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Maryland Teen Wins World's Largest Science Fair
Velcroman1 writes "A Maryland student was awarded the top prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair on Friday for developing a urine and blood test that detects pancreatic cancer with 90 percent accuracy. Jack Andraka, 15, claimed the $75,000 prize for his test, which is roughly 28 times cheaper and faster, and over 100 times more sensitive than current tests. Each year, approximately 7 million high school students around the globe develop original research projects and present their work at local science fairs with the hope of winning."
Bright kid.
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If all he did was get a specification from a client and build something to that specification, I'd agree with you. Seeing as he both developed the test and did a scientific evaluation, I think this qualifies as a healthy mixture of both engineering and science.
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How much of the work supposedly done by this individual were actually done by the child? What about the others considered for the award? Science fairs have become a huge joke, and I'm sorry if this child actually did this on his own. Even HS fairs have no credibility.
when will we see wide-spread usage in regular medical practice?
When insurance companies and hospital administration boards find a way to make it ridiculously expensive.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
How many contestants entered in with volcanoes and solar system dioramas.
.. from what I have seen of these fairs where kids invent/discover things seemingly beyond their mental, physical or financial means, they are inevitably "guided" by parents who are professionals. In the case of Andraka, his mother appears to be an anaesthetist at a hospital and his father might be an engineer ...
It's nevertheless a commendable result.
A Maryland student was awarded the top prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair on Friday for developing a urine and blood test that detects pancreatic cancer with 90 percent accuracy.
Who did the work? I'm not thinking the kid did. He may have "developed" it in the same sense that modern americans talk about how they are "building a house" when they really mean cutting a check for someone else to build it.
I'm thinking most of the list is "This is what my dad does at work and this is what they did while I watched them".
Plausible projects that could actually be done by kids would be:
"Euglena: The Solution to Nanosilver Pollution" Nothing too unobtainable here, nothing requiring a weird environment, clearly possible in a basement, or in my basement anyway.
"Design and Creation of Small Wind-Power Engines for Low Wind Speeds Based on Magnus Effect" Totally designable and buildable by a kid, key word being "small" and "low speed"
"Repelling Effect of Plant Extracts on Bees-A Study on Preventing Bees from Pesticide Toxicity" Plenty of normal civilians keep bees, at least in rural areas, coincidentally same place plants to extract and pesticides to sample also reside. Totally believable that a smart hard working kid could do this alone.
"Effect of Food Types on Quantity and Nutritional Quality of Weaver Ant". Ants, we got em. Food, we got it too. Can we count? Yes we can. Sounds like good science doable by an actual kid.
Implausible projects that could not have been done by kids:
"A Study of the Endogenous Activity Rhythms of the Marine Isopod Exosphaeroma truncatitelson" Where does a kid get that and the testing environment necessary?
"Analysis of Photon-Mediated Entanglement between Distinguishable Matter Qubits" Oh come on. Well I'll head on over to home depot and get a can of qubits on the way home from school, and then...
"DNA Repair Mechanisms: Investigations of Base Excision Repair Pathway in Differentiated and Proliferative Neuronal CAD Cells" Oh come on. How big was the lab that did this work? 50 people and 10 million bucks of gear maybe?
"Synthesis of Trimethylguanosine Cap Analogues with the Potential Use in Gene Therapy" Oh come on
"Synthesis of Triazene Compounds and Their Application in Spectrophotometric Determination of Cadmium" Nobody's doing cadmium work outside a lab, at least without turning the basement into a "radioactive boyscout" situation. I would promote this to "possible" if and only if it were done as independent study at a high school chem lab.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If the test is only 90% accurate then it's useless.
A 10% error rate would generate a number of false results greater than the incidence of pancreatic cancer in the first place.
Jack Andraka
Gordon E. Moore Award Winners
Jack Andraka, 15, of Crownsville, Maryland, was awarded the Gordon E. Moore Award for his development of a new method to detect pancreatic cancer. Using an approach similar to that of diabetic test strips, Jack created a simple dip-stick sensor to test the level of mesothelin, a pancreatic cancer biomarker, in blood or urine, to determine whether or not a patient has early-stage pancreatic cancer. His study resulted in over 90 percent accuracy in detecting the presence of mesothelin. Further, his novel patent-pending sensor proved to be 28 times faster, 28 times less expensive and over 100 times more sensitive than current tests.
This is something easily done by a high-school student (the hard work is determining what to test for and that can be done by a literature search) and , yes he did apply for a patent.
His study resulted in over 90 percent accuracy and showed his patent-pending sensor to be 28 times faster, 28 times less expensive and over 100 times more sensitive than current tests.
Moron.
He just won an international level science competition, he is going to have job and scholarship offers coming out his ass.
If he had done this privately and tried to monetize it the business school graduates would have fucked him over.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
to take your project home on the airplane. They might end up shutting down the airport for several hours, arresting you, and confiscating your project.
My project was a really cool baking soda volcano.
he is going to have job and scholarship offers coming out his ass
Sounds painful, do you suppose he might develop a test for this condition?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
An anecdote: I judged at a middle and high school science/engineering fair myself once, a few years ago now. It was an ... interesting experience. Before the judging began, we held a meeting in which the lead judge reminded jurors to "pick winners based on creativity and hard work of the CHILD, not the parents". Whenever possible, we tried to interview the kids to see if they had any inkling of the project contents; this was usually the best way to determine if the parents did the project or not.
From what I saw that day, I would say half at best did the work themselves. One kid even admitted that his dad was an engineer and came up with the design, and he more or less just watched and took down notes (the parents had walked off when I came to his booth, so I guess they weren't around to stop him from being an honest little kid). I didn't even get the impression that he liked it much; more that the parents pushed him to doing it.
