See descriptions of past performances of this contest, which is sponsored by the American Mathematical Society, by clicking here. Take a peek at a contest that took place last February in Washington here.

Get ready for a bevy of excitement when AT&T assumes key roles in next year’s event, including serving as the official host of the Festival’s high-profile Nifty Fifty speaker engagements where four of its leading innovators will wow students with presentations showing how AT&T’s advances in science and engineering are ushering in some of the most advanced technology designed to help us communicate faster and more efficiently. AT&T will also have a major presence at the Expo, demonstrating in engaging ways how STEM can be made more interactive and exciting for young learners and “why STEM education and careers are so cool!”

And don’t miss other interactions with AT&T professionals that weekend when you’ll get the chance to try out some of the latest technology coming out of AT&T labs (including iPhones, iPads and new applications to enhance online security and environmental sustainability), plus the opportunity to view videos of AT&T scientists at work, and to get your cell phones and other hand-held devices recharged for free at AT&T’s charging stations that will be located at the Expo.

“Serving again as a Sponsor in the USA Science and Engineering Festival is such an important opportunity for AT&T to connect with people across the country about what we do,” says Jennifer Kuhn, executive director of Public Affairs for AT&T.

In addition to AT&T’s commitment to technological innovation, she says, “AT&T is devoted, from our CEO on down, to helping inspire and educate the next generation of innovators through various outreach endeavors in STEM that involve engaging our scientists and other professionals in mentoring and volunteering activities at schools, and taking an active role in other areas of the community.”

Jennifer adds: “AT&T is especially interested in helping to demystify science for kids by engaging them in hands-on experiences in technology with scientists. This gives students a chance to see and work with these professionals up close in exciting ways, and lets them see that scientists come from all ethnicities, genders and backgrounds. In addition, it lets them see how math and science are used to solve real life problems.” These are the types of students that AT&T would like to eventually hire to help create the next new technologies that will change the way we communicate, she says.

As further testament to AT&T’s commitment to outreach and community involvement, some of its leading scientists are participating at the forefront of these endeavors. Young students will get the chance to meet four of these innovators – Alicia Abella, Ph.D., Mary Fernandez, Ph.D., Sanjay Macwan, and Valerie Torres, Ph.D. – when they serve as Nifty Fifty speakers in April.

AT&T also spearheads AT&T Aspire, a national $100 million multi-year initiative that is working to help improve high school retention rates and college and career readiness among students, including those in underserved communities. Another example of AT&T’s commitment to STEM education is their work with the Obama Administration’s new Digital Promise initiative, which aims to transform learning, particularly around technology, in America’s classrooms. AT&T Labs Chief Scientist, Dave Belanger, will be joining other leading thinkers to form a commission to make recommendations for the initial research agenda for the Digital Promise initiative and help chart the course to transform how we use mobile technology to advance STEM teaching.

We thank AT&T and our other valued Sponsors as they join us in our goal of inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers!

They say New Year’s resolutions are meant to be broken. But as another year begins, here is a national challenge we cannot afford to ignore, and should resolve to address without delay: the declining number of young Americans entering the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

This is not, nor should it be, a problem for our schools to tackle alone. It will take all of us — from involved parents and teachers to employers, government entities, STEM professionals and civic and community organizations — to help inspire the next generation of innovators.

As science and technology increase their role and influence in our everyday lives, we need to find new ways to encourage, motivate and attract the best and the brightest minds to solve some of the toughest challenges these advances will bring – “challenges involving energy, water, climate and sustainability, and improving healthcare delivery and national security,” says Charles Vest, Ph.D., president of the National Academy of Engineering and President Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Inspiring kids not only to study science, mathematics and engineering but also to dream big and have the confidence and perseverance to follow those dreams into rewarding and well-paying STEM careers are also key, especially since innovations emanating from such fields play a critical role in the U.S. maintaining a competitive global edge in technology. (Unfortunately because of various factors, including the declining numbers of U.S. students entering STEM, we are showing signs of losing that edge. For instance, China currently is producing more engineers trained in English than the United States produces. And today, two-thirds of the Ph.D. degrees granted in engineering by U.S. universities go to non-U.S. citizens.)

