By: Hector Flores
Once again, Kennedy came up a big winner, with five semifinalists, tying with Port Washington for the largest number of semifinalists from any Nassau County high school this year. And given that Nassau encompasses a host of award-winning science programs like Jericho, Lawrence and Hewlett-Woodmere, Kennedy's feat was nothing short of amazing.
The JFK semifinalists include Dara Steinberg, 17, of Merrick; Eric Waller, 17, of Merrick; Samantha Breakstone, 17, of Bellmore; Wayne Reizner, 17, of Merrick; and Zachary Swiss, 17, of Merrick.
Calhoun's semifinalists are Jason Shaev, 17, and Katherine Fallon, 17, both of Merrick. And Mepham had one semifinalist, Catherine Mancuso, 17, of Bellmore.
The Intel contest is a nationwide competition in which an average of 3,500 of the country's top science students take part, but only 300 are named semifinalists. Of those 300, 83 come from Long Island this year.
Kennedy Principal Lorraine Poppe said, "I'm thrilled with the accomplishments of the students and staff. It has taken a lot of hard work and commitment to get to this level. All the students who submitted Intel papers should be proud of their endeavors."
Researching their passion
Students were elated when they received word of their success, and credited the Central District's Advanced Science Research Program with giving them the resources they needed to compete in the Intel contest. Steinberg said of the program, "This is a great opportunity to explore a topic that you're individually interested in with guidance. I was always interested in the subject I picked, and the program helped me achieve my goal."
Dara Steinberg devised a psychology project that examined the negative effects that societal stereotypes have on older adults. "In American society, the elderly are portrayed as being senile and useless, and my study was meant to find how this portrayal impacted their long-term memories," she said.
Steinberg said that negative stereotyping creates "premature cognitive commitment" in seniors. That is, when seniors are continually told they'll lose their memories as they get older, they tend to fulfill these expectations.
Steinberg studied 150 mature adults, ages 50 to 64, and 150 advanced seniors, ages 72 to 86. The seniors were all given an identical word-recall test. Before the exam, participants were divided into three groups and given information about seniors and their memory capability. Seniors in the first group received negative information on senior memory. Older adults in the second group received positive reinforcement, and the third group was given no information.
Steinberg's study showed that the negatively reinforced group did worse than the control group. She believes that poor memory in seniors is, in large part, a cultural phenomenon. Seniors in China, she noted, tend to perform better in these types of tests because they are revered. According to Steinberg, the mental capacity of seniors in China is similar to that of young adults.
"I picked this subject because my grandfather had Alzheimer's disease, and I have always been interested in memory," Steinberg said. "I often observed the way people reacted to other seniors, as if they were incompetent. I want to improve this situation. I hope to become a research and clinical psychologist specializing in the geriatric population."
Wayne Reizner undertook a genetics project, studying the expression and repression of certain genes in yeast. In science, "expression" denotes the way genes affect growth in living organisms. "By understanding the mechanisms that regulate gene expression in yeast, researchers can apply the knowledge of genetic expression in humans," Reizner said. "If a gene is being over-expressed, it could be repressed."
Reizner said that his research might someday enable scientists to repress the gene or genes associated with the growth of cancer cells.
Reizner's father, Jeff, said his son's research topic was inspired by a death in the family. "He has always liked science and medicine," Jeff said. "But it was the unfortunate death of his grandmother that propelled him to study cancer."
Jeff Reizner added that both he and his wife believe strongly in the district's science program, and encourage young people to take part in it because it brings out the best in them.
Barbi Frank, Kennedy's research mentor, explained that students are given the chance to apply for the science program in ninth grade. To qualify, they must write essays, collect letters of recommendation and be interviewed by teachers. Once in the program, students decide on a research topic by reading research articles and journals. They are then encouraged to contact a college-level expert in their field of study.
The experts become the students' out-of-district mentors in 10th grade, and offer guidance in their research through 12th grade. Meanwhile, they also work closely with teacher-mentors at their high schools.
Jason Shaev's outside mentor was Gene Van Buren of the Brookhaven National Laboratories in Suffolk County. The duo tackled a nuclear physics project, studying quarks, the subatomic particles found in neutrons and protons, which are the building blocks of all matter.
"Protons and neutrons are made of three quarks each," Shaev explained. "There is a theory called the Baryon-Junction Theory that states there is a three-way junction of energy connecting the three quarks. We set out to prove that the junction existed."
All was going well for Shaev until the day his Intel science project came due. "In the last minute, I found a glitch in the program ... and I had to correct it," he said. "I was on the phone with my mentor until 1 a.m. We were analyzing results, making changes in our program, waiting for new results and rewriting my essay."
In the end, Shaev and his mentor provided convincing evidence that there is a junction among quarks. "This stuff is so theoretical that it is hard to prove, but we were able to provide evidence for it," he said. The pair are now looking to have their research published.
Zachary Swiss looked into increasing cotton-fiber production by adding a specific acid to cotton. He got his research idea from another student at Kennedy, Carol Eisenstat of Merrick, one of Kennedy's crop of Intel semifinalists last year.
Swiss said, "Previous studies found that the right amount of acid increased fiber production in cotton," Swiss said, "but too much of that acid decreased production."
Katherine Fallon found her research subject, "The Effect of Mattering on Suicide Ideation in Adolescents," during her independent study at Brown University in Rhode Island last summer. Fallon's research showed that mattering -- the idea that a person makes a difference -- affects self-esteem and depression, which are variables in suicide.
"If you walk into a room and nobody acknowledges your presence, then you feel like you don't exist, and that you're not important to anyone," Fallon explained. "If someone relies on you or invests their time in you, your self-esteem increases, decreasing depression and suicide ideation."
According to Fallon, mattering is a new concept in sociology. Only 30 scientific papers have been published on it.
Catherine Mancuso, whose research topic was in behavioral and social sciences, found her inspiration in the classroom and examined whether a student's test scores were affected by whether questions were placed in random or chronological order. "I studied tests given in order of the material learned in class and just randomly placed," she said. "In some of my classes, a teacher will give out two sets of tests -- one in chronological order and another random. This is done so that there is no cheating. I wanted to find out if these tests had an effect on a student's test scores." Mancuso found that students taking a chronologically ordered test fared better than the random-ordered test.
Eric Waller said that the most rewarding part of competing in Intel was the research itself. "I'm interested in naval architecture and marine engineering, and this program taught me that working hard is more important than just being smarter," he said. In Waller's physics project, he studied the effects of folded stacks of film on light.
Samantha Breakstone studied how daylight affects the juvenile African weakly electric fish. She found that the fish would scatter during the day and form groups at night. Breakstone determined that fish got together in groups to protect against nighttime predators.
Subhead: What's next?
Intel Semifinalists earn $1,000 scholarships, and their high schools receive $1,000 per semifinalist to enhance their science or math programs.
Forty of the 300 semifinalists will be named finalists on Jan. 26. These students will take an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to attend the Science Talent Institute and compete for $500,000 in college scholarships. Winners will be announced March 15.
Comments about this story? HFlores@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 283.
