May 2011 Archives

Annual Science Buddies Award Recognizes Superior Community Service From a Top Science Student

Science Buddies is proud to announce Nithin Tumma, an 11th grader at Port Huron Northern High School in Port Huron, MI, as this year's winner of the Craig Sander Outstanding Mentor Award. The award is given in recognition of the quality of Nithin's contribution and commitment to the Ask an Expert Forums for the 2010-2011 season. Nithin will receive a $300 scholarship.

In addition to the time spent volunteering with Science Buddies, Nithin completed his own advanced science project this year. He won a first place award at the 2011 Michigan Science Fair and went on to participate at the 2011 Intel ISEF where he won both the Best of Cellular and Molecular Biology Category Award and a First Place Award for his project: "Identifying Novel Mechanisms of Cytochrome-P450 2E1 Regulation." There is a known correlation between having Type 2 diabetes and the increased likelihood of developing cancer. Nithin's investigation in rats of the ways in which insulin or metformin (two drugs commonly used to treat Type 2 diabetes) alters Cyp2E1, a liver enzyme that helps eliminate carcinogens, may help shed new light on the relationship between Type 2 diabetes and cancer formation.

Honorable mentions in our review of high school mentors at Ask an Expert this year go to Shyamprasad Radhakrishna, a 12th grader at Amador Valley High, Pleasanton, CA, and Yurimar Jaen, a 10th grader at Mast Academy, Miami, FL. Both students will receive an iTunes gift card in recognition of their strong performance as AAE mentors.

A Community of Science Experts Helping with K-12 Science Questions

Ask an Expert is an online forum that enables students and families to get assistance with science projects. Our team of volunteer "Experts" is comprised of adults from science and engineering fields and top high school students. These "Experts" work together to help troubleshoot experimental procedures, direct students who are having trouble finding or narrowing a topic, assist with questions about data and results, and offer guidance for students with questions about presenting a project at a science fair. At any step of the scientific method or engineering design process, students can post a question at Ask an Expert and receive quality help. With each answer an Expert provides, she may help a student move from viewing a project as "simply an assignment" to seeing it as something exciting and fun. For volunteers, Ask an Expert offers a way to make a difference in the effort to increase K-12 science literacy.

Giving Back Starts Early

High school mentors like Nithin receive community service credit for volunteering at Ask an Expert, a measure of social awareness that has become more and more important in college applications. Beyond the official community service credit, mentors who work with the program over the course of a school year find it a rewarding way to help the science community. They get to share what they know, interact with professional scientists and engineers, and be a part of a worth nonprofit organization. The program challenges these high-achieving students to articulate science concepts and suggestions to K-12 students in ways that are easy to understand, supportive, and encouraging, and mentors often do additional research in various areas of science in order to best respond to questions.

The Outstanding Mentor Award was established in honor of advisory board member Craig Sander to show our appreciation for exemplary AAE mentors.

Can you turn a craving for chocolate into a reason for science exploration? You bet!

As "The Sweet Science of Chocolate" video from KQED QUEST shows, there is a lot of science that goes into the production of chocolate. It all begins with the growing of the cocoa tree and the fermentation of cocoa beans. Cocoa trees yield a surprisingly small number of beans per tree per year. A single tree produces enough beans to make roughly 2 pounds of chocolate, which means that a successful chocolate business needs to produce a great product with a low margin of error. The key to success may lie, in part, in understanding the science of chocolate and in applying the engineering design process to come up with solutions and innovations that can streamline and resolve production issues and make an even better product.

Making Connections

There are many ways you can satisfy your chocolate cravings while you explore chemistry and kitchen science. In addition to the critical fermentation stage, chocolatiers also deal with fundamental scientific principles like pH levels and crystallization at various stages of production.

One way to get started (dip a toe in the chocolate?) is to experiment with the science of "tempering" chocolate. Tempering is a critical step in making chocolate and can be the make-or-break step in baking with chocolate or making certain kinds of candies. The Temper, Temper, Temper! The Science of Tempering Chocolate* offers suggestions for developing a "tempering" science project. There is sure to be plenty of taste-testing along the way, so gather some friends to help you savor the sweet rewards of scientific inquiry!

Taking it Further

And if you are interested in chocolate at the level of the cocoa crop, you might dig deeper into the sequencing of the cocoa genome. The Theobroma cacao Matina 1-6 genome sequence was released last year in an effort to help scientists find ways to grow hardier trees and trees more resistant to environmental, fungal, and pest-related risks. While you nibble on your favorite chunk o' chocolate, you might just find a genomics project that you'd enjoy.

In the News

For more information about threats facing cocoa crops, check these recent headlines:

• "Deadly Fungus Threatens Latin American Cocoa Crop"

• "Ivory Coast Cocoa Crop Survives Crisis - For Now"

Zombies.

Are you ready?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued a guide on how to prepare for a zombie attack. That's right, the government agency put together a set of "emergency preparedness" tips for a "zombie apocalypse," an all-out mass infiltration of zombies. If you missed the article, you should probably go, right now, read it and bone up on what you need to do to protect yourself, friends, and family from crowds of rotting, brain-hungry, walking dead.

