COMMUNICATION
Network Meet
JLU_China、DJU_China organized the Network Lanting Conference. In this meeting, five teams, JLU_China, DKU_China, XJTLU-China, HainanU_China, and FAFU, presented our projects. In the session, we focused on the future impact of our program "How can we expand our impact through human practices?" Here, we shared our vision for the future of SynBio. Below is a group photo of our meeting.
BIT Online Roundtable Sharing Session
This is a hardware experience sharing session hosted by the BIT and presented by BIT team member Taiyan Zhou . This meeting was participated by THU, FAFU, BIT, GXU-China and other schools. The conference shared microfluidic chips, lateral flow chromatography, fluorescence detection, and optical path detection. The fluorescence detection part provided inspiration for our Hardware. It was a very meaningful meeting. below is the course and the group photo after the end.
Promotion Video
More than anything, we wanted to combine science and art. In August, we planned a promotion video for the project, wanting to express our repressed emotions since the outbreak of COVID-19. We referred to the filming style and line style of director Wong Kar-wai. Through frame draws and close-ups of the characters, we wanted to show the inner emotions of the characters. The video tells the story of the protagonist (played by Weiyue Ke), who has been living the same life over and over again since the outbreak. One nucleic acid test at a time, one quarantine at a time ...... In order to change the situation, he has no choice but to step into the laboratory and create a new way of thinking about testing. We uploaded the video to the WeChat public platform as well as the bilibili platform. By October 11, 1,381 people had watched the video.
The Rumor Debunking Platform
Based on popular feedback, we have gathered a lot of rumors related to biology and the COVID-19 pandemic. We explain what we have learned on the platform in simple language, with the aim of making our information understandable to more people. As soon as this article was published, it received a lot of views and backstage comments, so we also have great confidence to continue this section and do better
The Science Popularization Platform
While debunking rumors, we also popularize biology knowledge and biological news around more people. Most importantly, the FAFU team allows those around them to learn the most about synthetic biology and fully understand synthetic biology in life. We have published dozens of popular science articles on multiple platforms, all of which have received good views.
Synthetic Biology Comics
In April, FAFU contacted OUC-China, who initially proposed to use the form of picture books, but we finally decided to use the widely circulated comic book form in consideration of the small audience of picture books and the lack of influence in society. After the communication between team members , they found that the masses often behaved as a manifestation of rejection when faced with obscure biological terms. This is often the biggest obstacle to popular science education. In order to overcome this difficulty, FAFU organized teams from BIT, XMU-China, JIANGNAN-CHINA, OUC-China and NEFU-China, transform the difficult experimental principles and processes into vivid comic form, so that the public can better and more thoroughly understand synthetic biology and our igem topics. Finally, we bind the book, printed it into books, and distribute them on campus and in the community.
We are also showcasing on public platforms such as bilibili and WeChat, and as of October 10, 2022, the number of views is 1763 Video is a very popular medium today, and in the future, we intend to make the manga into an audio
Synthetic Biology Lecture
After the conference, the Tsinghua team contacted us and anted to hold a joint teaching event online together.The FAFU team is the main organizer of this event, working with Tsinghua to produce promotional articles before class, and a total of 1564 people read the article. Prior to the course, the FAFU team produced and distributed a questionnaire. We count information such as the geographical location and age of the audience, and the statistical results are shown in the figure. At the same time, we collected what students want to know,,we have a clearer understanding of their interests through the way of word cloud.
During the course, the FAFU team is responsible for the work of the moderator, answering some of the questions raised by the students, and responsible for the statistics and making charts after the course. In addition to the staff who organized the event, 225 students eventually participated in our course, and even attracted three students from Singapore and Australia. We recorded each lesson as a video and uploaded it to the Bilibili video platform after the lesson, and as of October 10, it had been viewed 615.
At the end of the course, we collected the contact information of the students participating in the course, and we randomly selected several students to give gifts. For all the students who participated in the course, we made an electronic version of the postcard, and on the right side were the avatars of all the participating students on the Internet, which were eserved as a souvenir.
iGEMer Handbook
JLU-China is our Partnership. In August they invited us to co-author this book. It is mainly for future students who want to participate in iGEM but have no experience. In the book, FAFU shared how to do teamwork in iGEM, design ideas of human practice and hardware design ideas. Many thanks to the JLU-China team for the integration and layout of the relevant information. The following are the iGEM teams that participated in the Handbook.
Welcome to the 2023 FAFU-iGEMer
In September 2022, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University welcomed the new students of the class of 2022. We prepared a complete program as well as a PPT to help them understand synthetic biology and iGEM rules. We established the 2023 FAFU-iGEMer QQ group and attracted more than 200 students to join. We held an iGEM lecture on October 3 in Room 203, Chuang Xin Building, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University. Qinyu Chen shares the history of synthetic biology and its excellent synthetic biology applications. Yining Wang shared the composition of the iGEM team and the duties that each member should play. Sibo Jiao showcases the crucial role in Human Practice, Education, Art plays in iGEM, and design ideas. In addition, this lecture has invited our Partnership, BIT and JLU-China. They shared their iGEM projects for the past two years. We hope to share all the experience and harvest of the year with them to help them better understand synthetic biology and iGEM. Below is a group photo of us and a souvenir card given to each student.
