Eideard

Lauren Hodge, Shree Bose and Naomi Shah

If Google’s first science fair is any indication, the top scientists of the future will be women. Google has announced the fair’s winners, and they are all young women.

Shree Bose, age 17, from Fort Worth, Tex., won the grand prize for developing a way to improve ovarian cancer treatment for patients who have developed a resistance to chemotherapy. Naomi Shah, 16, from Portland, Ore., found ways to improve indoor air quality and decrease people’s reliance on asthma medications. And Lauren Hodge, 14, from Dallastown, Pa., researched the effects of different marinades on potential carcinogens in grilled chicken.

“As a girl, to see that my gender actually is going to come into this field that’s been so dominated by men is exciting to me, and to be a part of that is even more exciting,” Ms. Bose said in an interview.

Surprisingly for Google, a computer science company, the winners each did bioscience projects. But the entries were wide-ranging, as was the science fair. Teenagers from all over the world could enter the fair in areas from computer science to space exploration. Unlike other science fairs, like those of Intel and Siemens, students entered online instead of presenting their projects in a school gymnasium.

Ten thousand students from 91 countries entered 7,500 projects in the science fair, including transforming recycled cans into solar ovens, building robotic prosthetic limbs and developing 3-D indoor navigation for blind people. For a clue about what tomorrow’s scientists care most about, the most popular category was earth and environmental sciences.

Google invited 15 finalists to its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters this week. The winners received scholarships, internships at Google, CERN and Lego, and for Ms. Bose, a trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Explorer.

Bravo! You have to wonder if anyone from Congress was watching?

Thanks, Ursarodinia

Move over Chile, Brazil has the world’s largest Lego tower.

Standing at 31.19 meters the tower in the city of Sao Paulo breaks the previous record set in Santiago, Chile, in 2008 by 25 centimeters, according to Lego’s Brazilian website.

Lego sent designers from Denmark to build the tower, which was completed Saturday in a shopping center parking lot after four days of construction.

Brazilian soccer great Cafu attached the last piece of the colorful tower.

According to Lego, the first such structure was built in London in 1988 and stood just a little over 15 meters (49.21 feet) tall.

OK, we know it’s a publicity stunt for the upcoming World Cup and the Olympics. But, it ain’t a bad way to waste some time.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

It’s quite easy, wandering round the small town of Billund, to start believing in the existence of a Lego god. You can’t help but feel a master intelligence is at work here – the place is so manifestly wholesome, the street plan so well ordered, the pavements so tidy. Unostentatious automobiles proceed slowly along all-but-empty roads, stopping politely for pedestrians nowhere near a zebra crossing. A jovial red-and-yellow Lego giant points towards the town centre; huge coloured bricks lie scattered as if awaiting deployment in some exemplary new civic amenity (except that, being Denmark, it’s not immediately apparent what else the town might need).

I half-expect to be plucked from the pavement, brushed up a bit and plumped down in front of the smart rectangular building labelled Head Office: Lego A/S. My goal here is to find out how, in the teeth of global recession and barely five years since it was being read the last rites, one of the world’s best-loved brands has come back from the dead. For Lego, born of an earlier and tougher depression, is positively revelling in this one: the little studded, primary-coloured bricks are selling like never before. In Britain alone, the company’s turnover last year was up 51%.

Its home town, though, is a bit too much for some people. “I couldn’t ever live here,” admits Mads Nipper, who looks and – when it comes to plastic bricks – acts about 12, but turns out to be one of the company’s executive vice-presidents. “I’m nuts about Lego, believe me; I eat, sleep and breathe the stuff. But there’s a bit too much of it around here even for me.”

Read the rest of this entry »