Microplastics in the water, bioremediation, wildlife health — for this year's Mt. Hope High School science fair, held Wednesday, Jan. 29, the winners of the first-place awards dealt with a wide variety of environmental issues, as well as other issues that affect both them and the towns of Bristol and Warren.

The science fair was for students taking Junior Honors Science, though it also featured the work of a handful of students from both the sophomore and senior classes. In the end, 10 first-place ribbons were given out, with the winning projects all advancing to the state science fair.

Cohen Ferreira and Quinn Frawley won the principals award for their mealworm project that researched how diet changes affect gut microbes. Influenced by the high-fat diets of many Americans, they decided to simulate a study using mealworms. “The United States diet is pretty diverse but it is higher in fats,” Frawley said.

The study broke the diets into three categories; protein-heavy, fat-heavy, and protein, and showed that none of them give the required nutrients for the animal, showing the importance of a balanced diet.
Also using mealworms were Magen Almeida and Piper Raducha, whose research showed that superworms have the potential to degrade certain microplastics in a controlled setting, potentially reducing pollution.

“When they consume the plastics it comes out as a less toxic byproduct,” Almeida and Raducha said.

Others focused on the environment as well, such as Mekayla Neves & Adriana Botelho, whose project focused on "The Effects of Ocean Acidification on Catalase Activity and Oxidative Stress in Brine Shrimp." Their project was inspired by concerns regarding ocean acidification and its effect on the environment, concluding that shrimp have a higher mortality rate the more time they are exposed to acidification. Their project won them the Joe Koger Science Innovation Award.

Working solo, Tyler Scarborough studied duckweed and the effects of its biomass on bioremediation, or its ability to help remove pollution from environments. He won the award for best in the fair.

Science department chair Jennifer Alexander said that the goal of the science fair was for the students to pick subjects that they are passionate about, and said that she is not surprised that there was a health and environmental undertone to a lot of the projects.

“That shows how our students are aware of the current state of things in the world and that the environment is something that we need to take a look at,” she said.