tagged w/ Good News Network
-
A YOUNG scientist from Co Kerry believes she has discovered a flaw in drink-driving breathalyser results.
Her research suggests that both diabetics and those on very low-calorie diets are more likely to show false positive results because of chemical changes in their blood.
Ciara Stein (13), who is a student at Presentation Secondary School in Tralee, explained how these devices could misread results and indicate a person was drink-driving.
“Diabetics and people on very, very low calorie diets can trigger false positives on breathalyser tests,” she said yesterday.
Ciara’s study is one of 500 currently on display at the RDS in the 2009 BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. The overall young scientist of the year will be announced later this evening.
“This project has lots of importance to lawyers,” Ciara suggested.
The chemical changes in the blood are caused when levels of sugar drop too low, she explained.
“If you are diabetic or you are on a very low calorie diet, you can become hypoglycaemic – your blood sugar is too low. When this happens, you get ketones on your breath,” she said.A YOUNG scientist from Co Kerry believes she has discovered a flaw in drink-driving... more
-
-
Two eight-year-old girls from Banff are raising money to help care for an injured golden eagle.
A recovery centre in Southern Alberta took in Spirit the eagle after he was shot twice, leaving him blind and unable to fly. But looking after an eagle is an expensive venture for the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation in Coaldale, and the centre relies heavily on donations.
Elementary students Sierra Tanner and Maddison Strombecci have organized fundraisers, canvassed for corporate donations, and talked classmates into doing chores for donations.
Since October, they have raised $3,000.Two eight-year-old girls from Banff are raising money to help care for an injured... more
-
-
"Playing with her parents on Christmas morning, Cerys Edwards is just like any other excited toddler unwrapping festive gifts.
But just two years ago doctors advised her parents to switch off her life-support machine as she lay in hospital severely paralysed from a high-speed horror crash.
Cerys was 11 months old when Antonio Singh Boparan’s £57,000 Range Rover smashed into her parents’ Jeep at 70mph in a 30mph zone
Cerys, now three and whose father Gareth is from Llangollen, suffered a broken neck and brain damage in the November 2006 crash and needs £730,000 round-the-clock care and a ventilator to help her breathe.
As Cerys’ condition showed no signs of improvement, doctors advised Gareth and wife Tracey to switch off her life-support machine because her chances of survival were so slim.
But two years later she is back home in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, astonishing her family and carers with her progress and enjoying her first Christmas at home since the accident.""Playing with her parents on Christmas morning, Cerys Edwards is just like any other... more
-
-
(Marquette, Michigan) - The Zaagkii Wings and Seeds Project in Marquette is protecting pollinators like butterflies because billions of honeybees and bumblebees are dying worldwide in syndrome called “Colony Collapse Disorder.”
Marquette teens and Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) youth spent this summer building the first of dozens of white cedar butterfly houses that will be created over the next three years. Lined with bark and slimmer than birdhouses, the shelters offer protection, rest and reproduction safety to Monarchs and other butterflies.
Butterflies are a close second to bees in transferring pollen from one plant to another.
Experts are unsure why bee colonies are collapsing but pesticides, climate change and other man-made reasons are among the suspects. Without pollinators the world food supply will dry up including fruits, vegetables, flowers, other plants and trees.
The Zaagkii Project was founded by the non-profit Cedar Tree Institute (CTI) in Marquette.
“The problem with disappearing pollinators is a cause for concern (because) all life is interconnected,” said Todd Warner, KBIC Natural Resource Director.
Sponsors are KBIC, CTI, Marquette County Juvenile Court and the United States Forest Service (USFS).
“We are seeing a reduction in the number of bumblebees,” said Jan Schultz, Botany and Non-native Invasive Species Program Leader at the USFS eastern region office in Milwaukee.
The Zaagkii Project will plant native plants on the once-barren and polluted Sand Point, a Lake Superior beach that the KBIC is restoring from the effects of old copper mining waste. Marquette teens planted and distributed over 26,000 native plant seeds including at the Hiawatha National Forest greenhouse in Marquette.
The KBIC will use many of the plants at Sand Point Beach that was polluted about 90 years ago with stamp sands from the Mass Mill.
The first tribal Brownfield cleanup site in the Midwest, future plans include a nature tail, restoring a historic lighthouse, swimming, camping, boating, picnic areas and fishing ponds.
The goal is “the propagation of the native species rather than having the exotics come in and destroying what we have established,” said Evelyn Ravindra, KBIC NRD Natural Resources Specialist.
KBIC Summer Youth Program members Ethan Smith,17, and Janelle Paquin,15, and other NativeAmerican teens measured, hammered and painted the butterfly houses.
"We put the bark on the inside for the butterflies to rest on," Smith said.
Marquette teens were given a tour of a bee farm with about 60,000 honeybees.
If all bees disappeared the world food supply would be devastated as “fruits, vegetables, nuts and other commercial crops” vanish, said Beekeeper Jim Hayward of Negaunee Township. “We are all dependent on bees.”
The Marquette teens “went to libraries and studied about the Monarch butterflies and their life cycle and their migration patterns,” said Danny Weymouth, 16.
Restoring indigenous plants is vital to wildlife “so our native species don't get overruled and extinct by predator species,” said Justin Fassbender, 16.
Ensuring the future of native plants is important because “there are a lot of invasive species,” said Devin Dahlstrom, 15.
The public can help protect pollinators by being careful with insecticides, Schultz said.
“Apply the pesticide really early in the morning or at dusk when the pollinators aren’t active,” Schultz said.
The Zaagkii Project contributors include the Marquette Community Foundation, the Negaunee Community Fund, the Negaunee Community Youth Fund, the M.E. Davenport Foundation, the Kaufman Foundation, the Phyllis and Max Reynolds Foundation, theUpper Peninsula Children's Museum in Marquette and the Borealis Seed Company in Big Bay.(Marquette, Michigan) - The Zaagkii Wings and Seeds Project in Marquette is protecting... more
-
