Woodward Academy senior Harini Indrakrishnan is a semifinalist in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology for her Independent Scientific Research work called, "Creating a system to detect chromosomal fragility caused by GAA triplet repeats in Saccharomyces Cerevisiae." Harini is one of five Georgia students named a semifinalist. The Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology recognizes remarkable talent early on, fostering individual growth for high school students who are willing to challenge themselves through science research. Information: www.siemens-foundation.org/en/competition.htm.
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A team from South Forsyth High School took top honors in the overall category of the 2013 Georgia BEST robotics competition at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta Saturday. BEST stands for boosting engineering, science and technology. Second place went to the Fernbank LINKS team of Fernbank Science Center High School in DeKalb County. Third place went to a team from Cobb's Wheeler High School. In the game winner segment: Northview High School in Fulton won first place; followed by South Forysth and Piedmont Academy. The event includes two competitions – one involving the building of robots from a specific list of parts and the other involves writing high-quality engineering journals, designing a website, a table display and an oral presentation. Georgia BEST's mission is to engage, excite and inspire middle and high school students to pursue careers in engineering, science and technology through participation in science and engineering-based robotics competitions. Engineers and other technical professionals serve as mentors during the competition. The winners will compete for the regional title at Auburn University later this year.
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Kennesaw State University physics professor Nikolaos Kidonakis and assistant professor David Joffe share a connection t0 the winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics, according to a KSU news release. Earlier this month, physicists Francois Englert and Peter Higgs were awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for their theories, hatched 50 years ago, that led each of them to independently propose the mechanism that gives subatomic particles their mass. Their theories were confirmed through last year's discovery of the predicted fundamental particle by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. ATLAS and CMS are particle physics experiments carried out by international teams of scientists. KSU's Kidonakis performed theoretical research on the Higgs boson and the top quark as part of both Standard Model calculations and other physics, the release said. His results are used worldwide by theorists and in experimental collaborations. Joffe, who participated in the ATLAS experiment that confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, said of the experiments in Switzerland, "It was like looking for the world's smallest needle in the world's largest haystack."
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