[world-vedic] INDIA'S TEENAGE SCIENTISTS

[Guest guest]

Four teenaged scientists to prove their mettle at global fair

By Mohua Chatterjee

 

NEW DELHI: The world's entire white tiger population lives in

captivity. Swati Mishra, 14, discovered this and much more while doing

a project on these big cats - The white tiger: A prognosis for survival

- over a two-year period. A class IX student from Rourkela, Swati has a

fascination for wildlife, which led her to the discovery that the white

tiger originates only in India and faces extinction.

 

The project won her the first prize at the Intel National Science

Talent Discovery Fair, 2000, here on Wednesday. She found that

in-breeding among these animals lead to stillborn and weak cubs. Worse,

captivity has killed their natural instinct for hunting and survival.

These two factors may hasten their extinction.

 

Swati and three other teenaged scientists, who too won prizes for their

projects, will be headed for Detroit, US, in May to compete at the

Intel International Science and Engineering Fair to be held there.

 

Swati doesn't, however, want to take up wildlife study as a career. She

would rather be a bio-technologist or study cystic fibrosis - because

``one of my friends died of it.''

 

M Venkatasubramnian, a 15-year-old class X student from Bangalore, won

the second prize in the individual category for his project on

``Aluminium-powered fuel cell''. ``The idea sprang from the power cuts

I suffered, specially during exams. I realise that mankind's survival

depends on renewable power, with zero emission. This means we need

eco-friendly devices. This led me to look at a project on alternative

energy,'' he says.

 

The cell he devised produces electricity by using aluminium from used

coke, beer, perfume cans and aluminium foil.

 

The top winners in the group category were the duo Sameep Agrawal and

Sarvesh Rathore, class IX students from Jabalpur. They stumbled upon

the fact that the shellac industry could be a good source for

eco-friendly micronutrients.

 

``We had gone on a summer vacation to Bilaspur where we saw that lac

dye from the shellac industry being dumped in the forest; vegetables

and other plants were thriving on these dumps. That got us thinking.

Our project - Shellac industry waste as a complexing agent for

eco-friendly micronutrients - results from that.''

 

The talent discovery fair is in its second year in India. Last year,

the debut year, an Indian entry had won the top award in the

biosciences category at the international fair, according to Debjani

Ghosh, manager, Intel education programme which organises the fair.