BT Young Scientist 2025
Best wishes to the three Ursuline teams heading to the RDS this week along with their teacher and mentor Ms. Molony for the BT Young Scientist Exhibition and Competition 2025. Below is a short summary what each of their projects are about.
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Clodagh O`Dwyer and Roise Glynn have completed the “No Environment, No Wellbeing” Study
The effect of a nature –based intervention on Eco-anxiety and Climate Engagement in TY students: a randomised controlled trial
“I want them to know what a polar bear is!”
Firstly, we decided we would apply for ethics approval for the study with the help of researchers in the School of Medicine in University of Limerick where one of our parents work. This was a very involved process but the advantages were that if forced us to be really clear about what we wanted to do and how we were going to do it. At the same time we registered the trial with the ISRCTN trial registry as we wanted to be open and transparent about what we were doing and try to do it to the highest standard we could.
We invited all TY students (n=116) in the Ursuline secondary school in Thurles, Co Tipperary to take part. All students were given information on the climate crisis and on the planned study. If they wanted to participate, students then had to sign an assent form and get their parents to sign a consent from. Once they signed consent and before they were assigned to control or intervention groups, climate capability was measured using the Climate Capability Scale and eco-anxiety using the Hogg eco-anxiety scale in all participants using an online survey link. All participants were then randomly assigned to either control of intervention groups by an independent researcher not involved in the study using a computer programme. The intervention group over the following four weeks received weekly AI-generated online messages consisting of climate education and motivation to climate action.
At the end of the four weeks the intervention group undertook a supervised half day field trip consisting of climate education, Shinrin Yoku forest bathing and river restoration and tree planting. The control group received their usual educational curriculum during the study period. At the end of four weeks follow-up data was then collected on all participants (intervention and control) using the same online survey tool. The primary outcomes were change in climate capability measured using the Climate Capability Scale and the change in eco-anxiety measured using the Hogg eco-anxiety scale
A total of 116 students were invited to participate in the study and 86 agreed to do so. After informed consent and prior to allocation, all participants completed the online survey which consisted of the Climate Capability Scale and the Hogg eco-anxiety scale. A total of 86 students were consented for the study (73%) and completed baseline data (Intervention =43; Control=43); 83 provided outcome data (Intervention =43; Control=40). Mean climate capability score at baseline for intervention and control groups was 24.4 (7.3) and 27.7 (8.0), respectively and mean eco-anxiety score at baseline for intervention and control groups was 7.7 (6.5) and 6.7 (5.1), respectively. There was evidence of a significant intervention effect (p<0.01); with an increase in mean climate capability score of 8.2 (4.9 – 11.5) and an associated increase in eco-anxiety score of 7.2 (3.7-10.7) favouring the intervention.
The study results confirm to us that it is really important that we get younger people out into nature and engaging with our environment in order to build up positive relationships with nature and build their own capacity and capability to effect change in their own lives and in the world around them.
2.
Ella Frend and Julie Johnson have investigated :
Does reducing the routine use of antibiotics on dairy farms reduce the antimicrobial resistance in bacteria isolated from cows' milk on those farms?
The aim of our project is to investigate antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in cows on dairy farms with different levels of antibiotic usage.
Antibiotics are drugs used to treat infections in humans and animals. Antibiotics work by killing or inhibiting the growth of micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and other pathogens responsible for causing infections. Antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria or microorganisms adapt to prevent antibiotics from working against them. This resistance poses a major threat to both animal and human health as it limits treatment options available. Quoting from The World Health organization (WHO) “By 2050 if AMR continues to spread at current rates 10 million people may die due to AMR related infections, more than the death toll due to cancer”.
To carry out our investigation we selected three types of dairy farms with varying levels of antibiotic usage; organic dairy farms (low antibiotic usage), dairy farms that use selective dry cow therapy (moderate antibiotic usage), and dairy farms that use blanket dry cow therapy (high antibiotic usage).
We collected milk samples from cows on the three different types of farms. We then cultured these samples in the veterinary laboratory and tested the bacteria we cultured for antimicrobial resistance. We wanted to see if we could find differences in antimicrobial resistance patterns in the bacteria isolated from these samples.
From our results we found that there was very little difference in antimicrobial resistance between the samples we took from the different types of dairy farm. Overall, the bacteria were sensitive to the antibiotics we tested for, with only low levels of resistance. This is a positive result as it is reassuring to know that the levels of antimicrobial resistance present in dairy cows are low and is therefore of low risk to AMR in humans.
3.
Grace Eiffe's project is : "Hot off the press! The facts about Women’s sports coverage "
I sought to test the hypothesis that women's sport gets less coverage than men's in the mainstream print media in Ireland. I researched a number of national newspapers over different periods throughout 2024. I looked at overall coverage of male and female sports, noting number of articles, prominence of reporting, pictures, word count and other relevant comparisons. I also researched Gaelic Games coverage, as both men's and women's codes have similar tournaments taking place concurrently during the year. Across all my research, and every metric I measured, I found a very large disparity that showed much less coverage of female sports. This is very disappointing, as all my reading on the subject has shown how important media coverage is for promoting sport and participation levels. The social, economic and health benefits of sports participation and seeing positive role model is well documented. My conclusion includes recommendations on how the current inequality of coverage can be addressed and improved. I hope that you will find the subject as interesting as I did, and I hope that I can research the topic further in future.