Students innovate in food, medicine and more at Las Vegas science fair
LAS VEGAS, N.M. — For those who don't store their avocados in the fridge, here's some bad news.
Science says you're wrong. More specifically, 12-year-old James Junghans has found — using the scientific method — that you're wrong.
James' project is one of many that filled the hall of New Mexico Highlands University's Student Union building Saturday for the Northeastern New Mexico Regional Science and Engineering Fair. This was the college's 67th year as host.
Another student, Evie Odiamar, 13, tested the ideal fermentation times in glucose content for a batch of kimchi. She noted results might be different for adding fish sauce, which she said her family prefers.
The projects weren't all food-related, though. The fair takes entries in 17 categories. Both avocados and kimchi fell under the biochemistry umbrella.
The two projects awarded Best in Show among the ninth to 12th graders advance to the International Science and Engineering in Columbus, Ohio, held by the nonprofit Society for Science.
Students are judged on a variety of criteria from methodology and design to execution, but they all have one thing in common — they must use the scientific method for a real-world application.
Lilly Viteva's real-world application was to use science to examine ways to reduce plastic waste.
'Plastics make up most of the waste in our environments, in our oceans, even in our backyards. So what I wanted to do was find a quicker, more effective way, because recycling takes a lot more than just putting it into the blue bin. It takes time, energy, money — which most people aren't willing to spend,' said the 15-year-old Los Alamos High School student.
Her method? To heat plastic until just below the melting point to classify it, thereby making otherwise flimsy plastic into a solid chunk that could be used in structures like homes.
Daniel Rodriguez, a special awards judge at the show, was keenly interested in the project, noting other judges sent him over to check it out.
'It's very cool,' said Rodriguez, who works at Los Alamos National Laboratory and is presenting the special award on behalf of the American Chemical Society's Central New Mexico chapter.
He said he looks for presentations that communicate the research — but conversation with the student is equally important.
'Never judge a project just by what you see,' he said. 'It's always the balance between that and the student.'
Los Alamos High student Alyssa Sun, 16, aimed to use artificial intelligence to make medical diagnoses.
She downloaded 6,000 of the 112,000 X-ray images of pneumonia-afflicted lungs available on the National Institutes of Health public database. Then she wrote 200 lines of code to create an AI model able to look at new X-ray images, compare them with the models and estimate the likelihood that a given lung X-ray contained pneumonia.
She was pretty successful — her model boasts around a 95% accuracy rate, beating trained radiologists, she said, who report around 90% to 95% diagnosis accuracy for comparable tests.
She got the idea from a friend who contracted pneumonia. When the friend saw Sun's project, she asked, 'Where was this when I had it?' Sun said.
Joshua Bala, a student at Mandela International Magnet School in Santa Fe, got his idea for a medicine reminder app from someone in his life who takes medicine, 'and especially some people who have to take their medicine exactly on time, and they can't even be like 10 minutes late or 10 minutes early.'
'So I was wondering, there must be some other way that's more effective than just using memory,' he continued.
He devised a study that found cellphone reminders greatly improved rates of on-timeness compared to plain memory or a sticky note on the fridge.
The youthful inventiveness was an inspiration to Jenn Aldred, director of the fair and of its organizing body, the Achieving in Research Math and Science Center at Highlands.
'If you're feeling sad and hopeless in everything that's happening in the world, all you have to do is come down here and talk to these kids who have these amazing ideas for how to make the world a better place,' she said.
Aldred, who holds a doctorate in geology, is in her third year organizing the fair. Since her first year, she's been pushing to increase participation by students from underresourced areas, noting northeastern New Mexico encompasses some of the wealthiest and poorest counties in the state.
'We need more support for these students,' Aldred said.
The college received several grants to provide additional mentorship for students and for International Science and Engineering Fair training for teachers to help correct those disparities. Aldred said this has helped, citing the first- and second-time appearances of a few schools at Saturday's show.
' We know science is not equitable,' she said. 'We know that most sciences are not diverse. We know that most sciences are not inclusive, and I know that those are dirty words these days. But I believe wholeheartedly that we aren't going to solve any problems if we do not have DEI and our sciences. You'll see kids from all walks of life, different backgrounds ... ranges of mentorship and education, and it's truly inspiring.'
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