Thank you for participating in TechFest 2010! It was a pleasure to see and meet all of you, and I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. We will be holding the TechFest again next year, but that is far in the future.

As of now, we have plenty of great events to participate in: ARMAD in May, Field Day 2010 in June, The BVARA Corn Roast in August, Campaganza in September, and the Christmas Party in December. And this just the tip of the iceberg! We also have weekly meetings for our Explorer Post on Wednesday nights at 6:00PM at the Baden American Legion (the same location as the TechFest), so feel free to join us at the meetings.

There will be more information about upcoming Merit Badge classes right here in the near future, so please check back often. You can also check our blog, which is updated more regularly than the TechFest site.

Again, thank you for participating, and I hope to see you next year!

Make sure to stop by for a day of fun and learning!

Doors open at 8:00 AM for attendees, and at 7:00 AM for vendors or those who need to set up a display table. You are invited to set up a table on Sunday morning, but there is limited space available! Please contact us at TECHFEST@W3SGJ.ORG to reserve a table.

The TechFest will be held this Sunday, February 14 at the Baden American Legion, 271 State Street, Baden PA 15005 from 8:00 AM – 2:00 PM.

We hope to see you there!

To learn whether the TechFest has been postponed, please MAKE SURE to keep checking back here.

Underground Transmission

Alexander Kendrick, 16, won the 2009 International Science Fair for inventing this cave-texting device. The award got the teen from Los Alamos, N.M., a new computer, a trip to Switzerland and $12,000.

Image credit Brad Horn for NPR

I wanted to find out why this thing was such a big deal. The next thing I knew, I was hanging from a rope in the bowels of the Earth and groaning under my breath.

I was with a team of cavers in Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, heading 1,000 feet underground to test Kendrick’s invention.

The device is something like a computer attached to a ham radio. It transmits data using low-frequency radio waves that can penetrate rock more easily than high-frequency transmissions, like those in FM broadcasts.

If this test succeeded, it would be the deepest known underground digital communication ever to take place in the United States.

The Difference Between Life And Death

Why would anyone want to text from nearly 1,000 feet underground?

Here’s why: In a 1991 New Mexico cave rescue, it took 170 people four days to save a woman with a broken leg. The rescue team had to lay miles of telephone line in order to stay in touch with the surface.

If they’d had Kendrick’s radio, the rescue time may have been cut in half.

That could make the difference between life and death.

‘It Could Save The Cave’

The other reason this thing’s a pretty big deal: science.

Diana Northup, a microbiologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, says cave scientists find microorganisms in these deep caves that might have the potential to kill superbugs.

“Microorganisms that live in such a low-nutrient environment actually put out antibiotics, they produce them,” Northup says.

But scientists think one of the biggest threats to this emerging source of antibiotics is actually the scientists themselves.

In fact, researchers believe the more they visit a cave, the less likely they are to find antibiotics. People contaminate the sensitive cave environment just by being there.

Northup thinks that by connecting data recorders to Kendrick’s radio, scientists could remotely transmit information about the cave environment.

“So a cave radio that allows you to beam data to the surface rather than visiting it in person can be extremely valuable,” she says. “It could save the cave.”

Success

Back in the cave, we arrived at the test spot exactly 946 feet underground. The radio was being set up on the edge of a big pool of blue-green water pocked with stalagmite islands. It was 68 degrees, but incredibly humid.

Kendrick and the team pulled pieces of white PVC tubing from their backpacks and assembled the radio’s antenna, which looks like a 6-foot-wide tick-tack-toe frame with wire wrapped around it. Kendrick’s dad, Brian, was about to hike to an identical unit sitting directly above us on the surface.

They synchronized their watches, and Brian Kendrick and another caver climbed the steep, dusty slope above us. Then we waited.

Two hours later, after calibrating the devices, Alexander Kendrick typed the word “happy” on a rubber keyboard and pushed send. Up above on the surface, his father stared at a small screen hoping to see the word.

The message “appy” appears. Not the entire word, but good enough. “That’s digital data coming through at 950 feet,” says Brian.

Now Alexander Kendrick has to fine-tune the radio to make it smaller and tougher and easier for rescue crews to get down into caves.

That will have to wait, though, because he’s busy working on his 2010 science fair project — a device that finds underground rivers by measuring their electromagnetic currents.

