Author: Jo Louise Seltzer

Over 11,00 young robotics enthusiasts from 48 states and 29 countries converged on the Edward Jones Dome for 4 days of team competition and excitement at the International FIRST—For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology—championship last week.  The event, sponsored by the Saint Louis Science Center and FIRST, includes challenges for teams from kindergarten through high school.

The Saint Louis area had 34 teams competing in the four categories, and came out with several winners. The Perpetual Chaos Team from St. Louis Gateway Tech earned the “Coopertition” award”, the iBrick First Lego League Team from St. Albans got the judges “Save the Day” award, and fourteen area Junior Lego League Teams won special recognition. Luther Banner, a junior from Hazelwood High School and member of their Robo Hawks team was one of only ten students awarded the “Dean’s List Award” for outstanding leadership.

Continue reading Robotics fans from around the world have field day at Edward Jones Dome

“Cutting edge technology is taking us farther and faster into an extraordinarily challenging domain where the human brain is trying to understand the human brain,” declares Washington University’s Dr. David van Essen, lead investigator for the Human Connectome Project, a consortium of nine institutions.

The $30 million Human Connectome Project plans to create a wiring diagram for the human brain in the next five years. This massive undertaking, led by Washington University School of Medicine and the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, will make a road map showing how each small area of the cerebral cortex connects to the rest of the brain.  The map will give detailed information down to a resolution of 1-2 cubic millimeters.

The brain contains about 90 billion nerve cells (neurons) that make approximately 150 trillion synapses (connections) with each other.  Trying to untangle such a vast network seems dazzling in its audacity.  However, the Human Genome Project seemed like an impossible dream at one point.

Continue reading Washington University plays leading role in ambitious brain-mapping project

For Missourians, the time to consider a solar energy system is now.  The Missouri Clean Energy Initiative, passed overwhelmingly as Proposition C in 2008, requires that 15% of the state’s electrical power come from renewable sources by 2021.  As a result of the Clean Energy Initiative, Missouri’s power companies are offering financial incentives to customers who help them meet that goal. ” Erin Noble of the Missouri Coalition to the environment points out that those incentives added to the 30% federal tax credit can reduce the initial cost of a solar installation by up to two-thirds.”

In addition, the cost of solar panels has come down about 30% in the last three years.

Solar Energy Use Becoming More Visible

Until recently solar panels have not been a frequent sight in Missouri. Ameren has only about 200 solar power producers integrated into its grid.  (Most commonly, Ameren supplies the needed power to supplement solar production, and will buy excess power if solar production exceeds usage.)

Now solar panels are going public.  The Missouri Botanical Garden recently installed a 25 kW array of 100 solar panels on its Commerce Bank Center for Science Education.  The panels, given to the Garden by Express Scripts, will produce about 32,000 kW-hrs a year—about 5% of this large building’s electricity requirements, or enough electricity to power four to six average homes.

Continue reading Monetary gains make solar power a more practical choice

Today the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew announce the online publication of The Plant List, the world’s first database of all land plant species. The Plant List includes all accepted botanical names and their synonyms, as well as a number of names whose status as accepted or synonym is unresolved in the current literature.

“If we want to conserve plants, we need to know what species there are,” said Peter Wyse Jackson, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden. “We all need to work from the same page.”

Conservation today is a worldwide undertaking. Fully one-fourth of existing botanical species are in danger of extinction. The preservation of biological diversity demands shared priorities.

Information technologists and scientists at the botanical gardens in St. Louis and London worked together to develop innovative computer strategies to make the database comprehensive and available in a timely manner. The plant list is available to anyone in the world with access to a computer.

Continue reading One List for All the World’s Plants

Nick Matteucci was in third grade when his teacher reported that he was slow learning to read, and not writing well. The teacher suggested he might have an attention deficit disorder, but because his IQ was high, and he was not yet behind grade level, the school was not ready to test him.

His mother Sandra, a faculty member at Washington University’s School of Engineering, didn’t think that attention deficit diagnosis fit Nicky.  He could play the same game for hours, and he could answer any question about a story read aloud to him.  In fact, after a particularly bad social studies quiz, she persuaded the teacher to read the questions to him—and he showed dramatic improvement.

So Sandra went to the web, and found the home page of the Center for Vision and Learning in Creve Coeur.  On a hunch, she made an appointment for testing.  Upon examination Nicky’s vision was 20/20 and his eyes were healthy.  He was able to focus correctly for a time, but when Dr. Gail Doell, a developmental optometrist, and her therapists observed his eye movements, they found that his eye moved well for a short time, and then stopped scanning correctly.  His eyes were experiencing extreme fatigue.

The good news was that Nicky’s problem was amenable to vision therapy, according to Doell.  Exercises could strength his eyes to let them move quickly and accurately without fatigue.

 

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This article was originally published in the St. Louis Beacon.