NEWS RELEASE

Office of External Communications

Houston, TX 77204-5017 Fax; 713/743-8199

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2007

Contact: Ann Holdsworth
713/743-8153 (office)
832/387-9322 (cell)
aholdsworth@uh.edu

HOUSTON-AREA YOUTHS SET FOR ‘EXPLOSIVE’ FUN AT UH SCIENCE DAY

Creating flaming volcanoes, playing activity-based video games and generating explosive noises are some of the activities and demonstrations a group of at-risk youths from the Houston area will participate in during All-N-One Science Day June 27 at the University of Houston.

UH professors hope their displays and activities can spark an interest in science for the 50 fifth- through ninth-graders descending onto the UH campus next week. In addition to viewing fun chemical displays, the youths also will learn how scientists are using computers to help people get physically fit and to detect diseases through automated analysis of cells and chromosomes.

Other activities include Neat-o-Games—activities in which players are represented onscreen as animated avatars and compete based on energy counts recorded by body-worn accelerometer sensors.

The UH computer science team will open its Quantitative Imaging Laboratory for a demonstration in biomedical engineering. The students will watch how a computer can perform an automated examination of the approximately 100,000 cells in a microliter of blood — the equivalent of one drop — a process that would be tedious and time-consuming for a person to perform manually.

The visitors also will observe how scientists use computers to illuminate cells with different wavelengths of light to reveal a cell’s structures and to identify abnormal genetic codes, which may be associated with diseases such as cancer.

American Chemical Society (ACS) volunteers also will execute other attention-getting demonstrations such as mixing chemicals to emit a neon blue, glow-in-the dark light and creating an explosive noise by dropping a lit match into a jug containing methanol.

The College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Texas Learning and Computation Center (TLC2), the ACS student chapter and All-N-One, a non-profit youth outreach program affiliated with UH athletics, are teaming up to present the demonstrations.

The at-risk youths attend Southmore Intermediate School in the Pasadena Independent School District, Shape Community Center and a Riverside General Hospital youth mentoring program. All are attending an All-N-One camp at UH this summer.

WHAT: All-N-One Science Day
WHEN: 9:30-11:30 a.m., Wednesday, June 27
WHERE: University of Houston
Each 30-minute science demonstration will be repeated three times in the following locations:
 
  • TLC2 multimedia classroom, Philip Gutherie Hoffman Hall (PGH), Room 232 (building No. 547 on campus map - www.uh.edu/cgi-bin/campusmap)
  • Quantitative Imaging Laboratory, PGH Room 550E
  • Science and Research Building 1, Room 117 (building No. 550 on campus map)

To receive UH science news via e-mail, visit www.uh.edu/admin/media/sciencelist.html.

For more information about UH visit the university’s ‘Newsroom’ at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom.