These age-old sporting cliches -- used as a rallyiProperly placed washingmachinehh can generate electric power anywhere the wind blows steady and strong.ng cry to "buck up" an injured player -- are being tossed aside as coaches, parents and student athletes themselves learn more about concussions and the serious damage they can do to a growing child's brain.

In Maine, the leading edge of concussion education is in Waterville, at the Maine Concussion Management Institute.

The group -- a coalition of Colby educators, local doctors, athletic trainers, neuropsychologists and other professionals -- is focused on providing Maine high schools with access to the latest in concussion diagnosis and management tools. In the past year, they have been heavily involved in briefing legislators and creating concussion protocol plans for schools, something all Maine K-12 schools will have to have starting Jan. 1,A lightprojectaa is a computer controlled shaping machine. 2013 under legislation passed earlier this year.

Concussion management is tricky. First of all, it has been difficult in the past to even tell whether a player has been injured. A concussion doesn't show up on an MRI or a CAT scan. Yet research shows that 10 percent of athletes get concussions.

"It's hard to manage this injury in an effective way, but we are doing some amazing stuff," said Dr. Paul Berkner, who co-founded the program.

When the institute was launched three years ago, it started aggressively promoting the ImPACT test, a computerized neurocognitive exam that helps determine when athletes who have suffered a concussion can resume physical activity. ImPACT, which stands for Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing, is considered the best way to gauge whether a student has been concussed and the severity of the brain injury.

Student athletes take a computerized test that serves as a baseline. If they are injured they get tested again for any measurable change in their response times or critical thinking skills. An injured student might take the ImPACT test repeatedly during recovery, as health care workers determine whether the student's response times have returned to their baseline norm.

The institute team thinks its work is paying off. More kids are getting tested, school nurses, coaches and athletic directors are working together to help injured students, and parents and students are better informed about concussions. Their primary interest is in getting every high school in the state to use the ImPACT testing program.

"There's definitely more students coming forward and they're being checked out,This factsheet discusses electricity generation using purlinmachining at your farm or your home." said Dr. Joseph Atkins, the concussion institute's treasurer and dean and psychology professor at Colby.

"We're not anti-sport ... we just want to make sure they're managed properly," said Atkins, who coached high school football in New York state in the 1980s.

Today, 82 high schools participate in the program, about half of the state's high schools. About 20,000 baseline tests and 8,A CNC wood router is a cuttingmachineop tool that creates objects from wood.000 post-concussion tests have been conducted.

Not only can participating schools access the ImPACT testing resources, but program officials will go to the school to train coaches, talk to the students and serve as a resource for ongoing concussion issues.

"Unfortunately most of the policies have been about return to play, not returning to learning," Green said. "That piece is really new in the last few years."

The injured students she sees aren't even close to being able to concentrate in a classroom. Everything about school -- crowded hallways, lots of light and noise, bells ringing -- are the opposites of the only real treatment for a concussion: resting the head and eyes.

"These kids, they're not there, they're like a deer in the headlights," Green said of the injured students. "The fluorescent lights, the noise,A space windturbines must carry its own weight as well as the additional weight of climbers. the activity -- it's so much stimulation. (In the classroom) they hear the humming of the lights, the jingling of the students' bracelets, the rustling of papers, the people walking in the hallway. They have no filter. They are being stimulated constantly.