Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi Heather,

I am glad to let you know that my project won second place at the Regional Science Fair. I have been asked to participate at the state level. I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards
Vish

Hi Vish,

Thank you for that exciting update! You developed a unique and well-conducted study, and it's so great that you earned second place. Make sure to incorporate any feedback from your judges at the regional fair as you prepare for the state fair. Let me know if you need help with that process.

Best,
Heather

Thanks Heather,

I came first in the Medical and Health Science section in the Arizona State Fair (Azsef)

Thanks once again for your help.

Regards
Vish

Hi Vish,

That is such great news! Congratulations on a job well done.

Heather

Thanks Heather.

Also for next year one of my topic of interest was Pancreatic cancer. I thought it will be a nice start if I understand what it is and start reading about it so I can then think about some project ideas.

I see you have been mentoring on this subject as well. Let me know if you have any resource I should look up.

Regards

Vish

Instead of Rice one of the many foods my daughter is testing is Whole Wheat Pasta vs White Pasts.
Is there a rule of thumb as to how much pasta and how much water to combine before mashing ? Or Blender?
Thank you

Also planning on testing fruits, veg, and juices.

Hi Vish,

bumblebee27 wrote:Also for next year one of my topic of interest was Pancreatic cancer. I thought it will be a nice start if I understand what it is and start reading about it so I can then think about some project ideas.

I see you have been mentoring on this subject as well. Let me know if you have any resource I should look up.

I love how you think ahead! I am a physiologist, but I do not have particular expertise in the topic of pancreatic cancer. The student I was mentoring did the Science Buddies project called The Cancer Genome Anatomy Project: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p011.shtml. There are a lot of resources available in the information provided for that project.

PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/) is a wonderful resource for anything related to molecular biology. You can find everything from scientific articles to gene sequences.

I hope this helps you get started, and I would be happy to continue helping you along the way!

Best,
Heather

Hello Hun,

Welcome to Science Buddies!

Hun wrote:Instead of Rice one of the many foods my daughter is testing is Whole Wheat Pasta vs White Pasts.
Is there a rule of thumb as to how much pasta and how much water to combine before mashing ? Or Blender?
Thank you

Also planning on testing fruits, veg, and juices.

Were you planning on doing the Science Buddies project "How Sweet It Is" (https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p049.shtml) with these foods? Or did you want to test glycemic index? If you scroll through the earlier posts in this thread, you will see that testing glycemic index requires blood draws from human volunteers, whereas testing the glucose content of food is a simpler procedure.

The important thing when comparing foods is to pick a standard amount for comparison. With solid foods that you plan to mash or blend, you could start with the same wet mass (weight of the food with water in it, including cooked pasta). For the juices, you can compare the same volume.

I hope this helps you get started. Please post again if you have more questions.

Heather

Hi Heather,

Happy New Year!

For this year's science project we started on doing a project on Ultrasonic sensors , but we are running short in time and think we might not be able to complete it. Then we thought of extending the GI project. We have 2 ideas

1. See the effect of genetically modified foods and compare GI. We are not sure if we can get food that are labelled genetically modified in the .
Looking to use Rice, pasta etc similar to the foods we did last year.

2. The other option is to find the effect of GI on the same foods we did last time, but pair it with a constant amount of protein. Thinking about Fish.

We are more leaning to the second option. We would like to see what your suggestion is.

Regards
Vish

Hi Heather,

I know this is an old topic and wanted to get your attention.

Earlier I posted that I am extending this project this . We today decided to modify what we want to try.

We would like to pickup one of the carbohydrate we tested earlier and combine that with different proteins

so thinking about
Carb+fish
Carb+chicken
Carb+lentils

Wanted to see if you have any suggestions

Regards
Vish

Hi Vish,

So sorry for the delayed response. I was away at a conference and have been playing catch-up since I returned.

I think your idea for combining one of your carbohydrates with a protein is a really great idea!

bumblebee27 wrote:so thinking about
Carb+fish
Carb+chicken
Carb+lentils

Remember to include a control, by measuring the same carbohydrate alone.

Otherwise, I think this is a great plan. Any reason you are avoiding red meat here? I like the use of chicken, fish, and lentils (for a vegetarian/vegan option), but I think it would also be interesting to look at red meat. Of course, I only suggest this if it is not a problem to add another trial for your subjects. If 4 trials (control, fish, chicken, lentils) is as much as you are willing to inflict on your subjects, I think it's a well-rounded design and you will be good to go.

By the way, I wanted to address your other idea regarding the genetically modified foods. Honestly, I do not see any reason that genetically modified carbs should affect GI any differently than non-modified carbs. (The exception would be if they were specifically modified to exhibit a lower GI.) Most genetically modified foods are modified for pest resistance and/or flavor, which are genes that would not necessarily affect the GI. Basically, I think you picked the better project idea from the two you listed. (Again, sorry for taking so long to get back to you.)

