Two New Castle high school seniors are Intel semi-finalists

January 13, 2012
by Christine Yeres

At 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday Intel Science Talent Search 2012 announced the names of the 300 semi-finalists who will compete for $1.25 million in awards.  Among the 300, chosen from an applicant pool of 1,839 in 2012, are two New Castle residents: Evan Olin of Ossining High School and Davis Wertheimer of Horace Greeley High School. Both are 17-year-old seniors.  Fourteen Intel semi-finalists were from Westchester County.

Each of the 300 semi-finalists receives a $1,000 award, each school $1,000 for each of its semi-finalist students.  Three of Olin’s classmates were also semi-finalists this year.

Next steps from the Intel Newsroom

“On Jan. 25, 40 of the 300 semifinalists will be named as finalists. They will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C. from March 8-13. There, they will compete for more than $630,000 in awards provided by the Intel Foundation. Winners will be selected based on rigorous judging sessions and announced at a black-tie gala award ceremony at the National Building Museum on March 13. The top award is $100,000; the remaining top 10 will receive awards totaling $305,000.”

Evan Olin
Research project:  “The Initial Transition from Shod to Barefoot Running Generates Increased Tibial Shock and Muscle Activation”
Science research teachers:  Mr. Angelo Piccirillo and Ms. Valerie Holmes
Mentor:  Dr. Gregory M. Gutierrez from the Physical Therapy Department of NYU Steinhardt

Evan Olin, second from left

How did you choose your research subject?

I’m a runner.  Cross-country in fall and track in spring.  In freshman year I sustained an injury in cross country, tendinitis in my knees. Then in spring track, stress fractures.  So I was interested in running injuries and started talking to my mentor about this new trend of barefoot running. 

There’s been a lot of attention in the media on, for example, Vibram Five Fingers, minimalist footware that’s essentially the same as barefoot running.  It just protects you from rocks and nails.  Sales have been increasing. 

There’s a change in mechanics involved in barefoot running: Instead of running with the heel hitting first, the ball of the foot hits first, then you bring down the heel.  It’s a completely different running style.  Because it’s so different, it’s something the body isn’t used to and the transition period from one to the other had never been looked at.

Do barefoot runners sustain fewer injuries?

It’s based on the idea that it would be less injurious.  It’s speculated, but research needs to be done.  The idea is that in developing, human being have run without shoes.  And in countries where they don’t have ready access to shoes, like in Kenya, they seem to have fewer injuries.

In runners who compete?

In both kinds of runners—those who compete and those who run because their life requires them to run places.

So you looked at what happens in transitioning from “shod” (with shoes) running to barefoot running.  What happens?

Initially, there were three things: tibial shock, muscle activity and knee flexion angle.  Based on changes observed, it’s more likely that a runner would experience an injury before they acclimate to barefoot running.  If they just suddenly jump into it, there’s a greater likelihood of injury than if they’d just kept running shod.

The idea is that with knowledge about this transition, people will take it in increments, not just go out and run five miles barefoot, but instead maybe run half a mile barefoot and the rest in shoes.

Do you run barefoot?

I’ve tried it a few times, but it doesn’t really work for the way I run.  The way I run, my stride doesn’t really match up.  I’m fairly tall, and with barefoot strides, you take a shorter stride because of a change in the ankle.  Because you hit on the ball of the foot, you end up having to cut off a little of the extension you would take to land on your heel.