Art
The arrival of the epidemic has made people's otherwise rich and happy lives tense and tedious. But the existence of art makes people's lives still full of fun and hope. The FAFU team aims to elicit emotional resonance with more people, add fun to boring life, and improve people's happiness in life. The most important thing is to make them feel that science is not boring, but really gives them energy. Therefore, the FAFU team carries out activities from the three directions of music and art.
Music
We had the pleasure of connecting with Yuan Zhao, who was in Accademia Teatro alla Scala. He told us that more people are willing to learn music during the pandemic, which can put people at ease. In addition, he stressed that a good musical work needs to be deeply emotional. This was a great help to our subsequent music creation.
We learned a lot about music theory and finally tried to make a simple piece of music to express how we felt in the two years of COVID-19.
Fine Arts
We consulted Shan Si from the riverside studio in May. When she heard that we were going to make a comic about popular science, she was very interested,and shared her experience of painting in oil painting, watercolor and other styles for us. We spoke for her about our topic for this year. She said that because of the arrival of the epidemic, people's emotional fluctuations have indeed been greatly affected. She communicated our thoughts to her students and hoped that her students would be able to express their emotions during the pandemic through painting.
Thanks to her for the two excellent works she painted for us.
The meaning on the left is that the arrival of the epidemic has made people strangers to each other
The meaning on the right is: workers on the front line of the fight against infectious diseases, creating a safe living environment for more people.
3D Lab
In the years of the epidemic, biological testing is gradually coming into view. When we teach online, we find that many students want to learn, want to join the lab in the future, and want to become scientists in the future. However, they may not be able to enter the laboratory to visit and study. So we used the iPad Pro's LiDAR to scan parts of our lab in Blender. We upload 3D models to public platforms such as QQ and WeChat. Due to the sheer size of the model, we have only uploaded a GIF of the model.
Countryside
The purpose of education is to advance society in order to improve people's way of life. Therefore, it is even more important that we develop our educational activities with a view to having a positive impact on the region through the dissemination of science. The economy is the lifeblood of regional development and will directly affect the development of the local education sector. Therefore while we carry out science communication, we also consider how we can use what we have learnt to improve the quality of life of people in poor areas.
We do our best to make our science communication accessible to society as a whole. Education policies and employment policies have been tilted toward rural areas in China in the past two years. According to statistics, the number of junior high schools and primary schools in China's rural areas has decreased year by year, with a total of 740 high schools, 14,477 junior high schools and 89,000 primary schools in rural China in 2019. Among them, in the 7 years from 2013 to 2019, more than 50,000 rural primary schools were abolished or merged(Huaxia Times, 'Number of rural schools declining year by year', 2021.5.31). For the education level of rural people, we collected the education level of rural people in China (China Rural Yearbook) from 2013 to 2019 (2020-2022 data not published) and found that most rural people have education level of junior high school and below. This may be due to regional remoteness and economic reasons. It is therefore necessary for people living in rural areas to disseminate scientific knowledge, which may help their production and life.
We hope that some impact will be made by what we've learned, and we really want to do something that can help them. So we started a 2-day rural education campaign.
On the first day we came to Pingtan, which is a beautiful island. Most of it is rural, and mostly growing some tropical fruits and salt-tolerant crops. Our leading teachers and classmates explained to the villagers how to control the diseases and pests of some crops. After that, we also assist farmers with work in their fields.
The next day we headed to the aquaculture village. The villagers introduced us to the abalone habits and related diseases. We are not very familiar with aquatic products, we just help them to replace the water in the pool and clean up the dirt. And then we went to their office for an interview and made a detailed record. Maybe that could inspire our project next year.
In order to have a sustainable impact, we decided to go to the countryside every year to volunteer for education after that. At the same time, we donated the money from our online live education to the Red Cross Society of China, hoping to help the construction of education in remote areas. Although the amount is not much, we will improve the way we educate online in the future and bring more benefits.
Pingtan is a beautiful island, mainly focused on tourism, farming and aquaculture. We travelled to Pingtan to carry out two days of social research. Below are the problems we gathered from our research, which we will try to improve in the future.
The research and study industry is dismal
Pingtan has a large area of lawn for a large number of people to play and carry out activities. In recent years, due to the epidemic, people from all over the world have been travelling less. The situation has not only had an impact on tourism, but has also hindered the advancement of the research and learning industry. Previously, Pingtan Lvsheng Integrated Agriculture Company Limited received a large number of students to conduct research activities here every year, but in the last two years, the number of people participating in research has decreased and therefore the company's source of income has decreased significantly.
