From regional FIRST Robotics competitions to a day of special events at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the country will mark National Robotics Week April 6 – 14 with a host of engaging, hands-on activities.

Check out the annual firefighting home robot contest at Trinity College, near Hartford, Conn., or the Botball tournament in San Diego, capping a standards-based educational robotics curriculum. Mars rovers, service bots, robotic dogs… there’s plenty to learn about intelligent machines.

Click here to find an event in your area!

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America’s got STEM talent!

Biofuels, new ways to treat diseases, and computer algorithms that help robots avoid obstacles are among the research projects that netted 10 high school seniors top honors in the 2013 Intel Science Talent Search.

Launched in 1942, the Talent Search remains the nation’s most prestigious science and engineering research competition. (Think Academy Awards on steroids!) Alumni have gone on to win seven Nobel Prizes, five National Medals of Science, 11 MacArthur Foundation “genius” awards, and even an Oscar – Natalie Portman‘s for Best Actress in the movie “Black Swan.”

This year, some 40 finalists from 20 states vied for $630,000 in awards. The group, honored at the White House on March 12, was winnowed from a field of 1,712 applicants.

Watch the finalists set up their projects and describe what they love about science, engineering, and innovation.

Meet the top three champions – and watch them describe their projects:

First place winner Sara Volz:

Sara Volz, 17, of Colorado Springs, Colo., won the top award of $100,000 for her research on converting algae into sustainable, renewable biofuels. Algae produces oil but turning it into fuel can be costly. Volz, who built a home lab under her loft bed and sleeps on the same light cycle as her algae, used artificial selection to establish populations of algae cells with high oil content, which are essential for an economically feasible biofuel. WATCH VIDEO.

Second-place honors and a $75,000 award went to Jonah Kallenbach, 17, of Ambler, Pa., whose bioinformatics study breaks new ground in predicting protein binding for drug therapy. Kallenbach’s work suggests a new path to drug design by targeting a protein’s disordered regions and may open doors to treatment for such diseases as breast cancer, ovarian cancer and tuberculosis.

Third-place honors and $50,000 went to Adam Bowman, 17, of Brentwood, Tenn., who successfully designed and built a compact and inexpensive, low-energy, pulsed plasma device. Typical plasma sources are large, complicated and expensive. Using his inexpensive technology, Bowman believes plasma research can now be conducted in small-scale operations and even high school labs.

In addition to the prize money, participants in the Talent Search and Intel Science and Engineering Fair will receive digital badges. Some states also are beginning to award certificates or badges for accomplishments outside of the classroom.

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Guest author Bo Yuan (photo, above) is an engineering student at the University of British Columbia. He created this post for senior instructor Annette Berndt’s technical writing class.

Like many high school students, I was a little confused about what I should pursue as a career.  Frankly, I went into the Faculty of Applied Science without any clear idea of what an engineer does. A group of senior mining engineering students pointed me into the right direction. They told me: “If you like to play with big machines and to blow up stuff legally, then go into mining engineering.”

Here are photos of a giant “monster,” a Bucket Wheel Excavator used in open pit mines:

Well, explosions and blowing stuff up definitely sounds very exciting, but I joined mining engineering  because I was attracted to their camaraderie, their spirit of unity, and the future of having huge responsibilities.

Yes, big machines come with big responsibility. The cost of a single replacement tire for a haul truck is $50,000.  Engineers have the ability to change our world, so they must take responsibility for what our world is changing into.

You probably have not realized how important mining is to our world.  Laptops, cars, medicines, and even bread all contain elements that have to be mined.  As a result, mining raw materials is essential for our society to work.

What if natural resources start to run out? This is when mining becomes even more interesting. Some pioneers have already started working on Space Mining. We might be just in time to become the first generation of space miners!

Learn about asteroid mining:

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Each year, sudden infant death syndrome, or crib death, claims the lives of around 2,225 U.S. children from birth to 12 months. But German researchers have developed a stretchable, printed circuit board that could be fitted into a one-piece sleeper and would signal an alarm if a baby stops breathing.

Investigators at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM in Berlin have figured out how to make the flexible, wearable circuit board from polyurethane, a plastic often used as a sealant. They fitted it with sensors that monitor breathing in the chest and stomach areas, and ironed it onto baby-size PJs.

The flexible circuit could also be used in pressure bandages for burn wounds; the sensors would help nurses to fit them onto patients with more precision.

Meanwhile, a sister organization, the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communications Systems, has come up with a hardware/software device that would enable patients undergoing physical rehabilitation to do their physiotherapy exercises at home. The “physio box” plugs into a TV and runs videos of training programs developed especially for the patient, based on a 3-D biomechanical computer model of him or her. A video camera records each session and sends the results to a physiotherapist who can monitor a patient’s progress and adapt the exercises, as needed. A set of sensors can be placed in a chest strap, cane, or watch to measure vital signs and send the data to a smartphone.

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A little piece of red tape – and discovering she had diabetes – changed Wendy Peng’s career plans.

Here is the University of British Columbia engineering student’s story, written for the blog competition that forms the first assignment in instructor Annette Berndt’s Technical Communication course.

“To be honest, I’ve always wanted to be a business woman since I was in grade seven. I always dreamed that someday in the future I would become one of the most influential women on Wall Street.  The reason why I wanted to be a business woman is simple: I wanted to make MONEY. However, things changed dramatically in my 9th grade summer.

I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.  This means that I have to inject insulin for the rest of my life.  Traditionally, Type 1 Diabetes patients use syringes to inject insulin. However, injecting with syringes is really inconvenient. For example, you are not allowed to eat whenever you like, you have to take a shot every time you eat, and you have to tolerate the soreness of injections.

Fortunately, my family is able to afford a more advanced therapy for me: insulin pump therapy. (See YouTube video.)  Although this newly developed pump has greatly improved the quality of my life, it also brings another problem:  Skin allergies.  The tape used to attach the infusion set on my body causes serious redness on my skin. This little piece of red tape has totally changed my career plans. My future is in engineering.

I decided to study materials engineering because I plan to gain a better understanding of the tape material and possibly become involved in its production and development.  In materials engineering, we investigate materials from different aspects, such as the microstructure and macrostructure.  I intend to major in biomaterial engineering to achieve my ultimate goal of improving medical materials and helping people like me with the same problem.

What can you do to help people who can’t be cured?  Study engineering and find out!

What is diabetes? Watch and find out:

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