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The International NASA Space Apps Challenge allows participants from all countries, ages, and educational backgrounds starting at the high school level to pitch a research proposal for NASA researchers to investigate! For those enthusiastic enough, gather a team up to six and start planning your proposal for a chance to win $1,000 for teams with the best proposals.

Next, researchers at the NIST and New York University have figured out nature’s hack: if symmetry exists between a pair of arms, nostrils, and hands to assist with physical functions then surely symmetry must exist between ways to sense different compounds induced through cancer. With this method, researchers hope to use two compounds—carbon nanotubes and DNA—to detect early-onset compounds found in cancer cells.

Upcoming Opportunities

🚀 NASA Offers $1,000 to Global Winners for Project Proposal Challenge

The NASA Space Apps challenge allows participants to use pre-existing data collected by NASA researchers to address challenges related to topics like storytelling, software development, astrophysics, space exploration, agriculture, and more.

Gather your friends, colleagues, and neighbors together to form a team of six to address a chosen challenge and compete with thousands of other teams for a $1,000 grand prize!

📅 Program Details

• Award: $1,000 to winning team(s)

• Registration Window: July 17th, 2025 - October 5th, 2025, at 11:59 PM EST

• Apply Here: [Website]

✅ Eligibility

• High school, college, and graduate students OR working professionals

• U.S. citizen, permanent resident, and international candidates

⚠️ Bonus Opportunities You Should Know

• 🧪 NSF REU Summer Research Programs: List of funded undergrad research programs. (Search here)

• 🎓 Zintellect: List of scholarships, research fellowships, and internship opportunities funded by the U.S. government or private sector. (Search here)

• 💰 NASA OSTEM Internships: List of NASA Internships for high school and undergraduate STEM students. (More info)

• 🪖 Department of Defense (DoD) SMART Scholarship: $30,000-$46,000 scholarship awarded to top STEM students. (Link)

🌍 International Opportunities

• 🧲 Pathways to Science: List of upcoming internships, scholarships, and research programs hosted by any country [open to international students]. (Search here)

• 🔬 Amgen Scholars Program: Prestigious summer research program for undergraduate students in the U.S., Europe, or Asia. (More info)

• ⚛️ European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN): Search for any upcoming internships related to chemistry, physics, engineering, or data science! (Link here)

• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Intrax Global Internships: STEM-focused internship program for international students hosted by the U.S. Department of State. (More info)

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Scientist’s Scroll

🧬 Researchers Exploit Symmetry in Nature to Investigate Warning Signs of Cancer

Why do humans have pairs of body parts—two eyes, ears, and nostrils? It’s because having mirror organs helps us understand our surroundings better. This is known as bilateral symmetry in biology.

Researchers are now manipulating bilateral symmetry to develop two sensors—DNA and carbon nanotubes—that act as bilateral agents to detect cancer screening at earlier stages. Molecules themselves possess bilateral symmetry in the form of chirality, and by detecting all chiral forms, researchers hope to make progress in cancer-curing research.

Dr. Ming Zheng from NIST and collaborator Dr. Ruojie Sha at New York University are some of the first to tackle this problem in unique ways.

🔗 Read the full article here —>

Tip of the Day

📚 Study Efficiently, Not Harder

Studying for exams is difficult: you must recall weeks of complex concepts most students barely know and demonstrate that you can understand and apply the theory sufficiently. Rather than spending entire days cramming for the exam the week before, apply these tips to improve your retention:

• Read the Textbook Before Lecture: The best method you can use to retain and learn information deeply is by reading the textbook the night before. That will allow you to follow the instructor without confusion and brain fog midday.

• Homework Problems are in the Textbook: Like you and I, professors are lazy and copy their homework problems from a similar version seen in the textbook so make sure you dive into the books to find a similar problem.

• Understand the Theory for Exams: Rather than practicing hundreds of homework problems, spend some time redoing homework problems and also read about the theory: how certain mechanisms work, equations derived, etc.

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Today’s Theme: What’s Happening Wednesday

This Week in Science: Screening Every Gene using a Large Language Model in AI

🧠 Personalized Diabetes Monitoring Gets a Privacy-First Upgrade

Researchers at the NIH have developed an AI agent—known as GeneAgent—powered by a Large Language Model (LLM) to store genetic data which encodes biological processes. GeneAgent is capable of cross-checking its own initial predictions for accuracy against information from established, expert-curated databases.

Researchers hope GeneAgent will be used to identify relevant biological pathways and functional modules, leading to a better understanding how certain diseases affects groups of genes individually and together.

🔗 Read the full article here —>

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