As a nation, we can do wonders in helping to turn this situation around by coming together to demonstrate to young students that science, engineering and other STEM areas are not only fun, but key to improving the quality of life for everyone in countless ways!

This is why I founded the USA Science & Engineering Festival, the nation’s largest celebration of science and engineering. The Festival’s second national gathering will take place next April in satellite events across the nation, and culminate in a massive Expo on April 28-29 in Washington, D.C. – an event that will celebrate the wonders of technology and innovation through an exciting array of interactive, hands-on exhibits, stage shows, book fair and other activities — all featuring some of the top scientists, engineers, space explorers, serial entrepreneurs, authors and other “stars” in technology today.

Make a New Year’s resolution for you and your family to join us in a satellite Festival event near you, or in DC at the Washington Convention Center for the Expo!

As founder and chief organizer of the Festival, I want this event, like our Festival held in 2010, to help inspire the next generation of science and technology innovators through exciting unforgettable ways, including our fun and exciting Expo weekend that allows kids and their families to participate in over 2,000 hands-on activities (sponsored by hundreds of partners from education, research, government, and professional and community organizations) and see more than 100 live performances by science celebrities and others.

On hand will be such stars as Bill Nye the Science Guy, real-life neuroscientist Mayim Bialik who plays Amy Farrah Fowler on the CBS TV’s hit comedy The Big Bang Theory, and Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of the MythBusters. Visitors will also learn from such world-renowned innovators as Elon Musk, creator of rocket manufacturer SpaceX and co-founder of Pay Pal (the world’s largest internet payment system), and best-selling science authors, including Homer Hickam, author of Rocket Boys (the book that inspired the Hollywood movie October Sky).

The excitement does not stop there. The Expo also features a STEM Career Pavilion which gives kids the chance to meet real-life role models in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, in addition to finding out about internships, mentorships, scholarships and after-school program, and meeting representatives from some of the leading colleges and universities focused on STEM.

And leading up to the Expo during the month of April will be a series of interactive events in science and engineering to further wow students and communities:

–Through our Nifty Fifty program, sponsored by AT&T, middle and high school students in the greater Washington, DC area will have a chance to meet with more than 125 of the nation’s most dynamic and influential scientists and engineers through. In addition, the Lunch with a Laureate program is a rare opportunity for small groups of middle and high school students to engage in informal conversations with 15 Nobel Prize winning scientists during a brown bag lunch. Students will learn first-hand about exciting scientific discoveries, hear about the trials and tribulations of fast-paced research in STEM-related areas, and find out what makes a Nobel Laureate tick.

–Our Satellite Festival gatherings throughout the country will truly make the 2012 USA Science & Engineering Festival a national experience. These events – held by student clubs, schools, universities, community organizations and companies – will bring the excitement and the celebration of STEM and innovation to thousands of people across the nation. For a listing of these events, and to find out how you can attend or host one, please visit the Satellite Event section of the website.

Together we can make a difference in inspiring the next generation of innovators. I invite you to join with us in resolving to take that step in April with the Science & Engineering Festival!

When word leaked out last September that the beauty pills would be test-marketed for two weeks, they were scooped up like candy. After all, no prescription was needed. The ingredients, soy isoflavones, omega-3 fats, lycopene, vitamin E and vitamin C all occur naturally in food and can be marketed as supplements. No further approval is necessary unless there are claims of treating, preventing or curing a disease. Wrinkles may terrorize, but they can hardly be regarded as a “disease.” So treating them is not a medical claim, hence “Strength Within” is regarded as a cosmetic, not a drug. “Cosmeceutical” describes such products that blur the line between cosmetics and drugs.

