分类： 赛事资讯

想象一个我们可以将致癌烟草转化为可再生能源的世界;针头几乎无痛;我们可以重新利用自己的细胞来逆转退行性疾病;以及我们可以使用激光发现埋藏的古代世界的地方。

这听起来像科幻小说的内容，但这些只是青少年为我们的第三届年度STEM写作比赛研究和撰写的一些创新和科学可能性。

我们与《科学新闻》的合作伙伴一起，邀请学生选择科学、技术、工程、数学或健康方面的一个问题或问题，并在 500 字以内进行解释。有些人解决了他们在自己生活中观察到的问题，比如麦齐耀，他在接受手术后想知道什么可以帮助伤口更快地愈合。（一个答案？罗非鱼皮。其他人对周围的世界感到好奇。海伦·罗奇（Helen Roche）想了解颜色如何影响大脑——她甚至在家里的不同颜色的房间里写了一篇文章来找出答案。（“紫色是迄今为止最好的，橙色是迄今为止最差的。还有一些人承担了重大的全球性问题，比如艾米丽·邢（Emily Xing），她想找到解决吸烟的方法（她的祖国中国是世界领先的烟草消费国），最终也找到了应对气候变化的解决方案。

从 3，564 个参赛作品中，我们选出了 8 个获奖者、16 个亚军和 33 个荣誉奖。这些文章不仅向我们介绍了一个有趣的科学或数学概念，而且以一种外行人可以理解的方式进行，并且阅读起来很吸引人。您可以通过以下链接完整阅读八篇获奖文章。

艾米丽告诉我们，写文章帮助她“想象一个人们不怕尝试疯狂想法和承担创造性风险的社会——一个牵强附会的创新可以帮助编织更美好的明天和解决全球问题的地方。我们希望，像我们一样，你能从这些文章中学到一些新的东西，并为这些年轻人描绘的充满希望的未来感到振奋。

恭喜我们的获奖者，感谢所有送作业的老师和学生，以及许多自愿帮助我们选择的具有STEM背景的评委。

STEM 写作比赛获奖者

按作者姓氏的字母顺序排列。

获奖论文

July 15, 2016. The world held its breath as a revolutionary airplane blazed overhead, leaving a silver trail across the sky. Forever changing countless industries, this flight was powered not by conventional fossil fuels, but rather by the world’s leading cause of preventable death: tobacco.

Today’s society faces a devastating smoking epidemic. According to the World Health Organization, tobacco products kill over eight million people annually — more than malaria, influenza, tuberculosis, AIDS and alcohol combined.

Unfortunately, millions of workers also depend on this deadly plant to support their families. A study by researchers at McGill University highlights why these farmers hesitate to switch to alternative crops: Tobacco has always had a readily available market, and its lands are typically unsuitable for any other plant. Completely eliminating tobacco therefore may not be the most feasible solution. So what if we repurposed it for healthy innovations, such as a sustainable fuel for the future, instead?

In 2014, South African Airways, Boeing and SkyNRG launched Project Solaris. The goal? To cultivate tobacco that can send airplanes into the sky.

Aviation is projected to account for over 22 percent of global carbon emissions by 2050, which makes finding eco-friendly energy sources an industry priority. Solaris, a special nicotine-free tobacco strain with maximized seed yield, is one promising solution. Scientists are refining the oil within these seeds to craft bioenergy that, compared to conventional fossil fuels, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 83 percent!

On July 15, 2016, South African Airways flew its very first tobacco-powered flight. Six thousand three hundred liters of Solaris bioenergy carried the airplane from Johannesburg to Cape Town — a journey that, as Ian Cruickshank, the airline’s environmental affairs specialist, said, “shows the industry is really changing. Four or five years ago biofuel was seen as futuristic, and today it’s here.”

Unlike tobacco, growing common crops like corn for bioenergy generates many problems, from hurting global food security to disturbing local wildlife. But by repurposing the 10.5 million acres of already-existing tobacco farmlands, Solaris cultivation perfectly overcomes these challenges, all while producing more oil!

This creative endeavor has inspired people to see tobacco as “a viable source of energy for the future,” in the words of Robert Mills. The Virginian farmer now dedicates a portion of his land to grow biofuel tobacco every year in partnership with Tyton BioEnergy Systems, an eco-friendly power company.

