Difference between revisions of "Team:ShanghaitechChina/Human Practice"

 
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          <h4 align="center">iGEM at Jiangsu Normal University</h4>
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<h1 align="center">Human Practice Overview</h1>
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              For this year’s competition, our team collaborated with the iGEM Team at Jiangsu Normal University.
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              JSNU’s project aims at applying anthocyan to a potential cancer therapy. Their early experiments were conducted based on the (cell type) where (gives a reason why use that cell type). To better test their idea, cancer cells were required for the further explorations. However, in September when they turned to work on the cancer cells, they just realized that those commercialized cancer cell clones were not ideal materials for the experiments, because the pioneer cell generations soon after the reviving were usually not in good condition for the experiments. Only those later cell generations (normally after the fifth generation), could be applied in the test. Additionally, due to the high expense of the cell clone as well as the long time period of the cell culture, it seemed impossible for the team to conducted their further experiments in cancer cells within the time frame necessary.
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Thankfully, our team just had the hela cell clone (the ninth generation) in stock which was originally prepared for our previous idea for the iGEM competition. Also, benefiting from some of the group members’ professional skills in cell culture, the cell clone demonstrated good viability. In response to the emergency request from the iGEM at JSNU, we very soon prepared the cell samples according to their needs, and sent the materials immediately.
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Meanwhile, the wiki-design team at JSNU provided us assistance in creating avatars, where they drew a serious of cartoon bacteria characters based on the real photos of our team members. These avatars are used and also can be seen at the Team session on our wiki page.
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<h4 align="center">iGEM at Tsinghua University</h4>
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This year, our team launched the collaboration with the iGEM team at Tsinghua University. (Lechen is going to ask Tsinghua Team to composite this portion.)
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To better illustrate our biofilm-based platform strategy, the wiki-design team at Tsinghua University helped us to depict the brief mechanism of our project in a cartoon style. This figure are used and also can be seen at the (where do we use the picture) on our wiki page.
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           <h1 align="center">Social Research on the Energy Issue</h1>
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  As we described in the introduction and background session, the importance and urgency to work on the energy issue is obvious. The energy issue is neither just a regional nor national problems, but instead a global. In response to the urgent need, lots of scientific researches have devoted vast efforts and time to those relevant studies, however, only few of which are really able to be put into real usage. Therefore, the key issue for the energy issue is not only the technological advancements, but also the awareness to integrate the scientific results into industrial application to yield concrete social values. With this idea in mind that also accord with the requirements for iGEM Human Practice, this year our team conducted the social research on the energy issue, along with our biofilm based artificial photosynthesis platform.<p></p>
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Thinking beyond laboratory is one of the key factors that would affect the yield of scientific researches into real social interests. Thankfully, this idea has been recognized by the iGEM community for a very long time. Not only should every team participate in various social activities, but also we need to keep a real time interaction with the society, the place that we ultimately hope to create significance.<p></p>
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The main objectives of this social research aim at socially figuring out the background information of the energy issue as well as getting prepared for the further industrialization of our project. To understand the situation more comprehensively, we want to hear various point of views from different aspects, the public, the academic, the industrial, and also the authority. Only when opinions from all these parties are heard, could we fully understand the issue in reality and then figure out a series of feasible solutions to contribute to our society.<p></p>
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This year, our team applied the knowledge of synthetic biology to seek feasible solutions to the energy issue. Urgent as it is, the energy issue is more than a regional problem, but has raised global concerns.  In this social context, converting solar energy into chemical energy is undoubtedly of fundamental and industrial importance. Our original interest on this topic was initially sparked by recent cutting-edge research in artificial photosynthesis. To enhance our understandings about energy issues, and meanwhile, arouse public awareness of synthetic biology, we raised multiple public questionnaires and dialogues within academe and industry. In communications with industrial community, field experts as well as administrative authority afterwards, we realized that development of a robust, sustainable and scalable approach for hydrogen production would be socially relevant, industrially important, but technically challenging. This has led us to set our ultimate goals to solve such challenge by leveraging the power of synthetic biology. We eventually proposed and demonstrated a sun-powered biofilm-interfaced artificial hydrogen-producing system, Solar Hunter. Benefiting from the real time social interactions, we kept modifying the system to be more and more adaptable to the scalable industrial application. This new system will in return, introduce a synthetic biology-based approach towards energy applications in industrial context.<p></p>
