Taiwanese students won seven awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2010 — the world’s largest pre-college science competition — that concluded on Friday in San Jose, California.
It marked Taiwan’s best performance at the fair in recent years, garnering one first prize, five third prizes and one fourth prize. The winning projects covered a wide range of fields including chemistry, animal science, electrical and mechanical engineering, physics and astronomy, medicine and health sciences, and mathematical sciences.
“The excellent performance is due to the students’ hard work,” said National Taiwan Science Education Center Director Chu Nan-shyan (朱楠賢), the leader of the Taiwanese delegation.
Nine students took part in this year’s competition, in which more than 1,600 young scientists worldwide were vying for more than 600 individual and team awards.
Among the Taiwanese winners was a team project titled “Synthesis and Analysis of the New Superconducting Material — FeSe Nanocrystals” by Lin Chi-chieh (林季潔) and Jacqueline Hung (洪瑀) from Taipei Municipal First Girl’s Senior High School.
Another award-winning team project was titled “Ballot Problem Approached from n-Dimensional Paths” by Hsu Te-wei (許德瑋) and Hou Tsung-cheng (侯宗誠) from Kaohsiung Municipal Senior High School.
Meanwhile, five individual projects bagged third prizes, including “Why Spiderman Cannot Do Without His Silk — Effects of Dragline Silk on the Jumping Performance of the Jumping Spider (Hasarius adansoni)” by Chen Yung-kang (陳永康) from National Taichung First Senior High School.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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