Now, there is an easier way for you to do something similar with your creative ideas! The internet giant has launched the world’s first online global science competition, giving all young scientists a unique opportunity to get exposed to the world and win some prizes that could never be any better for students.

To enter in Google Science Fair students need to be aged 13 to 18 and have a Google Account so that you can complete the form. They also need to have their parent or guardian consent without which entries will not be valid. Students can work on their own or within a maximum group of three.

If you are a teenager with an interesting idea you believe in, visit Google Science Fair website and submit your project. The deadline for submissions is 4 April 2011.

Judging criteria will focus on quality of the data, the writeup, and the significance of the concept for the project, as well as the quality of the two-minute video or 20-slide presentation that the students must produce for the project. As Google explained, entries will be judged on eight core criteria, which include the student’s presentation, question, hypothesis, research, experiment, data, observations, and conclusion.

Sixty semifinalists will be announced in early May and fifteen finalists (selected from three age groups -13 to 14, 15 to 16, and 17 to 18) will be chosen to participate in a live, in-person event to be held at Google headquarters in July. There will be three finalist winners, one in each age category, and only one of them will be named the Grand Prize Winner.

Notable organizations such as National Geographic, CERN, The LEGO Group, Scientific American and Google have partnered to make the fair happen and to provide lots of fantastic prizes that will be awarded to the 15 finalists, along with the Grand Prize winner and a people’s choice winner. The two category winners who did not win the Grand Prize will win a $25,000 scholarship from Google and Sponsor’s choice of Experience from CERN, Google, LEGO or Scientific American. The Grand Prize Winner will receive a $50,000 scholarship from Google and his or her choice of experience from Google, CERN, Scientific American or LEGO and an amazing trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Expeditions.

So, all you smart young people with interesting and creative ideas, this is your opportunity to do something big for yourself and for this world! Don’t miss it! Check video Below for more info

sponsored post

Be sure to visit they’re website

For the first time since Hwang Woo-Suk’s cloned stem cells were revealed as fakes, human cloning — for medical purposes, or even for reproduction — appears to be a realistic possibility.

“We show for the first time that the same genes turned on in normal human embryos are the same genes turned on in human clones,” said Robert Lanza, scientific director of Advanced Cell Technologies and co-author of a study published Monday in Cloning and Stem Cells.

Lanza’s team inserted human cell nuclei into hollowed-out egg cells from both humans and animals, then stimulated them into development, a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), or more informally, cloning. When compared to a normal human embryo produced through in vitro fertilization, the animal-human hybrids didn’t develop normally, but the human-human cloned embryos displayed many of the genetic characteristics of healthy development.

The research is the first step toward therapeutic cloning — making embryonic stem cells from a patient’s own DNA capable of replacing diseased tissue, failing organs and even lost limbs. And, theoretically, the same technique could be used to produce a cloned person.

In 2001, Lanza’s team claimed to have made cloned human embryos, stoking public hopes that cloning would soon produce thousands of embryonic stem cell lines — one for every common genetic group, capable of replacing diseased tissue, failing organs and lost limbs. It wasn’t clear, however, whether those embryos were actually healthy, and their DNA was never analyzed.

Four years later, researchers led by the now-infamous Woo Suk Hwang claimed to have actually harvested embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos. The findings again raised public hopes, only to be revealed as fraudulent. Hwang now works for a controversial dog cloning company, and embryonic stem cells taken from a human clone remains hypothetical.

However, even if the scientific challenges of so-called therapeutic cloning are overcome, ethical problems remain. Harvesting human eggs requires women to take ovulation-inducing hormones, a process that is arguably dangerous and inarguably arduous. As a result, egg supplies are limited and expensive. Some scientists hoped to solve this by substituting animal eggs for human.

Research on these hybrid embryos — as well as chimeric embryos, formed by mixing actual human and animal DNA — was approved last year in the United Kingdom. But that approval came after bitter public debate in which opponents raised the specter of sentient human-animal hybrids being used as biological parts factories.

The latest findings suggest that hybrids are incapable of growing to a medically useful stage, much less sentience. But both cloning and induced pluripotency — a recently-developed procedure in which adult cells are transformed into an embryo-like state — should work.

“Science has a way to go with both of these, but we will soon have a way to create a bank of stem cells to expand the range of stem cell therapies,” said Lanza.

His team compared the gene expression of a human embryo produced through in vitro fertilization with clones that incorporated human, cow, rabbit and mouse eggs. Several thousand genes were active in the fully human clones, but almost completely silent in their counterparts, which stopped developing after several days.

Among these were the genetic targets stimulated during induced pluripotency, in which adult cells are returned to an embryo-like state. Their silence suggests that animal eggs will not be useful in making clones capable of generating embryonic stem cells, much less growing to adulthood.