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This social research were performed briefly in two parts, public questionnaire and interviews. A public questionnaire was firstly implemented to collect general information from the public. Then, we carefully analyzed the data collected. And according to the main concerns and opinions we found through the questionnaire, experts from different walk of life were invited to participate in the interview. Our interviewees included scientists working at the cutting-edge in the field, industrial representatives dedicating to the energy conservation, as well as from the administrative government. With the participation of not only the public and the academic, but also the industrial and the authority, we deeply explored the social background to prepare to integrate and industrialize our project as well as built up necessary social connections for the future supports. <p></p>
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Additionally, while conducting the research, our team not only kept real-time interactions with the society regarding to the project itself, but also we actively participated in a variety of educational propagation and public engagements. As the first-ever iGEM team at ShanghaiTech, this year we established the iGEM Day for Public Interests (iDPI), a special social activity for every iGEMers at ShanghaiTech. For this year’s iDPI, a Lab Open House Day was held where delegating high school students from Shanghai Coordinate International School paid a visit, aiming at arousing their interests in science, especially in synthetic biology. Moreover, we introduced the iGEM to them during the day, and are now helping them to build up their first-ever high school team for the future iGEM. Besides, this year our team closely collaborated with two iGEM teams in China, JSNU-China at Jiangsu Normal University and Tsinghua-A at Tsinghua University.<p></p>
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<a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:ShanghaitechChina/HP/Gold">Click here to find our Integrated Human Practice.</a>
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As previously addressed, the importance and urgency to seek a feasible solution to the energy issue is undebatable. The energy issue is neither just a regional nor national problem, but instead a global one. In response to the urgent need, vast efforts and time have already been devoted to those relevant studies, however, only few of which is really able to be put into real applications. Actually, the biggest obscure restraining the feasible solution to alleviate the energy stress is mainly due to the huge gap between the research results and the massive industrialization. In another word, not only should we emphasize the technological advancements, but also we ought to raise a strong awareness to integrate the scientific results into real industrial application to yield concrete social values.<p></p>  
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A questionnaire about the energy issue was designed and then distributed through the internet. All 37 questions were asked, and here, we performed the core analysis of the questionnaire. We have finally in all collected 231 samples, 15 of which were canceled as invalid samples due to their short answering time (less than 180 seconds). The rest of 216 samples were regarded as valid responds that qualified for further analysis.
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To understand the energy issue from a border aspect, our team carried out a social research discovering the gap between the academic research and the industrial application, especially in the context of the energy issue. The main objectives of this social research aim at socially figuring out the relevant background as well as getting the project prepared for the further industrialization. We hope to hear various opinions from different aspects, or to be concrete not only the public and the academic, but also the industrial and the authority. Only when we understand comprehensively, could we figure out a series of feasible solutions in the social context, to profoundly contribute to the world.<p></p>
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<h4>1.Respondents’ Backgrounds</h4>
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Our social research started as early as we just decided to work on the energy issue. We built up a long-term real-time interaction with the society, instead of just a simple glimpse, for the comprehensive understanding on the issue required continuous communications and thoughts exchanging. Generally speaking, this social research consisted of two main parts, the public questionnaire and interviews. The public questionnaire was implemented to be familiar with the general public attitudes. We carefully analyzed the data collected, and according to the main concerns and opinions we found through the data analysis, we then invited several experts from different walks of life to participate in the following theme interviews. Our interviewees included scientists working at the cutting-edge in the field, industrial representatives dedicating to the energy conservation, as well as from the administrative government. With their generous engagements, our team was able to further explore the project in a social context.<p></p>
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A variety of respondents from different age groups, different education backgrounds, and different occupations participated in our questionnaire research. Age distributions can be viewed from the following figure. <p></p>
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<a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:ShanghaitechChina/HP/Silver">Click here to know more about our social research.</a><p></p>
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Among all, the biggest two age groups participating in the questionnaire are 18-25 and 41-50. About 39% of the respondents were from 18 to 25. 13% aged between 31 to 40. More than 35% were aged between 41 to 50. The diagram shows an ideal age distribution aged from 18 to 50, while there were few respondents under 18 or over 50. Based on the survey on education background, over 77% of the participants were well-educated with at least a bachelor degree who surely share sufficient social experience and intellects. These statistics here demonstrate and ensure the statistical significance underlying this questionnaire.