As you review the suggestions for preparing for a zombie attack, take some notes. Go ahead, put them in your lab notebook so you will know where they are if and/when the time comes and you need to do a hasty review. (It is vampires, by the way, that are said to be repelled by garlic. Garlic may or may not have an effect on zombies.) Once you're done filling your brain (zombie delicacy that it is) with zombie facts and emergency preparation suggestions, head back here to finish up. We'll wait.

Making Connections
Okay, now that you know what to do in the even that zombies come meandering down your street, arms outstretched, collective monotone cries of "brains" or "feed me" filling the air, make another note at the top of the notes you took.

In your best zombified handwriting, write: Also for Pandemics and Natural Disasters.

That's right. The preparedness strategies you need in the event something in the doughnuts from the local bakery goes to everyone's brains and causes rampant zombification mutation are some of the same strategies you need in the event of natural disasters, mass illnesses or viral outbreak, or other widespread epidemics or threats.

Strong Winds

All of this extra awareness of how to avoid, evade, and survive a zombie attack is especially helpful this week because May 22-28 is National Hurricane Preparedness week. The 6-month hurricane season along the Atlantic Basin begins June 1. Scientists are predicting that the 2011 season will be a particularly bad one, so FEMA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are working hard to raise awareness and encourage people to be proactive in preparing ahead of time—before the winds and storms hit.

Knowing what you now know about getting ready for a zombie attack (including what you should have on hand and what plans should be in place), you are hopefully in better shape to help your family, friends, and community get ready for the coming hurricane season, too.

Finding the Science

Chances that you'll be in a position to study zombies for a school fair or project seem slim. But there are plenty of angles you can take to further explore hurricanes or other meteorological events, including:

• Hurricanes and Climate: Are there connections between global warming and the strength and frequency of hurricanes?
• Do Warmer Seas Make Stronger Hurricanes? Review historical data to explore the relationship between ocean temperature and hurricanes.
• Do Hurricanes Cool the Ocean?: What happens to the temperature of the ocean after a hurricane?

Be Prepared

You might also find some useful information in our previous post on Campground Science. As our lead staff scientist pointed out when I asked her about zombie attacks, in the wake of a zombie apocalypse, survival may depend on some solid camping-savvy skills. And, eventually, you might want a hot shower if you can find enough clean water. Luckily, camp science can help you with the water situation—and with s'mores!

Looking Ahead

Zombies on the horizon or not, if you are interested in thinking through how to help plan either before or after an emergency, you may want to learn more about careers in Emergency Management.

Exploring the science behind what we see and what we think we see. It's not always the same thing!

When you watch the animation above, focus on the white dot in the center. As the surrounding dots begin to spin, do they seem to stop changing colors until the spinning ends? In fact, they continue to change, but the motion of the overall outer ring makes it appear that they stop blinking until the ring stops spinning. If you watch it again and focus on the outer ring, you will see that the colored dots continue to blink and shift color even when the ring spins.

This animation recently won the seventh annual "Best Visual Illusion of the Year" contest , organized by the Neural Correlate Society and associated with the annual Vision Sciences Society meeting. The winning illusion by Jordan Suchow and George Alvarez, a Harvard graduate student and assistant professor of psychology, respectively, is titled "Silencing awareness of change by background motion." It's a simple title for a sensory perception that may also seem simple. But what's simple about the fact that we can think we are seeing something we are not? Nothing!

From studying visual illusions, and the ways in which the brain controls what we perceive, scientists learn more about sensory perception, about the brain, and about vision.

The Science of Visual Illusion

Research in visual illusion and sensory perception involves psychology, physiology, and neuroscience of vision and image processing. Students who are interested in these fields or who simply enjoy the "wow" factor of visual illusions can get more hands-on with the following science projects:

• The Brains Behind 'Where's Waldo?': Create your own visual "find it" game to test the role of "distracters" and how changes in number, size, and color influence difficulty.
• Apparent Motion & Animation: Create flip books to learn more about the way the brain "fills in" motion between a series of static images. Put your love of animation to use by learning more about the science behind the tried-and-true flip book!
• Get the Scoop on Stroop: The color of text makes it harder for people to correctly read the typed name of a color. It's a visual brain twister!
• Now You See It, Now You Don't: A Chromatic Adaptation Project: Explore chromatic adaptation when you use a specifically-colored field to change how the brain will perceive an image.
• Now You See It, Now You Don't: Investigating Inattentional Blindness: Make a video to explore the ways in which focusing on something specific allows you to completely "not see" other things that happen or appear in the same space. There's a zany fun-factor built into this one!
• Warped Words and the Stroop Effect: Can you beat the Stroop Effect by bending the words or otherwise changing their shape or direction?
• Are Your Eyes Playing Tricks on You? Discover the Science Behind Afterimages!: Learn more about color perception, cone cells, and afterimages , the images you see after you focus intently on an image for a length of time and then look away and still see an "imprint" of what you had been staring at.
• I See a Full Moon Rising...and Shrinking...or Do I?: Investigate Emmert's law and the way the moon appears to be bigger at certain points of the night.

