Humanpractice.html






OVERVIEW

Human practice forms an essential element, of any project; it helps in bringing the project in open, among the common masses. Thereby shaping the project in sync with needs and requirement of general people, who will be directly or indirectly affected by the implementation of the project.

Since our project deals with the issue of heavy metal toxicity in rivers; water of which is constantly used for agriculture and irrigation practices ; thus, our engagement and outreach basically focused on -:

•      INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL OWNERS

To assess:-

•      To identify sources of heavy metal discharge.

•      Level of heavy metals in discharged water.

•      Steps and measures taken by individual industries to cope with heavy metal toxicity.

•      AGRICULTURAL LANDS AND FARMS

To monitor:-

•      Quality of water used for agricultural purposes.

•      Effect of toxic water on the yield (vegetable-fruits)

•      Their problems and issues.

Apart from this , our reach-out also focused on creating awareness about synthetic biology among the school and college students; thereby igniting young minds ; with the concepts and vastness of this field.

We also took an initiative, to create large scale awareness about heavy-metal toxicity and its related affects among common people ; by creating numerous surveys, questioners, and forms(Google-forms) ; which circulated through various modes including both offline and online.

 

 

 

 

VISIT TO LOCAL SCHOOLS (REGION DELHI)

Our first outreach initiative, was a visit to two local schools in Rk Puram sector (New Delhi)-:

•      Hose Marty Sarvodaya Vidyalaya

•      Govt.Co.ed Sarvodaya Vidyalaya

 

On this visit, we engaged in an interactive talk sessions, with students of 11th and 12th grade. The talk highlighted the concept of synthetic biology; and a brief discussion about our project and its relevance. Interactions were also made, to make students understand the iGEM competition, and thus encouraging them to participate in the coming years.

The talk sessions in both the schools lasted up to 1-2 hrs. , at the end of which each student was provided with a questioner which dealt every basic and simple questions on synthetic biology , iGEM ; and a column to share their experience and views on this session. Our questioner also highlighted a question-: "DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A SYNTHETIC BIOLOGIST IN FUTURE?" to which we got some really heartwarming answers like-:

•      Yes...I want to become a synthetic biologist; so that I can make my country feel proud!!

•      Yes...I want to become a synthetic biologist; so that I can make a human with powers of superman & Batman!!

VISIT TO KENDRIYA VIDYALAYA(Region-Agra)

Our next outreach session ; was at K.V in the ''Air force" area of Agra; where we interacted with senior-secondary students ; understanding their views on pollution of river "Yamuna", and their thoughts on heavy metals and their toxicity. Through this talk, we discussed about varied concept of synthetic-biology ; and it can be used to tackle the issues of heavy-metal toxicity in our rivers ; the main highlight of this session were the various, videos we showed on iGEM and synthetic biology ( collected from iGEM site YouTube); we gained students interest in thisfield. A questioner was distributed at the end of this session; through which we could analyze the impact of our talk; on those young minds.

 

NATIONAL IGEM MEETUP(MEETING OF YOUNG MINDS AT IISER PUNE)

To help us prepare for the Giant jamboree, we attended the Pune iGEM meet-up, conference at Pune to share and receive valuable feedback from other teams.

The Conference was extremely rewarding and we learned different aspects of synthetic biology through various talks organized by the hosting team.

INDUSTRIAL VISIT

An Industrial visit at "VINCO-PAINT INDUSTRIES-AGRA" was done by our team on 06/09/2017.

It was an initiative taken to understand the problem of heavy metal toxicity in industrial effluents, from the source itself. As Industries like paint, batteries, electroplating use metals like Zinc (Zn), Lead (Pb), Copper (Cu) as their main raw material.

Thus:- Analysis of methodologies, they undertake to deal with disposal of these metals was necessary. Through this visit, we marked certain valuable observations -:

a) Presently small-scale industries like these do not have any specialized or trained workers who can chart-out dose of heavy metals in the effluent released.

b) Through a short talk with the factory workers, we realized that awareness about toxic-effects of heavy metals; was very limited among them.

c) Currently no such machineries or treatment plant; have been employed within the industry, which could monitor, control or absorb the heavy metals discarded.

d) The industrial effluents; are passed into sewage pipelines; where it is received by local sewage treatment- plant [STP], which performs three-level sewage-treatment. However, presence of heavy-metals is not considered; after this treatment water is dumped into near-by river bodies.

IMPACT-: Through these observations, it was clearly evident that, there is not only a need to create Bio-remediation systems, to tackle heavy-metals; but also to create large-scale awareness about the hazardous effect of heavy-metals. Thus, this visit became a realization; of need to bring our project out from laboratory to the local grounds.

VILLAGE-AWARENESS CAMP(Venue-:Agricultural Fields, Department of botany, DEI)

Our next human practice initiative, was a "Village-awareness camp", which our team organized in agricultural fields of our department.

Through this initiative, we focused on local farmers and addressing their issues to farming.

India is an agricultural based nation, and thus farmers play a pivotal role in shaping the face and health of our nation. Therefore, understanding their ordeals becomes important for our project. Through this camp, we could analyze of how the problem of heavy-metal creeps into our agricultural fields and hampers health of our people; our-nation. The main source; that we could identify was, the water used in the farming-practices; which is directly pulled out from the toxic rivers. Also the leaching of metals to the soil; was another reason of fixation of heavy metals within these agricultural fields.

METAL MOVERS (CollegeEvent)

(Monday, September 11, 2017)

 

A college event named "METAL-MOVERS", was organised by our team, within the college campus.

The event was given a theme of an imaginary cafe name ''METAL-RE-TOX",which gives us a "peek-a-boo"; of how the future menus of cafe would look like.

The highlighted dishes were-:

•      "Assorted mushroom with cheese & Zinc toppings".

•      "Copper stuffed Raj-kachodi" and many more.

The theme highlighted the fact; that how problem of heavy metal-toxicity is making; its way with our day-to-day life.

On the event-day, we also organised a "Checker-game"; within which we incorporated various quiz question based on synthetic biology, iGEM, Team DEI Agra and many more related topics.

The quiz was aimed at creating awareness about synthetic biology and the prevailing issues of heavy metal toxicity in the environment, among our own college-students; and giving them chance to meet their college iGEM team (DEI-Agra).

The event was an open to all faculties of our-college; thus our stall saw a mixed crowd of students, taking part belonging to both science and non-science backgrounds.

The "METAL-MOVERS" became a successful-event; and the event winner- “ZIBI LUKOSE” (B.Sc. 2yr.) was awarded with iGEM sticker, coffee mug, chocolates, an acknowledgement certificate; and a proud winning-cap.

 

SURVEY:-

Our team conducted a general survey in order to know the opinions of the public regarding heavy metal toxicity in our rivers. We raised multiple public questionnaires and prepared Google forms for the same.