Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013


Component One: Task One

Prepare a 200 - 300 word history abouth the topic your team has selected to solve a local or national problem.

  When kids miss too much school due to family problems or personal health issues, it is hard to make up all the homework. Especially when they get older and take harder classes.  Sometimes they fall to behind that they can't graduate, or they miss so much that they get held back. But most of the time they just fail the class and have to retake it the next year or semester, or they have to go to summer school. But in some cases they drop out of high school.

  In some extreme cases they drop out of high school completely. Studies show that the majority of people who drop out of school are between the ages 16-24.  In 2005, 11 percent males from the ages of 16-24 dropped out of high school along with 8 percent of females. Males make up 58 percent of the dropouts in this age group. Immigration status also affects these percents. Kids who emigrated from a foreign country make up 24 percent of the dropouts in this age group. But people who were born in the U.S. to foreign parents only make up 11 percent of the dropouts.

  Students that come from a low income family are more likely to leave high school before graduation.  Students with disability, physical, intellectual, or emotional, also have a increased risk for dropping out. According to the National Transition Study, students in these situations make up 36.4 percent of drop outs. Once a student starts to skip or miss school, they start to go down a slippery slope that leads to becoming a drop out. Or if they fall too far behind and start to fail classes, they seem to find that it is hard to catch back up.  Lower self-esteem help play up these factors.


Component 1: Task 2

Cite three detailed examples of research done in the past 3 to 5 years which focused on the topic that your team has selected.

Include:

The Funding Agency

The Principal Investigators name

Institution Where the research is or was being conducted.


Virtual Reality Research Group

Funding:

 Welcome Trust fund

The royal Society

The principal investigator:

· Dr. Andrew Glennerster

Institute where the research was being conducted:

· Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, Oxford

Team GAMMA

Funding:

Research Sponsors

Student Fellowship Sponsors


The Principal investigator

  • Ming C. Lin - Beverly W. Long Distinguished Professor
  • Dinesh Manocha - Phi Delta Theta/Matthew Mason Distinguished Professor

Institute where research is conducted

· University of Northern Carolina


Reading Visualization Centre

Funding:

 Pedal

 ISRG

The principal investigator

  Ali Al-khalifah

Institute where research is being conducted

School of systems engineering



Component One: Task Three 

Based on the research your team has done, explain how the topic chosen has advanced scientific knowledge.  

Virtual Reality has advanced scientific knowledge in many ways. It has helped surgeons and war veterans. New surgeons are being trained by virtual reality. Virtual reality programs helps them see results of surgeries; interact with their "patients"; and it also gives them a safe way to use new techniques. The new program tells them if they killed their patients and they can see if the surgery will accomplished what they wanted. Also, it gives them a good idea on how well the surgery will go and the state the patient will be in if they go through with it. This also gives them an idea on how the body will react to different techniques used or different instruments used to conduct the surgery. New software has come out to help war veterans with post war depression. This software takes them into a scene of the war, and helps them move past it. It also helps doctors and scientist see how the mind and body react to the different elements of the program and how they have adjusted to life after the wars. Settings for the program can be changed based on the stage of depression and how sever it is. Scientist soon hope to be able to add an effect that will simulate you mind to thing a real bullet is being fired, an explosion happening, or choppers over head being heard.