Throughout the span of our project, human practices have acted as a source of creativity and guidance, addressing social and academic aspects of our topic and engaging with the world through interviews, surveys, education, and collaboration. As for Integrated Human Practices, our team has sought expert opinions and professional advice, hoping to improve all aspects of our project through discussions and evaluations. By conducting interviews, we had the opportunity to inquire about current governmental policies, solutions to eutrophication, the enforceability of our product, and other comments and suggestions for our project through the perspectives of stakeholders. In addition, post-interview discussions are important to gather information to supplement different parts of our project, ranging from hardware and software to education and biosafety concerns. On the following page, we will dive into the processes and takeaways we gained from integrated human practices.

Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union promoted the efforts to combat water pollution and destruction of the environment. In the past decades, they have been fighting for illegal waste water disposal from local factories and agricultural systems. To specifically understand the scenarios of different reservoirs and rivers in Taiwan, our team reached out to the president of the Union Dr. Tsai to further discuss the severity and distribution of eutrophication in the local community. Our conversation also extended to government policies and possible campaigns that can effectively raise public awareness in the younger generation.

Prof. Lin currently serves as the professor in the Environmental Engineering department at National Cheng Kung University. He has considerable expertise in using chemical and engineering methods to deal with environmental issues. His related research topics include absorption technology, ​​identification and treatment of algae metabolites, site remediation, etc. Aiming at consulting his past research about cynopeptides detection and pre-treatment system for nutrients removal, our team interviewed Prof. Lin with questions ranging from his research interests to biosafety mechanisms of our hardware .

Prof. Chen currently works in the Life Science Department at Tzu-Chi University. His research interests include microbiology, environmental science, etc. Our interview mainly focused on the feasibility and the potential risk our device would bring after installing an aquatic environment. His expertise in the aquatic environment informed us of the risk of bacteria leakage and the potential methods we could use to optimize our biosafety mechanisms.

Tr. Hung is a teacher at Tianmu elementary school with familiar knowledge of the Taiwanese 108 syllabus. Through our interview we have gained a better understanding of the current curriculum design elementary schools have regarding environmental issues, specifically regarding the aquatic ecosystem.

Regarding our implementation, Prof. Chen pointed out several concerns about the filter paper we planned to use. The original design was to use a cellulose acetate membrane with a pore size of 0.45 um to prevent bacteria leakage. However, Prof. Chen informed us that E. coli would naturally secrete substances over time, such as biofilm, can help bacteria attach to the abiotic surface, leading to block water inflow and affect the efficiency of our device. More than mere secretions, other organic substances in water bodies may also cover up the outer surface of our filter. He stated that the 0.45 pore sized filter could only filtrate 5 liters of normal lake or ocean water before being plugged by substances.

In the interview with Prof. Chen, we concluded the two main issues to be addressed about our implementation hardware are the limited pore size for water inflow and the blockage of organic substances on filter paper. After receiving these useful suggestions from Prof. Chen, we reevaluated the device. We decided to address the secretion blockage problem by adding bacterial houses made in the material of sodium alginate, which allows E. coli to adhere and grow on the surface of the houses, thus preventing secreted substances from covering the filter pores and blocking water infiltration.

In our interview with Prof. Lin, he specifically suggested solutions to solve the substance blockage problem that inhibits water flow. Prof. Lin stated that we could install an additional appliance that spout water or a brush that would scrub unwanted materials off the surface of the membrane. Other ideas provided were using filter sand or silver coded filter papers to prevent bacteria from growing on the surface.

We also consulted Prof. Lin about the sustainability and recycling of resources of our product. Prof. Lin provided an idea about incorporating aquatic plants on our artificial island which floats on the surface of the water. By growing plants on the island, the root of these plants would be able to simultaneously absorb phosphate thus improving the overall efficiency of phosphate extraction from bodies of water. Therefore, we decided to add aquatic plants such as Common Rush, water arum, water chestnut, and Hygrophila into the design of our hardware island.

Other than the artificial island, Prof. Lin stated that we could use a molecular method, which uses ionic attractions between anion and cations to adhere negatively charged phosphorus to the positively charged exterior at the bottom of our device. This idea has great potential in improving the efficiency of our device, and we are planning on adding it into our future plans and implementing it after further research and design.

When discussing about how reservoir water quality are measured, Prof. Lin introduced us to the Carlson Trophic State Index (CTSI), which determines eutrophication quantitatively using the concentration of three water quality parameters – Transparency(SD), Chlorophyll-a(Chl-a), Total Phosphate(TP). Given that the Taiwanese government calculates eutrophic levels solely using CTSI, we thought that it would be helpful to incorporate this measurement into our software application, so users would be easier to understand the specific water quality of the reservoirs. In addition to the three parameters, CTSI also categorizes water quality into three severity classifications, “oligotrophic” indicating low levels of nutrients, “mesotrophic” indicating moderate inheren fertility, and “eutrophic” indicating an overabundance of nutrients. Thus, our software also provides information in such forms to ensure data quality and the variety of information presented to users.

