参加顶级科学竞赛的美国高中生

参加顶级科学竞赛的美国高中生

WASHINGTON— Some of the brightest high school students in the United States showcased their ground-breaking math and science research at the annual Intel Science Talent Search.

Forty high school seniors, who came up with new technologies and scientific breakthroughs, competed for the top prizes of $150,000. Their innovations included a blood testing kit 1 for smartphones, and a computer that identifies potential new drugs to combat disease.

Diseases like cancer, tuberculosis 2 and Ebola kill millions of people each year. By combining computer technology with biochemistry, 17-year-old Anvita Gupta identified new medicines to combat these illnesses. She used an innovative 3 technique to get a computer to look for potential drugs, earning a third place award at the competition, and $35,000.

癌症、肺结核和埃博拉等疾病每年夺去无数人的生命，17岁的安维塔·古普塔通过将电脑技术与生物化学相结合，找到能对付这些疾病的新药物。她使用一种创新技术让计算机寻找潜在的药物，这让她在竞赛中获得第三名，得到3.5万美元的奖金。

“I actually found four new tuberculosis drugs. They’re natural compounds that have been screened from the ocean, isolated 4 from the ocean near China,” said Gupta.

“事实上我发现四种肺结核新药物，都是天然化合物，这些化合物被海洋隔离，被中国附近海域所隔离。”

The search to cure skin cancer began as a personal quest for Emily Ashkin, after her mother was diagnosed with the disease. She took a novel approach to enhancing a treatment that uses the body’s own immune system T-cells to help fight melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

艾米丽·阿希金的母亲被诊断出皮肤癌后，寻找其疗法就成了艾米丽的个人目标。她采用新方法改善了一种疗法，该疗法用身体自身免疫系统T细胞来帮助对付最致命的皮肤癌黑素瘤。

“I discovered how to make the cancer cells more recognizable to the killer 5 T-cells by using chemotherapy treatment, by using drugs to manipulate the cancer cells, slow them down, and make them more vulnerable and susceptible 6 to the killer cells to be able to recognize them,” said Ashkin.

“我找到了让杀手T细胞更容易识别出癌细胞的方法，我使用的是化疗法，使用药物来控制癌细胞，将癌细胞生长减缓，使之更脆弱，更容易受到能识别它们的杀手细胞的影响。”

Early malaria 7 detection can save many lives. A smartphone that detects the parasites 8 that cause malaria and other blood diseases may be the wave of the future, especially in developing countries.

疟疾早期检测能拯救很多生命，一款能探测出导致疟疾等血液疾病的智能手机可能是代表着未来，尤其是在发展中国家。

Tanay Tandon created a low-cost microscope lens that attaches to a smartphone camera. Photos of patient blood samples give rural doctors a tool to quickly identify parasites.

塔纳·坦登发明了一款能连接到智能相机上的低成本显微镜镜头，患者血液样本的图片能帮助乡村医生快速识别出寄生虫。

“The thing that I was targeting this towards is in rural areas," say Tandon. "There’s devastating 10 parasite 9 mortality rates because a lot of times these diseases go undetected.”

“我发明这个镜头的目的就是服务乡村地区，因为很多时候这种疾病没有检测出来，所以寄生虫导致的死亡率很高。”

Cutting edge technology is helping 11 these high school students make real scientific advances, according to Wendy Hawkins, Executive Director of the Intel Foundation, sponsor of the competition.

前沿科技帮助这些高中生实现了科技进步，这场竞赛的赞助商英特尔基金会执行董事温迪·霍金斯如是说。

“Most of these students are doing work that’s certainly sophisticated enough that it would be at the senior levels of university level research," she said.

“大多数学生所从事的科研都非常尖端，足以达到高校水平研究的高级水准。”

And that includes the work of Dhaivat Pandya, who thinks he’s found a way to increase the available bandwidth on large computer networks, including the Internet, which continues to grow worldwide.

其中就包括潘迪亚，他认为自己找到了能增加大型计算机网络中可用宽带的方法，其中包括正在全世界继续发展的互联网。

“We have to find a way to use our existing infrastructure 12 to support all these new users and all this new data. So we have to be able to solve the problem of increasing the bandwidth to maintain the speeds that are available on the Internet today,” said Pandya.

“我们必须找到办法，使用现有基础设施来支持所有新用户和所有新数据，所以我们必须想办法解决增加带宽的问题，从而维持目前互联网能达到的速度。”

This year’s competitors join other alumni who have gone on to make extraordinary contributions to math and science -- and received even greater awards -- including the Nobel Prize.

今年的参赛者中还有其他校友，他们将继续为数学和科学做出卓越的贡献，并努力获得包括诺贝尔奖在内的更大奖项。