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[HOTH]

As I just entered in the Google Science Fair 2013, I was wondering if any of you were hoping to enter as well. It's a great competition, much a kin to the Siemens and Intel STEM Fairs that are held annually. It would be cool to see some submissions from nerfers, although I would doubt any submission would be nerf related. The judges like to see innovative and beneficial ideas/inventions for the scientific community as a whole.

If you plan on entering, or have entered already, we should talk about submission ideas or bounce some ideas back and forth about our respective projects. If you are mathematically/computationally compelled, you can read on about my project.

As a mathematician, I feel obligated to bring math into my project as much as possible, even where it may not be entirely necessary.

Basically, I am writing a series of algorithms to help diagnose autism earlier than it can currently be detected. The algorithms will be interpreted in OpenCV via Visual C++ and will most likely be compressed into an application-esque format for a tablet. The idea is that the OpenCV algorithms will run a program to determine how long a young child (preferably 3-4) maintains eye contact with the screen of the tablet. The screen will display a human face, and the child will be instructed to look at the face. Autistic people cannot stand to maintain eye contact with others for very long at all (but neither can young children, so we may have to up the age for initial tests). The algorithms help to both determine where the patient's eyes are focussed, for how long they are focussed there, and then ultimately whether or not the patient has a high chance of being autistic based on some verified confidence interval that has yet to be defined. If it is largely successful, it can be implemented in clinics and at a younger age.

Anyways, its a fun project. If you want to bounce some ideas off of me, or have any questions about my project, PM me or comment.

Oh, by the way. It may seem like a high-school oriented contest, but it has nothing to do with grade level. It is simply for people ages 13-18, so many college freshmen are eligible as well.