OTTAWA - A Singapore-born teenager who recently moved to Canada wona national science award on Tuesday for her groundbreaking work onthe anti-ageing properties of tree pulp, officials said. Janelle Tam, 16, won the US$5,000 (S$6,240) award in the 2012Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada for showing that cellulose, thewoody material found in trees that enables them to stand, also actsas a potent anti-oxidant. 'Her super anti-oxidant compound could one day help improve healthand anti-ageing products by neutralising more of the harmfulfree-radicals found in the body,' Bioscience Education Canada saidin a statement. Tam's work involved tiny particles in the tree pulp known asnano-crystalline cellulose (NCC), which is flexible, durable, andalso stronger than steel. Tam, a student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, chemically boundNCC to a well-known nano-particle called a buckminster fullerene,or buckyballs, which are already used in cosmetic and anti-ageingproducts. 'The new NCC-buckyball combination acted like a 'nano-vacuum,'sucking up free radicals and neutralising them,' said BioscienceEducation Canada. Since cellulose is already used as filler and stabiliser in manyvitamin products, one day Tam hopes NCC will make those productsinto super-charged free radical neutralisers. 'It would be really nice to commercialise this,' Tam, who moved toCanada five years ago, told AFP. 'I envision it more as an ingredient that would be added toexisting formulations, so it could be added to tablets or bandaidsfor a wound dressing or it could be added to cosmetic cream.' She believes NCC may also be superior to Vitamin C or E because itis more stable, so it may work for longer periods of time. 'I think it also opens up a whole new field of research for NCCs,'Tam added. 'Doing research is like finding out things that no one has foundout before, which I find really exciting.' Canada's national forestresearch institute, FPInnovations, has predicted a US$250 millionmarket in the coming decade for NCC. A pulp and paper mill that opened in January in Quebec now servesas the world's first large-scale NCC production plant. 'When we founded the Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada 19 yearsago we believed then, as we do now, in the potential of our youthto develop the next big breakthrough in science,' said SanofiPasteur Canada President Mark Lievonen, who presented the firstplace prize. The judges came from Canada's National Research Council and otherleading science institutions. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as China Tree Wall Stickers , China Interior Decoration Wallpapers, and more. For more , please visit Contemporary Wall Clocks today!
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