The 21st annual Toshiba/National Science Teachers Association ExploraVision Program today announced its 24 Regional Winners for 2013. Underwritten by Toshiba and administered by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision challenges students to work in teams and design innovative technologies that could exist in 20 years.
Every year, many students in the Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision Program carefully research real science and work together to envision technologies that could benefit the world’s environment and help build a more sustainable future. This year, for instance, citing their concern about how air pollution could be contributing to global warming, a team comprised of one 2nd grade student and one kindergarten student from the Davis School for Independent Study/Peregrine School in Davis, CA imagined the Flying Photocatalytic Pollution Frog – a device to be built into airplane engines that would literally spray chemicals from the engine’s exhaust to “scrub” the atmosphere of dangerous pollutants – or, as the students say: “eat pollution like a frog eats insects!”
Two 5th grade students from Locust Valley Intermediate School in NY came up with the idea for Triple C: Carbon Capture for Cars, a futuristic type of filter that would physically separate environmentally harmful carbon from an automobile’s exhaust. A new technology proposed by two 5th grade students from Millstone River School in Plainsboro, NJ, the N.T.S.B. (Nano Tech Shoe Base), would provide an alternative energy source to help preserve fossil fuels by producing safe alternative power simply by harnessing the energy generated by walking.
A team of 1st grade students from Evanston, IL aim to use technology to eliminate the problem of nasty head lice with the Lice-Anator, a computerized hairbrush with special bristles and processors that not only detect the presence of the creepy crawlers, but also kill them using a tiny pulsating laser.
To help prevent heart attacks, a 10-12th grade team from San Jose, CA, suggested Immunotargeted DNA-based Nanostructures for the Delivery of the Pro-Angiogenic VEGF Protein to Revascularize Infarcted Myocardium, a DNA nanostructure delivery system that would administer a beneficial VEGF protein directly to the patient’s heart. Two 10th grade students from Alexandria, VA, proposed another nano-based medical treatment with A Combinatorial Approach to Breast Cancer Prognosis and Treatment Using Fractal Dimensional Analysis and Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) Nanoparticles, which would incorporate a computer interface that uses a fractal of a patient’s MRA can to identify locations of primary tumors, followed by thermal injection of targeted nano-particles to eliminate cancer-specific cells.
For more information or an application for 2014, visit www.exploravision.org.
