Last week the semi-finalist winners of the Intel (formerly Westinghouse) scholarship applicants were named. New Hyde Park was well-represented with the announcement that Katherine Marie Rhindress, of New Hyde Park Memorial High School and Jonathan Cook and Yu (Mimi) Yan, of Herricks were included on the list. All live in New Hyde Park. It goes without saying that each school was very proud of its students for being named to the prestigious position of semi-finalist.

The topics covered by each student was very different, very involved and very intense. The topics include:

Katherine Rhindress chose as her project the study of the Black Holes that surround Binary Stars. She first talked it over with her Science Mentor Dr. Dawn Lapiano/Smith who agreed with her that it was a fascinating subject.

In an interview she said that for years of studying astronomy magazines and watching the Discovery Channel she has been fascinated by the subject of Black Holes. To begin she said, "Binary Stars are usually two stars that rotate around each other but in some cases in the Binary System it is a star and a black hole. What she set out to do was to find an easier way to calculate the mass in the black hole because it is difficult and the calculations are not precise."

Her project was executed by studying at Stonybrook University in the Simons Fellowship Program with professor Madappa Prakash from June 25 to August 25.

Rhindress said, "By taking calculations that we know are correct about the star rows heating around the black hole we were able to make a cubic mass function which when factored would give the mass of a black hole."

Rhindress explained, "The study is important to give a clearer understanding of why the system is behaving in the way it is and it gives a little clearer understanding of the universe and how it was created and where it is going in the future. The system is in another galaxy and is so far away that they must be detected through X-rays. The X-rays were not taken by the Stonybrook group because they are theoretical physics not observational physics. Theoretical physics, however, does the math behind the theory derived from the laws of Newton and Kempler and it is easier to get the cubic mass than to find the solution."

In her findings she said, "I thought that Black Holes could not emit anything because they trap off the light, but it has been discovered that in Binary Systems some of the mass comes off one star and swirls around the black hole, like water down a drain, and it heats up so much before it goes into the Black Hole, The matter going around the Black Hole gives off its own x-rays and the mass in the Black Hole can be detected from those x-rays. To date there are 14 systems of Black Holes and Binary Systems."

Rhindress said that until she was 12 years old she lived in Glendale, Queens and attended Sacred Heart Elementary School. The family moved to New Hyde Park and she attended Notre Dame School until the ninth grade when she went to Memorial High School.

At Memorial she is a member of the Drama Club and just captured a lead part, that of Mrs. Stanley in their upcoming production of A Man Who Came to Dinner. The Spring musical will be Once Upon A Mattress and Rhindress captured a lead part in that as well. She is also a member of the Gilbert & Sullivan Light Opera Company and they will be performing Utopia Limited for the first time on Long Island with productions set for late April and early May.

In her "spare" time Rhindress, who is a member of the National Honor Society, tutors a student in both math and literature. She lives with her mom, Mary and dad, Paul and sister Sara, who is 14 and her brother Michael who is 4 years old.

Rhindress, a senior has applied to many colleges including Loyola, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Fordham, New York University, Boston College, Rochester University and Binghamton University.

Although Rhindress said she really hasn't made up her mind which one she will attend she did admit that if she receives an acceptance from Harvard she said, "I would have a really hard time turning it down."

Jonathan Cook, a senior at Herricks High School chose as his project magnetic levitation. The Efficacy of Electromagnetic Induction without Inductive Loading as a Means of Achieving Magnetic Levitation. He launched this study with the guidance of his mentors Mr. Curran and Mr. Gangji, both of the Herricks the Physics Department

Cook said that since he first studied magnetic levitation, or "maglev" as he called it, in the Technology Department at the Middle School and he was captivated by the subject. At that time each student in the class built a maglev vehicle and Cook said, "I was really fascinated as I was watching the model glide down the track."

He said that he really started his project last year and continued the project this year. He said he found an article in Scientific American, written by Dr. Richard Post, of Livermore National Laboratories in California, on a new means of achieving magnetic levitation which would be safer, more cost effective and more efficient than the maglev systems in the world today. He said he had several conversations with Dr. Post, on the phone before he started his research and Dr. Post sent him his laboratory report.

Cook studied Dr. Post's article over and over again until he had a complete grasp of the concept. He said, "A full scale model, using the new technology, has not as yet been built but there are plans to build a system in Pittsburgh."

The projected time for that model to be operational is approximately 12 years. All research at this time is being done by the government, Carnegie Mellon and General Automics. Cook said, "The system, once built would be stable, with a comfortable ride and will operate at a very high rate of speed and is more appropriate right now for the operation of trains."

Cook explained what exactly "maglev" is. He said, "Magnetic levitation by electromagnetic induction is a revolutionary concept which could provide an alternate means of driving the high-speed transportation systems of the future. In past studies, magnetic levitation has been achieved by electromagnetic induction with inductive loading, which is a levitation aid."

He went on to say, "The purpose of my study is to determine, through a working model, the validity of electromagnetic induction without inductive loading as a means of achieving magnetic levitation."

Cook continued, "It was hypothesized that a maglev system could be successfully designed and constructed to achieve magnetic levitation by electromagnetic induction without the aid of inductive loading. The hypothesis was tested through a model whose design utilized the principles of the concept to achieve the magnetic levitation of an array of permanent magnets."

Cook then constructed a model that he used to test the theory. He said, "I passed an array of permanent magnets over a track consisting of coils of wire. When the magnetic field from the array of magnets cut through the track, currents were electromagnetically induced in the coils. These currents turned the coils into electromagnets that repelled the array of magnets with a levitation force in the vertical direction. When the motion of the array of magnets reached a certain speed, the induced currents increased to the point where they turned the coils into electromagnets that were strong enough to repel the array of magnets with sufficient force to levitate it."