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<h4>2. Awareness of the Energy Issue</h4>
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When investigated on public awareness the energy issue, most respondents as 78% laid strong emphasis on the problem. They considered the energy issue as an extremely urgent social problem that needed to be solved, which strongly illustrates the huge potential value and promise for our project.
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<h4>Knowledge of Green Energy</h4>
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Asked about whether people were familiar with the green energy, only 13% of the participants chose the most familiarity. Over 51% of the samples showed insufficient knowledge in green energy, which demonstrates the need for more public propagation. And this assumption were then proved by the following question that whether it is necessary to publicly enforce the idea of green energy, with about 95%  participants showed positive attitude. <p></p>
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However, when talked about the possible influence from the studies on green energy, over half of the participants declared the strongest attitude. And plus, another 35% were with the second strongest attitude. From this, the promising prospects to apply green energy to deal with the energy issue are apparent. Besides, our team believes that with a wider spread of the background knowledge on the topic, more and more people would be likely to support the study on green energy to solve the energy issue.<p></p>
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We tested on the kinds of green energy well known by the public, where the solar energy ranked first with nearly 88%. Also, we asked about the important characteristics for a good form of green energy; less pollution,strong sustainability, reasonable costs ranked at the top three. Obviously, the application of solar energy perfectly can meet all these three requirements. Also, when asked about the opinion on the application of solar energy as the main energy source, near 88% demonstrated positiveness.<p></p>
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Speaking of the overall attitude towards the present application of hydrogen production, more than half of the participants showed a negative attitude, which was understandable due to the high costs and immature means of industrial production. However, when asked about whether the hydrogen could be a sustainable energy source, a substantial increase in positive attitude could be seen, which showed the huge potential for the further development of hydrogen. Although there were still 45% held a negative attitude towards the application of hydrogen, our team believes that people may become more and more confident about it as long as the technology are much maturer and they are more familiar with the hydrogen with their main concerns eliminated. <p></p>
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n terms of the concerns for the application of hydrogen as an energy source, the biggest two dominating concerns were laid in safety and costs. From a scientific point of view, as long as the transportation and storage of hydrogen is proper to avoid the explosion limits, the usage of hydrogen are relatively safe. (This point were verified by the field professor though the late interview.) Actually, this is pretty much similar to the usage of coal gas and nature gas. Since people can well deal with these two inflammable gas, with the further development of relevant technologies, we hold a pretty positive prospects with regards of the safety problem. However, based on our background search, the way to maintain a relatively low cost producing hydrogen are still not available; and this just demonstrates the huge potential value of our project.<p></p>
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<h4>5.About Our Project</h4>
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We briefly described the idea and mechanism of our energy-conversion platform, gaining about 63% of the positive feedback.Therefore the real application of our platform in a big productive scale is relatively promising and deserves a try. However, we also noticed the 37% with a relatively negative feedback, which also reminded us of further improvements on our idea, especially with regards to the safety, cost, and efficiency based on the feedback from previous question. And we believe that as long as the technology are much maturer and their main concerns are eliminated, people would hold a more positive point of view. <p></p>
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To assist our further integration of our project into real social application, further questions on the necessity of collaborations with industrial partners, academic research groups, and the government were asked.<p></p>
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About 62% of the participants demonstrated the strongest necessity to cooperate with some green energy related enterprises. Near 87% supported to acquire more technological assistance from the academics. More than 62% of the participant thought the supportive policy from the authority was very important for the real application. In responses to these results, further interviews from these three aspects were then scheduled.<p></p>
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A questionnaire about the energy issue was designed and then distributed online. In all, 37 questions were asked, and here, we performed the core analysis on the data we collected. We had eventually collected 231 samples, 15 of which were cancelled as invalid samples due to their short answering time (less than 180 seconds). The rest of 216 samples were regarded as valid responds that qualified for further analysis.<p></p>
