A paper describing research attempting to halt the effects of age on the brain has won first prize in the second annual Science Communication Forum organised by the RDS as a contribution to Science Week Ireland.
Mr Eamonn O'Donnell, of Trinity College, received £500 and a medal for his presentation, which described work into the biochemistry of ageing. He described how taking additional vitamin C and E apparently halted some of the damage caused by ageing in rats. The competition, which took place at the RDS yesterday, included seven presentations by third-level researchers who were asked to describe their work in ordinary language. Second prize of £250 was won by Ms Maria Davoren of the Athlone Institute of Technology. Her research was on the harmful effects on plant and aquatic life caused by Environ, an agri-chemical used by the mushroom industry.
Third prize of £50 was won by Ms Patricia Johnston of NUI Maynooth who presented a paper on the use of DNA in vaccinations. Other competitors included Dr Anthony Killard of Dublin City University with a paper on engineering antibodies to fight disease; Mr Colin Adrian of NUI Maynooth who spoke about chemicals which caused cell death; Ms Tracy Keane of the Institute of Technology Tallaght and UCD, about helping the body to fight transplant organ rejection; and Ms Catherine Dempsey, of NUI Maynooth, on "natural born killers", tiny one millimetre-long unsegmented worms which could be used as a natural method to control insect larvae damage.
