There are many examples of how young people can contribute to science with they brilliant ideas and creative projects. We all know the story about a ten-year old girl from Canada who discovered a supernova and became the youngest person ever to find a stellar explosion. Also, there is a less known example of a group of 25 eight-to-ten-year old kids from Blackawton primary school in UK that published a study about how bumble bees use different color and pattern identification strategies to determine which flower to choose for getting nectar and which ones to avoid.

Unfortunately, on the other side, there are probably even more young people who have never been given the opportunity to explore their visions and the young geniuses in them simply died.

Therefore, in order to help young scientists with the interesting projects, Google has launched the first-ever global online science fair, allowing any student from anywhere in the world to participate in the competition.

“Science fairs help students to explore their vision and curiosity through science,” said Google’s Tom Oliveri. “Our company was founded on an experiment. We firmly believe that science can change the world.”

The competition is open to students aged 13-18 years old and all they need, beside their ideas for a scientific experiments, is an Internet connection and a Google account, as their projects will be submitted through Google Sites. Competitors can choose to work on their own or in a team of two or three. And of course, they are allowed to use the panoply of Google products to record and share their work.

All entries are due April 4, 2011 and judging will occur in July 2011. Entries will be judged on eight core criteria, which include the student’s presentation, question, hypothesis, research, experiment, data, observations, and conclusion presented in either a two-minute video or a 20-slide presentation.

As Google explained, there will be three finalist winners, one in each age category (13-14, 15-16, 17-18), and one of the finalist winners will be named the Grand Prize winner. In partnership with Lego, CERN, Scientific American and National Geographic, Google prepared fantastic prizes for the winners. The prizes include scholarships that are intended to be used towards the finalists’ further education, visits to major research institutions, Scientific American subscriptions, and LEGO products. The Grand Prize winner will win a trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Expeditions, a $50,000 scholarship from Google and an experience at a sponsoring organization.

For more information about entering the competition, judges, judging criteria and prizes, visit Google Science Fair website or watch video below

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A team of scientists at MIT has discovered a previously unknown phenomenon that can cause powerful waves of energy to shoot through minuscule wires known as carbon nanotubes, a discovery that could lead to a new way of producing electricity.

The phenomenon, described as thermopower waves, “opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare,” said Michael Strano, MIT’s Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, who was the senior author of a paper describing the new findings.

Like a collection of flotsam propelled along the surface by waves traveling across the ocean, it turns out that a thermal wave — a moving pulse of heat — traveling along a microscopic wire can drive electrons along, creating an electrical current. The key ingredient in the recipe is carbon nanotubes — submicroscopic hollow tubes made of a chicken-wire-like lattice of carbon atoms.

In the new experiments, each of these electrically and thermally conductive nanotubes was coated with a layer of a highly reactive fuel that can produce heat by decomposing.

This fuel was then ignited at one end of the nanotube using either a laser beam or a high-voltage spark, and the result was a fast-moving thermal wave travelling along the length of the carbon nanotube like a flame speeding along the length of a lit fuse.

According to Strano, in the group’s initial experiments, when they wired up the carbon nanotubes with their fuel coating in order to study the reaction, “lo and behold, we were really surprised by the size of the resulting voltage peak” that propagated along the wire.

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A team of scientists has discovered magnetic waves that fluctuate when exposed to certain conditions in a superconducting material.

The finding was made by Brown University physicist Vesna Mitrovic and colleagues at Brown and in France.

At the quantum level, the forces of magnetism and superconductivity exist in an uneasy relationship.

Superconducting materials repel a magnetic field, so to create a superconducting current, the magnetic forces must be strong enough to overcome the natural repulsion and penetrate the body of the superconductor. This relationship is pretty well known. But why it is so remains mysterious. Now, physicists at Brown University have documented for the first time a quantum-level phenomenon that occurs to electrons subjected to magnetism in a superconducting material.

They report that at under certain conditions, electrons in superconducting material form odd, fluctuating magnetic waves.
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Hair preserved in permafrost for 4,000 years has shed light on a tribe of Stone Age hunters who crossed from Siberia to Greenland in an unsung odyssey of migration, scientists said on Wednesday.

Unearthed at a site in western Greenland, the hair provides a vivid portrait of a man who died four millennia ago and overturns a mainstream theory about how humans colonised the Arctic New World, they said.

Greenland’s first known settlers were not Inuit or Native Americans as widely believed, but the direct descendants of Siberians who somehow crossed the Bering Strait to Alaska and then headed east, according to their report, published by Nature.

The tuft of hair and four pieces of bone, uncovered at Qeqertasussuk, are the only human remains ever found of Saqqaq culture, an enigmatic coastal-dwelling community that lived in western Greenland for some 1,700 years.

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This traditional portrait of Athanasius Kircher gives his age as 76. The engraver has emphasized the energy in Kircher’s inquiring eyes. A professor of eloquence in Rome added the flowery inscription: “The painter or poet would declare only in error: ‘This is the man.’ But the farthest Antipodes know his name and face.”

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One of the world’s oldest shipwrecks has been discovered off the coast of Devon after lying on the sea bed for almost 3000 years.

The trading vessel was carrying an extremely valuable cargo of tin and hundreds of copper ingots from the Continent when it sank.

Experts say the ”incredibly exciting” discovery provides new evidence about the extent and sophistication of Britain’s links with Europe in the Bronze Age, and reveals the remarkable seafaring abilities of the people during the period.

Archaeologists have described the vessel, which is thought to date back to about 900BC, as being a ”bulk carrier” of its age. The copper and tin would have been used for making bronze, the primary product of the period which was used in the manufacture of weapons, tools, jewellery, ornaments and other items.

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The green brigade has precisely touched most of the industries; Automobile can be left as the fuel consumption is the highest in this sector. Efforts have been made in the past to promote electric cars but the end result has not been impressive to many. Electronic cars launched previously had few draw backs like their top speed not exceeding 20 miles per hour, long recharge hours, expensive and two seating capacity. Though they make no noise and are pollution free vehicles it didn’t made any difference.

A lot of time and money has been put in developing these electric cars and make them more lucrative to the buyer.

UK is coming up with a Electric car which will be a four seater, can run up to 70 miles without bothering to be recharged. It’s a Citroen C1 based car, which is joint venture by Peugeot, Toyota and Citroen. It shall take only six to seven hours to charge and can be charged in a 13a normal socket. Subsidies are also being discussed with British government to encourage people to go in for a Citroen C1. By 2011 Citroen C1will hit the market.
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Bird watchers walking along the beach on the Baltic island of Öland off Sweden’s southeastern coast were puzzled by an unusual natural phenomenon recently when they stumbled across dozens of football-sized balls of ice lying on the shore.

A week before Christmas, Magnus Bladh of the Ottenby bird station, located on Öland’s southern cape, was strolling along the beach with a colleague when he saw something he’d never seen before.

“Temperatures were below freezing and there was a light wind, but it was very cold! In the seaweed we noticed at least 200 large ice balls,” he said in a report to Swedish meteorological agency SMHI.

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