Sure there are kids that don't take the science fair seriously and end up feeding Mountain Dew to a plant for 30 days to see what happens (yay science!), but there are also kids that go well above and beyond. Here are 10 that won with extremely brainy projects that have real world applications. For example, 16-year old Mahdavi Gavini acheived a medical breakthrough while researching cystic fibrosis.
This student at the Mississippi Institute of Mathematics and Science turned to traditional Ayurvedic medicine to find a way to defeat these deadly bacteria. Eventually she isolated a specific molecule in a tropical plant extract that inhibited its growth by preventing the transcription of vital genes. Rather than patenting her discovery, she made the information readily available and plans to seek many more alternative cures in the future.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by redsfaithful.
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http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2007-01/2007-01-23-voa49.cfm?CFID=148599670&CFTOKEN=24995805&jsessionid=de3019a703b850939d585a48d5c506b7d4a5