12 kids awarded full tuition to Wright State
FAIRBORN, Ohio (WDTN) — A dozen students who aren't even in high school yet are all set for college. They've been awarded full rides to Wright State University.
Eight of the 12 scholarship winners competed in a basketball competition. The other four were drawn at random. To be eligible, everyone had to participate in 80% of events during the Big Hoopla STEM Challenge at Wright State.
'STEM is such a critical piece to the entire world because science, tech, engineering and math is what drives essentially everything that we do,' says Mister C, who performs science experiments and is a 2001 Wright State graduate.
In a world where STEM is the future, 12 kids already have their future set.
'It's a very, very big deal, thanks to God above, of course. But this makes us really, really excited for his future,' says Demetrius Taylor, whose eight-year-old son won a scholarship.
A dozen grade school students were awarded full rides to Wright State University.
'That's just amazing. I'm so excited that Wright State has donated the scholarships, and it just means a lot to our family,' says Amy Boley, whose nine-year-old son won a scholarship. 'I am over the moon. He deserves it so much.'
Share your good news with 2 for a chance to be featured!
For a shot at a full ride, students took part in a basketball competition and the Big Hoopla STEM Challenge.
'So we're bringing together kids, basketball, STEM, all sorts of cool things, lots of exhibitors. And Hoopla STEM is just designed to inspire kids to want to do STEM and be participating in STEM events, not just a one day thing, but make it part of your life and essentially become a lifelong learner,' describes Mister C.
About 1,500 kids explored hands-on exhibits on a floor full of demonstrations.
'As far the STEM program, I think that's great for students to learn, especially at this age,' says Shaquora Shelley, whose son won a scholarship. 'He has a long time since he's only in first grade. It means a lot. It's one thing, one less thing I have to worry about really financially.'
The money will help ease the financial burden of higher-education as students work to advance their knowledge in a field that's growing just as fast as they are.
This was the second year Wright State sponsored the Big Hoopla STEM Challenge but the first time the university hosted the event on campus.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WDTN.com.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Yahoo
UD professor earns $400K+ for new brain study
DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) — A local professor is receiving quite a boon for their research. University of Dayton biology professor Pothitos M. Pitychoutis, is receiving a grant of $413,681 to study a potential catalyst for conditions such as autism, schizophrenia and ADHD. The purpose behind the study is to find more effective and safer treatments for these conditions. 'Overall, gaining insights into the regulation of calcium-cycling processes in the brain may pave the way for developing new, safer and more effective drug therapies for the treatment of these debilitating and costly brain disorders,' Pitychoutis said. Pitychoutis' study will see a closer look at phospholamban, the calcium-handling protein and its impact in the part of the brain that manages sleep, attention and how we process stimuli around us. The grant will help with Pitychoutis' efforts as well as opportunities available for UD students. 'Working on this project will help prepare some of our talented students to pursue postgraduate studies in neuroscience and follow careers in industry and academia, as well as in biomedical and health-related professions,' Pitychoutis said. While the university currently hosts a neuroscience minor, the program will expand to serve as a major for students beginning this fall. For more information on the study and the grant award to Pitychoutis, click here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Yahoo
Nepal 'cloudburst' video is AI generated
"Live video footage of cloudburst in Nepal," reads the Hindi-language caption of a video posted on X on May 25, 2025. It appears to show torrents of water emptying out of a cloud onto already flooded fields. It was shared as monsoon rains in eastern Nepal caused at least one death, according to the Kathmandu Post, as well as widespread flooding and disruptions to transport (archived link). Meteorologists in Nepal said the monsoon clouds had entered the country two weeks ahead of schedule, with the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority predicting that around two million could be affected by monsoon-related disasters (archived link). The video was also shared among Hindi-speaking users on Facebook and Instagram. "What a terrifying scene... it seems like water gushing out of a dam," reads a comment on one of the posts. Another comment reads: "A very scary scene... May God protect everyone." But Nepalese authorities told AFP that no such weather phenomena had occurred in the country. "Monsoon (season) has begun in Nepal so many areas are receiving rain. But there has been no incident of any cloudburst recently," Dinkar Kayastha, an information officer with the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, said on June 5. A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same footage posted in a YouTube short on May 19 (archived link). The video's Thai-language caption includes the hashtag "AI", and the user who posted the video also posted others with the same hashtag that appear to have been AI generated (archived link). The director of Purdue University's Machine Learning and Media Forensics Lab, Shu Hu, also told AFP that there are visual inconsistencies in the video which confirm the clip was generated using AI (archived link). "The red roof was absent at the beginning of the video but appeared later," he said on June 3. AFP has debunked other false claims that utilised AI-generated footage here.
