Difference between revisions of "Team:USP UNIFESP-Brazil/HP/Silver"

 
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<p class="black">In order to fulfill the requirements for the human practices silver medal, our team explored a huge issue : hardware accessibility in the developing world!</p>
 
<p>All the restrictions that we and other motivated research groups face such as: </p>
 
<ul><li> Restrictions due to outdated bureaucracy and hierarchy </li>
 
    <li> Economic/funding limitations </i>
 
    <li> Dealing with closed equipment </li>
 
    <li> Being free, with autonomy, to create and improve hardware</li>
 
</ul> </p>
 
  
<p class="black">
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<p class=black>Brazil is known as a beautiful country that has a great nature, happy people and excels at soccer. </p>
Brazil is a beautiful country presenting a great biodiversity and a rich culture, which is full of dialects, different fruits and flavors. However, it still faces some problems, as technological dependence, which is related to low research funds. The Nature Journal released the following report on September 30th, 2015: “Brazilian science paralysed by economic slump”. This reports highlights the scarce economic funds and its consequence, as unpaid electricity bills and a delayed participation in a microscope project (GIBNEY, 2016). Another report from the brazilian Journal “O Globo”, released on August 1st, 2016 is entitled: “Capes has 3,000 post-graduation scholarships suspended in Brazil” (MARIZ, 2016). Capes in one of the main brazilian funding agencies, so this cut in research budget directly affects the technological innovation. Still, it is uncommon for the funding agencies to give grants to students that are not formally connected to a research group and there is a lack of official programs for sponsoring competition-oriented groups.</p>  
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<p class=black>But our country is not just it, it faces many problems as an emerging country, like its scientific-technological dependence from other countries. Lab equipments are very expensive and several brazilian laboratories are not able to afford them. Moreover, when an acquired equipment breaks, it can not be quickly or easily repaired without the company's assistance due to the lack of autonomy and the companies charge high prices for that. Therefore, we have important limitations in brazilian science.</p>
According the brazilian Journal “Exame”, Brazil has the highest tax burden in Latin America  (NAKAGAWA, 2016). Brazil has more than eighty-five taxes (HIGGINS; PEREIRA, 2014), and  depending on the product, the federal and state taxes may increase in 100% the importing cost (NES, 2012). This issue has direct impact on science and technology, as laboratories and a good quality research demands high standard devices and reagents that, many times, are not produced in Brazil due to the little expressivity of national suppliers. Moreover, everything needs to be ordered through bidding, which significantly increases the time taken for stuff to get to the lab.</p>  
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<p class="black">
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<p class=black>Since knowledge stands as global resource, many people has already gained the right to access to devices and equipments in order to make their ideas and projects possible. The problem? In many places, it’s a veiled right. On this regard, hardware accessibility has raised aware of how sharing information can empower us to construct and disassembly such fancy and forbidden-to-touch equipments. </p>
Socially speaking, there is little involvement of brazilian society with science, generated in part by the huge gap existing between Academia and the public. This situation legitimates the wrong idea that the science done in the university is disconnected from elementary schools and real world problems.And, of course, inhibits innovation in multiple forms, including independent igem groups.In this way, customized devices built on a low cost basis represent a powerful tool to empower not just our own team but also the whole scientific and educational community.They are a shortcut for global access to tools essential for synthetic biology.</p>
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<p class="black">
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<p class=black>As we let others recognize that “openness” can help to restore our autonomy, we unconsciously liberate others to come up with audacious solutions to their own problems and to put their work into daily practice!</p>
Brazil invests 1.3% of its GDP in research and development, while Israel and Finland invests, respectively, 4.2 % and 3.6 % of theirs GDP (CALEIRO, 2016). Jailson de Andrade, the secretary of Research and Development Policy and Programs of the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication, said, during an interview, that Brazil needs to increase investment in science (LOURENÇO; QUEIROZ, 2016). This statement gives hope to the future of brazilian science.</p>
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<p>
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<p class=black>These issues let us talk about open and closed hardwares/softwares, two opposite ways to develop a hardware or software. Closed hardwares/softwares has been adopted in many laboratories due to their reliability. But open hardwares/softwares mirror collaborative development, sharing what people have desired, designed and made, so that anybody can access it and collaborate with. And it is so amazing, is not it?! We greatly appreciate this approach because it embraces people without access to high technology or expensive settings and allows a fast and robust development process.</p>
How do we deal with brazilian’s science current difficulties?</p>
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<p class="black">
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<p class=black>In this way, we developed a do-it-yourself centrifuge in our project using the open hardware approach in order to share it with the community and help other people that face limitations to put their ideas into action. Other equipments are being developed like a transilluminator and an electrophoresis system. We also created the device to count cells in a stream using a webcam adapted to function as a microscope.</p>
Besides all the problems cited above, we still love science and we fight for our objectives! During the development of our project, we faced many obstacles, as broken devices and few options of laboratory equipment suppliers. These equipments could not be quickly repaired due to bureaucracy and/or the high values charged by the fixing companies. An example was the budget to fix the vaccum pump, what resulted to be the value of a new equipment. These issues led us to a discussion about closed and open hardwares / softwares.</p>
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<p><p class="black">
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<p class=black>It is important to say that we live surrounded by "magic boxes" in a laboratory. We only press a button and something happens, many times without having knowledge of their operation. So open hardware stimulates the comprehension of an equipment and enables us to customize it. The closed devices purchased from companies come to us sealed and “untouchable”, leaving the user limited to the interface. Hacking these devices was empowering, since we became familiar to them to the point of even redesigning and building them up from scratch!</p>  
The choice of closed hardwares /  softwares have been traditionally adopted in many laboratories due to their reliability and quality. However, several small laboratories are not able to afford their price. As an alternative, there is the open hardware and software. These framework are based in information sharing, what makes it accessible to everybody that has internet connection, often becoming a good cost-benefit choice. Based in this concept, a centrifuge (named “Harry Potter”) was developed during our project using open hardware. This equipment cost less than 10% of any option we had available in the market, and also achieved the same capabilities.</p>
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What´s inside the “magic boxes”?</p>
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When we are in a laboratory we live surrounded by "magic boxes", so we only press a button and we have an action, as a cell optical density result, without having the knowledge of their technology. Thus, free hardwares facilitate the comprehension of an equipment, enabling us to customize it, as the “Harry Potter” centrifuge that we made and the device named “Cyclops”. We had some problems with these devices however, as they were made with an open hardware, it was easier to repair, mainly because all of the team members participated of its development.</p>
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<p class="black">
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This “learning by doing” experience gave us an insight about what is inside the “Black boxes” we deal with in the lab day by day. The closed devices purchased from companies come to us sealed and “untouchable”, leaving the user limited to the interface. Hacking these devices was empowering, since we became familiar to them to the point of even redesigning and building them up from scratch!So, now we have autonomy!</p>
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<p class="black">
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The iGEM project helped us to solve problems that we were not able. Today, we are much more confident, and we know we can contribute positively to brazilian science!</p>
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REFERENCES</p>
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<ul>        <li>CALEIRO, J.P. 15 Countries that invest in research (Brazil in 36°). Exame, Sep. 13th, 2016. Available in: <http://exame.abril.com.br/economia/15-paises-que-mais-investem-em-pesquisa-e-o-brasil-em-36o/>. Accessed in: Oct. 18th, 2016.</li>
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            <li>GIBNEY, E. Brazilian science paralysed by economic slump. Nature, 16-17, 2015.
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HIGGENS, S.; PEREIRA, C. The effects of Brazil’s taxation and social spending on the distribution of household income. Public Finance Review, 42 (3), p. 346-367, 2013.</li>
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            <li>LOURENÇO, L.; QUEIROZ, A. Brazil needs to increase investment in science. Agência Brasil, 2016. Available in: <http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/en/pesquisa-e-inovacao/noticia/2016-07/brazil-needs-increase-investment-science>. Accessed in: Oct. 18th, 2016.</li>
+
 