Besides biofuel, research has found that tobacco has countless other applications, including deterring troublesome pests, serving as paper, and even yielding promising drugs for AIDS and cancer. These innovations take the first steps in providing society with alternative, beneficial uses for the plant, proving its boundless potential outside of smoking.

Just like Tyton’s president Peter Majeranowski said, slowly, but surely, we are “re-imagin[ing] tobacco’s place in the world.” The shift in this crop’s uses — from addiction to aviation and beyond — teaches us that even the most harmful substances can be repurposed for the better. All it takes is a little creativity for change to take off.

Works Cited

Bakalar, Nicholas. “A New Death Toll for Smoking.” The New York Times, 31 Oct. 2016.

Chandran, Nyshka. “Why Getting Farmers to Switch from Tobacco Crops Is a Struggle.” CNBC, 10 Jan. 2017.

“Converting Tobacco to a Bioenergy Crop.” Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, 15 May 2012.

“The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control.” National Cancer Institute, June 2020.

“Fact Sheet: Malaria.” World Health Organization, 6 Dec. 2021.

“Fact Sheet: Tobacco.” World Health Organization, 26 July 2021.

“Global Health Topics: Tuberculosis.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3 Apr. 2020.

Grisan, Simone, et al. “Alternative Use of Tobacco as a Sustainable Crop for Seed Oil, Biofuel, and Biomass.” Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 23 Sept. 2016.

Guillory, Ferrel. “Save Our Small Farmers: Keep Subsidizing Tobacco.” Editorial, The Washington Post, 26 June 1983.

“Harmful Use of Alcohol Kills More than 3 Million People Each Year, Most of Them Men.” World Health Organization, 21 Sept. 2018.

Helmer, Jodi. “Meet the US Farmers Turning Their Tobacco Into Airplane Fuel.” The Guardian, 6 July 2016.

Hoshaw, Lindsey. “Tobacco Gets a Makeover as New Source for Biofuel.” KQED, 3 June 2014.

Kilian, Anine. “First Local Seed Selection to Take Place at Project Solaris.” Engineering News, 14 Oct. 2016.

LaGrave, Katherine. “South African Airways Completes Flight Using Fuel From Tobacco.” Condé Nast Traveler, 21 July 2016.

Maragakis, Lisa Lockerd. “COVID-19 vs. the Flu.” Johns Hopkins Medicine, 23 Feb. 2022.

“Solaris Energy Tobacco.” CORDIS | European Commission.

“The Toll of Tobacco in the United States.” Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, 3 Nov. 2021.

Warmflash, David. “From Jet Fuel to Medicine, Tobacco Growers Turn a New Leaf.” Discover Magazine, 27 July 2016.

“Warning: Smoking Can Kill You.” Editorial, The New York Times, 28 Aug. 2012.

Willmott, Don. “Holy Smokes! Tobacco May Fuel Planes in the Future.” Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Nov. 2014.

Womack, Rocky. “Tyton BioEnergy Takes Step toward Marketing Tobacco-Based Products.” Tobacco Journal International, June 2015.

Zandt, Florian. “HIV/AIDS Deaths Continue To Decline.” Statista Infographics, 30 Nov. 2021.

Just as we consume food, we consume color at an even greater rate, constantly digesting the different tonalities that paint our world. But little do we know that the beige of the library walls we study in, the red of busy hallways and restaurants, and the blue of your own bedroom have been strategically chosen from millions of different swatches and tones and shades to control our bodily functions and alter our emotional behavior.

From the moment you entered the world, you were swaddled in a baby pink blanket. The same pink of the padded walls that consoled a kicking and screaming child detained at the San Bernardino County Probation Department in California to sleep within 10 minutes. The same pink that covers the buildings of urban cities to prevent vandalism. And the same pink on the walls of visiting football teams’ locker rooms to calm grown men into submission and defeat. This shade of “Baker-Miller” pink finds itself recurring in our lives, all resulting in the same effect — comfort.

