Puckett’s Mill team headed to robotics world championship

Puckett's Mill Elementary School's robotics team, the Sparrow-bots, is headed to the FIRST Lego League World Championship in Houston, Texas, in April. The team of fourth- and fifth-grade students earned the bid after a top finish at the Georgia FIRST Lego League Tournament Feb. 4 at Georgia Gwinnett College. Puckett's Mill's Sparrow-bots were named the overall grand champion of the competition, recognized for their perfect scores in teamwork, research and innovation and robotics design. This team has dedicated hundreds of hours to bringing awareness to the three-toed pygmy sloth, a nearly extinct species of sloth discovered in 2001, which lives off the coast of Panama. Disease scientists have discovered that algae embedded in this sloth's fur holds the cure to many parasitic diseases and are hopeful that the algae may also combat the breast cancer cell McF-7.