Bob Donaldson/Post-Gazette Boy Scout Michael Deschaine delivers a sofa to a sixth-floor apartment in McKeesport’s Isbir Manor. Michael was joined by family and Scouts from Troop 405 in Baden to deliver furniture to clients of Pittsburgh Mercy Health System’s Operation Safety Net, which helps to improve the lives of the homeless.

When Michael Deschaine of Baden embarked on his Eagle Scout project, he picked a cause that would probably not occur to most middle-class teenagers. He decided to help the homeless.

Michael, 17, a junior at Ambridge Area High School, originally thought he would collect donations to buy and distribute sleeping bags to people on “the street” to help them stay warm through the winter.

He contacted Operation Safety Net, a Pittsburgh-based program that helps the homeless.

The staff was grateful for his offer, but suggested he take on something bigger that would help in a more meaningful, long-term way.

“I said, ‘Let’s move from the streets to apartments,’ ” said Linda Sheets, program director of Operation Safety Net, a program of the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System.

Since 2007, the program has gotten 361 clients off the streets and into apartments, “but a lot of them moved into apartments with just what they had on their backs,” Ms. Sheets said.

She suggested that the teen help the formerly homeless furnish their new residences, working with the Streets to Homes initiative of Operation Safety Net. The project gathers basic supplies, including cooking supplies and utensils, bed linens, towels and laundry detergent.

Michael set a goal in early December to collect and distribute household supplies for 10 apartments by April. Instead, he has collected supplies for 17 apartments and made his last deliveries Sunday.

And he went way beyond towels and kitchen utensils. Michael also collected food, televisions, beds, dressers, couches, recliners end tables and other furniture.

Michael and other volunteers delivered food, furniture and other supplies Sunday to furnish three apartments in McKeesport, downtown Pittsburgh and McKees Rocks.

Before Michael’s delivery, one formerly homeless person was living in a nice apartment, but with no furnishings except a sleeping bag. At a fourth stop in Avalon, Michael delivered a table and chairs, bookcase, kitchen shelf, beds, linens and pillows to put the finishing touches on a new residence.

Other collected furnishings were delivered to apartments in December, sometimes during heavy snowstorms, notes Linda Ross, director of communications for Pittsburgh Mercy Health System.

“At one home, he even delivered a Christmas tree,” she said.

Michael would be the first to tell anyone he could do none of this without a lot of volunteer help. His parents, Michael and Cindy, helped on delivery days, as did members of Boy Scouts of America, Baden Troop 405.

More than one recipient had tears in his eyes as the deliveries were made, Mrs. Deschaine said.

Recipients were asked to pick out the items that they needed.

“One man would not pick anything because he said he didn’t want to be greedy,” Mrs. Deschaine said, but the group made sure he received a generous sampling of donations.

Michael’s mother has done work for Covenant House Missouri, an international homeless shelter for young adults 18 to 21 years old. Michael and his brother Matthew, 12, toured the facility last year and were very moved by the experience. That’s when he decided to help the homeless for his Eagle Scout project.

“I started out by sending 150 e-mails” in early December, Michael said. Those were widely forwarded and donations of cash, furniture and home supplies flooded in at a pace so plentiful that he surpassed his earlier goals.

Bob Donaldson/Post-Gazette Michael Deschaine unloads furnishings for a sixth-floor apartment in McKeesport’s Isbir Manor.

Helping with donations and collections were 30 Boy Scouts from Michael’s troop and his fellow Junior ROTC cadets.

Tips for further donations also were appreciated, such as the tip to check out Capo Furniture and Appliance in New Brighton, where used furniture is sold.

“They gave us two big boxes and told us to fill them up with whatever we wanted,” Michael said.

Other tipsters told him to talk to Joe Kuhn, an auctioneer in New Sewickley.

“Mr. Kuhn had truckfuls of stuff and he told us to take whatever we wanted,” Michael said. “He asked us how we were going to pick up and deliver the furniture. We said we were renting a truck. He told us to cancel it,” and he loaned them a truck for all the deliveries, at no charge.

Big donors also included Richard Howard from Passavant Memorial Homes, who donated more than 500 units of food.

On any given day in Allegheny County, there are 1,500 to 2,000 homeless people, about 150 to 200 of them in Pittsburgh, according to Operation Safety Net, which regularly conducts a census of the homeless.