WASHINGTON: They are yet to get their drivers license, but they are already assured in their way around the world of science and maths. They are yet to wield a shaving razor, but they are adept at using electron microscopes and spectroscopes.
The seventh annual Siemens-Westinghouse science competition threw up the usual medley of brilliant young minds with a strong contingent from India and China.
Of the six individual finalists, two were of Indian origin and two of Chinese lineage, and all six teams in the team group event had an Asian participant. Anne Lee and Albert Shieh, two high school students from Arizona, won the top prize in the team event —a $100,000 scholarship — for developing software that experts believe may increase the rate of accuracy in genetic data analysis. But the most intriguing project came from the Long Island pair of Benjamin Pollack and Abhinav Khanna, who won $50,000 for tracking the sexual preferences of fruitfiles and determining how changes in those habits contribute to evolutionary development.
In the individual category, judges said Texas student Desh Mohan’s research may contribute to the understanding and potential clinical management of anoxic diseases such as strokes. By studying the survival rate of male and hermaphrodite C elegans nematodes in oxygen-deprived conditions, he was able to identify the hsp 12.6 gene as a factor in male anoxia survival. Judges also said Connecticut high schooler Kiran Pendri’s project might contribute to future pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing developments.
Essentially creating a new building block, for creating new molecules, his “‘macrocyclisation using a Ring-closing Olefin Metathesis allows for the creation of a useful mid-sized molecular ring that can serve as a precursor for the synthesis of new chemical species.” Pendri won $ 50,000 in prizes and Desh Mohan won $ 30,000. The winner of the $ 100,000 first prize in the individual category was a home-schooled American senior.
Michael Viscardi’s project, entitled On the Solution of the Dirichlet Problem with Rational Boundary Data, develops new approaches to a math problem first formulated in the 19th century by the French mathematician, Lejeune Dirichlet. His research shows solutions to the Dirichlet problem which are what mathematicians call “rational functions.” Simple and useful, “rational functions” are particularly amenable to computer implementation. —Dawn/ The Times of India News Service