Improving the skin’s appearance from within is not a novel idea. After all, acne medications do exactly that. And a plethora of dietary regimens have claimed to reveal the secret of achieving beauty by the bite. Many of these also take a big bite out of the pocket book with Dr. Nicholas Perricone’s “Wrinkle Cure” being a prime example. Perricone is a dermatologist with frequent TV appearances in which he outlines his formula for reversing wrinkles and sagging skin. He claims that increasing protein intake, while avoiding foods like bananas, bread, rice, beets and sweet potatoes is the key to healthy skin. Perricone is high on salmon, which he calls “your magic bullet for great skin tone, keeping your face firm and contoured.” My face changes its contour when I hear stuff like that because there is just no evidence for such assertions. And his costly dietary supplements and creams may be “designed to reduce the appearance of loss of tone, sagging skin, and fine lines,” but there is no peer-reviewed evidence to show that they actually do. The Perricone regimen will, however, reduce one’s bank account to the tune of over $400 a month. Not only in appearance, but in substance.

None of this is to suggest that diet doesn’t play a role in the condition of the skin. Indeed, it plays some role in virtually everything that goes on inside of us, since food is the only raw material that ever enters our body. Rosacea, for example, can often be triggered by alcohol or spicy foods, lack of niacin can cause dermatitis and acne can be exacerbated by specific foods, depending on the individual. Furthermore, a balanced diet can have a major impact on how skin ages as well as on the risk of skin cancer. The biggest factor in skin aging is the damage carried out by free radicals generated by exposure to sunlight. Vitamins C and E along with beta carotene can sop up the nasty free radicals and vitamin C also plays a role in building new collagen, the protein that gives skin its resilience. A diet that includes lots of fruits and vegetables, especially beta carotene-rich ones like sweet potatoes (one of Perricone’s supposed nemeses), while reducing fats is the way to go. A Baylor University study effectively demonstrated that patients who had been treated for skin cancer were able to significantly reduce the chance of recurrence by maintaining a diet in which only 20% of the calories derive from fat as opposed to the North American average of 38%.

Being told that the route to healthy skin involves eating a balanced diet, shunning smoking, getting plenty of exercise and staying out of the sun is not what some people want to hear. Swallowing a few “Strength Within” capsules seems a more attractive proposition. This, however, is not the first product to offer hope in a bottle. Imedeen tablets, developed by the Danish healthcare Company Ferrosan (recently acquired by Pfizer), have been around since 1991. And unlike most “cosmeceuticals,” they have placebo controlled randomized trials to back up the claims of improved skin appearance. A mix of soy extract, fish polysaccharides, white tea extract, grape seed extract, tomato extract, vitamins C and E and Zinc, Imedeen was tested in eighty post menopausal women. Observations by independent evaluators, as well as objective data from ultrasound measurements, backed the claims of improvement when compared with placebo. But, there is a but. It took six months for Imedeen to work, and the effects could hardly be described as spectacular, but at least they were statistically significant. But there is a difference between statistical significance and practical difference. Especially when it comes to forking out $500 for a six month supply.

The new kid on the block, Strength Within, is very similar in composition to Imedeen, but it adds a new wrinkle of its own. Researchers managed to show that this particular chemical mix activated genes responsible for collagen synthesis, and even confirmed through biopsies that new collagen had formed in the dermis, the skin’s deepest layer, one that is generally not reachable by creams. Of course the real question is whether this “gene food” treatment will elicit “gee, you look great” type of comments. Judging by the Unilever’s double-blind trial I would put that in the doubtful category.

After 14 weeks the “crow’s feet” wrinkles around the eyes became on average 10% shallower in subjects treated with Strength Within. Frankly, that is not a very gripping difference. But it is proof of concept. Maybe improved versions of the capsules will produce improved effects. It would also be interesting to see trials comparing oral supplements to the effects of topical treatments with moisturizing creams, some of which have also been shown to help reduce wrinkles. All in all, though, it is a person’s inner beauty that is attractive, and that cannot be obtained from a pill.