Please keep me posted as you continue with this project! I really enjoyed helping you with the original project, and I am looking forward to seeing what happens with this one.

Best,
Heather

Hi Heather,
Thanks for the suggestion. We are going to use red meat as another protein and have a control. I will inform you on what we will be doing.

Do you have recommendation on how much protein we should add for each meal.

from,
Vish

Hi Heather,

We started the experiment this weekend. When we researched we found the suggested quantity is 2:1 ( Carb : Protein) Ratio. So we are calculating 25gm of protein in the given food to add to the 50 gm of carb ( we are doing potatoes since it had the high GI).

Regards
Vish

Hi Vish,

Sorry I missed your question about how much protein to add. I'm glad you found a suggested ratio! (I probably would have said that it is most important that you keep it constant and note the ratio.)

Please let me know how it goes!

Heather

Hi Heather,

Thanks for your reply. We did experiment today using red meat and found each volunteer's blood sugar did better when they also eat protein.

I will keep you posted.

From,
Vish

Hi Vish,

What an interesting result! I'm looking forward to hearing more when you complete more of the project.

Thanks for keeping me posted!

Heather

Hi Heather,

We completed all our test. We did one with red meat, white meat, salmon and peanuts as source of protein.It is interesting to see that each individual reacted differently for the different proteins. Now we are thinking of a title. Our title right now is: Which protein reduces the GI of a carbohydrate?

Let us know if this is a good project.

Regards,
Vish

Hi Vish,

Glad to hear you have completed the project! Those are interesting results indeed. Did you find that pairing a carbohydrate with a protein reduced the GI in all cases, but the amount of the reduction differed among individuals? If so, you could make your title something like: "Which protein most reduces the glycemic index of a carbohydrate?" or "Individual variation in glycemic index reduction with protein pairing." I also like to start my titles with something catchy, followed by the more scientific version. For example, "To meat or not to meat... Which protein most reduces the glycemic index of a carbohydrate?" (Maybe you can come up with something a little less cheesy. )

Let me know if you need more help. Are you comfortable with how you plan to present your data?

Heather

Thanks Heather,

We chose to use one of your suggested title.

We are planning to present the project showing the glucose response of each individual and also calculate the GI of potato and different proteins in our data and charts and write our conclusion based on it.

Do you have a suggestion on the calculations? Last year we did the graph manually on our lab books. My parents want us to see if we need to present the data professionally as it is done in Broadcom masters. I have seen some pictures of the projects on the web and wondering if that is appropriate for us.

Regards,
Vish

Hi Heather,

We are glad to share the news that our project won first place in the Regional Science Fair and is nominated for Broadcom Masters.

Thanks once again for all your help.

Looks like it is a different process to compete here. We are all excited and appreciate any guidance you can provide.

Regards
Vish

Hi Vish,

Congratulations! So glad to hear that you won first place.

Broadcom MASTERS is a national competition, and I understand you want to wanting to create a professional-looking presentation. You would be surprised at the kind of figures you can create in Microsoft Excel. If you tell me more about the data you have and what you want to do with it, I can give you more specific advice about your figures.

Overall, I recommend that you take a look at your supporting information (background, discussion) and make sure you have enough to tell a complete story. I also recommend thinking about the applications of your project as well as possible next steps, so you can answer questions the judges might have for you.

I hope that helps. Let me know if I can be of more help regarding your figures.

Best,
Heather

Hi Heather,

Sorry for not responding to you for a long time. I am almost done drafting my presentation for Broadcom masters and was wondering if I can send it to you to get a feedback.

Vish

Hi Vish,

Very exciting! Science Buddies wants us to keep all of our communication in the forum. Can you upload your presentation as an attachment? (There is an option to do this below the message window.) If it is too big, you may need to upload it in sections.

Best,
Heather

Thanks Heather.

I am not able to attach the zip file or the pdf due to it size.

Hi Heather,

I went ahead and submitted my application and my application is accepted. Sorry my one page pdf was still not accepted here in this forum due to its size. Since I was running short of time I went ahead and submitted.

Thanks for all your help.

I also wanted to get your advice on how to extend this project. I would like to collect a lot of data and was wondering how to accomplish it. I think doing some research project in a lab will also be helpful. Do you suggest any resource which allows 7th graders to do research?

Regards
Vish

Hi Vish,

Sorry for my delayed response. Congratulations on submitting your application!

I think you have a very well designed project, and the important thing would be to improve your sample size (number of subjects) and to try doing some basic statistics (e.g., Analysis of Variance, ANOVA) to compare your results. I think performing statistics would improve the project more than extending or changing it further.

I do not know of any research labs that would allow 7th graders to do research. However, that does not mean there are none! My recommendation is to ask your science teacher if s/he knows of any such resources. I also recommend looking for local colleges and community colleges with research labs. A university will be more likely to have a research lab related to your interests (glycemic index and/or diabetes), but a community college might be more open to having younger students work in the lab. Opportunities definitely vary by region.

As always, please keep me posted.

Best,
Heather