Poor crop growth
In order to overcome the difficulties caused by the epidemic and to increase the source of income, the company chose to plant two crops, passion fruit and sweet potato, for profit based on the large area of land it originally owned. Among them, there was no obvious poor growth of sweet potatoes, probably because the local soil and other environmental factors in Pingtan are suitable for the growth of sweet potatoes. However, the growth of passion fruit was poor, the fields were overgrown with weeds, most of the grafted passion fruit seedlings were wilted, and the only remaining seedlings had fewer green leaves, fearing low fruit production, lower quality and poorer harvests. Through conversation with the farmer, we learnt that the orchard had not been weeded, sprayed and fertilised in a timely manner, and that the grafting of the seedlings had lacked regulation and management, and that passion fruit is a crop that requires more stringent environmental conditions.
Lower sales in aquaculture
The epidemic had an impact on abalone sales. Although the abalone website was still able to operate normally, the epidemic resulted in lower selling prices for abalone. The revenue of enterprises was only half of the level before the epidemic. In addition, abalone farming is also affected by the marine climate, as certain stages of abalone growth require seawater, and natural disasters such as typhoons can affect lower production, which is far more damaging than the epidemic.
Lower income levels of residents
However, the epidemic has to a certain extent reduced the public's desire and purchasing power, and the selling price of marine products has dropped significantly, resulting in a situation where villagers have enough products to sell to the outside world, but the profit they make is much less than before, and ultimately the income level of the residents is reduced.
Insufficient infrastructure to build a tourism industry
Both are relatively pristine villages with beautiful scenery, but there are deficiencies if tourism is developed. In this hot area of Pingtan, tourists tend to feel tired during their walks, but there are few restaurants in the village that can provide food and water for tourists, and there are no seats for resting along the road. There is also a need for a tourist map to help visitors find their way around the area and for proper promotion to raise awareness of the area, all of which need to be considered if tourism is to be developed in both villages.
Finally, we took a group photo with the locals at the beautiful seaside. Such an unforgettable educational event!
Company
Interview on light and heavy industries in Quanzhou
In order to understand the impact of the epidemic on heavy industry, we came to Shuitou Town, Quanzhou City, Fujian Province to interview Peiyu Wang, the chairman of Rongsheng Group. The group has a sizeable stone enterprise, so our interview mainly focused on the operation of the enterprise before and after the epidemic and the changes in revenue.
Wang Peiyu said that since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in 2019, it has a great impact on the development of the entire stone industry chain. For example, the problem of labor shortage: during the epidemic, in response to the government's requirements for the control of personnel flow, the arrangement of workers has changed greatly, from 285 workers to 118 workers, even less after the epidemic. The reasons include the difficulty in recruiting workers after the epidemic, and layoffs due to the decline of economic benefits of enterprises. In addition to the labor problem, the cost of raw materials and logistics has also increased significantly: in 2021, the price of raw materials in Quanzhou stone industry has increased by 12-18% compared with 2019, and the logistics cost has also increased by 20-23%. Under the influence of various external factors, the actual turnover of the enterprise in 2021 decreased by 28.6% compared with 2019.
Wang Peiyu stressed that what she is most worried about now is the health problems of employees in the factory. She was worried that the epidemic situation in the factory would spread because some employees did not carry out nucleic acid testing regularly, which would lead to the factory being closed by the government and cause greater losses to the whole society and the factory.
In response to her concerns, we timely introduced the possible hardware parts of our project, which aroused her great interest. She warmly invited us to test our products in her factory to ensure the safety of the factory. We expressed our gratitude for this and promised to pilot in her factory once the hardware part was improved.
Interview with Huabing Wang, owner of the food company
In order to understand the impact of the epidemic on light industry, we interviewed Wang Huabin, the boss of Fengsheng Food Company. After understanding our intentions, Wang Huabin told us that due to the impact of the epidemic, the local government has greatly improved the requirements for the biosafety of the entire industry, and also indirectly improved the quality and safety testing standards in the food production process. In order to prevent raw materials from carrying viruses during transportation, he purchased a complete set of disinfection equipment, which also increased the operating costs.
However, he stressed that although it cost a lot of money to buy disinfection equipment, it made him feel more secure during production. He felt that the epidemic also indirectly promoted the quality and safety control of the whole factory, which was a good opportunity to improve the production quality level.
In the follow-up conversation, we learned that his factory actually made less profit during the epidemic, but Wang Huabin took a long-term view. He thought it was only temporary. He is currently trying to improve the production level of the factory, and once the transformation is completed, it will bring huge profits.
Wang Huabin is undoubtedly a long-term and optimistic entrepreneur. We expressed the hope that our hardware could be tested in his factory in the future. He welcomed the idea, saying that it would add a guarantee to the production safety of his factory.