C&EN, the flagship weekly newsmagazine published by ACS, will help convey information about the festival nationally and internationally through both its print and online editions. With 163,000 primary member subscribers worldwide together with pass-along and online readership, C&EN is seen by approximately 300,000 readers.

C&EN Editor-in-Chief Rudy Baum says that “C&EN, in its commitment to advancing all aspects of chemistry, also sees a tremendous role to play in public outreach to engage students, teachers, and others in the wonders of science and engineering. This is why we are delighted to be returning as a festival media partner.”

Elise Swinehart, C&EN’s assistant director of marketing and exhibits, echoes his sentiments: “As we increase our publication’s reach and visibility in the science and chemical community, we, together with the ACS, are heightening our involvement in supporting outreach from K through 12 to grad school. In fact,” she adds, “many readers are actually educators and teachers at the high school and college levels.”

ACS itself is planning exciting hands-on exhibits and activities, some of which will coincide with “Chemists Celebrate Earth Day” – showing how chemistry is at the forefront of “green” endeavors impacting the environment, according to Kevin McCue, assistant director of the ACS Education Division.”The festival is one of the most exciting outreach experiences I’ve ever participated in,” says McCue, “and we at ACS look forward to returning.”

Also returning to represent ACS at this year’s festival is Diane Bunce, a professor and education researcher with the Catholic University of America. Bunce is a member of the “Nifty Fifty (times 2),” which is a group of 100 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C., area in the 2011-12 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools.

Last but not least, representatives of ACS’s Washington, D.C., local section; students from university chapters and chemistry clubs; and the ACS Mole (the society’s mascot) will return to help festival-goers understand how chemistry impacts our daily lives.

According to Madeleine Jacobs, ACS executive director and chief executive officer, “ACS is really delighted to be returning to the Festival. We were so pleased with the thousands of people who came by our booth to learn about how chemistry and chemists will help solve our world’s most challenging issues – ensuring abundant food supplies and clean water, addressing disease and promoting public health and finding new energy sources and addressing climate change. We are looking forward to the Festival and to involving our members once again in this exciting outreach opportunity.”

“After participating in 2010, there was really no question about our desire to return to the Festival,” says Bruce Fuchs, Ph.D., Director, NIH Office of Science Education. “We got the chance last year to introduce some exciting new ways to communicate with students, teachers and others about science – and we’re looking to build upon that at next year’s Expo.”

Adds Dave Vannier, Ph.D., NIH Office of Science Education: “It was great to see that NIH exhibits and demonstrations were so well attended last year, and through these exchanges NIH benefited as well, both internally and externally. The Festival gave us a chance to interact with the public like never before through engaging hands-on activities (which involved 22 or NIH’s 27 entities and more than 400 NIH volunteers), helping us to better inform people of what NIH is all about.”

In addition, Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., the eminent Director of NIH, also took an active role in activities last year by not only performing his catchy songs on DNA and science at a special Expo stage show, but by also personally visiting individual NIH exhibits and meeting visitors.

For its Expo participation in 2012 at the Washington. DC Convention Center, NIH will be taking steps to enhance the excitement of its presentations. “One such adjustment will involve us holding all our exhibits and demonstrations indoors at the Convention Center, enabling us to use more high-tech equipment,” says Bruce.

Here’s a sampling of the cool hands-on NIH presentations from last year’s Expo. Look for these and more in 2012 – all designed to wow and inform you about how innovations in medicine and science are improving health worldwide:

Experience a day in the life of an NIH medical researcher! Learn the process behind clinical studies. Perform medical examinations using ultrasound; find out your body composition using the latest bioelectrical equipment, and examine a real human brain.

See Mobile Lab Science in action! Immerse yourself inside two NIH partner labs – a DNA Mobile Lab which lets visitors experiment with real DNA, and a Cardio-Pulmonary Mobile Lab which will take you on a virtual thrill ride through the lungs.