Taking it Farther

• A programming environment like Scratch can help you create animated illusions like the one award-winning one featured above. Find out how to get started with Scratch.

• You could also use Scratch to create an I Spy-, Where's Waldo-, or Pictureka-style game. Put what you learn about distracters to use to scale up or down the difficulty!

• Learn more about illusion, perception, and "magic" in Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions.

• Have you created your own visual illusions? We'd love to see! And if you try one of these projects, be sure and fill out an "I Did this Project" report to let us know how it went.
  

To view the other 2011 winning illusions (as well as winners from previous years), visit the Best Illusion Contest of the Year website.

Science Buddies will soon be turning ten, and in recognition of countless volunteer hours donated to building, refining, and envisioning the nonprofit's award-winning, free resources, the Science Buddies' staff recognized Ken Hess, founder and president, as "Volunteer of the Decade" at a company meeting today.

Since he launched Science Buddies in 2001, Ken has worked to facilitate the creation of top-notch resources, tools, and project ideas designed to support students, teachers, and their families in all aspects of doing a science or engineering project.

For more information about Ken and his move from successful entrepreneur to author, educator, and philanthropist, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hess.

Please join us in congratulating and thanking Ken on close to a decade of volunteerism. Millions of students, teachers, and families have benefited from the services Science Buddies offers. And behind those services, at every step, has been the guiding hand and inspiration of Ken.

Blake Marggraff and Matthew Feddersen were a "sweeping" success at the Contra Costa County Science & Engineering Fair" (CCCSEF) last month. The duo of 12th graders from Acalanes High School won first place in their grade, a "Senior Division Grand Award Sweepstakes," and "Best in Science Fair" honors for their biology project entry, "Simulated Treatment of Cancer with Photoelectric Effect-Produced Secondary Radiation."

Marggraff and Feddersen moved on to the California State Science Fair (CSSF) and will represent the CCCSEF at the Intel ISEF in May. The team also garnered special awards, including cash prizes for the "California Society for Biomedical Research," "Bio-Rad: Senior Division—Best in Biological," and "John Muir Health: Excellence in Potential for Improving Healthcare in the Future" special awards.

Nicholas Paz, a 10th grader at De La Salle High School, also won a first place award and a "Senior Division Grand Award Sweepstakes" for his environmental science project, "Coral Pollution: Effects of Tricaine Methane Sulfonate on Seriatopora Coral."

A Growing Fair

A survey of the projects that won awards (first-fourth, honorable mentions, and/or special awards) indicates the high caliber of scientific exploration represented at the fair, exploration, in many cases, that mirrors areas of hot scientific inquiry and pursuit for today's researchers. The quality of submissions at CCCSEF also reflects the growth of the Northern California fair, now in its sixth year.

According to April Treece, director of the CCCSEF, there were a record number of projects and a record number of students who participated in the 2011 event. "There were 120 projects and 142 student participants this year," says Treece. "We had 6 high schools and 8 middle schools participating," she adds, noting that two new high schools and one new middle school participated this year.

For CCCSEF officials, the upward trend—and continued support from the community and local corporations, including Bio-Rad and Chevron—is exciting. CCCSEF's growing numbers of science fair participants also potentially indicates growing interest in science literacy—together, teachers, communities, families, involved corporations, and organizations like Science Buddies are doing something right!

Congratulations

The following projects won first place recognition at the 2011 CCCSEF:

Student(s)		Project/Category		School/Grade
Madison Martin		"Double or Triple Scoop: How Different Blade Sizes and Types Affect a Savonius Wind Turbine's Energy Output" Engineering		Adams Middle School, 8
Andrew Johnson & Matthew VanderKlugt		"Hot n Cold" Physical Science		Holy Rosary, 8
Vipul Kashyap		"Software Complexity Measurement" Math/Computer Science		Deer Valley High School, 9
Nicholas Paz		"Coral Pollution: Effects of Tricaine Methane Sulfonate on Seriatopora Coral" Environmental Science		De La Salle High School, 10
John Jankowski		"How Do Omega 3 Fatty Acids Affect Cell Membrane Strength?" Biological Science		De La Salle High School, 10
Blake Marggraff & Matthew Feddersen		"Simulated Treatment of Cancer with Photoelectric Effect-Produced Secondary Radiation" Biological Science		Acalanes High School, 12
Andrew Clausen		"Singers vs Instrumentalists: A Test of Relative Pitch Sense" Behavioral/SS		Deer Valley High, 12

Special Awards

At Science Buddies, we encourage students selecting and conducting science fair projects to explore special awards that may be available at local fairs and competitions. At CCCSEF, there were 30+ special awards up for grabs, including the following "Innovation" awards presented by Chevron, one of the fair's key sponsors:

• Chevron Innovation Award, Sr Division: Yasamin Haider, Deer Valley, "The Effects of Time on the Orbits of Globular Clusters"

  
  

• Chevron Innovation Award, Sr Division: David Avunanya, Deer Valley, "Lunar Crater Counting"

  
  

• Chevron Innovation Award, Sr Division: Jackson Schleider, Deer Valley, "The 'Hydrosphere': Responsible Efficiency in Water Bottles"