the corner of the end zone and the Panthers went up 21-14. From there, Pitt dominated the game. While Rutgers’ offense managed 7 points at the end of the game, Pitt added 3 touchdowns and 2 field goals in the second half to win it 41-21.

Sunseri went 21 of 27 for 307 yards and three touchdowns.

The Panthers are now 2-0 in conference play and 4-3 overall. Pitt plays Big East rival Louisville at Heinz Field next Saturday.

Pitt Researcher: Walking Helps the Brain

A study published today shows seniors who walk as little at one mile a day can prevent brain mass loss and slow the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Study author Kirk Erickson says his study piggybacked on a study looking at cardiovascular health. That study looked at the walking habits of people in their 60’s. Nine years later Erickson measured the participants’ gray matter volume and found that those who walked six to nine miles a week had a slower rate of loss than those who did not regularly exercise. He then looked at the onset of Alzheimer’s disease 13 years out and again found that those who regularly walked were less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s. The University of Pittsburgh Professor of psychology says there is no magic to 6-9 miles and there is no reason to believe that walking is better than any other cardiovascular activity. However he notes that walking is something that nearly all seniors can do. “You don’t have to be a marathon runner to benefit,” says Erickson. walking more than nine miles a week did not have any additional benefit. According to the data. Erickson says it is never too early to begin an exercise regiment and the study shows that as far as brain health goes, it is also never to late to start. Of the 229 seniors studied, 116 developed cognitive impairment or dementia but those who walked regularly cut their risk of memory loss in half. Erickson says he would like to be able to do more studies of this type. In the future he hopes to look at how long the impact of a regular walking routine lasts after a senior stops walking and he hopes to use more accurate measurement tools that have recently become available.

Tree Tells Pollution Story

A 126 year-old tree that grew in Schenley Park may be painting a new picture of the environmental health of Pittsburgh. The red oak blew over in a storm in January of 2007 and eventually made its way into the hands of university of Pittsburgh undergrad Amelia Johnson. Johnson separated each ring and then using acid and a machine known as an I-C-P spectrometer measure the amount of 5 trace metals in the tree that she thought might indicate how much pollution the tree was being exposed to every year. She says the levels slowly increased through the 1900’s with a dip during the great depression, slid a bit in the 60’s and then went back up in the last 20 years of the tree’s life. “Which was extremely surprising because the steel and other manufacturing base of the Pittsburgh region has really sort of disappeared in the last 20 years. I was expecting that the trace metal levels would be lower, but based on what I have here, it seems tat there is still a lot of pollution within our environment,” Says Johnson. The metals measured where Zinc, Nickel, Copper, Cadmium, and Lead. Johnson says it is unclear if the material, which is mostly absorbed through the roots, is a remnant of the city’s industrial past of the product of some current condition such as increased car traffic. She says she hopes other will do similar studies in an effort to learn more.

Pitt Researchers Look at Adolescent Brains

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh say that adolescents’ behavior could stem from increased sensitivity to internal factors and their environment.

Lead researcher and professor of neuroscience Bita Moghaddam says her study found that although young rats learned to get rewards faster than adults, they continued to seek the sugar pellets even after the researchers stopped giving them.

Moghaddam says this behavior of the adolescents was amplified when the rats faced internal and external changes like hunger and noise.

She says this sensitivity to outside influences could help scientists gain a better understanding of why symptoms of psychological disorders first come out in one’s teenage years.

Moghaddam says the next step is to determine how the neurons of the rats’ brains interact to cause this behavior.

“If we see a very glaring difference in the first few months of recording, that then can be very quickly translated into human studies and functional imaging studies,” says Moghaddam, “whereas if the effects are far more subtle or they’re not in the regions we suspect they are, imaging would be a much longer process.”

Moghaddam says although understanding teens’ brains is important to public health, it remains an understudied field.

Pitt Loses Big East 'Championship Game'

The Pittsburgh Panthers suffered a heartbreaking 44 to 45 home loss in a very close football game against the Cincinnati Bearcats today. The result crowned Cincinnati as the champions of the Big East conference with a perfect 12-0 record.

Pitt’s Dion Lewis totaled 228 yards and three touchdowns, setting a new freshman scoring record, but it wasn’t enough as Pitt let up a 31 to 17 first half lead to the Bearcats. Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt says Mardy Gilyard’s 99-yard kickoff return for a Bearcats touchdown just before the half reversed the flow of the game.

“And then we came out the second half, and they scored a couple times and we couldn’t get anything going in the third quarter. We never really regained that momentum that I thought we had in the first half,” says Wannstedt.

Wannstedt says he doesn’t place any blame on Andrew Janocko for fumbling an extra point snap late in the game. If Pitt had converted that attempt, the game might have gone to overtime. The loss puts Pitt third in the Big East behind Cincinnati and West Virginia.

Pitt Group Helps Vets With Facial Injuries

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of medicine have picked up $1.6 million to perfect a fat grafting technique that the team hopes will help wounded soldiers return to a more normal life. Associate professor of surgery J. Peter Rubin is the head of the team awarded the Department of Defense grant. The doctors will use new regenerative tissue technologies and new medical instruments to transfer fat from one part of the patient’s body to his or her face. Rubin says, “As many as 26 percent of wounded soldiers suffer some kind of facial injury, which can have a huge impact on quality of life. While we can reconstruct bony structures very well, it is the surrounding soft tissues that give people a recognizable face. This project will investigate how soft tissue grafting can more precisely restore facial form and improve the lives of our wounded soldiers.” Rubin says the wounds received in combat are often very destructive involving shrapnel and burns. Rubin says the underlying tissue is often very scared and the work is done in “tight spots.” That leads to the need for new techniques and interments. About 20 patients will be treated in Pittsburgh under this grant. Doctors at military hospitals will then be taught the techniques and eventually offer the reconstructive work to more veterans. The first surgeries will be performed in January. The team of doctors doing the work includes a psychiatrist to help the patients with the transition and measure the impact the injuries and the new surgeries have on returning vets.