I did not want to discourage interest in science, especially if the parents are really trying hard to encourage their kids, but at the end of the day I awarded my votes to the less visually impressive projects that were very obviously done by the kids. One was a simple experiment with growing plants in certain soil conditions. I can't remember exactly what the additive was. But nothing fancy. But here we got to the booth and the kid was beaming and excited to show off the plants, and demonstrated a decent grasp of scientific method (trying to control conditions, etc.). I gave her more points than the equivalent of the "quantum qubits" project.
I haven't tried doing it again since then because honestly it made me feel discouraged. There were very few students truly interested in doing a science project, that were able to find a project interesting to them. Most of the projects struck me as either "completely cobbled together last minute in order to prevent a failing grade in science class", or "forced to do a particular project by overbearing parents that want the most spectacular project possible". I can see where it is very hard to judge in that environment because the helicopter parents will demand 1st prize when their kids don't deserve it. The fact that I was allowed to be a "secret" judge helped a bit that particular time. I imagine most people just thought I was a curious parent wandering around asking basic questions.
but ridiculously profitable. I would imagine charging 1/4 current rates would be about right, considering that the cost is 28 times cheaper.
Considering that these are the same greedy assholes that charge $100+ for the Sharpie markers they use in the OR*, I expect at least 1/2 the current rate, if not more. * No bullshit. Make sure you get an itemized bill for your next surgical procedure, it'll piss you off what they charge for some of this shit.
Ha! Clearly you both are underestimating the level of greed and corruption in big pharma. You forgot to consider that this test is now likely more accurate than the current test. In 6 months time, the small handful of the populace who barely remembers "28 times cheaper" won't matter, for this "new and improved" test will hit the market at 2x the current price.
If anything, the cost will go UP, not down. This will be marketed as a "better" product, not a "cheaper" one.
You would follow up with an ERCP, which is expensive.
The current CA19-9 blood test is not reliable in many individuals, but is a relatively inexpensive blood test to check for pancreatic cancer. If you baseline with CA19-9 and use the test on a regular basis, it seems pretty good right now. I guess I can't see this kid's test being 28 times cheaper than a CA19-9 test, but I could see it being 28 times cheaper than an ERCP.
Moe
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
There's a strong argument that it's easier today to move up the social ladder in Europe than the United States
I've always thought that this is very widely accepted fact. Where I live, higher education is free (and in fact, you get social security of 500 euros ($640) a month, lower rent, government-backed loans, etc. if you're a student) and university admissions are based on objective tests to select the best students (everyone who finishes Highschool will participate in national testing. Grades come from bell curve and graders don't know whose paper they're grading... or even the highschool of the student). It seems obvious to me that a system like this will result in more social justice and less inequality (Nearly everyone who has the will and skill can climb the social ladder regardless of who their parents where) but people in USA decided that the gain is simply not worth the price (=more taxes, less personal liberty, more nannystate...).
This is appalling.
Why so? Again, I assumed this had always been both well-known and intentional but if it isn't... is there something that makes Europe especially appalling in this regard or is it just so appalling to hear that USA isn't at the top?
When your hospital is for profit, you end up in this funny cycle. Ambulance chaser sues someone, and wins a ridiculous tort settlement against a doctor/hospital. Insurance company says "Boohoo, I can't possibly survive this assault if I don't raise my rates accordingly!" so they accommodate the ambulance chaser, and pad the raise to increase their profits by 5-10%. The Hospital says "Boohoo, I can't possibly survive this assault if I don't raise my rates accordingly!" so they accommodate the insurance company and jack their rates up an additional 5-10% to increase their profit margins. Everyone pats each other on the back, wash and repeat. The problem is, 5-10% starts looking like business as usual, and the only way for a CEO to stand out with his shareholders, is to bring in 10-20%. Then 15-30%. On and on. Until now a hospital charges $15 for a Tums, or $20 for a travel size box of Kleenex. Or the one I love, nearly $400 for a $1.60 spinal tap needle.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of greedy asshole lawyers. Likewise greedy asshole clients who think winning a tort is a lottery ticket. Greedy Insurance company executives. Even greedy money grubbing Hospital Administrators. Its the circle of life in a dystopian money grubbing circle jerk. So you can pick one clown out of the circus if you like, but there are plenty of other rings of action going on, and if you were to bring the owner of every palm being greased forward, I'm guessing you'd be looking at quite a crowd.
Perhaps a more interesting conversation might be, how do we mozy our culture back to society based on personal responsibility, social service, and personal dignity. Sorry, forgive the brain-fart, just fantasizing.
Whoever invents a way to detect prostate cancer without a TSA re-enactment deserves 10 fucking Nobel's.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm late on this one, and haven't posted in awhile, but this is probably worth chiming in on. (Posted above anonymously, just replying in full here.) I chatted with him after the fair, and also chatted with his parents for awhile. He understood the theory behind and around his work, and by all accounts did the work himself; this wasn't a parent doing it for him. What he did is likely going to save lives. I also had a chance to talk to Nicholas Schiefer, who did a project called Apodura; better search of short content based on markov chain modelling. He also very much understood what he had done, how it worked, what some of the pitfalls were, and what he might do on it next. Or, in short, at least at the level of winner/runner-up, they've done the work themselves, and are phenomenally advanced students. If you have experience in the target field - which the judges do! - it should be *very* evident which students have done the work, which students have done the work with assistance from a university lab, and which students are essentially parroting knowledge that a parent handed to them. Students that do phenomenal work on their own and can speak intelligently about that to a subject matter expert, I'd certainly give the benefit of the doubt.