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<a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:ShanghaitechChina/HP/Silver#p3">Click here to view detailed questionnaire analysis.</a>
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To deeply understand the energy issue from various aspects as well as further develop our system in the real social context, our team conducted a series of interviews with experts from all walks of life. Besides the general voices heard from the public, we discovered the opinions from the relevant industrial communit, the academic researchers and the administrative authority.<p></p>
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Our interviewees include the following: <p></p>
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Professor Qixi Mi from School of physical science and technology at ShanghaiTech University;<p></p>
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Researcher Fei Yu from CAS Key Laboratory of Low-Carbon Conversion Science and Engineering;<p></p>
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Mr. Yujun Lan from Shanghai Energy Conservation Association (SECA);<p></p>
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Ms. Chen from Shanghai Energy Conservation Association (SECA);<p></p>
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Ms. Yu Huang from Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD;<p></p>
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Mr. Shengbo Chen from Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD;<p></p>
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<a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:ShanghaitechChina/HP/Gold#p3">Click here to find further information about our interviews.</a>
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This year, our team actively collaborated with two iGEM teams in China, which are the team Tsinghua-A from Tsinghua University and the JSNU-China from Jiangsu Normal University. The team Tsinghua-A focused on constructing a synthetic biology circuit to seek insights into noise propagation as well as measuring the capacity of parallel information channels. Our team members, Lechen Qian and Haolong Zhu, helped them to gain access to a better home-built computation platform, applied their knowledge to modify and operate the algorithm, and scanned two key parameters, Ka (dimer association rate) and Kd (dimer dissociation rate constant) relevant to their modeling project in use of Gillespie Algorithm. Meanwhile, we also helped JSNU-China from Jiangsu Normal University to culture a hela cell clone (the ninth generation) in our culture facility, which later on became an indivisible part in their project and gave them new thinking about utilizing new cell lines. We also benefited a lot through multiple interactions with the two teams during team collaboration. <p></p>
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<a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:ShanghaitechChina/Collaborations">Click here for more details about our team collaborations.</a><p></p>
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<a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:JSNU-China/Collaborations">Click here to see our assistance reported by the iGEM team at Jiangsu Normal University.</a><p></p>
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<a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:Tsinghua-A/Collaborations">Click here to see our assistance reported by the iGEM team at Tsinghua University.</a><p></p>
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<h1 align="center">ShanghaiTech iGEM Day for Public Interests (iDPI)</h1>
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Aiming at spreading the iGEM as well as dedicating to various  social engagements, ShanghaiTech iGEM Day for Public Interests (iDPI) was found in 2016, along with the establishment of the first ever iGEM team at ShanghaiTech University. The iDPI at ShanghaiTech is set up to encourage every iGEM team to devote themselves not only into advanced scientific researches, but also active social practices.<p></p>
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In the acronym name iDPI, “D” stands for dedication, “P” stands for passion, and “I” stands for inspiration. We expect that with the establishment of iDPI, every iGEMer at ShanghaiTech would bear a strong social awareness in mind, yielding profound contributions and achieving valuable social interests.<p></p>
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This year, the iDPI collaborated with Shanghai Coordinate International School, holding an iGEM Lab Open House Day on Zhangjiang campus.<p></p>
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<a href="https://2016.igem.org/Team:ShanghaitechChina/HP/Gold#p5">Click here for more details about iDPI.</a>
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In response to the strong necessity to get connected with the industrial, the academics, and the authority, so as to better promote and prepare for the real application and integration of our energy conversion platform and sever the mankind, a series of interviews with the industrial community, academic scientists, and administration and supervision departments were carried out. Taking the chance here, our team would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all those individuals and groups for their assistance and cooperation.