Pique your imagination with engaging games and activities! Treat your brain to mind-bending optical illusions, a live science game show or have your picture taken with an infrared camera (including seeing the heat moving inside your body). In addition, play 3-D video games that put you right inside a human body battling microbes. Is your MP3 player too loud? Well, let Jolene, NIH’s hearing robot, check it out!

Hear Dr. Francis Collins perform on the big stage! Expand your knowledge of genetics when you hear renowned NIH Director Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., as he performs songs about the intriguing world of DNA. (Dr. Collins, a pioneering medical geneticist who once headed the Human Genome Project, is also known for his talents as a guitarist and for regaling audiences with original tunes about science.) And like last year, he will be on hand at NIH’s Expo exhibits to meet the public!

And at the Festival’s Book Fair, don’t miss the chance to meet Terence Boylan, one of the original “Rocket Boys” of NIH, who will tell you what happened in 1957 when the NIH gave him and his friend $10 to build a rocket.

At the Book Fair, Terence will appear as a Nifty Fifty speaker where he will sign free copies of the Rocket Boys of NIH book and DVD, provide readings from the book, and give away copies of the book’s rocket cartoon.

At the Festival Expo, you will have the incredible opportunity to find out first hand from the experts about the details regarding this “God Particle”. The Festival is honored to have The Atlas Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (New York University), a research group that works at the LHC, as an Exhibitor and Sponsor for the 2012 Expo! The Large Hadron Collider, a gigantic scientific instrument spanning the border between Switzerland and France that lies roughly 100m underground, was used to test the existence of the Higgs boson.

Also, at the Festival, meet Featured Author Lisa Randall, a Physics Professor at Harvard University and author of the best-selling book “Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World.” So get your questions ready for our experts and read about Lisa Randall’s interview discussing the Higgs boson with the New York Times.

Throughout the year, we at the Festival make it our priority to serve as a multi-faced source of information to promote awareness of STEM for our next generation. And we are active in doing so not only with the Festival itself in April and our many global satellite events, but we also provide a variety of great online resources that reach thousands daily. This includes the monthly newsletters to our readers as well as a special newsletter focused primarily on those in the field of education. Our online blog and website features a broad range of articles in the field of science. Plus, we reach a daily audience of over 3,500 plus on Facebook. Yet, our most visible source of information comes from our interesting facts and tidbits about science, our sponsors and the Festival posted daily on Twitter. With 4,260 twitter fans reading and retweeting our nearly 10,000 posted tweets, our goal of reaching an extensive audience to promote STEM has been quite a success!

So be sure to “follow” us on twitter and take advantage of doing your part to further the growth of STEM in the United States! Take a look at the many other great organizations that rank as the 50 Essential Twitter Feeds for STEM Educators.

Mercury’s toxicity is a consequence of its ready binding to sulphur, an element that is a crucial component of many enzymes. Some of these enzymes are critical to the workings of the central nervous system and their failure to function properly when bound to mercury causes the shakes and mental disturbances that are characteristic of mercury poisoning.

Gilders, whose profession was based on coating metal objects with gold, exhibited symptoms similar to that of hatters. Their problems, however, came not from exposure to compounds of mercury, but from exposure to metallic mercury, the silvery liquid found in thermometers. The Romans called the metal hydrargyrum, meaning “liquid silver.” That also explains why we use the symbol Hg for the element. Unlike mercury nitrate, liquid mercury is somewhat volatile and can therefore be inhaled and absorbed into the bloodstream from the lungs.

Metallic mercury does not occur in nature, but it can be produced by heating cinnabar, a naturally occurring form of mercury sulphide (HgS). The metal has long fascinated people, especially the alchemists who thought that it was the key to the transmutation of base metals into gold. Of course it was not that, but there is a gold connection. Gold readily forms an alloy with mercury, a phenomenon that is apparent to anyone who has handled mercury while wearing a gold ring. While playing with mercury is a bad idea, the historical alloying with mercury to form “gold amalgam” has been an important method for isolating gold from ores. The traditional process involves crushing the gold ore, mixing it with mercury and separating the amalgam that forms. This is then heated to drive off the volatile mercury, leaving pure gold behind. But it can leave something else behind as well. The misery of mercury poisoning! And many a button gilder could have testified to that.