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Yahoo
Many Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than experts thought, AI analysis suggests
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls may be older than experts thought, according to an artificial intelligence (AI) analysis. Consisting of about 1,000 ancient manuscripts etched onto animal skin, papyrus and copper, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the earliest known versions of texts from the Hebrew Bible — including copies of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, Kings and Deuteronomy — and date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D. Now, scientists have used an AI program, dubbed Enoch, to analyze the handwriting patterns on the scrolls, revealing that they may be older than experts thought. The study authors say their findings, published June 4 in the journal PLOS One, are a significant step in dating some of the earliest versions of the Bible. However, not all experts are convinced. "With the Enoch tool we have opened a new door into the ancient world, like a time machine, that allows us to study the hands that wrote the Bible," lead study author Mladen Popović, director of the Qumran Institute at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said in a statement. "Especially now that we have established, for the first time, that two biblical scroll fragments come from the time of their presumed authors." Discovered by Bedouin shepherds inside the West Bank's caves of Qumran from 1946 to 1947, the ancient manuscripts range from legal documents and calendars to sections of the Hebrew Bible and psalms, written mostly in Hebrew but also in Aramaic and Greek. Previous dating of the scrolls relied on paleography — the study of ancient writing systems — with some undergoing radiocarbon dating in the 1990s. However, castor oil had been applied to some of the manuscripts in modern times to improve their legibility. This oil is also a contaminant that can disrupt radiocarbon dating, so the results from these techniques remain a topic of debate. Related: Ancient 'curse tablet' may show earliest Hebrew name of God In an attempt to clear things up, the researchers first cleaned 30 samples from different manuscripts to remove the castor oil, before successfully radiocarbon-dating 27 of them. They found that two of these scroll fragments were younger than past analyses suggested but that other fragments were older. Then, the scientists set about creating their Enoch AI model. Enoch was trained on the handwriting of 24 of the newly dated manuscripts and their radiocarbon dates. After verifying the model with 13 further selected images from the same manuscripts, the researchers presented it with 135 undated manuscripts. They found that it agreed with the estimates made by scholars 79% of the time. Yet the results for the remaining 21% of the scrolls point to a mystery, with Enoch giving them a range of dates that could make them older, hard to determine, or even a century younger than initial estimates. They also suggest that two different writing styles, known as the Hasmonean and Herodian scripts (named after the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty and Herod, the Roman client king, respectively), could have overlapped for longer than previously thought. Nonetheless, Enoch also corroborates earlier paleography, notably for a scroll titled 4Q114, which contains three chapters from the Book of Daniel. Analysts initially estimated 4Q114's writing to have been inked during the height of the Maccabee uprising in 165 B.C. (a part of the Hanukkah story) due to its description of Antiochus IV's desecration of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The AI model's estimate also falls within this range, between 230 B.C. and 160 B.C. But for some paleographers, the results are hardly surprising. RELATED STORIES —2,700-year-old archaeological site in Jordan may be a biblical place visited by King David —20 of the most bizarre stories from the Bible —Ancient Yahweh worshipper's jar bears Hebrew script in biblical city "The results of this study are very interesting, and presumably important, but not Earth-shattering," Christopher Rollston,a professor and chair of biblical and Near Eastern languages and civilizations at The George Washington University, told Live Science in an email. "Most of the conclusions of this article also dovetail with what the great palaeographers in the field, such as the late Frank Moore Cross, had already stated more than 60 years ago." Rollston also criticized the notion that the new tool could enable researchers to "study the hands that wrote the Bible" as "at the very least, gross hyperbole." No manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible date to the First Temple period (circa 1200 to 586 B.C.), when it was originally composed, or to the early parts of the Second Temple period (538 B.C. to A.D. 70), he said. He noted that AI can be useful, but it should only be one of many techniques used to study ancient texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls. "Enoch could and should never be the only tool in the toolbox of someone wishing to determine the date for the writing of a manuscript. After all, human handwriting, and all of its variations and idiosyncratic features, is a deeply human thing," Rollston added. "Machines can be helpful in isolating features of a script, but the presence of a gifted palaeographer is at least as valuable as a machine-learning tool."
