© Mohammed MakboulSara Makboul works on her project in her home in Acworth, Ga.
Even if Harris is found innocent, he isn't the only parent who will have to live with knowing his son would still be alive had Harris been more cognizant that day. About 37 children die annually of heatstroke after being left in a car - and the number has already climbed to 35 this year, according to the advocacy group KidsAndCars.org.
A ninth-grader from Acworth, Georgia, wants to ensure that other children won't become part of these statistics.
Sara Makboul, an outgoing, 15-year-old finalist in this year's Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, has created a system that could save an infant or child if he or she is left alone in a sweltering car.
Other people, including many young scientists, are trying to solve the same problem as Makboul, but they haven't been very successful, she tells U.S. News. "I realized after my research that people were not actually using [these scientists' inventions] and they weren't actually working."
She says her goal is to make her product more innovative and inexpensive than those that already exist.
Makboul has created a system, which she plans to patent, aimed at warning parents if they have left their child in the car. It also serves as a backup system to save the child until the parent returns.
Her system, which she programmed using an Arduino development board and is powered by a rechargeable battery, is all built into a car seat full-body cushion.
The cushion contains a heat censor and a pressure censor, and the program turns on if a child is sitting on the seat when the car's interior reaches a certain temperature. A fan is then activated to cool the baby, and a fob, which parents can attach to their keys, will ring. This way, the baby's temperature is steadied until the parent returns to the car once he or she is alerted.
Makboul has had to kick it into high gear over the past few months to complete the car seat system, since she has had less time to perfect her invention than some of her peers.
She entered the contest and was selected as a finalist with a completely different idea: a soil supplement to reduce stormwater pollution and improve water quality. Makboul says she wanted to help the environment after living in different places - including Morocco for a year - with environmental issues. But she was so close to completing the project before she was announced as a finalist that she wanted to challenge herself to solve yet another problem in the time she had left.
Now, Makboul wakes up around 5 a.m. during the school week to work on her project before a 45-minute bus ride to Kennesaw Mountain High School, where she is part of the Academy Mathematics, Science & Technology magnet program.
She says she's interested in economics and could see herself going into Congress, but she also wants to major in nuclear physics. One of Makboul's ultimate goals is to develop a method to create energy through nuclear fusion.
"Many scientists have been working so hard and so long on this, and I thought when I grow up, or even soon, I could work to actually try to do this myself," she says.
like Stephen Hawking, she too would do well to learn a little history, such as how science and religion is controlled by the state for its own interests.
Why a fob when most of these parents are probably already on their phones, so just ring that or tap into the car's security system... there's an infinite number of easy solutions... such as teaching people to be self-aware... maybe send them to one of our many wars for a little while?