Overview

Science should be accessible to everyone. Technology development should involve everyone. NTHU_Taiwan makes efforts to remove the barriers between ages, races, religions, and even individual differences, connecting every need and novel idea in this global village. The intention of inclusivity affected our choice of materials and drive us to plan activities to satisfy every person this year.

Thoughtful for Minorities

Vegetarians and Muslims

The filler of our platform is a gel and in our experiment so far, we use gelatin. However, gelatin is made from animal hides, bones, and connective tissues which is not acceptable for vegetarians and Muslims.

Don't worry, our platform of microneedle and AMPC actually provides a concept of customized treatment. For those who cannot use materials obtained from animals, we planned to use different kinds of gels such as alginate or silk glue to be our fillers to replace gelatin in our future platform. Alginate is obtained from the cell wall of brown algae and silk glue is from synthetic spider silk. Those replacements are both biodegradable and can meet our expectations for this project. That is, our design meets popular demand.

Disabled

Disabled can also be benefited! Frequently changing a dressing or visiting clinics may be troublesome to those who are physically challenged. We provide a simple operation dressing with the advantage of slow drug release that can reduce the frequency of difficult moves and have a long drug-effective time.

Infants

Babies should never be forgotten. As many babies are suffered from S. aureus infections, we provide a painless dressing for them. Injections will stir up the babies’ fear of pain and needles and if they cry or wave their limbs, nurses and parents will get in big trouble to calm them down. With the microneedle platform, the process of treatment can be smooth and fast. What’s more, because the dressing is easy to use and low cost, the parents can take care of their babies by themselves without asking for leave for visiting a clinic!

Expand Access to Science

Different Languages of Our Picture Books

There are six language versions of our picture book. Though English is an international language, we hope that there can be more people reading our picture book in their mother tongue without language barriers. This achievement can make more people easily step into the science field, especially children. At an age of learning and reaching for knowledge, children may be stimulated by our project and make more amazing works in the future.