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To better illustrate our strategy and mechanism behind the Solar Hunter, our team self designed, filmed and edited a movie. The movie can be viewed in the following to help you build a better understanding on our project.<p></p>
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<h4>Industrial Community</h4>
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Meanwhile, this video is used as propagational and educational tools to spread the iGEM competition as well as synthetic biology. Multimedia approach is undoubtedly the best way to arouse interests when it comes to the young generations. Through our efforts, we expect more and more people, especially young kids could know deeper about synthetic biology, eventually resulting in more social contributions and significance.<p></p>
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Established in 1985, Shanghai Energy Conservation Association (SECA) is a membership non-profitable organization that works on the sustainable energy development on behalf of the industrial firms. Most of the local industrial companies, including those very influential ones like Bao Steel, are the members of the association. The SECA is set for the potential industrial collaborations with regards of the energy issue, whose main duties include the industrialization of new energy technologies as well as the propagation of the idea of energy conservation. Most employees working at SECA, including the interviewee, previously worked in the real industry. With their sufficient experience in the field, and also benefits from their daily cooperation with industrial partners, the SECA is undoubtedly an excellent place for our team to seek more insights from the industrial point of view. Also, the comments from the SECA would be of great importance for the industrialization and scale application of our project to yield more social interests.<p></p>
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Our delegation visited the SECA in August, 2016, where we also organized an interview with Mr. Lan (Yujun Lan), director of the expert committee at SECA, and Ms. Chen (Meijuan Chen), vise director of the expert committee at SECA.<p></p>
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At the beginning of the meeting, team member Haolong delivered an brief introduction to our project first. Both Mr. Lan and Ms. Chen were deeply impressed by our dauntless but creative idea. As they commented, they had served for the energy industry for decades, but this was the very first time they heard about using biological platform to provide new energy source as hydrogen gas. From an industrial point of view, they could tell the great future potential and feasibility our project suggested to be further developed into real industrial application in a big scale, meanwhile they also point out that some modifications especially with regards of the working conditions as well as an adaptation to the flow line production would be necessary. Besides, as Mr. Lan further said, the mission of the SECA included the promotion and industrialization of new technology, with their abundant experience in the field, they were willing to assist our team to continuously modify the project and try to put it into industrial application. <p></p>
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Then, Mr. Lan and Ms. Chen briefly talked about the daily operation of the SECA. Additional to the modulation of the membership industrial companies that resulted in a series of collaborations, socially popularizing and promoting the idea of energy conservation was also one of their core objectives. Through their efforts, they were looking for a gradual improvement of social awareness of the energy issus, espceially among the young age group. Annually, a variety of theme activities were held by the SECA to achieve the goal. Every year, there is an Energy Awareness Week took place in Shanghai where the representative industrial delegates were invited to introduce their cutting edge energy technologies to the public, in communities, schools, or exhibitions. Mr. Lan warmly welcomed and invited our team to participate in the next year’s theme week. We were so much sure that this special chance would be an awesome opportunity for our team to not only further socialize and industrialize the project, but also integrate our own efforts into real social needs.<p></p>
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Finally, Mr Lan. And Ms. Chen again emphasized the creativity and huge potential of our project from an industrial aspect. They encouraged us to modulate in details and step further. They were willing to provide any necessary assistance from the industrial community.<p></p>
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<h4>Academic Scientists</h4>
