Abigail Gotlieb

We expect to see more of the Gotlieb family - Abigail, left, younger sister Jessica, and their doctor dad - here at the science centre.

Why? Because Abigail Gotlieb, from Herzlia Senior School, won a gold medal at the Eskom Expo For Young Scientists 2007 national competitions for her investigation into the relationship between breast cancer and Hormone Replace Therapy (HRT).

HRT, according to Wikipedia (today, at any rate) is a system of medical treatment for menopausal women, based on the assumption that it may prevent discomfort and health problems caused by diminished hormones.

The treatment involves a series of drugs designed to artificially boost hormone levels. The main types of hormones involved are estrogens and sometimes testosterone

Simone Abramson

Simone Abramson, a grade ten student from the United Herzlia High School in Cape Town, built on her success earlier this year at the city-wide Eskom Expo at the MTN Sciencentre, recently winning not one but three distinctions:

Simone went away with a national gold medal for her exhibit on a new method for identifying people.

She also won the Eskom Best Female Award at the nationals in Pretoria.

And perhaps best of all, Simone was selected to be a delegate to the Expo Sciences Europe (ESE) in in 2008.

Her teacher, Ron Jones, must be very proud of her. Herzlia, a private Jewish school, is online at www.herzlia.com.

Geekathon

And a big thank you goes to the fabulous young ladies from Herzlia, Jessica Puterman, 14, and Candice Schneider, 15, who appeared in The Atlantic Sun newspaper on Thursday August 23 with some of their work from the recent Eskom Expo for Young Scientists.

Jessica and Candice did their project on the new and very important vaccine for cervical cancer. It's amazing to see how research into vaccines has suddenly taken off again. There hasn't been this level of interest since the 1950s, when Jonas Salk became an international hero for developing a vaccine against the dreaded disease of polio.

Although we're not 100% convinced of the headline ''Kids flock to geekathon'' in The Atlantic Sun, we're delighted that reporter Megan Baadjies wrote about how popular the Expo was.