With 2020 underway, we are also in the end stretch for the 2nd annual NSPC Health Science Competition! But the Competition is in over 5 months you say? If you think that is far off then just wait, because time will fly faster than you think! It feels like just yesterday that we were back at LIU Post, awarding almost $80,000 in awards to our top participants! We have just as much to give away next year, so you should start working on those presentations and papers if you wish to earn top honors in this years event!

Best of luck to you all, we are getting close!

For the 2nd annual NSPC Health Science Competition, we will be hosting the event on May 27th, 2020 at Molloy College! This is an exciting idea for both parties involved: last year, several judges for our event came from Molloy, and they have one of the best nursing programs in the nation so they are thrilled at the idea of us hosting this incredible event at their facilities! We will be holding the main event in their gymnasium, so there will be more than enough breathing room for everyone who will be joining us. 

I will be headed over on Thursday to check everything out and get a feel for it, which is great because hopefully that will relieve some of this excitement I have built up inside of me! Well, not likely, but I can dream right! 

Our inaugural event in 2019 was incredible and everyone at both NSPC and CSTL is very excited for our next event!

Earlier this year, scientists conformed the existence of a new strain of HIV, one of the worlds most infamous diseases. It was the first new strain confirmation in 19 years – but do not take that to mean that the disease is mutating and will cause a host of new issues. While just confirmed, this strain was first observed in 1983! What researchers have to do to be able to prove that a new strain exists however, is show 3 indisputable cases that have the same markers on them. They thought they had it over a decade ago, but were unable to prove it indisputably. But with new genetic testing techniques made available in the last few years, confirmation was finally possible!

This is important because understanding how a strain is different is crucial to treating it. It is why each year they recommend a new flu shot, because it is a different strain then the one from previous years that you were inoculated against. HIV, and by association AIDS, are still very dangerous diseases, with over 1 million people dying annually from AIDS. But things have gotten drastically better than they were 20 years ago! People nowadays can live fairly healthy lives while being HIV+ as long as they have access to medical care and consistent medication. And this is all made easier by breakthroughs in research and knowledge, like knowing exactly what strain is being dealt with. 

Throughout history there have been innumerable people who have provided advances of incalculable importance, most of which are either lost to history. However, on October 28th, two researchers were born that made a two of the most important advances in modern medicine. I know I am a day late (sorry!) but I still feel like they need to be given as much notoriety as possible because of their importance. 

The first is Sir Richard Shaboe Doll, the British epidemologist born in 1912 that helped link smoking to lung cancer. As most of us know, smoking tobacco actually used to be prescribed by doctors as beneficial to health, which is absolutely crazy to think about now! It started in 1947 when he was asked to look into increased lung cancer rates in England, with the suspect being the rapid increase in motorized vehicles on the road. However he quickly and definitively proved that it was related to the smoking of cigarettes and tobacco that was the cause. A life long smoker, he actually quit because of this information! While this connection would have no doubt been made at some point, it was an important first step in understanding the harm that occurred from a product consumed by millions annually. 

The second of these important birthdays occurred in 1914, and was the entrance of Jonas Salk into this world. Salk, an American researcher, developed the polio vaccine. Released in 1955, it was a miracle drug that helped contain, and eventually eradicate in many parts of the world, one of the most dismal diseases humans faced. It killed a significant proportion of those it infected, leaving most of the rest with some form of paralysis for the rest of their life. This vaccine helped save millions who would otherwise have suffered without it. Fun fact: while millions of children were vaccinated against polio in 1956, teenagers were very much against it. That all changed when Elvis Presley agreed to be vaccinated live on television, endorsing the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine. The subsequent increase in vaccinations was exponential, and this moment was truly important in the early vaccination campaigns. Now if only modern celebrities listened to actual science instead of listening to disgraced attention seeking researchers….

Registration is live and I am too excited for this moment! This is the time where we get to see all the talented students the area has to offer take that first step towards proving themselves. While I am sure some may have started their projects already, many have not or are just barely begun. For some, this will be their first competition they are entering into, making it a whole new challenge they are testing themselves against. For others, this is far from their first rodeo, but I have no doubt each competition wears at their nerves as much as the first. They do this to prove to themselves and to others that they are not only smart, but determined. 

Wherever you are on this scale of experience, we are thankful you will be joining us. Not just because you are giving this competition a purpose, but because you are putting yourself out there and trying something you want to become better at. That is the real reason this and all competitions occur, to provide students and teachers with the ability to showcase their research and learn ways to improve. Good luck!

There are a lot of steps along the way to getting this competition going, and making it feel like it has actually begun. And they all seem to hold equal significance when it comes down to it. But in the end, I would have to say that the one that really seems to mark the start, is when registration opens, and that date is very soon! October 16th we open the flood gates, and while we are not expecting the flow to sweep us away in the beginning, every flood begins with a slow trickle. So we start, and wait, and see, each days excitement becoming stronger and stronger as we approach out finals in late May (more on that date coming soon!) A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and our first step is October 16th, 2019. I look forward to you joining us!

