Are public telephones a carrier of disease? Such a question, of obvious interest to Esat Telecom, sponsor of this year's Young Scientists' Exhibition, is posed by Sinead Fallon and Olivia Mullooly, two 14-year-olds from Scoil Mhuire, Strokestown, Co Roscommon.
Theirs is one of more than 350 projects entered in the 34th annual exhibition now under way at the RDS in Ballsbridge, Dublin. Judging of projects begins this afternoon, and the exhibition is open to the public at the weekend.
Sinead and Olivia discovered that the 7,000 public phones in the Republic - practically all of them, it must be said, the property of Telecom Eireann - could be carriers of diseases as varied as scarlet fever, pneumonia, septicaemia, boils, kidney infections, tonsillitis and half a dozen other alarming-sounding afflictions.
The culprits are three bacteria called streptococcus, staphylococcus aureus and bacillus anthracis. These occur in telephone mouthpieces, says Sinead, because they "tend to be warm, moist places for microbes to thrive".
Evelyn Power (17), from Malahide Community School in north Dublin, found in a survey of 400 students from 10 schools on both sides of the Border that southern parents are much stricter than their Northern counterparts when it comes to teenagers going out at night.
Nearly 33 per cent of the Southern 15 to 17-year-olds surveyed said they were not allowed out on weekday nights by their parents, compared to just over 9 per cent of Northerners.
She found that 81 per cent of Northern students felt "a sense of hope" during the first IRA ceasefire, compared to under 71 per cent of Southerners. In contrast, over 10 per cent of Northern students agreed with the statement: "I like things as they are - who needs peace?" The equivalent figure for Southerners was 4.7 per cent.
Paul Loughnane, also 17, from Colaiste Dhulaigh in Coolock, had travelled thousands of miles to the French island of Reunion in the southern Indian Ocean to investigate a possible answer to Dublin's traffic problems.
There he studied a village whose energy requirements are supplied by solar power beamed through microwaves. He and his fellow students, George Thurlow and Michelle Byrne, are proposing that the Luas light rail network should be powered by a similar - and once installed, totally free - energy system.
Over in Clifden, in Connemara, Sibeal Laffan, Evelyn McLoughlin, Mary McDonagh and Colette Heanue carried out a survey of 1,400 fellow students to discover that 92 per cent of them carry school-bags which weigh more than the recommended maximum, one-tenth of a student's body weight.
Chris McDowell and Ian Miller, transition-year students at Kilkenny College, have found a way to make diesel fuel from waste cooking oil and a new plant called Camelina, sometimes called "false flax".
There are more than 350 such projects on show at the RDS representing the rich fruits of yet another crop of young Irish geniuses. The awards will be presented by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, on Friday. The exhibition will be open to the public on Saturday and Sunday.
The Irish Times on the Web, including a special page on the exhibition, will be also be on show.