The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair has just concluded with its grand awards ceremony. [Text continues after the photo]Three young women -- Yi-Han Su, 17, of Taipei; Natalie Saranga Omattage, 17, of Columbus, Miss.; and Sana Raoof, 17, of Jericho, N.Y.  each took home the Intel Young Scientist Award, which comes with $50,000 in scholarship money. You can find all of the winners here. [Text continues after the photo] As someone who spends a fair amount of time wringing his hands over what has been called the most-praised generation, I have to say that seeing this many kids, with this much energy and enthusiasm for science, made me smile. These are high school students who really deserve the praise. We were only able to highlight a small fraction of the 1,557 finalist projects in our blog, but theyre all impressive.One of the speakers at the ceremony was Kathy Cox, Georgia's superintendent of schools. She said she was particularly interested in a project in which a student looked at whether kudzu would be a good biofuel source, which we covered yesterday. (I found Cox an, um, interesting choice for a speaker at a science and engineering fair, given some of her earlier comments on teaching evolution in Georgias schools.)But the coolest announcement at the ceremony was by Elizabeth Marincola, president of the Society for Science & the Public, which administers ISEF. This year, all of the first and second place winners will have an asteroid named after them. Thats really making stars out of these kids.