Worried that the United States Lacks Future Scientists?
August 20, 2008
Kids these days. Playing Wii. Eating cheetos. Messing up their rooms. Scoring low in math and science. How will they ever buck up, grow up and run the country?
Well, take a chill pill. After coming across this little nugget, I'm gonna hunker down in front of the Wii myself with a bowl full of cheese that goes crunch.
The link is to the Davidson Institute for Talent Development and every year they award scholarships to "profoundly gifted" young people under 18. I get a little narrow-eyed whenever I hear the words "gifted child." Everyone thinks their kid is super smart and needs special attention. But, seriously, these kids are no joke, winning $10,000 to $50,000 scholarships for their brainy ideas. Some examples:
- In his project, “Translation – Invariant Binary Representations,” Akhil Matthew worked on a problem involving the encoding of real numbers into zero-one sequences without reference to an origin.
- In her project, “Investigating an Allosteric Binding Site for a New Class of HIV-1 Protease Inhibitors,” Christine Shrock developed an approach to finding a more effective HIV treatment.
- In his project, “High Efficient 3-Dimensional Nanotube Solar Cell for Visible and UV Light,” Williaminvented a novel solar panel that enables light absorption from visible to ultraviolet light.
- In his project, “Novel Herd Immunity Threshold Analysis Incorporating Population Dynamics and Gradual Immunization,” Nathan Georgette developed a novel mathematical model intended to reduce the costs of stopping viral disease outbreaks in impoverished nations.
Wowsers. Disease, energy, algorithms for signal processing....I think we're going to be okay.
Photo: Paul Taylor
Has anyone looked at the role Cheetos may be playing in these young geniuses cerebral development?
Posted by: mysterymeat | August 20, 2008 at 10:48 AM