Cook discovered that magnetic levitation by electromagnetic induction is a revolutionary concept which could provide an alternate means of driving the high speed transportation systems of the future. He said, "In the past studies of magnetic levitation has been achieved by electromagnetic induction with inductive loading (a levitation aid). The purpose of the study was to determine, through a working model, the validity of electromagnetic induction without inductive loading as a means of achieving magnetic levitation."

At the end of his experiment, using his model that he constructed in his basement, Cook came to the following conclusion: "The successful operation of the model proved that electromagnetic induction with inductive loading is a valid means of achieving magnetic levitation. Furthermore, a comparison of expected to experimental data suggested the efficacy of a full-scale maglev system operating on the concept. With these findings it is apparent that magnetic levitation of electromagnetic induction without inductive loading has the potential to revolutionize the future of transportation making it practical, safe, cost-effective and efficient."

Cook added, "Who knows in the future you could possibly travel from up to 500 miles per hour on a train going from say New York to Florida in less time than it takes to fly now. The only limiting thing would be the correct design of the train to withstand that speed."

The unique thing about Clark's project and about the project of Yo Yan was they both researched their projects on their own without the help of an outside lab.

Cook lived in Bayside until the fourth-grade when he moved to Herricks and was enrolled in the Searingtown School. He lives with his dad Phil, a biomedical engineer and machinist, his mom Eileen, who is a speech language pathologist, and his 9 year old sister a student at Searingtown School.

Cook's also a member of the Herricks Wind Ensemble, was part of the Herricks Pit Orchestra performing Anything Goes, the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra, the Pep Band, Mathletes and is the co-president of the Herricks Technology Club.

Colleges he applied to include: MIT, Stanford, Cornell and Carnegie Mellon but he said he really doesn't know what college is his favorite at this point.

Yu Yan, who is known in school as Mimi, chose as her topic, "The Effect of Starvation and Infection on the Ability of Tribolium Beetles to Detect the Parasite Hymenolepis Diminuta."

Yan said, "I read in a science magazine an article that described how parasites changed the behavior of rats and it was also said, in the same article, that one-third of human beings have the same parasite in their brains and it would be interesting to see if humans have parasites that could actually change their behavior. That article peaked my interest in studying parasites."

Yan said, "From there I investigated different types of relationships between parasites and their hosts. The project that I really wanted to work on was a very common bug called "pill bugs", but unfortunately, I could not get the parasite for that bug. Therefore, I e-mailed a scientist named Janice Moore, of Colorado, that did an extensive study in the field. She suggested reading articles by another scientist and from there she suggested studying Tribolium Beetles and I could get the parasite for the Tribolium Beetle."

Yan added, "That's a really big problem in biology because it is really hard to find the equipment or the organisms to study. She started out studying Tribolium Beetles by observing the change in behavior that the parasite causes when they become infected. One article said that when these two species competed in an environment when the parasite was present that one of the species Tribolium castaneum was eliminated every time and I figured there had to be a reason. Some researchers hypothesized that the parasites could actually produce a chemical that might actually attract the host and they believed that the hosts could detect certain parasites."

She said she used those two assumptions. The first year of studying this topic she used starvation as a factor because it was suggested that perhaps it would have an impact. Then she obtained rat feces because the parasite infects rats, but than the beetles are the intermediary hosts. She said, "It's kind of like a cycle, the rats become infected with the parasite by eating a beetle infected by the parasite and the beetle becomes infected by eating the feces of the rat that has eggs from the parasite."

Yan went on to further explain. "I obtained the rat feces from. infected by the parasite and I also obtained feces from the beetle. From there it was actually very simple because I starved some of the beetles for five days and the others I fed for the five days. I got small containers, came to school and masked the feces before putting them into the containers with the beetles. After I introduced the beetles I again masked the uninfected and the infected feces again and I calculated the percentage change that occurred."

Yan felt that the first year she could not come up with a strong conclusion because her results showed that both species preferred the infected feces and I thought that it was just the Tribolium castaneum, but her results showed they ate as much of the infected feces as the Tribolium confusion did, so it didn't make sense.

Therefore, she went back to her original idea that when the beetles are infected their behavior changes. So she repeated the same experiment only this time she infected the beetles to see if that changed their behavior.

She said, "My conclusion showed that when the beetles were not infected with the parasite, both species, regardless of whether they were starved or fed preferred the infected feces over the uninfected. However, infected Tribolium castaneum preferred uninfected feces while infected and Tribolium confusion still preferred the infected feces suggesting that infection caused a different change in behavior in the two species regarding their avoidance of the parasite."

Yan was born in China and moved to the United States when she was 5 years old. Before coming to Herricks she and her family lived in Syracuse, Douglaston and moved to Herricks when she was in the seventh- grade.

She is heavily involved in Community Service and does volunteer work at hospitals and the Red Cross and worked on Carolyn McCarthy's campaign for reelection. She is also involved in the SAFE program and works on the production staff of the Herricks Highlander.

She applied to Yale, Columbia and Cornell and perhaps would like to become a pediatrician, but would also like to be involved with both research and working with patients.

She lives with her dad Xiaoping, who is an English teacher and her mom Mae, who is a nurse. She also has a sister Clara who is 5 years old and attends Center Street School and is looking forward to seeing her name in the paper along with that of her sister Mimi.