It’s known that color sets a mood: red feels energetic; orange and yellow are lively and a bit overwhelming; green and blue bring calmness; violet feels creative; pink is comforting; and neutrals feel … neutral. But it’s not so known how and why. Stephen Westland, a professor and the chair of color science and technology at the University of Leeds, explains that these effects are based on “light but not vision.” When exposed to color, the retinal cells of the eye don’t just send signals to the visual cortex to recognize such color, but also to the hypothalamus, the part of the brain in charge of the body’s self-regulation — the part of the brain unable to recognize visual images at all. Simply seeing a color, or, more particularly, the light the color gives off, can affect a person’s mood, temperature, sleep, heart rate, ability to eat and breathing patterns.

This stands true in an experiment conducted by Harold Wohlfarth, published in a 1982 issue of the International Journal of Biosocial Research, in which he repainted an orange and white classroom in shades of blue and installed gray carpeting in place of the previous orange rug; all of the students’ blood pressure, respiration rates and pulses dropped, and they all became calmer, after the room makeover. That included two blind students: Although their eyes were unable to see the physical changes, their hypothalami picked up the changes in wavelengths, so they were ultimately able to reap the same benefits of those with sight.

It might seem silly, but simple changes in colors can save lives. All around the world, each day, the color blue saves lives, whether by bathing a premature baby in blue light to replace blood transfusions or by shining blue light on the platforms of Tokyo’s Yamanote rail lines to keep a survivor of depression here to live another day. Blue is just one color, so imagine what the whole rainbow could do with a little research.

Maybe now you’ll think a little harder about that shirt you wear tomorrow — not only what it will say about you, but what it will do to you.

Works Cited

Gruson, Lindsey. “Color Has a Powerful Effect on Behavior, Researchers Assert.” The New York Times, 19 Oct. 1982.

“The Psychology of Color.” The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2006.

“The Psychology of Colors and Their Meanings.” Color Psychology, 2021.

Westland, Stephen. “Does Color Really Affect Our Mind and Body? A Professor of Color Science Explains.” The Conversation, 25 Sept. 2017.

A patient wakes from anesthesia after a successful foot surgery. As she regains consciousness, she feels an itching, wriggling sensation in her foot. Lifting the blanket to investigate, she is greeted by an abhorrent sight: hundreds of glutinous, yellow-white maggots.

Seemingly a scene straight out of a Mary Shelley novel, this uncomfortable example represents the cutting edge of modern medical treatments. In fact, maggots are one of only two animals (leeches being the other) approved by the Food and Drug Administration for medical treatment.

Maggots thrive in necrotic wounds — wounds that struggle to heal due to insufficient blood flow. These wounds are breeding grounds for bacteria, which can lead to infection and, in extreme cases, amputation. Luckily, maggots love to feed on bacteria. The combination of tissue, bacteria and lack of blood flow creates a fleshy paradise for these insects. The most amazing part: Maggots only feed on necrotic skin, leaving healthy tissue untouched.

The French surgeon Ambroise Paré first described the efficacy of maggots for treating wounds in 1557. Despite this initial discovery, it was not until the American Civil War that maggots were intentionally used as treatment. John Forney Zacharias, the Confederate surgeon who initiated this approach, dubbed maggots “better than any agents we had at our command” after using them to save many lives.

After all this, you might wonder: Why have I never heard of medical maggots? What happened to their use following the Civil War? The answers to these questions lie within human psychology.

Our instinctive reaction to parasitic organisms is panic and aggression. Every cell in our nervous system is repulsed by the idea of parasites crawling in our skin. This rush of adrenaline often trumps all rationale.

The other factor is the way our brain groups things. For example, we associate Christmas with winter and presents. Our brain does this for almost all of the information it has. Unfortunately for them, maggots fall into a pretty nasty subgroup: flies, trash, infection and death.

You may think, certainly, we have more effective ways of cleaning out dead tissue. The alternative to maggots is doctors manually removing dead tissue with scalpels. “Using maggots, 80 percent of the wounds were free of dead tissue compared to 48 percent using traditional methods,” Dr. Ron Sherman, an entomologist studying the relationship between insects and disease, observed. “Less than 5 percent of patients who are destined for amputation are given a trial of maggot therapy … 50 to 70 percent of those amputations could probably be prevented.”

