About 60 North Central High School sophomores, with the help of their science teacher, two sizable grants, and publication funding from Spokane Valley-based Itron Inc., have produced the first-ever Journal of Science at the Spokane high school.


Yet, the highly technical journal of original research is more than that.


To the best of our knowledge this is the first and only science journal completely produced from a single schools research efforts, says the science teacher, Brent Osborn, who says hes searched the Internet extensively to find comparable programs. He says hes found three instances where high schools printed online journals, and found occasions where students from different areas submitted works for one publication, but has found nothing to compare with the 600 printed copies of North Centrals student work published in June.


When I received the journal I was amazed at the detail and depth of the report, says LeRoy Nosbaum, chairman and CEO of Itron, a maker of automated meter-reading equipment. With 75 percent to 80 percent of the U.S. research scientists retiring in the next 10 years, we need to encourage students to go into scientific research. Programs like Mr. Osborns help build the foundation for our future scientists.


Three-member teams from Osborns two sophomore science honors classes researched and wrote 19 of the 21 scientific studies compiled in the 95-page journal. One of the other two study reports was written primarily by Osborn, and a trio of students in North Centrals senior biotechnology class wrote the other report.


To comply with a $10,000 Toyota Tapestry grant secured by Osborn that required original research, students chose such unlikely study topics as Analysis of insect populations in native bunchgrasses and noxious weeds, Evolution of organisms utilizing dead snags and fallen trees, and Assessment of genetic variation in Idaho fescue.


The common denominator for all of the research was the Pinecroft Natural Area Preserve, a 104-acre plot of Washington state Department of Natural Resource land located west of Mirabeau Point Park in Spokane Valley. Osborn is a property steward for that preserve, where the students made at least four visits during the 2004-2005 school year. After their first visit, the students generated a long list of scientific questions that evolved into their respective topics of research.


He was tricky, then-sophomore Theresa Loe says about Osborn, who drafted areas of unstudied research from those questions and put students into groups of three according to their respective interests. She says no one in the class had any idea at the time of the magnitude of the work that lie ahead.


Loe, along with classmates Rachel Goossen and David Simpson, studied the genetic variations of Idaho fescue. Because the required deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) extractions for their study could take up to four hours, they often began their laboratory work at 6:15 a.m. and worked through part of their lunch hour to prepare for their afternoon science class.


Goossen, who along with other students believes the hands-on approach to learning was better than studying exclusively out of a textbook, says, It was a lot of work, but it was pretty cool and fun, at least part of the time.


Even though her group failed three successive times in its DNA extraction efforts, Goossen says, We never thought about how difficult it would be, but we kept trying. Eventually, they succeeded.


Written primarily in technical language with graphs, maps, and tables, each study in the journal includes an abstract, an introduction, a methods and materials section, the results of the study, discussion, acknowledgments, and a section about the literature cited in the report.


I spent seven days at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and found many juniors in college there had never written a science paper like these kids have, Osborn says.


Each of the student groups was required to enlist an outside professional adviser to help, he says.


For example, a representative from the Audubon Society was called upon to assist a group studying the Assessment of bird species in Pinecroft Natural Area Preserve.


Osborn, who has taught science at North Central for six years and also has coached football and track there, specializes in the study of DNA and soils, yet is quick to acknowledge his limitations in the far-reaching horizons of science.


I dont know one bug from any other bug, he says, emphasizing the importance of a quality adviser for the insect populations group, as well as for other groups.


Rebecca Cabe, one of three students who researched the Assessment of native grasses and their ground coverage at the Pinecroft NAP, was troubled by the results of her groups research.


Cabe and her teammates, who used precisely-located spots on straight lines to monitor native grass populations in the preserve, say in their concluding abstract, Only about 5 percent of the ground coverage was native grasses.


I was sincerely disturbed to find such a small population of native grasses on protected land, says Cabe. There was an extremely large population of noxious weeds.


Cabe says one day she hopes to be a research scientist, and though the class was hard, she enjoyed doing the work. She adds she learned how to conduct a formal research study and how to write a scientific research paper.


A one-year process


Osborn says the research work began in October 2004. One rule he laid down for the project was that each student had to gather and bring back to the classroom, within two visits to the Pinecroft Preserve, materials to study in class. In addition to the more obvious grass, weed, and soil samples, those materials included animal scat retrieved by students who were assessing animal movement in the preserve, and bird feathers gathered by students who assessed bird species.


This is some pretty high-level stuff, Osborn says. He adds that the students researched beyond their reading level, growing from that experience as well as from writing their studies in succinct, technical, scientific language.


The studies themselves, which Osborn calls manuscripts in his editorial introduction to the journal, each range from three to five pages in length and were compiled and revised over the course of the school year.


The research was completed in April, but for many of the 15- and 16-year-old students, the hardest part was yet to come.


In mid-May, the first-ever North Central High School Science Symposium was held at the Red Lion Hotel at the Park, in Spokane, and the study teams were required to make 10- to 12-minute oral PowerPoint presentations. Their audience included school administrators, local business leaders, scientists from the Department of Natural Resources, collegiate researchers, the senior biotechnology class, and their peers.


It was the longest 10 minutes of my life, says Loe. It was really scary. She adds that the two minutes of questions and answers that followed the presentations were no less frightening.


In contrast, Cabe relished the opportunity to share her groups research with experts.


We did a lot of hard work, and it was nice to get a chance to talk about it and get some professional feedback, she says. It made me feel Id accomplished something.


The journal was published and distributed one month after the symposium.


Future journals


My goal is to make this happen every year for as long as I can, says Osborn, who has already secured an M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust Partners in Science grant to fund the second Journal of Science next school year. That grant totals $6,000, he says.


Eventually, within five years or so, he says, this journal will not just be written by honors students, but by science students at all levels.