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            <li>MARIZ, R. Capes has 3,000 post-graduation scholarships suspended. O Globo, 2016. Available in: <http://oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/capes-tem-3-mil-bolsas-de-pos-graduacao-suspensas-19823223>. Accessed in: Oct. 18th, 2016.</li>
+
 
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            <li>NAKAGAWA,F. Brazil has the highest tax burden in Latin America. Exame, Mar. 16h, 2016. Available in: <http://exame.abril.com.br/economia/noticias/brasil-tem-maior-carga-tributaria-da-america-latina>. Accessed in: Oct. 18th, 2016.</li>
+
            <li>NES, C.F. Importing to Brazil. The Brazil business, Sep. 10th, 2012. Available in: <http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/importing-to-brazil>. Accessed in: Oct. 18th, 2016.</li>
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<p class=black>The iGEM project helped us to solve problems that we were not able. Today, we are much more confident, and we know we can contribute to brazilian science!</p>
  
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<p class=black><a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:USP_UNIFESP-Brazil/Hardware">You can click here to give a look at the Hardware page!</a></p>
  
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2016/4/45/T--USP_UNIFESP-Brazil--centrifuga_1.jpeg"/>
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2016/b/b2/T--USP_UNIFESP-Brazil--centrifuga_2.jpeg"/>
  
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Latest revision as of 03:39, 20 October 2016

Silver

Brazil is known as a beautiful country that has a great nature, happy people and excels at soccer.

But our country is not just it, it faces many problems as an emerging country, like its scientific-technological dependence from other countries. Lab equipments are very expensive and several brazilian laboratories are not able to afford them. Moreover, when an acquired equipment breaks, it can not be quickly or easily repaired without the company's assistance due to the lack of autonomy and the companies charge high prices for that. Therefore, we have important limitations in brazilian science.

Since knowledge stands as global resource, many people has already gained the right to access to devices and equipments in order to make their ideas and projects possible. The problem? In many places, it’s a veiled right. On this regard, hardware accessibility has raised aware of how sharing information can empower us to construct and disassembly such fancy and forbidden-to-touch equipments.

As we let others recognize that “openness” can help to restore our autonomy, we unconsciously liberate others to come up with audacious solutions to their own problems and to put their work into daily practice!

These issues let us talk about open and closed hardwares/softwares, two opposite ways to develop a hardware or software. Closed hardwares/softwares has been adopted in many laboratories due to their reliability. But open hardwares/softwares mirror collaborative development, sharing what people have desired, designed and made, so that anybody can access it and collaborate with. And it is so amazing, is not it?! We greatly appreciate this approach because it embraces people without access to high technology or expensive settings and allows a fast and robust development process.

In this way, we developed a do-it-yourself centrifuge in our project using the open hardware approach in order to share it with the community and help other people that face limitations to put their ideas into action. Other equipments are being developed like a transilluminator and an electrophoresis system. We also created the device to count cells in a stream using a webcam adapted to function as a microscope.

It is important to say that we live surrounded by "magic boxes" in a laboratory. We only press a button and something happens, many times without having knowledge of their operation. So open hardware stimulates the comprehension of an equipment and enables us to customize it. The closed devices purchased from companies come to us sealed and “untouchable”, leaving the user limited to the interface. Hacking these devices was empowering, since we became familiar to them to the point of even redesigning and building them up from scratch!

The iGEM project helped us to solve problems that we were not able. Today, we are much more confident, and we know we can contribute to brazilian science!

You can click here to give a look at the Hardware page!