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On the 11st Oct., we met Professor Mi (Qixi Mi), assistant professor from the school of physical science and technology at ShanghaiTech University. Prof. Mi earned his B.S. degree from Peking University in applied chemistry in 2003 and his Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University in chemistry in 2009. Later he performed postdoctoral research on new souse energy at California Institute of Technology, taking advantage of a fellowship of the NSF Center for Chemical Innovation (CCI Solar), and then briefly at the Argonne–Northwestern Solar Energy Research (ANSER) Center. <p></p>
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Firstly, team delegation asked about the reason that guided Pro. Mi to the energy research field. As Pro. Mi responded, without any doubt, the energy issue was one of the biggest global challenges we mankind were facing and urgently needed to be solved. The significance of the relevant researches and studies were emphasized in terms of the sustainable development for the whole industry, because the energy source was the very fundamental matters of all sorts of industrial productions. Then, speaking of the possible solutions to the energy issue, without any hesitation, Pro. Mi emphasize the importance of the utilization of the solar energy for the sun was the ultimate way that we human beings could get sustainable source of energy. As he further stated, thanks to the development of the modern technologies, for now lots of simi-conductive materials people had discovered showed a relative high efficiency to collect sun light. However the central problems laid on how to efficiently utilize those solar energy we collected. Similar to what we applied in our project, Pro. Mi considered hydrogen gas as a good choice for the solar energy conversion. With its high molecular energy density as well as the simple chemical constituents, hydrogen demonstrated ideal characteristics to be a energy source. Also, without the participation of the carbon, the only product of the combustion of hydrogen was only water which had no side effect to the environment. This made hydrogen the complete clean energy source.<p></p>
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Then, in response to public concerns towards hydrogen application that we found in the previous questionnaire, Pro. Mi also gave some words to dispel the misgivings. For the very top concern, the safety problem, Pro.Mi said, actually for each of the efficient energy source, there would be a hidden danger. Since the matter could provide huge amount of energy supply, dangerous disaster happened when the source was out of control and huge amount of energy was released in a extreme shout period of time. However, this would never be the reason preventing people from using these high-density energy source. Academically speaking, hydrogen gas was similar to nature gas or coal gas that was widely used in every family; as long as people followed the safety instructions and properly used them, then the usage of hydrogen was very safe. Due to its low density, hydrogen gas was more likely to self-flow away to higher space; therefore it was less like to reach its explosion limits. Moreover, since people could deal with the carbon monoxide which was even toxic besides its possible explosion, why could not people handle hydrogen gas? With regards of the transport and storage of hydrogen, modern technologies were pretty mature in the field. So people could just benefited from those advanced technologies, and there was no need to worry about this as well.<p></p>
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Finally, we discussed our project with Pro Mi in detail. Pro. Mi was very excited and showed a positive attitude about our project. As he commented, a good solar energy platform that could be put into mass production should meet all of the three criteria which were 1.high efficiency, 2.low cost, and 3.sustainable. Usually, most of the research results could only meet two of the requirements at most, which greatly limited the industrialization and further development of the research results. However, in our project, the application of bio-enzymes ensured the relative high efficiency to produce hydrogen; with the application of bofilm, the system became recyclable to maintain a reasonable cost; and finally for the same reason, the system could be used for a long time showing its sustainability. Speaking of the future application into real industrial production, Pro. Mi thought our project demonstrated a very promising application potential, but he still suggested us to further modify the system to ensure a steady product quality and to find the best reaction conditions to undergo a better efficiency. And our team will going to further work from these aspects in the near future.
