Daily News from New York, New York • 127

By EDWARD EDELSON Science Editor Scientific finds rate top awards inhibits the breakdown of fatty acids. Liza Beth Subin. who attends the Ramaz School in Manhattan, identified mutant bacteria that are involved in. the basic energy processes of the living cell. THESE ARE, CASUALLY, superkids.

Sarkar is a varsity baseball player at Stuyvesant High School, president of a Frisbee team and has hobbies that include woodworking and photography. Riskin plays soccer at Stuyvesant and is an amateur juggler. "That's where the action is," he said. Chang's hobby the one for which he won the Sandy Chang built his own telescope and stayed awake all night for months to make precise measurements of the light output of variable stars. Jessica Riskin learned computer programing "as I went along" to develop a model of a new fusion reactor device.

Atom Sarkar launched himself into a yearlong study of the molecular biology of malaria parasites after his sister came down with the disease during a family trip to India. And in due course they became three of the five New York students who finished in the top 10 of the 43d annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search. The sophistication of these projects canvsurprise an observer. Eva Lana Assimakopoulos, another top-10 winner who, like Chang, attends the Bronx High School of Science, synthesized a molecule that second place $10,000 scholarship in the talent search is astronomy. He plans to become a molecular biologist.

He has been interested in astronomy since he was 7. A couple of years ago he took $500 worth of parts, built a telescope, persuaded his parents to spend $700 on a sensitive light-detecting device called a photometer and began observing stars. "I made the observations over arf eight month period, from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.," Chang said. "I did it mostly during the summer.

In the winter, I'd go out on weekends." For Riskin. the prizewinning project was something she started on her summer vacation. "I wanted to work in a laboratory last summer, so I went to the physics department at Columbia University and asked for a project," she explained. "They have a fusion device called a magnetic mirror, and I asked if I could work on it. They gave me the echo effect to model." The echo effect is a method that has been proposed to measure what happens inside a fusion machine.

Riskin, who had never done programing before, worked on a computer model of the effect all summer. The accuracy of the model will soon be tested, when the mirror machine goes into action. SARKAR HAD A much more personal interest in his project. Three years ago, when his family visited India, his 7-year-old sister contracted malaria even though she was taking drugs to prevent the disease. "I learned that she was infected with a parasite that was drug-resistant." Sarkar said.

"It fascinated me. Our next-door neighbor is a leading expert in malaria research. I asked him if I could work in the field, and he took me to Rockefeller University and introduced me to the people who were working on malaria." Sarkar decided to study the molecular biology of the malaria parasite. It has one protein that is unusually rich in an amino acid called histidine. It took Sarkar a year to learn the new and complex techniques needed to study the genetics of the protein, and "one long summer of work" to study genes for the protein from several strains of malaria parasite.

What Sarkar found is that the genes are essentially the same in all the strains of the parasite. The conclusion is that the histidine rich protein probably has an important function for the malaria parasite perhaps helping it to invade cells. Sarkar will attend Brown University this fall, and will study biology. He aims for a career in molecular biology. --4- lliliili j'" 'W'-a.

Hiii 1 4 i. -1 I 1 Ivir TOM MONASTER. DAN CRONIN DAILY NEWS Among the New York winners are Sandy Chang, with the telescope he built, and Jessica Riskin, who developed a model of a new fusion reactor device by using a computer..