The talk was of microscopes, research, mentors and Skype as Niles North high school students showed off their sophisticated science projects and their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) lab on April 21.

Between the STEM lab and the mentors and partnerships that Niles Township High School District 219 has formed with universities and other laboratories, students can take advantage of knowledge and equipment that students in previous years didn’t have access to.

In a room full of students standing in front of tri-fold boards showing the results of their science experiements, Ayana Jamal, a sophomore from Morton Grove, said she had wanted to study the gene involved in fetal alcohol syndrome, RALDH2.

She chose to experiment on zebrafish because they gestate in only 24 hours after fertilization. That gave her a reasonably short window of time in which to conduct experiments on them.

“They also have a common invertebrate ancestor with humans,” she said.

Jamal wanted to photograph the zebrafish embryo’s development, and was able to conduct the experiment in a Loyola University of Chicago laboratory through an arrangement between Niles North and the university. Working at Loyola with a $500,000 microscope, she inserted a fluorescent protein that bonded with the gene. The fluorescence made the development patterns visible.

Jamal submerged some of the budding zebrafish into 28 degree Celsius water, and some into 33 degree Celsius water. She observed that somites, which are essentially muscles, grew faster in the warmer water.

“So gene expression and development is responsive to outside influences such as temperature. And because they are responsive to environmental factors, they would also be responsive to ethanol (a type of alcohol),” she said, adding that genes are affected when pregnant women drink alcohol.

Niles North pairs many of its students with outside mentors, and Jamal’s mentor Bryan Pickett, a biology professor at Loyola University of Chicago, was there to congratulate her.

“She’s just awesome,” he said. “I wish I could skip over undergrad and take her as a graduate student.”

Jamal won a Best in Category award in cellular and molecular when Niles North won the first place prize at the regional Illinois Junior Academy of Science (IJAS) award in March. Another student, Elan Ness-Cohen, won in the electronics category, and he will advance to the international competition, to be held in May.

Ness-Cohen, a sophomore from Morton Grove, got inspired for his project from a story he heard on National Public Radio about an Appalachian Trail hiker who wanted to find a way to convert energy from hiking to power his handheld GPS unit.

“I thought it was a great idea and I was looking for some other source of sustainable power,” said Ness-Cohen. “I thought, ‘I spend hours on the computer, maybe the energy of typing could be a source of power.’”

Using a scientific principle called Faraday’s Law of Induction, he devised a keyboard in which a coil moves in a magnetic field and causes a charge which induces a current in the wire. He fed the wire into a simple circuit, or capacitor, that can use or store energy.

Lois Wisniewski, science director for Niles Township High School District 219, used the occasion of the science fair to give visitors a tour of Niles North’s new STEM lab. Niles West High School also has a STEM lab.

From the corridor, a large picture window shows a view of the STEM lab, with its Think Tank area, which allows students to discuss, brainstorm or view video or photos on drop-down screens, and its Lab Zone area, which allows students to flexibly configure space for biology, chemistr and physics experiments.

“As soon as you walk in, there is a sense that something great needs to happen here, and the kids rise to that,” she said.

Marina Pazen, a Niles North alum who is finishing her Ph.D. in molecular biology at Northwestern University, toured the STEM lab and was impressed. Pazen had just finished mentoring a Niles North student.

“This really gives the kids a whole different perspective,” she said.

Wisniewski explained that students can put cameras anywhere in the STEM lab, and share video over the Skype website, so that their mentors in another state could watch them perform an experiment and guide them as they go. The video could be projected on a screen so more students could see it, she said.

“We’re trying to build a community of science learners, and we want kids exposed to the interrelatedness of all the sciences,” she said.