Humanity often overcomplicates its relationship with the natural world. We build our homes in dense towns and cities, far from the glades from which we arose. We seek dominion over nature through technologies like CRISPR, which provides a way for us to modify our DNA in the fashion we, not nature, see fit. However, complex technologies are not always the answer. The natural world has been the greatest problem-solver since its inception. Maggots present an opportunity for us to allow nature, honed over millennia, to do what it does best.

Works Cited

Mitra, Avir. “Maggots: A Vile Prescription.” WHYY, 16 Jan. 2019.

Mohd Zubir, Mohd Zurairie, et al. “Maggot Therapy in Wound Healing: A Systematic Review.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 21 Aug. 2020.

Renault, Marion. “A Truly Revolting Treatment Is Having a Renaissance.” The Atlantic, 2 June 2021.

Risen, Clay. “Medical Maggots.” The New York Times, 11 Dec. 2005.

Whitaker, Iain S., et al. “Larval Therapy From Antiquity to the Present Day: Mechanisms of Action, Clinical Applications and Future Potential.” Postgraduate Medical Journal, June 2007.

Hyper-aware of every intake of breath, irrational fears of death flood your brain. Anxiety sets in. Fingers shaking, you replay relaxing tunes, revisit Pinterest posts, recall fond memories, and, suddenly, it’s your turn. Forcing a smile at the nurse, your eyes zone in on the instrument of destruction about to penetrate your fragile interiors: the needle.

As many as two out of three people are scared of needles. But for 20 percent of the world’s population, their fear goes beyond merely inducing anxiety. Instead, it develops into a crippling fear, so much so that they avoid vaccination altogether even during the United States’ deadliest pandemic in history: Covid-19. This poses a grave challenge for achieving herd immunity, presenting a whole new set of logistical issues. But what if we eliminated needles completely?

Nasal spray vaccines accomplish just that. A technique known as thin-film freeze-drying, or T.F.F.D., allows scientists to transform liquid vaccines into powders. Trehalose, a derivative of sucrose, or table sugar, is often added, which prevents the formation of toxic structures by creating organic glass “orbs” around proteins, maintaining the biological activities that elicit the immune response. In T.F.F.D., liquid vaccines are dropped on an ultracool surface, causing materials to freeze. Pressure is then reduced and low heat is applied so that the frozen water changes directly from solid to gas. The result? Powdered vaccines that “revive” with a quick spray in the nose.

Medical research is currently well underway, spearheaded by Seongkyu Yoon, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, who was recently granted $930,000 for the development of freeze-dried mRNA vaccines suitable for large-scale production. He explains that the T.F.F.D. process makes vaccines “more stable” and able to “extend their shelf life, as well as make them easier to transport, store and use.” This eliminates the need for cold-chain systems, and perhaps even medical workers, which, together, account for 72 percent of worldwide transportation costs, the equivalent of more than $1.2 billion. With lowered costs, vaccines can reach developing countries that were previously unable to afford the massive costs of outreach and transportation.

Intranasal vaccines have also proven more effective than traditional injections against pulmonary diseases like Influenza B and Covid-19. As Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine, explained in an interview, “the beauty of the local mucosal vaccine is that not only does it provide protection acutely, but also it’s a long-lasting immunity.” More important, dry vaccines create the potential for a pain-free alternative, which, as Dr. Iwasaki goes on to add, will likely “increase the number of people who want to vaccinate themselves,” especially for the 20 percent of the world’s population “afraid to take the needle.”

With over a dozen nasal vaccines in development worldwide, some now in Phase 3 trials, vaccines can finally be made available to all countries, not just a select few. Their superior efficacy and low transportation and outreach costs offer great potential in controlling the pandemic, especially as new, more lethal variants emerge. These pain-free nasal vaccines could help us get back to pre-Covid normal.

Works Cited

AboulFotouh, Khaled, et al. “Next-Generation Covid-19 Vaccines Should Take Efficiency of Distribution into Consideration.” AAPS PharmSciTech, 9 April 2021.

Cicco, Nancy. “UMass Lowell Is Working to Freeze-Dry Covid Vaccines.” UMass Lowell, 20 Jan. 2022.

Forman, Robert. “Nasal Vaccination May Protect Against Respiratory Viruses Better Than Injected Vaccines.” Yale School of Medicine, 21 Dec. 2021.

