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LAST UPDATE | 8 Jan
THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS have arrived at the RDS in Dublin for the 61st annual BT Young Scientist & Technology exhibition.
A total of 550 projects from 225 schools are aiming to win the €7,500 grand prize of Young Scientist of the Year and other awards in their respective categories.
Tomorrow, members of the public will be able to make their way around the exhibition floor and watch some of the live shows being held at the venue in Ballsbridge.
On a visit to the event this afternoon, The Journal spoke to students who have developed DIY systems to detect major weather events, machines that turn compost into hot water and apps to assist students with stutters to communicate in the classroom.
One student, Farrah Corbett from Coláiste Chiarán in Co Limerick, wanted to find out if there is any truth to someone having a “big Irish head”. She was inspired to investigate this burning question after a student from her school won the contest last year.
She told The Journal: ”I’m constantly hearing, especially when on holidays, ‘The big Irish head on you’ – we get recognised so easily.”
Corbett set out to by measuring Irish teenagers’ head circumference, shoulder width, height and distance between their heads and their shoulder and feet. Her father welded and 3D printed specially-made measuring tools to help her get accurate measurements.
She then compared the results from Irish teenages to the same measurements she took from teenages from African, Asian and eastern European backgrounds.
After testing for any outliers, through using a number of complex mathematic formulas, to ensure that the averages she measured were indeed accurate to her sample size, Corbett found that Irish people do not have a larger-than-average heads.
Corbett said there were some measurements where she found that Irish people had larger results – such as the distance from heads to shoulders – but, on average, noggins from Ireland are no different to any other.
Every single first responder who took part in Dana Carney’s project said they would use her app, designed to translate sign language in emergency scenarios, when out at work and attending to people in need.
The Mount St Michael student from Co Mayo is developing an app that, through machine learning, is able to translate Irish sign language (ISL) using a smartphone camera in real time – removing the need for the use of pencil and paper or third-party interpreting.
Carney gathered ISL users and over 160 first responders to re-enact emergency scenarios, giving them a minute to communicate a message using what paramedics would normally do in instances where they interact with someone who cannot hear.
She then got them to re-enact the same scenario and, this time, use her app, Secure Hands, to communicate a message. She found that using her app reduced the amount of time needed to communicate the message by 22 seconds, on average.
Carney told The Journal she also hopes that this app will remove instances of biased interpreting – as her research has also found that rates of domestic abuse are high in cases of people with disability, especially those who are deaf and ISL-users.
“If paramedic ask a partner to interpret for someone, then what is going to happen? There will be biased interpretation and this can leave someone completely vulnerable, increasing the rate of domestic abuse – because people know they can get away with it.
“It also prolongs the amount of time that abuse lasts,” she told The Journal. “So my hope is that my project can reduce that and reduce the general communication gap, every second can mean life or death [in these scenarios].”
Mae Burns, Noah Hanrahan and Orla Connolly identified that vaping in St Joseph’s Community College in Co Clare was one of the most-harmful things that students take part in.
The trio have since set out to develop an app and portable test kit that examines the chemical make up of substances in vape liquid to enhance user safety. An initial round of testing found the presence of lead, arsenic, tin and nickel in popular vaping products.
Currently, Burns told The Journal, the version they have on display at the RDS this week can only detect heavy metals in e-liquid. Connolly said, however, that they plan to look at ways to roll out accessible testing kits to detect all types of harmful substances.
Hanrahan explained that the software the group is using, Thermanio, helps to identify a number of different substances in samples fed into the machine. Burns said they hope this and future versions will help to spread more awareness of the harms of vaping.
“Heavy metals are really not good for you,” Hanrahan said. “They cause different diseases, like lead poisoning and neurological issues and stuff.”
Connolly suggested that these devices would would in school settings and in other healthcare settings to test for unwanted substances. She said people who saw their project this week have told them stories where their vapes have allegedly been spiked.
More than 2,000 projects were submitted this year, seeking a place on the exhibition floor at the RDS in Ballsbridge. Over the next three days, 85 judges will choose projects that will win one of the 200 prizes that are on offer.
President Michael D Higgins opened the event this afternoon and wished all of those competing for a prize the best of luck this morning.
Members of the public can visit the exhibition from tomorrow and a number of acts will be hosted in the venue until Saturday, including presentations by Mark the Science Guy, interactive science shows by Circus 250 and 3D space tours.
The overall winner, and some international awards, will be announced on Friday evening.
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I don’t know why they’re getting angry about flights being stopped. I mean I understand it, but they need to be realistic. They can’t contain it in their own towns and cities, so other countries have the right to try to prevent it coming into them.
They have that right…. Don’t they?
Well, politicians are known to throw shapes at one another. Of course Ivory Coast and Senegal have the right to seal their borders. As for the WHO’s alarmist claims… Liberia has always been a project of wishful thinking ever since the Americans founded it. Perpetual, ineradicable poverty will do more to dismantle the country than Ebola.
