Team:Nanjing-China/HP/Silver
Overview
This year, our team Nanjing-China is mainly focused on developing new energy to deal with current energy crisis. Thus it is important for us to know both the public opinion about traditional chemical energy and development of new energy such as solar energy and hydrogen energy, as well as advice from experts about how to tailor our project to the current need. We also take the responsibility to propagate the idea of energy conservation and educate the young kids about synthetic biology. Therefore, we think we are qualified for the Human Practice silver medal.
Questionnaire
We designed a questionnaire about general energy issues and our project both in English and Chinese versions. Finally, we have collected 573 samples, which qualified us to make further analysis about our topic.
1. Respondents
In order to get a comprehensive knowledge of people’s understanding about the background of our project, we collected a variety of respondents of different ages, different occupations and different knowledge levels. As to the age, respondents of 18-29 years old, such as university students, account for more than one-third of the total, so as the respondents of 30-49 years old, who are energetic to do their jobs or researches. The rest are people under 18 or above 50. Besides, as to the knowledge level, most respondents have received well-round education. And also, not so many, but also not none people with professional knowledge are involve according to the Job type results. That is to say, we almost covered ever stage of people and we are going to get a really comprehension results
2. The knowledge of new energy
Most people think that fossil fuels are running out and exploration of new energy has a big impact on future. However, people are overconfident about the time left. More than half the people think that energy crisis is 200 years away from now, which is not the case at all. This results dictates that propagation of basic knowledge about chemical energy and new energy such as solar energy is necessary. Solar energy is also the most well-known energy among the people surveyed.
Besides, we also investigated the attitudes of the public about the applicability of new energy. It turns out that cost and damage to the environment are the most important considerations of new energy development from the points of the public. We also found that community activity and propagation on the internet are the most acceptable ways for new energy propagation.
3. The knowledge of Bio-hydrogen
We are also curious about the public opinion of bio-hydrogen production. It turns out that the public don’t know well about the advantages of hydrogen as a new energy. Most people regard hydrogen as an unsafe form of energy and think it difficult for application to the industry, which is also the main problem that scientists want to solve.
For hydrogen production methods, water electrolysis is the most widely known. However, the public expect photo-biological water splitting as the most promising way, which is exactly what our project is focused on.
To get more specific opinions about our project, we also asked some detailed questions. To our surprise, most people have heard of microbes for energy production ad regard them as organisms with short life cycle and low energy consumption. Most of them can accept genetic modified organisms in hydrogen production, which makes it easier for propagation of our project.
4. The propagation of iGEM
In the last part of our questionnaire, we also designed some questions to propagate iGEM. The data shows that around 50% of respondents have heard of iGEM, and they mostly heard from educational or scientific research institutions. Besides, they treasure it as an opportunity to communicate other than competing as the meaning of this competition. It indicates that although iGEM is well-known to universities and scientific research institutes, it still lacks online propagation and social communities. Thus we made up plans to propagate iGEM through social activities in the community and propagations online.
Education
To propagate basic ideas of synthetic biology and iGEM and promote education, we opened up our lab to children from Nanjing Foreign Language Primary School on June 1st, which is the National Children’s Day. Eight third-year children came to our lab with great enthusiasm about science.
One of our team members, Zhen Li gave a training to the kids about the biosafety issues in the lab. He took the kids to wash their hands and wear gloves before they went into the lab. These children were very curious about the various facilities, reagents and materials in the lab and observed them very carefully. We showed some simple experiments to the kids at first, namely, the reaction between iodine and starch. The kids were very surprised that the color turned blue when iodine and starch were mixed together. We also gave the children some 10ml tubes and taught them how to use the pipette. Under our supervision, they added 1ml of NaCl to 1ml of AgNO3 and were excited about the “magic power” of the white precipitation in the tube. One girl even said that she felt as if she was a fairy. Besides, we also showed the kids the E.coli that we cultured and taught them how to use model organism to test our hypothesis. We told these passionate young scientist that science is a journey of ups and downs and the up moments really make the down moments worthwhile!
Considering the safety issues, we took the tubes and materials back from the children, although they seem to be fascinated about these magic “toys”. Captain Chen Chen sent the kids cards and T-shirts to them when they left our lab. The kids said that it was the first time that they get to know synthetic biology and it was very interesting. This activity is indeed a good propagation of both iGEM and synthetic biology!
Community Propagation
The development of new energy is always expensive and takes a long period of time, making it difficult for the public to know and support. Therefore, our team planned to attract public attention to new energy development by community propagations. We went to an activity center in a neighborhood in Henan Province and promoted knowledge about new energy development to the citizens there. We also propagated our project to them in a simple and easy-to-understand way. Besides, we appealed people to choose green energy and ultimately we got 256 signatures from people who realized how important it is to choose hydrogen for a better future.
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CONTACT
Address
- Life Science Department
- #163 Xianlin Blvd, Qixia District
- Nanjing University
- Nanjing, Jiangsu Province
- P.R. of China
- Zip: 210046
- nanjing_china@163.com
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SPONSORS
南京大学
生命科学学院
SCHOOL OF LIFE SCIENCES
NANJING UNIVERSITY
南京大学
NANJING UNIVERSITY
南京大学
化学化工学院
SCHOOL OF CHEMISTRY AND CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
NANJING UNIVERSITY