It has been a long silence since you last heard from us, but I promise we have not been idle! Plans for the 2020 competition are well under way, and we will be announcing that information within the next couple weeks. For now, all you need to know is that we will be back, and better than ever!

This will be the second year of the Neurological Surgery, P.C. Health Science Competition, and everyone involved is ecstatic to be back. Last years participation far exceeded our expectations, so we cannot wait to see what is in store for this year. We had teams from over three dozen high school across Nassau and Suffolk County come through last year, bringing almost 250 student competitors with them. Even though those of us involved in planning were expecting a high level of project sophistication and ingenuity, we were still blown away by what we saw. Which is why these competitions are so necessary, because you never know what radical discovery may be found as you look into something no one else has. 

2019 went off about as well as we could have wished, but that was the first run through and we are always looking to improve, which means 2020 will be even better. I for one cannot wait to see what everyone has in store this year, whether it be from returning faces or new ones. So warm up those test tubes and start your pipettes, because we are looking for the very best you have to offer!

The response to this brand new competition has been overwhelming and the whole team at Neurological Surgery, P.C. and the Center for Science Teaching & Learning is pleased with how well Long Island has responded to this wonderful opportunity. While most of the response has been positive, there have been numerous questions regarding the forms needed to enter, as well as those needed to fill the three adult roles to supervise student participants. After careful consideration, as well as reading the rules a thousand times (I wish that was as much of an exaggeration as it sounds…), I am happy to announce we have cut down and simplified what is needed to enter, and are as follows; 

• There are no projects that need pre-approval from the NSPC HSC Scientific Review Committee. Any project that required approval from other agencies according to federal or state law (i.e. IACUC for animals, IRB for humans, etc.) must have that approval, and any forms that were given must be brought to competition. Again, it is up to the Adult Sponsor to verify that all proper procedures were followed.
• The roles of Adult Sponsor, Designated Supervisor and Qualified Scientist have been streamlined into one role: the Adult Sponsor. We understand that many have completed their research before they entered, and getting in contact would be tedious. The Adult Sponsor is required to be able to certify that all rules, regulations and safety procedures were followed at all times in accordance with any laws or other regulations. 
• The number of required forms has been reduced down to three: Student Checklist (1), Adult Sponsor Checklist (2), and Human Participants (3). These cover applicable areas to ensure safety has been followed, but do not impose limits based approval before starting research and other encumbering areas.
• Projects will be approved during sign in. This is simply to ensure that all the forms have been properly filled out and there are no discrepancies.

So that about summarizes the update to the rules and forms. For a complete picture, please always reference the Official Rules & Regulations. It has made it a lot simpler to gain entry, so I hope if you were on the fence due to the overwhelming number of forms or adult supervisors, you will go ahead and sign up! If you have any questions, never hesitate to call or email me at the information below. I wish nothing more than to make this process as smooth for you, nothing is an inconvenient or useless question!

Kevin Sanders NSPC Health Science Competition Administrator Center for Science Teaching & Learning E:  NSPC@cstl.org    P:  (516)764-0045

Right now the international medical community is wrapped up into one of the biggest controversies of the 21st century: the morality of editing the human genome. A Chinese scientist claimed to have edited the genes of two infants to make them immune to HIV. This news is astounding on multiple reasons, and is the pinnacle of morality issues when it comes to scientific experimentation. There are numerous reasons this should not have been done, ranging from this has never been done before so no one knows what will happen, to the possible effects are all too predictable if anything goes wrong. While the infants are claimed to be in perfect health, they are still very young and therefore the effects can still be way off from being detectable. This list for why this should not have been done goes on and on, and even those who feel genome editing will be necessary in the future feel that this was a reprehensible action taken. With little oversight and even less forethought taken into account, there is no question this should not have been done. 

Medical science often pushes the boundaries of what we think is possible. But this in particular pushed what anyone thought is even safe. Human DNA is indescribably complex, and while the CRISPR technology has been used before, it was done so on bacteria — an infinitesimally simpler genome sequence to handle, and one that if done improperly, is much easier to contain and eliminate issues. 

When it comes to science, there has to be a strict set of guidelines followed that do not allow research to enter any morally devoid areas. In the case of this experiment. while done for all the right reasons to make these babies lives a little safer, it was done for all the wrong reasons in regards to understanding the norms and morals of science. 

When it comes to careers in STEM, a lot of people (both parents and students alike) think that they are “hard” and therefore not an invigorating. Well, they could not be more wrong! While going into the medical fields is certainly no walk in the park, that challenge is what makes it so much more rewarding. Doing things that are easy provide instant gratification and a quick path to an enjoyable feeling. But have you ever worked on something that pushed you to your limits? Or made you question if you could truly do this task? Was the feeling you had at the end something that was more euphoric than one from an easy task? Those are exactly the emotions you should be striving for! Nothing truly satisfactory comes easy, they all require work. And if you are really trying to see what you are capable of, what you can push yourself to do, then you should always be looking for a challenge. Careers in health science research will always provide these positive obstacles. The human body is one of the most complex systems in the universe, so there will always be something new to explore and improve upon. Our medical science has improved rapidly in the last 100 years, but we still have far to go so there is plenty of room to make your mark!