Military uniforms commonly feature golden buttons. Until about the middle 1800s these were made by dipping metal buttons into gold amalgam and then heating to evaporate the mercury. The layer of gold left behind was very thin, just one gram of gold was enough to gild about 500 buttons. The results for the buttons were pretty, but for humans, not so much. On occasion, even construction workers had to deal with “gilder’s palsy.” About 100 kilos of gold were mixed with mercury for application to the copper sheets that were used to create the golden dome that adorns the cathedral of St. Isaac in St. Petersburg. The dome, unfortunately, is also a symbol of mercury poisoning. Some sixty workers died as a result of mercury inhalation! However, the chemical ingenuity of two Italians would eventually put gilder’s palsy on the back burner.

In 1800 Allisandro Volta’s discovery of an electric current flowing between two dissimilar metals separated by moistened cardboard established the chemical principles that would lead to the first battery. Just five years later his friend, Luigi Brugnatelli reported in Belgian Journal of Physics and Chemistry how he had put the “Voltaic pile” to use: “I have lately gilt in a complete manner two large silver medals, by bringing them into communication by means of a steel wire, with a negative pole of a voltaic pile, and keeping them one after the other immersed in ammoniuret of gold newly made and well saturated.” Brugnatelli had discovered electroplating, a process that would be commercialized by Henry and George Elkington of Birmingham, England in 1840.

The elimination of gilder’s palsy thanks to electroplating did not mean that we were rid of poisoning from inhaled mercury. Consider the case of the 68 year old man and his 88 year old mother in law in Michigan who were admitted to hospital with nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. The next day, the man’s son and daughter in law were brought in with the same symptoms. Because the esophagus and lungs of all four were inflamed, doctors suspected chemical exposure. It turned out that the son worked for a company that manufactured dental amalgam which is an alloy of mercury and metals, mostly silver. With the price of silver on the up and up, he had the bright idea of stealing some of the material and extracting the silver by evaporating off the mercury. Thinking he had a formula for riches, the prospective alchemist set up a crude lab in the basement equipped with a furnace for melting metal. He had a formula alright, but it was one for disaster. Despite the use of dimercaprol, a drug that can bind to mercury through its sulphur atoms, all four mercury poisoning victims died. Their house was demolished and the debris treated as hazardous waste.

You don’t have to be a greedy crook to suffer from mercury inhalation. You can be an inquisitive youngster. Like the boy who dissected a household thermostat and spilled the mercury on the carpet. He vacuumed it up but never changed the bag. With each subsequent use of the vacuum cleaner some of the mercury vapourized. Months later the boy was hospitalized with weakness, weight loss, anorexia, lethargy and insomnia. Luckily in this case dimercaprol treatment was effective. Too bad Alice didn’t have any to offer the Mad Hatter.

Click here to view the article about President Obama and The Kavli Foundation.

Don’t miss out on the chance to enter the contest! The 2012 Kavli “Save the World Through Science and Engineering” Video Contest is now accepting student entries. Eligible applicants include: individual students or groups from Grades 6-12 schools, home school networks, after-school programs, science clubs or any other organization the student is representing for the purpose of the contest.

Students worldwide are encouraged to send videos through schooltube.com and take the chance to win cash awards and prizes for the top entries! And best of all, the top videos will be shown at the Festival Expo during April 27-29, 2012, where hundreds of thousands of science fans are expected to gather in Washington, D.C. In addition, the first place winner will also receive a travel stipend to attend the Expo!

So if you think you can save the world through science and engineering then send your entries to the Festival! Video entries will be accepted on schooltube.com until March 1, 2012.