Waterford students shine at BT Young Scientist exhibition
Árdscoil na mBraithre student Oran Sheehan at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS in Dublin. Photo by Hugh Dooley.
Árdscoil na mBraithre student Oran Sheehan is well on his way to his dreams of working in agriculture or engineering with his revelatory research project into maximising biodiversity for grassland farmers at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS in Dublin.
"My farm was entered into the scheme for the past three years," Oran said, whose family farm is based in the Comeragh mountains near Ballymacarbry.
"So when it came to doing an Ag Science project in school the scheme came to mind and I have carried over that work into this competition," he added.
"ACRES is a biodiversity positivity scheme introduced in 2020 to farming. It's a result-based scoring measurement system whereby you are financially compensated for the levels of biodiversity that are visible on your farms."
Farms, he explained: "are inspected once per year by ACRES and Teagasc representatives and scorecards are filled out and analysed. You receive a score accordingly and receive payment based on your score."
Oran explained that his project worked to find the "sweet spot" for farmers to maximise their land, by designating areas away from sheep grazing "in order to significantly increase your ACRE score".
"Sheep will eat everything they see," said Oran, while recommending that farmers control the area their sheep are grazing in order to improve the biodiversity on their farms.
"Allowing your grazing land to recover will improve your ACRE score and allow your land to recover and flourish again," he said.
Oran said he started to collect the data for the project in March until September 2024, at which point Oran began to "compile the data, working and research all of the aspects of the project as well as creating the project report book".
He said that he was "delighted" when he found out that his project was going to be included in the exhibition which he described as a "great experience".
Another Waterford student, seeking to revolutionise food packaging, is Dungarvan CBS student, James Hickey, who was doubtful of the efficacy of expiry dates and decided to come up with his own evolution.
Explaining his project at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS in Dublin, James proposed using pH-responsive packaging to indicate when food has gone bad.
Imagine going to the shop and seeing the packing on your groceries change colour when the food has gone bad; James said it's just a matter of using a "biodegradable film which has pH-sensitive properties which mean it will change colour based on the chemicals produced when foods expire".
"This would reduce food waste, we throw out a lot of food that is completely safe to eat, but it would also alert consumers if there are issues in the packaging before the expiration date," he said.
James decided to approach the project as he believes that "expiration dates are not fully reliable".
"I thought that if we used pH as an indicator we could tell if the food had expired in a smart way," he said."I dairy products, there is an increase in lactic acid which is more acidic, and meat becomes more alkaline which would display it."
James thanked his teacher Ms Maria McSweeney, who he said had helped him to get the project into the BT Young Scientist Exhibition.
Cathal Barry, a Transition Year student at Blackwater Community School in Lismore, ran a revealing investigation into propaganda on young people.
Cathal said his project, ‘Where is the truth: The effects of media propaganda on young people’ is the culmination of more than two years of work having been inspired to investigate the issue through his interest in politics.
“My project is an investigation into the effects of media propaganda on young people,” Cathal explained. “I’ve been working on this for about two-and-a-half years now."
“It came from a big interest in politics and history,” the 16-year-old said, explaining that he was interested in how “small groups of people were able to control millions and in how we know so much about propaganda and yet it’s still such an effective phenomenon today".
The Blackwater Community School student said that he is concerned about the effectiveness of propaganda today, and said “the key to its effectiveness today is its evolution, the propaganda we see today is not what is in the history books – on a poster or in a newspaper – it’s on social media now. We don’t know how to deal with that now or how to differentiate it, which is causing a lot of problems now.”
“I decided to investigate the impact that it has on young people to see how it could affect the political landscape in the future as those young people get interested and involved in politics,” he said.
Cathal’s research included a test where respondents were shown a number of examples of propaganda in media and controls and had to identify which they were, the results of the test stunned the Waterford student.
“The mean score was about 38 per cent, and on a standard school test that is a fail,” he said; a result the student described as “slightly worrying”. The vast majority of the sources of propaganda he identified came from social media, a statistic which becomes more concerning when accounting for his finding that 72 per cent of his respondents get their news from social media.
Cathal has been working with two academics from UCC, Drs Theresa Reidy from Department of Government and Politics, and Maria Thieler in the UCC School of Mathematics who he thanked for their help with the project.
