Twenty two schools participated in the inaugural ACT da Vinci Decathlon held this Tuesday at Canberra Grammar. Forty two teams and 336 students contested the Year 7 and Year 8 divisions and we would like to thank all the schools that participated and especially congratulate the students for the exceptional manner in which they engaged with the challenges, worked within their own teams and the cooperative spirit in which they tackled the day.

Results

Year 7:
1st place Radford College
2nd place Telopea Park School
3rd place Lyneham High School (Blue)

Year 8:
1st place Lyneham High School
2nd place Canberra Girls' Grammar School
3rd place Canberra Grammar School (Blue)

Complete results for year 7.

Complete results for year 8 .

Congratulations to Hayden Lee (Year 10) who has taken out first place in the individual competition of the Australian Brain Bee Challenge ACT Final, held yesterday at The John Curtin School of Medical Research, ANU.

The Brain Bee Challenge is a test of knowledge about important facts concerning intelligence, memory, emotions, sensations, movement, stress, aging, sleep, Alzheimer's disease and stroke. Over 9000 students from around Australia and New Zealand entered this years competition

Hayden has now qualified for the National Finals to be held in Queensland in August and will vie for an all expenses paid trip to the USA to compete in the international version of the event.

Hayden is photographed receiving his certificate from Professor Greg Stuart, Head, Division of Neuroscience, JCSMR, ANU.
Photo courtesy of Karen Edwards, Multimedia, JCSMR.

Congratulations to Andreas Sherborne who has placed second in the national HanYu Qiao National Chinese speaking competition held this weekend in Perth, Western Australia.

Hosted by the Confucius Institute the 2008 Chinese Bridge (Hanyu Qiao) Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign Students is a worldwide competition open to high school students from non-chinese speaking backgrounds. Students from around Australia competed to qualify for the finals to be held in Changsha, China, in June and July.

The competition comprises three sections, a prepared speech in Chinese, a general knowledge test and a cultural performance. Andreas placed first in the general knowledge test and second in the cultural performance component. Next month he will be heading off to China to tour for two weeks and represent Australia in the International round of competition.