While diving into his viewpoints on the current solutions and governmental policies on eutrophication, Dr. Tsai emphasized that the best and most effective way of solving an environmental issue, especially one that doesn’t necessarily relate closely to the people’s lives, is to raise public awareness and educate people about the severity of the issue along with the urgent need of support in implementing solutions. Raising public awareness on eutrophication not only inspires people to lessen phosphate use as much as possible but could also influence them to encourage governmental policies on solving this specific problem. Dr. Tsai particularly stressed the necessity of educating the younger generation so they would have an embedded value on environmental issues and ecological preservation. This not only reminds them of the effects of their choices on our environment but could also inspire them to invest more time and effort into environmental research in the future.

In the process of holding lectures and courses about eutrophication in local communities we also decided that it would be a great opportunity to know the level of understanding students have about our topic before and after our education. Therefore, we designed survey forms for the students to fill out, which consisted of questions about the causes of eutrophication, the effects of eutrophication, and more knowledge based questions related to our topic. By knowing how much students know about the issue we’re focusing on, we would be able to design more suitable and understandable information while promoting our topic in the future.

In our interview with Tr. Hung, we focused on the level of environmental education required and taught in elementary schools. Tr. Hung gave us insights on how the 108 Taiwanese syllabus teaches students about the environment, our ecosystem, and sustainability goals. Tr. Hung suggested that it would be a great idea to teach elementary students about eutrophication in simpler terms, so that even students could understand the seriousness of algae blooms and how the lack of oxygen affects underwater ecology.

After Tr. Hung informed us that environmental courses related to water preservation are specifically taught in fourth and fifth grade, we planned a two hour course to teach fourth grade students the basic ideas of photosynthesis, how oxygen is a necessity for organism survival, and how algae blooms lead to the death of aquatic life. Moreover, we gave them examples of how they also have the power and ability to make a change, such as preventing the use of insecticides, detergent powder, and other products that consist of phosphate as ingredients.

One of the most concerning aspects of our project is biosafety and dealing with the risk of TripleP leakage to the outer aquatic environment. Prof. Chen suggested that despite the fact that we already have filter membranes to restrict bacteria in the filter tube, there are still possibilities of engineered E. coli being leading to ecological unbalance. Due to this concern, we did further research on the mechanism of our bacteria, and discovered that once our E. coli is saturated with phosphate, its growth mechanism would be hindered, thus disabling its functions from affecting the balance within the outside ecosystem. Furthermore, we decided to change our filters more frequently and put in lesser quantities of bacteria to reduce the harm brought to the environment if the filter papers ever break.

While evaluating the environments where our hardware device could achieve maximum efficiency, Dr. Tsai informed us that there are two main types of reservoirs: on-stream and off-stream reservoirs. On-stream reservoirs have a greater tendency to encounter eutrophication problems since they are located at the streambed, where water flow is blocked, so accumulation of nutrients and algae blooms are more likely to happen. Whereas off-stream reservoirs are supplied by pipelines, aqueducts, or adjacent streams and water inflow and outflow that could prevent nutrient accretion. On the other hand, Prof. Lin also provided information that off-stream reservoirs with lower flow rates and small shallow sizes still possess potential risks that cannot be overlooked.

With all information provided we learned in the interviews, we decided to utilize our product in on-stream reservoirs in Taiwan, which includes the Zengwen Reservoir, Feicui Reservoir, Shimen Reservoir, Deji Reservoir, etc. However, we would also exert our power and be more concerned about the off-stream reservoirs, which have more severe eutrophication levels.

During our interview, Prof. Lin told us the importance of evaluating the cost and price of our product, the quantified efficiency, and how these aspects act as strengths or weaknesses compared to other solutions to eutrophication. Prof. Lin suggested us to research on themulti-soil laying (MSL) technology, a current solution to eutrophication implemented by the Taiwanese government, and compare and contrast the qualities of their and our solutions from various aspects. With these evaluations, he said we would be able to place our product

To verify the public's knowledge of Eutrophication, we performed a public survey of middle and high school students to compare their understanding of synthetic biology, eutrophication, and biosafety before and after the lectures.

As the graph shown above, the results indicate that responses became more diverse when professional language appeared in questions. Regarding this problem, our team recorded short Instagram video clips to explain eutrophication. In the following lectures, we also simplified the explanations and specifically introduced the meaning of each term. The results from later respondents showed a great improvement in answering the questions.

To improve our educational practices in bringing the issue to the public, we investigated feedback from the audience. We also introduced the iGEM competition and specific tasks for each group(wet lab, dry lab, human practice, and wiki) in lectures, hoping to provide useful information to students passionate about biology.