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<h4>Administrative Authority</h4>
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In August, 2016, our team delegation paid a visit to the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD. On the interview day, we had a meeting with Ms. Yu Huang and Dr. Shengbo Chen from the department of Research & Development Center there. As one of the most important parts of implement by Chinese Authority, lots of policy are set and then implemented here, in response to the United Nations Climate Conference. Due to its special characteristics it possesses, the Energy Exchange Center is an ideal place for us to know more about the energy issue from a governmental aspect. <p></p>
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First of all, Dr. Wu carried out a brief introduction about the Energy Exchange Center. Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange CO., LTD is a platform directly built my the Shanghai Central Government, where carbon emission permit is allowed to be traded. Since people are still trying to figure out a sustainable solution to the energy issue, temporarily one of the feasible idea is to use the power of the market where carbon emission is controlled by the invisible hand of the free market. Due to the reason, the energy exchange platform was established. However, to realize the ultimate goal to solve the energy issue as well as prevent the heavy pollution caused by the combustion of fossil fuel, Dr. Chen viewed the development of technology as the only way to achieve that. As he added, some of the policy were designed to encourage the industrial companies to conduct self-dependent technological innovation by increasing the cost of using those old polluting manufacture methods. In another words, Enterprises were encouraged to take actions to weed out outdated manufacturing techniques. Meanwhile, supportive policy to assist technological innovations was established as well, including some tax benefits.<p></p>
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Then, delegate from our iGEM team briefly introduced our energy conversion project. Ms. Huang and Dr. Chen were surprised by our newly-designed platform. They greatly praised our desire to contribute to the energy issue as well as the persistence in scientific research. Ms Chen said, indeed our society as well as the government very much looked forward to the technology breakthroughs like ours to serve the energy issue. Lots of encouragement policies had been set up to encourage project both financially and politically. They suggested us to do a brief background search, and apply to some of the supportive programs to further develop and modify our system. From the authority aspect, they were pretty sure that we would get many privileges and supports in developing the project, when we step further.<p></p>
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Finally, a free discussion was held where our team members further exchanged ideas and thoughts with two guests. Future collaborations are very likely to occur when our technology become maturer and are put into real life use.
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          <h1 align="center">Propagation of iGEM - iGEM Day for Public Interests (iDPI)</h1>
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          Aiming at spreading the iGEM as well as contributing to the local community, ShanghaiTech iGEM Day for Public Interests (iDPI) was found in 2016, along with the establishment of the first ever iGEM team at ShanghaiTech University. The iDPI at ShanghaiTech is set up to encourage every iGEM team to dedicate themselves not only into scientific researches, but also social practices. Sciences and technologies are used to serve people ant the society; therefore the awareness to contribute to the social interests is of equal importance with the research explorations. This year, iDPI collaborated with Shanghai Coordinate International School, holding an iGEM Lab Open House Day on Zhangjiang campus.<p></p>
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The activity took place in the early September. At noon time, alone with another iGEM team at ShanghaiTech, our iGEM team members warmly welcomed the visiting delegation from Shanghai Coordinate International School at the conference room. Leaded by Dr. (Name), a leading science teacher at the Coordinate, the delegation consisted of 8 high school students from different grades.<p></p>
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An introduction speech to the ShanghaiTech was first delivered by the team member Haolong. Then he continued to further talked about the background of iGEM as well as synthetic biology. After that, delegates from two of the iGEM team conducted a brief presentation on the iGEM project subsequently. Finally an open discussion session was held, where the high school students demonstrated strong interests about synthetic biology and actively asked questions about the iGEM and our projects. Some of them even showed strong willingness to participate in the iGEM in the following year. As we responded at the meeting, we would be very happy to try to provide all sorts of assistance they may need to build up their own high school team for the iGEM. Also, if any of them were interested in real experience of hand-on lab operations, our iGEM lab was always open to them to visit and explore. Additionally, last week we were just informed by (Name) that their school would be very likely to build up their first-ever high school iGEM team; hopefully they may officially participate in the competition in the following years. We would keep providing them sufficient assistance and support as long as necessary.  <p></p>
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After the speech and discussion, a lab visiting was scheduled as the second session of the Open House Day. Our team members paired with the visiting high school students, guiding them around the research center at school. We introduced the equipment to them one by one, from the cell disruptor to the ultra centrifuge, from the FACS to TEM, explaining the mechanisms behind in popular and easy-to-understand language. Part of our lab results were demonstrated as well, so as to help them build a better understanding on our projects.<p></p>
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The Open House Day ended around 6 in the evening. As one of the visiting students commented, this lab tour was very impressive and amazing which greatly aroused his curiosity to explore the secrets of nature. And this was just the core value shared by iDPI to pass the knowledge and inspire the interests to the next young generations.
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Latest revision as of 12:46, 1 December 2016

igem2016:ShanghaiTech