By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — From a student-invented device to strengthen tongue muscles, and thereby battle some speech impediments, to a survey to determine how familiar Ashkenazi Jews are with the threat posed to them by Tay-Sach Disease, I found there was much to learn at the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair where I accompanied by grandson Shor Masori and his friend Kean Hernandez.
Approximately 400 project display boards filled the large activities center in the former Naval Hospital section of Balboa Park, and, because Shor and Kean are sixth graders at Lewis Middle School who will be eligible next year for the science fair, we gravitated toward the exhibits in the junior division (7th and 8th grade contestants), where there was plenty to see and learn on Saturday, March 23.
Shor, fulfilling an extra credit assignment, took notes on a first-place project submitted by Eitan Feifel, an 8th grader at Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School. Sensing a story for this publication, I took notes too on Feifel’s project which asked, in texting language, “Can U Txt Away Ur Social Skills?” To find out, Feifel surveyed 100 students about how much time they spend per month texting, and then had them look at a set of 36 photographs of people’s eyes to see if they could read the emotions within them. This is known as an RMET test (Reading the Mind in the Eyes). Then, Feifel ran what is known as a Spearman Correlation to see what the relationship between texting hours and emotion recognition might be. He concluded that there was no correlation whatsoever.
But he did find out that girls tend to be more perceptive than boys about reading emotions. And he also found that while texting may not influence the score, the more people played video games, the less likely they were to recognize other people’s emotions.
After checking out Feifel’s work, I wandered over to a “Junior Sweepstakes Winner” in the Physical Science Category and found, lo and behold, that another young man named Eitan — in this case Eitan Acks — had executed the project. He is an 8th grader at San Diego Jewish Academy.
There are numerous categories within physical sciences, and people in each category might be accorded a first, second, third, or fourth place. But then the firsts go through another round of judging and a sweepstakes winner is declared in the physical sciences. There is a similar procedure for the Life Sciences.
Acks engineered a device to fight speech impediments on the theory that many forms of the malady are caused by the patient’s inability to control the muscles of the tongue. If those muscles could be strengthened, he postulated, speech impediments could be overcome.
Accordingly he created a device to fit on the mouth like a snorkeling tube, with a tiny lever to go inside the mouth. The device could be plugged via a USB drive into a computer. Subjects were asked to try to lift the lever with their tongues and to hold it at maximum height for 30 seconds. Their efforts were graphed on the computer.
“The main purpose of the device is to show the user his own tongue’s muscle strength and to guide him along the path of improving it,” Acks wrote.
Repeated efforts can be compared on the computer’s graph to track progress, the student wrote. “I predict after a couple weeks or months of using this device, the user’s speech will greatly improve.”
In developing the device, the 8th grader created five iterations, each somewhat better than the previous.
Another San Diego Jewish Academy 8th grader who won a first place in her category was Daniela Osowiecki, whose project was titled “Raising Awareness to Prevent Tay-Sachs.”
She surveyed over 100 Jewish residents of San Diego, dividing them into Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Jews. She learned that 52.5 percent of the Ashkenazi population of child-bearing age hadn’t been tested to learn if they might be carriers of the disease, which is characterized by deterioration of the nerve cells of an infant and that child’s eventual death by age four.
A full 40 percent of the Ashkenazi respondents hadn’t even heard of Tay Sachs Disease, she found.
Her findings mean “that there is a crucial necessity to raise awareness about Tay Sachs,” Osowieck wrote. “People at risk need to be informed about the disease, they have to be screened and they must have the proper action in case they test positive.”
The SDJA student recommended educational programs in Jewish schools, synagogues and community centers. “Awareness can also be raised at the clinical level with more information provided by the primary care physician and or the ob-gyn. Educational materials can include lectures and reading materials.”
A Sweepstakes Winner in the Junior Life Sciences Division– 8th grader John Gomez of Marshall Middle School — asked how safe are the helmets sold commercially for lacrosse players. He compared three helmets — the Pro7, clh and clh2 — by creating a replica of a human head out of styrofoam and burying paintballs within it. Then he put a helmet on the head and with a ball-throwing machine, hit the helmets on the front, the left side, the back and the right side (in varying orders), with a ball traveling at 20 miles per hour. Thereafter he removed the helmet from the stryofoam head and counted the number of broken paintballs following each contact.
In two full trials, he found that eight paintballs were broken in the Pro7. In contrast, the combined number for the clh was 31 broken paintballs and for the clh2 it was 15 broken paintballs. The pro7 helmet, which had more evenly distributed padding, was the clear winner in Gomez’s estimate.
Wrote Gomez: “This helmet will protect against concussion the best and minimize damage to each player’s brain.”
Television used to make me wonder if I was “smarter than a fifth grader.” Clearly, when it comes to 8th graders, there is no contest! I was very impressed, and in fact in awe.
*
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com