Griffiths, Ulla. “Costs of Delivering Covid-19 Vaccine in 92 AMC Countries.” World Health Organization, 8 Feb. 2021.

Love, Ashley S., and Robert J. Love. “Considering Needle Phobia Among Adult Patients During Mass Covid-19 Vaccinations.” Journal of Primary Care & Community Health, 3 April 2021.

Mandavilli, Apoorva. “The Covid Vaccine We Need Now May Not Be a Shot.” The New York Times, 2 Feb. 2022.

Two thousand years ago, the first emperor of China became obsessed with acquiring immortality, ruthlessly deploying his empire’s vast resources toward this quest. Unfortunately, Qin Shi Huang died at the age of 49 from ingesting mercury, which he mistakenly believed to be the elixir of life. Could the secret that eluded the powerful emperor, and the rest of humanity, be instead found in a humble jellyfish smaller than a fifth of an inch?

In 1988, Christian Sommer, a young German marine biologist on vacation in Italy, stumbled upon a peculiar trait in a known species of jellyfish. Instead of always growing older, Turritopsis dohrnii could seemingly reverse time until it reached the youngest stage of its development and began aging again. We now know that the adult jellyfish, also called a medusa, can transform into its youngest state, a polyp, in response to stressful conditions such as physical damage and starvation. An analogue of this “reverse metamorphosis” would be an adult butterfly that, when faced with danger, would transform into a caterpillar and would later grow back into a butterfly. Moreover, this magical insect would be able to repeat this process over and over again!

In order for the so-called “immortal jellyfish” to accomplish its curious transformation, its adult cells, which are already specialized for specific purposes, need to change into entirely different types of specialized cells. Turritopsis dohrnii represents the only known instance of this reprogramming process, called transdifferentiation, occurring in nature. However, there is considerable scientific interest in identifying artificial ways to repurpose cells in order to help reverse degenerative diseases. For example, heart failure is usually caused by the lack of healthy cardiac muscle cells called cardiomyocytes. This could be addressed by reprogramming other heart cells, such as widely available fibroblasts, into new cardiomyocytes. Similarly, the transdifferentiation of adult liver cells into insulin-producing pancreatic cells could help reduce the impact of diabetes.

While Turritopsis dohrnii can be challenging to keep in the lab, being sensitive to temperature and diet, its transdifferentiation can be readily stimulated and occurs within 48 to 72 hours, making the process easy to study. Maria Pia Miglietta, an associate professor of marine biology at Texas A&M University at Galveston, is studying the messenger RNA molecules of the animal throughout various stages of its “life,” both during regular and reverse metamorphosis. Dr. Miglietta’s research identifies biological processes that are significantly over- and under-expressed across these stages, unlocking clues for artificially inducing transdifferentiation of cells in other organisms.

Despite its nickname, Turritopsis dohrnii is not really immortal in the manner that Qin Shi Huang aspired to be; it can easily be killed by predators or die of disease. However, its ability to reverse the aging process by reprogramming its cells could help develop treatments for some of humanity’s most widespread diseases. And that would bestow an undying legacy on this tiny sea creature.

Works Cited

Gannon, Megan. “China’s First Emperor Ordered Official Search for Immortality Elixir.” LiveScience, 27 Dec. 2017.

Ieda, Masaki, et al. “Direct Reprogramming of Fibroblasts into Functional Cardiomyocytes by Defined Factors.” Cell, 5 Aug. 2010.

“The Immortal Jellyfish.” American Museum of Natural History, 4 May 2015.

Ling, Thomas. “The Secrets of the Immortal Jellyfish, Earth’s Longest-Living Animal.” BBC Science Focus Magazine, 15 May 2021.

Miglietta, Maria Pia, et al. “Transcriptome Characterization of Reverse Development in Turritopsis dohrnii (Hydrozoa, Cnidaria).” G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, 1 Dec. 2019.

Nagata, Renato. “Small Jellyfish and the Secret to Eternal Life.” Bate, 19 Nov. 2020.

“Research.” The Real Immortal Jellyfish, 10 Dec. 2020.

Rich, Nathaniel. “Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?” The New York Times Magazine, 28 Nov. 2012.