“You can never say never,” said Lanza, “but we’ve been at this a very long time, and despite literally thousands of these attempts, we’ve never seen one of these hybrids advance further than what we’re reporting here. And though negative results don’t often get reported, I know for a fact that other experts have had the same results.”

But the fully human cloned embryos could produce stem cells and, if permitted, perhaps grow into a person.

“The DNA resembles the DNA of a normal human embryo, which raises the question of human reproductive cloning,” said Lanza.

However, New York Medical College cell biologist Stuart Newman disagreed with Lanza’s assessment. Though the paper “shows that interspecies SCNT is a bust,” he said, there are still “substantial differences” between fully-human cloned and IVF embryos.

But even if Lanza’s embryos cannot develop, other scientists may come up with a more effective process. And though reproductive cloning has not yet been attempted, some experts say it’s inevitable.

The procedure is illegal in the United States, but a global ban proposed in the United Nations fell apart after the U.S. insisted that therapeutic cloning be banned as well.

“Virtually every country agreed, but President Bush held it hostage,” said Lanza.

President Barack Obama has promised to overturn President Bush’s moratorium on federal funding of most embryonic stem cell research. Lanza hopes he will abandon Bush’s position at the U.N. as well.

“Reproductive cloning is unsafe and unethical,” he said. “This raises the urgency that those laws need to be passed.”

Citation: “Reprogramming of Human Somatic Cells Using Human and Animal Oocytes.” By Young Chung, Colin E. Bishop, Nathan R. Treff, Stephen J. Walker, Vladislav M. Sandler, Sandy Becker, Irina Klimanskaya, Wan-Song Wun, Randall Dunn, Rebecca M. Hall,  Jing Su, Shi-Jiang Lu, Marc Maserati, Young-Ho Choi, Richard Scott, Anthony Atala, Ralph Dittman and Robert Lanza. Cloning and Stem Cells, Vol. 11 No. 2, Feb. 1, 2009.

Image: Cloning and Stem Cells / Each top-and-bottom image is a pair; from left to right, a human-mouse embryo; human-cow; human-rabbit; human; and a human embryo produced through in vitro fertilization.

credits

Nearly every day we are inundated with new genetic discoveries. Scientists can now pinpoint many specific genes including being lean, living a long life, improved self-healing, thrill seeking behavior, and having an improved memory among many other incredible traits. Many believe that these genes can be manipulated in ordinary humans, in effect creating Super-Mutants.

Isaac Asimov, the famous thinker and sci-fi writer wrote, “The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.”

The options are nearly limitless. Theoretically, if a gene exists in another species, it can be brought over to a human cell. Imagine some of the incredible traits of the animal kingdom that humans miss out on- night vision, amazing agility, or the ability to breath underwater. The precedence for these types of radical changes is already in place. Experimental mice, for example, were successfully given the human ability to see in color. If animals can be engineered to have human traits, then humans can certainly be mutated to have desirable animal traits.

Recently, a National Human Genome Research Institute team reported a mutation in a gene that codes for a muscle protein known as myostatin which can increase muscle mass and enhance racing performance in whippets. Some wonder if human athletes could benefit from having a gene or two artificially mutated to give them a little extra strength and speed.

It is even thought possible to so drastically alter human genomes that a type of superhuman species could emerge. The fear with germline engineering is that since it is inheritable, offspring and all succeeding generations would carry the modified traits. This is one reason why this type of engineering is currently banned- it could lead to irreversible alteration of the entire human species.

Ethics, not scientific limitations, is the real brick wall. Most scientists believe manipulating genes in order to make an individual healthy is a noble and worthwhile pursuit. Some are against even that notion, arguing that historically amazing individuals have sometimes been plagued by genetic mental and physical disorders, which inadvertently shaped the greatness of their lives. Should we rob the human race of character shaping frailty? Very few scientists would dare to publicly endorse the idea of using genetic engineering to make a normal, healthy individuals somehow superior to the rest of the human race.

“The push to redesign human beings, animals and plants to meet the commercial goals of a limited number of individuals is fundamentally at odds with the principle of respect for nature,”
said Brent Blackwelder, President of Friends of the Earth in his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee.

However, would it be so bad if the human race was slightly improved? What if a relatively simple procedure could make an individual and his or her offspring more compassionate, intelligent and thoughtful? Currently scientists are using gene therapy in an attempt to wipe out disease, but what if we could save many more lives by wiping out war instead though engineering humans to be less bloodthirsty, hateful and narrow-minded?

After all, Nature isn’t always right. Nature has naturally selected many people to carry the burden of uncomfortable and often lethal genetic disorders. If nature knows best, then shouldn’t we quit trying to “improve” upon nature by “curing” people of genetic conditions we consider inferior? Many say we shouldn’t change human genetics, UNLESS it’s the RIGHT thing to do. Who gets to decide where the line is between righteous endeavor and the corruption of nature? These are the questions facing our generation.

via