Roslyn High School seniors - Alexander Babazadeh, Andrew Forrest, Michael Hofer and Paulene Meyers - were named semifinalists in the 65th Intel Science Talent Search. Three hundred semifinalists were selected from over 1,500 entrants nationwide in this prestigious competition. "We're delighted with these four students' success but also extremely proud of all nine of our students who entered," said Coordinator of Secondary Research Dr. Allyson J. Weseley. "There's no question that part of our ability to succeed on this level is due to the ongoing support of the board of education and central and building administrators."

Alex Babazadeh's study was entitled "Cytokine Mediated Proliferation and Differentiation of Adult Stem Cells into Functional Vasculature." He worked in a laboratory at the Weill-Cornell Medical College with his mentor, Dr. Shahin Rafi, and Roslyn High School science teacher Ms. Laura Wenzel served as his research advisor. Babazadeh's study showed that a combination of pro-angiogenic cytokines, Kit-ligand, VEGF-A, and FGF-2, supported the expansion and differentiation of adult stem cells into mature endothelial cells.

In "Vote or Not to Vote? An Exploration of the Factors Contributing to the Political Efficacy and Intent to Vote of High School Students," Andrew Forrest investigated the reasons that young voters have such low turnout rates. He found that using the media to learn about politics was the strongest predictor of students' political efficacy. In an experimental portion of his study, he also learned that negative political advertisements that attack a candidate's personal life reduced students' intent to vote but advertisements that attack a candidate's political position did not. Andrew conducted his research at Roslyn High School and was mentored by Dr. Weseley.

Michael Hofer also ran his experiment, "The Effect of Framing and Described Task Difficulty on Expectations and Performance," at the high school with Dr. Weseley as his mentor. His research looked at how the presentation of information could impact students' expectations about and performance on a test. He found that it was relatively easy to influence expectations but that these changes did not necessarily translate into improvements in performance.

Paulene Meyers' experiment, "A Study to Remember: The Effect of Deeper Processing and Rehearsal on Recall of Vocabularly," explored ways to help students learn new vocabulary. She contrasted the use of flashcards with deeper forms of processing such as putting words into sentences. Meyers found that deeper processing methods improved performance on an immediate recall test but that as little as one day later the different groups performed equivalently. Meyers' conducted her research at the Roslyn Middle School with the help of her mentor, Dr. Weseley.

Each of the semifinalists will receive a $1,000 scholarship. Forty finalists will be selected from the semifinalist pool later this month and invited to Washington, DC to vie for over $500,000 in scholarship money. Roslyn High School has fielded semifinalists in 25 of the past 26 years of the Intel (previously known as the Westinghouse) competition.