“The Initial Transition from Shod to Barefoot Running Generates Increased Tibial Shock and Muscle Activation”
by Evan Olin

Abstract

Running is a highly injurious activity, and as a potential means to decrease this risk of injury, many runners are transitioning into barefoot running. This requires that habitually shod runners learn to change their foot-strike patterns from a heel-strike to a toe-strike technique. This study aimed to evaluate the biomechanical risks during the initial transition from shod to barefoot running. Eighteen habitually shod recreational runners ran for three separate seven minute trials, including shod heel-strike, barefoot heel-strike, and barefoot toe-strike conditions. For the barefoot toe-strike condition, subjects were instructed on proper technique. Electromyography (EMG), tibial shock, and knee flexion angle were monitored using bipolar surface electrodes, an accelerometer, and an electrogoniometer respectively. Data were collected and averaged over the 2nd, 4th, and 6th minute of each trial. A one-way MANOVA revealed that average EMG of the medial gastrocnemius (p=0.05), average and peak tibial shock (p<0.01), and the minimum knee flexion angle (p<0.01) all increased from shod (heel-strike) to barefoot (toe- strike) running. While it has been suggested that barefoot, toe-strike running may ultimately be less injurious, these data indicate that the transition into barefoot running presents a high risk period for musculoskeletal injury to the lower extremities. Therefore, habitually shod, heel- striking runners who choose to transition into a barefoot, toe-strike technique must undertake the process cautiously and with knowledge on proper toe-strike mechanics to avoid increasing their risk of injury.

Davis Wertheimer
Research project:  “Implicit Processes in Conscious Problem-Solving”
Science research teachers:  Ms. Naomi Cook and Dr. Trudy Gessler
Mentor: Professor Kenneth Kotovsky from the Psychology Department of Carnegie-Mellon

Davis Wertheimer

How did you choose your research subject?

For a while I’d been taking meditation classes and have been very interested in the spiritual aspect of the mind.  So I’d been thinking for a while of investigating how the conscious and the unconscious mind relate to one another and the scientific basis behind it.

What did you learn from your research?

I found out that what we call intuition is primarily deductive.  That is, there’s a lot of different approaches one can take to solve a problem—pattern-based, self-observation, memory—but it turns out that the way most people solve a problem is by using logical deduction.  But at the same time, they don’t realize it.  They realize they’re improving and becoming more accurate—but they don’t know how.  They just assume they’re getting more familiar with the problem.

“Implicit Processes in Conscious Problem-Solving”
by Davis Wertheimer

Abstract

This study used variations on the Balls-and-Boxes problem-solving task (Kotovsky & Simon, 1990) to investigate unconscious processes in conscious thought. When subjects repeatedly solved the original Balls-and-Boxes puzzle, their accuracy and speed improved, despite having no awareness of how to solve the puzzle. Learning was implicit and unconscious. Multiple proposed strategies are available for implicit solution, but previous studies couldn’t reveal which, if any, were predominant. Hypothesized strategies include deductive, metacognitive, memory-based and pattern-based approaches. Ten Balls-and-Boxes variations were solved over three trials to determine subjects’ relative proficiency rates in successive tasks. Different strategies were applicable to different variations, making them harder or easier to solve given previous learning. The strategy effectively in use was determined by measuring relative performances in succession. Subjects demonstrated significant improvement between trials 1 and 2, unless given a puzzle of different logical operation. Such transformations also disrupted otherwise significant correlations among individual subjects’ performances. Subjects consistently demonstrated insignificant improvement, even in the absence of any applicable strategy. This indicates that subjects relied on implicit deduction performed during trial 1, modulated by familiarity in later trials. In a broader context, human “intuition” in problem-solving is deductive, but inhibited or augmented by separate explicit learning.

The 14 Westchester County Intel Semi-finalists

Byram Hills High School: Sammi Cannold, Jesse Aaron Honig and Aurora Xu.

Eastchester High School: Brian Christopher McGovern

Edgemont High School: Vikrampal Alexandar Bhandari-Young and Apoorva Ganjam Talanki

Horace Greeley High School: Davis Wong Wertheimer

Ossining High School: Amelia Lyn Clements, Evan Daniel Olin, Emily Katherine Prentiss and Frances Corene Russell.

Pelham Memorial High School: Katharine Winifred Costantini

Scarsdale High School: Gibran Mian

White Plains High School: Benjamin Mark Van Doren