Latest news with #MandelaInternationalMagnetSchool
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
'Sort of saddening': Santa Fe student's video on deforestation wins international award
Fourteen-year-old Alisha Wald may live in a desert state. But the recent graduate from the Mandela International Magnet School in Santa Fe has seen the creep of deforestation in the rainforest firsthand. Every few years, Wald visits her grandparents in Malaysia. Across the road from their home is a rainforest. Each year, Wald sees it shrink bit by bit. "It was sort of saddening to see that land that was right in front of my grandparents' home was slowly disappearing," said Wald, who will enter ninth grade in the fall. "It made me think of all the animals, since we used to go on trips to the rainforest and we saw all the animals there, like monkeys, and I just thought about all the biodiversity and all the creatures that are affected from just the deforestation." Wald recently won first place in the World of 8 Billion International Student Contest for her video on the rainforest, competing against thousands of students in 67 countries. The contest, which for middle schoolers comes with a $600 prize, asked students to make videos about the impact of a growing global population on three topics: child well-being, rainforest ecosystems and sanitation. The organization behind the contest, Population Connection, is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that says it "educates young people and advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth's resources." There's a high global demand for food from the tropics, Wald explained in her video. But deforestation in the rainforest can lead to a loss in biodiversity and an increase in carbon emissions; a 2021 study published in Nature found that, in areas of the Amazon rainforest impacted by deforestation, forest areas that had once acted as carbon sinks — absorbing carbon — were now releasing it. Rainforest Deforestation Deforestation isn't a problem limited to the world's rainforests, Wald said. The loss of trees and biodiversity in the rainforest is a global issue. "That really stuck out to me about how, as it's burned or chopped down and degraded, it really impacts it ... as the carbon increases and goes up to the environment," Wald said. "I tried to use data to really dig deeper into my topic. But through that, I built on the idea of how it impacts everyone, not just those 1 billion people directly." But Wald wasn't just trying to identify an issue — she also was looking for solutions. Initially, Wald, who plans to study engineering, was thinking high-tech solutions. But her world geography teacher, Amanda Burkybile, encouraged her to look at existing practices to address deforestation. Enter agroforestry. Agroforestry mixes native trees with crops and livestock, rather than cutting down trees to establish a monoculture. "I learned about agroforestry, and through research it said that it's existed for thousands of years," Wald said. "It was essentially just introducing the land and like planting and agriculture with other animals and other native plants to make it replicate the land in a way, make it just better for the overall environment." The practice can help sequester carbon, Wald said. Her mother, Azuhana Azid, said she watched her daughter painstakingly edit her video into just 60 seconds. "She likes to try everything, and when she tries something, she wants to do the best that she can," Azid said. Wald, a clarinet player and striker for the soccer team, is heading to Santa Fe High School next year. Wald also took first place in the Santa Fe Public Schools District Science Fair earlier this year and received an honorable mention in the Aldo Leopold Writing Contest for her essay on her connection to nature. Wald will be recognized for her video Tuesday in an online ceremony.
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Eighth grader wins New Mexico State Spelling Bee for second time in three years
Mar. 29—For hours, they fought hard and, with the ding of the bell, dropped like flies — bested by words most people won't hear in a lifetime. It ended in dramatic fashion as two eighth graders, barely tall enough to see over the microphone, went back and forth misspelling words until one of them got it right. In the end, Keith Lee, 13, bested Joshua Bala, 14, for first place by correctly spelling puparium, a rigid outer shell formed from larval skin, and verbigerate, the action of repeating a word or sentence endlessly and meaninglessly. It marked Lee's second time earning the title of champion in the New Mexico State Spelling Bee, having also won in 2023. "It's just so many emotions... It just really showed to me how much I can achieve just by working hard," Lee, a second language English speaker from Albuquerque Academy, told the Journal. Lee's parents, Po-Hsuen Lee and Yi-Hsuan Chang, said it's been impressive to watch him juggle baseball practices and math contests while studying for the bee. "But that's Keith," Po-Hsuen Lee said, "always pushing himself." In late May, Lee will head to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. Bala, from Mandela International Magnet School in Santa Fe, took second place after misspelling graveolent, while Hanna Li, a seventh grader at Los Alamos Middle School, took third after correctly spelling mediatrix in an elimination round. Bala said he was "really unsure" of himself when they reached the dictionary words but was proud to take second place — especially after briefly forgetting how to spell quattrocento much earlier, in round 10. "I was really close to getting it wrong, but I remembered it at the last minute," he said. Devi Bala, Bala's mother, said with a laugh, "I just wanted to leave the room because I couldn't handle the stress." Li, who won second place in the 2023 state bee, said you can't really prepare for the dictionary words, of which there are 470,000. "You just have to ask for the origin and then guess," she said. Buzz words The contest began at 9 a.m. in an upstairs auditorium at the headquarters of the Albuquerque Journal, which sponsors the bee. Twenty-five students from 245 schools in the state went head-to-head. By round 25, only four remained after several students were thwarted by Gallic, boudin and velouté. In Round 31, organizers announced they were switching from the Scripps list of words to Merriam-Webster, eliciting a nervous smile from Li to her father in the audience. When it came down to Bala and Lee, the pair couldn't get a word right to catch an edge, misspelling pallescent, canasta, panforte, rubrofugal, banket, gaffsail, xeric, pipit, chancel and Sochi. Lee said he learned to calm himself in such moments by meditation, taking deep breaths and "force a smile, because that just makes you feel less stressed, and it also puts you in a positive mood." Heading into this bee, Lee said he learned to not set too high of expectations, something he will carry through life. "Like, I could say I want to graduate from college at 13, and I want to earn whatever amount of money and send the first human to Neptune," Lee said. "But really ... to just set your expectations low, not low to where you just feel lazy and don't really try hard enough, but not to the point where you feel overwhelmed ... and doubt how well you can do in these situations." Last year's state champion who reached the national quarterfinals, Juliette Anderson, was on the other side of the table this time around, as an audio recorder. She said she found it funny to "not be nervous" at a bee, but she was still spelling the words in her head the whole time. Anderson said she misses studying words and preparing for the state bee, saying there's "a hole" in her life where that once was. A poet, she said she has written many poems about how much she misses the competition and community. The national bee was one of the best experiences of her life, she said, adding, "I just really felt like I belonged there." Anderson still relishes the tough words, and she easily rattles off one of her favorites: Makgadikgadi Pans, a salt pan in the dry savanna of Botswana.
