Update: Science Talk, the original podcast of Scientific American, features interviews with the winners highlighted in this post.
In 2005, ex-Harvard University President Lawrence Summers kindly brought to light his hypothesis that genes explain for the lack of women in top science jobs. Men in those high ranking positions may want to hold on tight to those high-ranking positions.
Girls stole the show today, winning the most coveted high school science prizes at the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology.
Isha Jain won the individual grand prize and a scholarship in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology for her research on bone growth in zebrafish. Jain, a senior from Bethlehem PA, has already been published in the journal Developmental Dynamics.
Her friends call her "fish girl."
Jain says zebrafish "are simple creatures and if you amputate their fins they regenerate."
Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff, two seniors from New Jersey won the top prize for a group project, and a $100,000 scholarship, for their work on tuberculosis.
The 17-year-old girls co-authored, ""FtsZ Inhibitors as Novel Chemotherapeutic Agents for Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis." After combining two TB drugs, they created a molecule that helps block the reproduction of the bacteria of drug-resistant tuberculosis.
"These students have climbed the Mount Everest of science competitions and reached the summit," Thomas McCausland, chairman of the Siemens Foundation, said in a prepared statement Monday. "With all the challenges facing our world today, it is heartening to know these remarkable young people are working on the solutions."
Take that, Summers.
Via Newsday and Siemens Foundation.
Comments
The Truth Seeker says:
Lawrence Summer may yet get the last laugh!
Have you noticed, there was NO radio or TV coverage of this year's TRULY 'headline grabbing' news (or should I say press release) from Siemens? Do you think Siemens holds this contest simply out of the goodness of their hearts and doesn't expect LOTS of free POSITIVE publicity in return ( I would guess $2-6M worth?) And do you have any idea of just how MASSIVELY corrupt (by its own recent admissions) Siemens AG is? Do you know that its corruption extends around the world? Do you know many executives and managers have been fired and/or indicted at Siemens over just the last year (well over 100 so far!)? Do you know that our own SEC is now investigating the company? And did you know that in 2002 Siemens had even callously planned to TRADEMARK the Zyklon name, for use in future Siemens products, even though during its Nazi collaboration period (yes NAZI collaboration!) it proudly gave this very same name (Zyklon B) to the poison gas used to kill millions of Jews! So I, personally, wouldn't even WANT to be associated in ANY WAY with this corrupt and very unethical (formerly NAZI) company and I also think the general public and the news media, are just WAY too gullible (as we have seen many times before with WMD's, the denial of global warming, tobacco safety, VIOXX, etc. )!
So do you STILL believe that this was all just a nobel competition worthy of celebration and without ANY possibility of duplicity on Siemens part (especially given the tremendous amounts of BAD publicity they have recently received?) And if you think that 'at the very least' Siemens (and the College Board) are infallible in their scientific judgments, just look further into what happened in the 2004 competition! So, sorry to rain on your parade just yet.
In conclusion, however, the participants in any of these competitions can not be blamed for any of this and they ALL should be congratulated for just having entered and worked so hard on their projects. Despite rather 'contrived' contests such as this, that may well have ulterior motives, there really are no winners and losers in science, since the goal is just to learn something new about our world (whether experiments work or don't).
I, at least, will be very interested to learn the truth about what really happened, both in 2007 and in 2004 (if not other years).
The Truth Seeker
January 10, 2008 8:16 PM
Truth Seeker says:
Where was all the radio & TV coverage of this?
January 11, 2008 1:51 PM
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