Have we any measures in place I wonder to assess/quarantine people arriving from affected regions?
Most epidemiologists believe the WHO predictions are in fact conservative, it’s going to be even worse. This is from Science Magazine, a respected scientific journal.
“If the disease keeps spreading as it has, most of the modelers Science talked to say WHO’s estimate will turn out to be conservative. “If the epidemic in Liberia were to continue in this way until the 1st of December, the cumulative number of cases would exceed 100,000,” Althaus predicts. Such long-term forecasts are error-prone, he acknowledges. But other modelers aren’t much more encouraging. Caitlin Rivers of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg expects roughly 1000 new cases in Liberia in the next 2 weeks and a similar number in Sierra Leone.”
Kai Kupferschmidt, Disease modelers project a rapidly rising toll from Ebola. Science Mag: http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/08/disease-modelers-project-rapidly-rising-toll-ebola
@John there is exit screening at every airport in the region, no direct flights from Africa to here. Someone making it here would have their passport flagged at any airport and be screened, so they’d have to get here by land and sea, by which time they’d be symptomatic and be isolated or screened anyway before they got a chance to spread this.
Only one case of Ebola has ever happened in Europe and it did not lead to a spread.
You plonker,ablitive,the u.s couldnt care less about africa.
The US civilian pandemic control agency the CDC has flown 100s of staff out to Africa, as they do with every major epidemic, on their own dime, to help WHO (of which the US is the biggest funder by far) set up exit screening at airports and help them control the epidemic. Did we send HSPC staff? No. Did the NHS send anyone? No. Did medicare Canada or medicare Australia send anyone? NO. Only the US sent it’s own domestic agency staff, whos primary job is to protect Americans, to a region where no Americans other than themselves are at risk, these AMERICAN doctors (some of whom have died) put their lives on the line to help these total strangers, at their own expense. No other country has done this, nobody else sends their own domestic agency out to foreign countries for free to help people.
Two American companies are working on drugs to treat this with the NIH, they gave nearly their entire stockpile of the most promising of these drugs to the Liberian health service, for free, on humanitarian grounds, for them to try on people who are definitely going to die anyway so there is nothing to loose giving them a ”hail mary” shot as they called it.
The US has a lot of problems I’m the first to say, but they and their staff are the heros in this story not the villains.
Governments will do anything to close down libraries
Forget about global warming, this is the sort of thing which will get us in the end as bugs develop resistance to all known antibiotics.
Trying to explain that it won’t help the flu is the same as trying to explain to them that it’s better for your healthcare to have 1 big regional hospital rather than 3 small pokey A&Es because the staff get more foot traffic, see more cases, more variety and become better doctors…just in one ear and out the other, they don’t care.
Luckily viruses tend to become less lethal over time not more, HIV has been around for at least 100 years now in one form or another it’s never mutated into anything more dangerous or airborne.
Of all the possible homeland security threats Ireland faces pandemic is our ‘national response scenario’ (the ranked system the yanks use to determine which scenarios are the biggest threats) number one.
We only have a certain amount of resources so we can’t prepare 100% for every single threat, so we scale them on a threat matrix trying to coincide what is the most deadly threat with what’s the most likely getting what is the most likely of the most deadly options, and that’s the one we pay the most attention to for planning
The ones the public worry about like a nuclear meltdown on the UK coast would not actually affect us in the least, surprisingly, the biggest threat that could take the most lives is pandemic so that’s where our biggest attention is and why we have major stockpiles of Tamiflu, Smallpox Vaccine, Relenza, H1N1 vaccine, pediatric preparations of the drugs, stockpiles of protective equipment…we’d be in the best shape of any in Europe if something like pandemic influenza came about. Plans estimate it would take at least 6 months to come up with a vaccine so the first wave of the pandemic would have to just be rode out, but since we live on an island it’s easier to isolate us.
If the virus starts hitting the UK and France all we need do is close the ports and airports and were protected 90%.
Healthcare is an all Ireland competence for the N/S Ministerial Council so we could take a join decision to isolate the entire island.
If the virus popped up here all we need do is declare a curfew for all nonessentials, allow newsagents to be open until that night to let people stock up, but immediately close down major shopping centres, schools, college campuses etc to stop people congregating, then after the curfew is in effect and everyone’s had a chance to get home / find a hotel / get groceries its easy to terminate all intercity road and rail travel, we have Garda, Garda Reserve, Army and Naval reserve, Civil Defence we have enough personnel to deal with it thankfully we never heeded those bonkers demands from some to disband the armed forces.
The United States is using Ebola to advance its imperialist agenda in Africa.
The United States is using the epidemic of the Ebola virus to advance its imperialist agenda in West Africa, a civil rights activist and journalist in Detroit says.
It was also mentioned recently that the US army will be drafted in.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste”. Winston Churchill
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/09/09/378229/us-uses-ebola-to-advance-imperialist-agenda/
You crack me up
Good stuff this great for a laugh
I am only quoting an article from a US Human Rights activist and I bet no one even read the article..
