EDITORIAL PUBLISH OR PERISH! Dear fans of science, Last month I launched a very simple survey which contained the only question - How do you think that a real scientist generally looks like? My aim groups were twofold. First I asked kids from Open Gate grammar school, aged 6 to 10 years; the other group of respondents were their parents. The options which they could choose from within the survey were as follows: a. A scientist can look like a boy or girl I met yesterday in the streets. b. A very young man or a very young woman in white lab cloak and they always research something. c. Respectable, elderly man or woman, grey hair, glasses, wearing a lab cloak, wise and experienced in their field of study. d. A scientist can look anyhow. Among the respondents, I have 23 students and 27 parents. 90 % of young students aged 6-10 years old chose the option C, 6 % chose D and 4 % went for B. Nobody mentioned option A. In group of parents, 93 % chose option D, 6 % chose C and 1 % B. Again nobody went for A. The image of a scientist changed dramatically. Three cheers for such results! Apparently, the older we are the more we are aware of the fact that being involved in science does not require any specific age, look, nor life experience. But wait, where are the young people involved in science then? How come that we come across so few of them and how come we so rarely hear of them? And do we really take care of them, do we stimulate them sufficiently and do we provide enough opportunities for them to train their skills for real science or do we neglect them and let their talent vanish in the crowd? I honestly think that answers to these questions depend on if we see our glass half full or half empty. But only thinking about the answers opens the question of the mission of our Open Science magazine, which you are reading right now. Firstly, we would love to show all students and adults that the world of science is not only fascinating, fun and educative but it is literally opened to anyone. This magazine is made by students for (not only) students! Regardless to your age and education, if you want to see what young people think about science and how they can write about it, here you are, this is your magazine! Secondly and more importantly, we want to literally open the world of real science to young people. This ambitious goal is related to one of the uncodified but strictly true and generally well-known facts in any field of science which is – publish or perish! And yes, it is an inevitable truth among sciences. Any scientist must publish his or her work in order to survive in the wild out there in the world of professional science. This fact is accompanied by a strange controversy – even undergraduate students are encouraged to publish their work but the opportunities where they can train their writing skills of scientific articles are startlingly limited! The OPEN SCIENCE magazine offers a unique opportunity for any secondary school student to publish his or her very first scientific article or a popular article. Conditions under which any article can be published in this magazine are described at the end of this issue and also in a letter which the editorial staff will send to randomly chosen IB schools in Europe. And we believe that this is just the beginning! Science has no borders, nor the country where any of our future authors lives! So if you would like to publish your article at this magazine, feel free to contact the extremely helpful editorial staff at openscience.info@gmail.com We do not have to possess a magical wand, nor an invisible cloak or ancient mysterious formulas to discover something what may once save the humankind. Anyone can do it! All we need is to open the doors to science to anyone interested, open ourselves to science and then science will simply open its fascinating door to us! Enjoy the journey!
Katerina Koznarova Head of the Science Department Open Gate School
IN THIS ISSUE:
CoN TACT US!
3
OG NEWS
COURAGE AND A COPPER COIN
KVarTA EXPERIMEN TING
4
WORLD NEWS COelux
INto the past!
NEW TYPE OF BONDING?
HUMAN HEAD TRANSPLAN T
5
MA TERNAL CONSIDERA TIONS IN MEDICINE
6
PERFECTION OF SCIENCE
7
comet landing
Ebola
immune shutdown a simple virus
on the surface
8
the killer
9
boranes? what''s that?
not only carbon
the discovery
new research
10
future of warfare iron man
the terminator
star wars
11
THE BIG BANG
WHA T WAS BEFORE?
WHY DO WE CARE?
DE TERMINA TIVE ACCURACY
12
Top 10 physics breakthroughs
13
TEACHER'S CUP
14
KIDS IMAGINE SCIEN TISTS
15
our TEAM Jan Petrů (15) is a
Michaela Mrázková (16) is a student of Sexta
Jakub Kunčák (16) is a
at Open Gate. She is fascinated by natural sciences and their combination which she would like to make use of in her future study of medicine.
student of Sexta at Open Gate. He keeps permanent interest in natural sciences and technology, such as robotics and engineering; once he would like to build his own computer.
Máša Paulavets (16) is a
Johan Rott (15) is a
Adéla Brzobohatá (16)
student of Sexta at Open Gate. She is interested in natural sciences and their uses in the economics. She is dedicated to language and and therefore focuses on editing the grammatical and stylistical aspects of the articles.
student of Kvarta at Open Gate. Apart from biology and chemistry, he loves illustration and photography, hence he makes the graphic template and the comics at the last page.
is a student of Kvinta at Open Gate. Besides being a big fan of sports, especially tennis, she enjoys studying biology and chemistry. Thus, she intents to make a career in the field of medicine.
student of Sexta at Open Gate. His life is dedicated to understanding the universe as precisely as possible. He therefore focuses on Maths and Theoretical Physics.
Mikuláš Plešák (16) is a student of Kvinta at Open Gate. He likes solving problems (and crosswords) and keeps interest in publishing - he is thus responsible for the typesetting and typography.
If you have anything to tell us, don’t hesitate to contact us at our email adress:
openscience.info@gmail.com