Asunción, Agencia IP.- A total of 27 innovative projects from high schools from several cities in the country were exposed during the XXI Edition of the Final Fair of National Youth of Science «Pierre et Marie Curie.»
The competition has been doing so for two decades, promoting young people in their last year of high school to the aptitudes needed for scientific investigation. The event occurred past Friday in the headquarters of the Institute Alianza Francesa.
One of the presented projects was the construction of a smart dispenser with a structure made of recycled materials and a driving base/programming of the MBOT robot for feeding pets. The National School Mariscal Estigarribia designed this machine in San Lorenzo.
The students Yamile Acosta and Verónica Acosta, with the teacher Enrique Monges, were responsible for the project. They said that the dispenser is made of pieces of wood that used to be on old desks and drain pipes. They explained that the dispenser detects the pet when it approaches it through an ultrasound distance and activates the engines, which have a closing and opening mechanism inside the dispenser and deposit a certain amount of food.
The dispenser is programmed for dos of until six months and for cats with no age restrictions since it is from small and big animals. The students affirmed that veterinarians established proportions according to their weight, age, and breed. The animals would not have problems of over or under-feeding.
The students Bianca Sanabria and Luján Fariña from the Private School Divina Esperanza in the city of Encarnación spoke about their project, consisting of a GPS tracking device. It is thought about older individuals with neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, dementia, and others. This tool has a chip like a cellphone and informs the coordinates of the location where the device is. The coordinates are transferred to Google Maps to obtain the exact location of the older patients. It represents an innovative solution whose primary goal is to guarantee the security and well-being of older people.
Likewise, the project related to the automatic irrigation system using a solar panel was exhibited at the fair. Liliana Ortiz, teacher of the Marist Center San Pablo in Asunción, manifested that the solar panel concept would be within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The educator noted that the investment would be considerable initially since the necessary equipment must be acquired. Still, the benefits to the ecosystem and the environment will be observed in the long term.
The youth science prize Pierre et Marie Curie 2023 is funded through the Paraguayan Program for the Development of Science and Technology (Prociencia, by its acronym in Spanish) with the support of the Fund for Excellence in Education and Research (FEEI, by its acronym in Spanish). The competition was organized by the National Council for Science and Technology (Conacyt, by its acronym in Spanish), the Ministry of Education and Sciences (MEC), the Embassy of France in Paraguay, and the Institute Alianza Francesa.
The initiative has been doing for 20 years, and the Conacyt has participated as a competition coordinator since 2002. From 2015, it funds part of the organization of the competition.