The winner’s essay explored the subterranean fungal community that extends beneath the forest flooring.
Evanna Winters, has develop into the primary pupil from College of Limerick (UL) to be named the general winner of the Mary Mulvihill Award, with Trinity School Dublin pupil, Róisín Ferguson, securing the judges’ extremely recommended award.
The occasion, which is in its eighth yr and in honour of the late science journalist and creator Mary Mulvihill, was held at the moment (23 Could) at a ceremony hosted by the Dublin Institute for Superior Research.
Winters, who’s initially from Castlebar, Co Mayo, and has just lately accomplished her bachelor of science diploma in bio-science, wrote an illustrated essay on the theme of intelligence, entitled ‘A Stroll within the Woods’.
Her work explored the subterranean fungal community that extends beneath the forest flooring and the way this intensive system reveals an important type of interconnectivity and communication, difficult our standard understanding of intelligence. In reference to her essay, Winters stated that regardless of not having a central nervous system or a mind, “fungi show their intelligence via their huge mycelial networks, signalling patterns and their symbiotic relationships”.
At a microscopic degree, she notes, mycelia “not solely seem like the neurons of a human mind, they act like them too”.
Dubliner Róisín Ferguson, who has simply accomplished a level in genetics, used the idea of the brainless scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz to discover the ideas of intelligence and cognition together with the connection of each to the mind and to extra rudimentary data processing techniques in “aneural organisms” similar to worms, vegetation and microbes, which don’t possess a mind.
This yr’s theme of intelligence encompassed the “cognitive skills that people and different dwelling beings possess and the quickly creating discipline of synthetic intelligence (AI) know-how, which mixes nice promise throughout many alternative areas of innovation with nice risk”.
In addition to persevering with Mary Mulvihill’s legacy, the competitors was established to encourage third-level college students to embrace science communication and foster their creativity. First place awards the winner with €2,000 whereas the winner of the extremely recommended award receives €500.
Visitor speaker Prof Kevin Mitchell, creator of quite a few acclaimed in style science books on the mind, evolution and free will, gave a chat discussing the challenges of speaking advanced matters, similar to autism, with out oversimplifying on your viewers.
Talking on the occasion, Mulvihill ’s sister Anne Mulvihill expressed her admiration for the 2 gifted younger girls, each of whom she stated her sister would have “cherished to fulfill and chat with”.
“To echo earlier years, there’s a consolation for her household and associates in figuring out that she would have been satisfied to hitch us right here this night to rejoice this yr’s winners and their entries,” she stated.
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