Meanwhile in another article in Journal this morning Obama has announced “war against ISIS” which will involve invading Syria… People need to wake up to US’s military expansion.
.
Ablitive I love a conspiracy theory but on this one maybe just keep the tin foil helmut on so we can’t read your mind.
16 Apocalyptic Quotes From Global Health Officials About This Horrific Ebola Epidemic..
You can add the headline from this article as the 17th…
You say ‘human rights activist’ like it’s a position of authority or something. Jesus, any lunatic can have an opinion.
Ablitive, you’ve been hoisted by your own petard. I stopped reading any of your links months ago. Everything in your world is a US/ Jewish conspiracy. Sadly, if you ever make a valid point it will be lost amongst the rainstorm of your conspiracy theories.
charles .. I don’e even want to hear from you again from your vial and insensitive postings on Gaza
And yes everything points to the Zi0nist conspiracy of take over the world by greed, from infiltrating governments, the mainstream media, most importantly banking.
I rest my case. Thanks.
And Charles I wouldn’t put a pass on it that Israel was behind the Ebola Crisis..They are the worlds NO 1 rogue nation. from genocide in Gaza to human organ trafficking.
I’m sure you’ll dig out a wholly unbiased presstv article implicating the Israelis in the extinction of the dinosaurs too. Feel free to ignore me from now on. Thanks.
Frank, did you really just suggest that Israel may be responsible for the outbreak of Ebola??
Frank, so nothing happened on September 7th after you said something big was going to happen.
Care to explain why your prediction was wrong?
Declan Noonan ….This was my posting on a thread last Saturday re possible false flag dates. Still two to go…
……………………………………………..
This would be a good guide..
There are three dates this month that add up to 777 taking September (Septem Latin for 7)
7th Septem 2014 (2+0+1+4 =7)
16th Septem 2014 (1+6=7)
25th Septem 2014 (2+5=7)
Today’s date September 7th 2014 is the most powerful as it contains two hidden 7′s .
September 7 is the 250th day of the year 2+5+0 = 7
There are 115 days remaining until the end of the year 1+1+5 =7
Looking back at 9/11 …
September 11 is the 254th day of the year 2+5+4 = 11
There are 111 days remaining until the end of the year
Avina Laaf .. Nothing would surprise me about Israel today.. they can get away Scott free with genocide, they have a law unto themselves. their quest is for world governance and they will do anything to achieve this goal including war, manufactured terrorism which could include biological weapons.
“Unfortunately, Israel is not the only regime with criminals and madmen running its germ warfare program. The United States of America also fits that description”
.http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/05/05/361346/bioweapons-could-lead-to-apocalypse/
But frank nothing happened on the 7th as you predicted something will?
I might have to start laughing at you now.
Btw, where’s joe and glen to back you up?
You’re an odd ball! 7 is an odd number too…. what a coincidence? !
Declan Noonan .. The next false flag on US soil will have the number 7 triplicated. Just like all other major US / Mossad false flags … MH17, 9/11 and 7/7..
Watch this space… False Flag season is upon us and the US authorities are itching themselves for the next one which no doubt they will blame on their latest invented bogyman terror group.
http://s4.postimg.org/qrnr1a6wd/addtext_com_MDUz_NDQ1_Nj_Q4_NDU.jpg
@ Ablitive,
Get a life frank.
Mark Heehee .. 7 is certainly an odd ball number.
For those of you not conspiracy theorists, the US military is worrying more about ISIS seizing control of the Middle East and about Russia starting WWIII (GWB having set a dangerous precedent that you can just invade and take another country if you want back in 2003), it does not have time to go f__ing around in Africa.
You really don’t know your enemy very well do you Abladive? The US has been afraid to deploy even peacekeeprs to Africa after the Somalia debacle, where the Marine Corps did a humanitarian aid operation off their AA ships, ending a famine, and their thanks was an attack on them and the UN forces which ended in their corpses being dragged through the streets.
Why do you think they didn’t get involved in stopping the Rwandan Genocide, despite what they said there was no logistical barrier, the RDF force could have put 25,000 troops there within days, the French and Belgians had 1000 troops there in a day to evacuate their own people and the troops, esp the ones who had been in Somalia, were dying to go in and stop it, but politically it was poison after what happened in Somalia.
There is no logic in sending troops in against a pandemic, troops can’t shoot germs, and their own troops are controlling civil disorder. There is no humanitarian motive because armies can’t help with germs, there is no financial motive because any resources those countries have are in western hands anyway, and there is no geopolitical goal because that area of the world is of no strategic value whatsoever. The defense industry are busy getting rich off the new drone market and salivating over the thought of how much they will make when the ISIS and Russia situations go pear shaped so they don’t care either.
It’s all in your head.
Is it any wonder its spreading…. look at all those people in the first picture!! If anyone of them walks over the area where that body is, they could pick up the virus from excreted fluids and track it around the place!!!!!!
have your say