Mililani High student wins science fair
A Mililani High School 10th-grader won first place last week in the senior division of the 55th Hawaii State Science and Engineering Fair.
Viola Mocz led the division, followed by Danten Inouye, a senior at Waipahu High School, and Shalila de Bourmont, a senior at Hilo High. Honorable mentions went to Danielle Keahi, a senior at Kamehameha Schools, Travis Le, a senior at Punahou School, and April-Joy McCann, a sophomore, also at Mililani.
The teacher award went to Namthip Sitachitta of Mililani High.
In the junior division, first place went to Sreelakshmi Kutty, an eighth-grader at St. Andrew’s Priory, followed by Sophie Bender, an eighth-grader at Niu Valley Intermediate, and Ariana Kim, an eighth-grader at St. Andrew’s. Honorable mentions went to Jonah Bobilin, Aaron Nagao and Nicholas Garcia, seventh-graders at Hawaii Preparatory Academy on Hawaii island; Brittany Scott, an eighth-grader at Kahuku High and Intermediate School; and Sidney Vermeulen, a seventh-grader at Hawaii Prep.
The awards were announced Wednesday at the Hawai‘i Convention Center.
Space station to shine brightly tonight
Weather permitting, the International Space Station will put in a bright appearance in Hawaii skies tonight.
The station will rise in the southwest at about 7:10 p.m. and move almost overhead, passing just to the left of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, in the constellation Canis Major.It will pass Mars, high in the east, between 7:13 and 7:14 p.m., then blink out of sight near the handle of the Big Dipper around 7:16 p.m.
The space station is occasionally visible shortly after sunset or before sunrise, when the sky is dark but the station is illuminated by the sun. It orbits at 17,500 mph at an altitude of about 220 miles. Aboard are NASA astronauts Dan Burbank and Don Pettit; Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin and Oleg Kononenko; and European Space Agency astronaut André Kuipers of the Netherlands.
Group identifies non-native, invasive plants
More than 80 new non-native species have been found on Hawaii island as a result of a painstaking, four-year roadside survey, the Hawaii Tribune Herald reported Sunday.
About a dozen of the species are considered invasive and harmful to native vegetation, according to Jimmy Parker, a botanist working with the Big Island Invasive Species Committee.
Parker said the study, which took place along 3,000 miles of roadway, was intended to give the island an edge against invasive plants by identifying them early.
"We’re not finding every plant, but we hope we are finding any new natural populations," he said. "Just getting out there and looking is definitely a big part of the fight."
Parker said the committee has removed all of the plants from three of the newly discovered invasive species: the princess tree, found in Oregon and the eastern U.S.; the Barbados gooseberry, a leafy cactus that widely populates Florida; and the palo verde, a thorny shrub from Mexico.
Baldwin High junior wins youth award
Baldwin High School junior Lopaka Mattos has been named Youth of the Year by the Boys and Girls Club of Hawaii. The Maui teen will now represent Hawaii at the regional level.
Mattos received the statewide recognition after the state Senate recognized the 2012 Youth of the Year finalists.
Sen. J. Kalani English (D, East Maui-Molokai-Lanai) said Mattos impressed the Boys and Girls Club with his strong faith, sense of community and volunteerism.
