Science Congress 21 Feb 2012 Student Poster Presentations

During the congress there were many students with splendid projects that were being showcased to us. I walked through most of the projects and stopped at some to get more details. This is on four posters that I saw and was interested in.

Poster 1

Antimicrobial biofilm formation by Acinetobacter baumannii

By_Lim Yanqing Esther Candice, Lee Huiwen, Shermaine Nah, and Chua Kim Lee

This group’s research plans to help in removing biofilm formation caused by bacteria growth on surfaces especially in the hospital. This will help in the sterilization process to make sure the patients are safe from bacteria reinfecting them. This is a research i see would boost the cleanliness of our hospitals but it would be better if the product could be used in a wider range like at homes. Another use i see for the product would be in the lavatories to keep equipments clean from any bacterial growth. In the end there should still be research on how safe the product is for actual use and whether it would harm humans especially children in any way.

Poster 2

The Study of Sericin as a natural adhesive

By_Yeow Li Teng Cheryl, Lee Wen Sin, Tay Kai Lin Hilda, and Willy Tan

Glue is something that can stick together almost anything and has help us in many ways. However in some extreme cases the glue looses it adhesiveness. The group plans to prove that Sericin is an extremely good prod

uct to be made into glue even contaminated. The glue is tested to withstan

d high UV light radiations where most glues would already have given way and even high temperatures. I see space glue for the future coming its way. However the uses of the glue are not properly stated on the poster and it seems that if the uses are available it would provide more information to the reader. Futher research could be done to find out if sericin can still act as an adhesive underwater as it can on dry land. Making a glue for water use would be useful for boats.

Poster 3

Wearable Devices for Parkinson’s Disease Patients

By_Ng Jing Yi Sheena, Ruthanne Toh Yun Xuan

This research just reminded me of the Elderly Challenge we did during Sec 1, although it is meant for patients with Parkinson’s disease. The device is worn and measures the movement of a patient with Parkinson’s disease to see if there are any improvements at all. This could help doctors to know the recovery of patients and the best approach to the patient. This seems to be a good idea but the device could even be put to more uses such as for the elderly to help them monitor their movements and see if the daily exercise required is met or to monitor the movements of criminals. The device could also become even more micro and thinner as it would help more. There can be improvements on the device that would make it better and add more features.

Science Congress 21 Feb 2012 Student Presentations

I will be talking about two presentations of the four that was shared during the congress

Presentation 1

Effect of Stress on Subsequent Performance in Observers during High Fidelity Simulator-based Training

I am sure everybody would think this is a very long title and it is but it has gathered some good information that could probably be used to help people understand stress better. It is mainly based on data gathered on medical trainees going for their training on dummies that can act like a real person. The stress responses are gathered through the means of heart rate and salivary cortisol. The research has shown that repetitive exposure does not decrease the stress responses but repetitive actual simulation does. It shows that if you do more the more confident you get rather than just watching the same thing over and over again. Now all that is needed is to research on how much stress major exams such as PSLE, O’Levels or A’Levels bring to the students and how to manage stress to perform better. I am sure the data for that will be amazing.

Presentation 2

Impact of Transverse Modes Interaction in FIber Amplifiers

In the modern day everyone wants their internet speed to be fast and when it becomes fast they want it to become faster and it goes on. This research project might just be the solution on helping us get out desire for faster speeds. This research aims to make sure that data transmission is amplified to the max without any quality degradation of the data as we want the data to be transmitted fast but also want to receive the data as it once was. It has been shown that multimode fibers have high signal power handling but decreased beam quality but the results show that the beam quality degradation can be compensated by appropriately designed fiber amplifiers. This would not only speed up our internet but also make sure it is clear, the next thing left is to speed it up wirelessly.

The Issue that is Cancer

Cancer, I am sure you have heard of it and all the terrible things it can do to us. The most frightening thing about it however is that anybody could get it even if you or your family never had a history with cancer. In its early stages it is hard to detect and when detected in its later stages your survival rate would have dropped to around 20%.

There are several researches being done on the cure for cancer and some have been great successes that saved many lives. When curing a patient the doctor would want the patient to preserve both their form and functions while being cured and after the cure. Therefore, more research is done towards detecting cancer at their early stages and improving survival rates of patients at the later stages. To obtain a successful result in this field of research networking becomes the key to gather information and statistics.

Questions on how cancer exists in our body while escaping our immune system, how different are they from normal cells and how they can grow back after therapeutic treatments are being answered but more questions are still being made. To answer these questions and for other types of diseases biomedicine will become a main key and the demand for the field will increase in time. Biomedical research is mentally simulating as it requires a person to solve the puzzle of a disease such as cancer and is emotionally satisfying as the results could save countless lives.