Barbara Lawlor, Nederland.  Each year at the White Rose Ceremony, science teacher Al Real goes home with a bouquet of flowers presented to him by his students. Most of them say they never liked science until they came into his class and now many of them are passionate about the subject, even planning to make some form of science their career goal. Two weeks ago, the Nederland students who entered into the Boulder Valley School District Science Fair competition, came back as winners, whether they placed at the top or not. They had met the grueling challenge of coming up with a premise and proving, through scientific research, that it was either true or not true, or kind of true but needed more work done.

Students who earned special recognitions were: Brie Sineni and Sierra Jakoby earned third place in Animal Sciences; Gabe Larrabee earned the Soil and Water Conservation Society Award; Emily Curcio and Hayley Turner earned the Ricoh Sustainability Award, and Sarah Davidson earned second in Behavioral and Social Sciences, qualifying for state.

Their projects included a wide variety of subjects and their work was focused on coming up with answers that are pertinent to living on the earth today.

Hayley and Emily studied the Improved Sustainability and Ecological Impact of Modified Mycelium Packaging as Compared to Foamed Polystyrene.

Gabe Larrabee's project was: Solar Distillation Using Variable Pressure Gradients: Providing Clean Water in Developing Nations

Sarah Davidson: Differences in Functions of Proprioceptive Feedback Mechanisms: in shod and Barefoot conditions

Sofie Anderson: Multitasking: An assessment of linguistic and arithmetic cognitive functions

Brie Sineni and Sierra Jacoby:  The impacts of physical abuse versus psychological Trauma: a comparison in Canis Lupis Familiaris.

They chose their topic because they are both interested in Behavioral Science and have loved animals since they were young. They found that males exhibit seven traits more than females: fear, excitability, hyper activity, persistent bark, aggression, attachment and attention seeking more than females.  As the dogs get older all of these traits decrease.

The girls felt proud of their work and feel this data should be available to people.

"Within the last few months the EPA has removed all literature on physically abused dogs.  So now there is no information out there for people to have," says Brie.

Brie will be studying at Montana State University next fall, majoring in Fish and Wildlife with a minor in Animal Science.

William Culver: Developing an application to provide greater stock market availability to people of mid to lower socioeconomic status.