Team:BIT/Practice/Integrated Practice

Integrated Practice

In terms of human practice, we have integrated all the HP work together to serve our projects.

After we had brainstormed and discussed with our experts to confirm the feasibility of our project through research, we decided to conduct a survey with the target users of our project’s final product to hear their views and suggestions on our project. Market survey is a direct and reliable way to find out whether our project has market potential and can meet the needs of prospective customers.

First, at the end of our lecture, we handed out questionnaires to understand the general population's views on our project. Then through data analysis of the collected questionnaires, we have learned that most people are interested in our project, but may not pay much attention to it.

The survey reveals that our project should identify the target customers in order to serve the people who really need it.

Therefore, we turned our attention to environmental protection. We went to the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences for interview and research. According to our market research, biosensors for water quality detection are widely used in Europe, and they are basically similar to our project. In order to learn more, we interviewed Yu Ruozhen, research fellow of CRAES.

First, Ms Yu Ruozhen introduced the application of biosensors in her research field: water quality monitoring. In terms of water quality detection, Europe is currently putting luminescent bacteria, algae, mites and even fish in the water source for dynamic monitoring. If biological devices send out alarms indicating excessive physical and chemical substances, gas chromatography will be used for further testing. Convenience and low cost are two advantages of biosensors, but there is also the risk of false positives. The expertise of the CRAES researchers is very helpful to us, especially at the beginning phase of the project.

We also asked Ms Yu about some of the current problems of ecological restoration. The current study of the biological effects of contaminated areas is basically based on finding similar areas and then comparing them. When asked if we could use our device to perform a long-term test to offset up a model for the microbial community's survival status in a contaminated area, Ms Yu gave a positive answer.

Our projects are also intended to play a role in responding to certain sudden safety incidents. To find out the feasibility of this end, we had a face-to-face interview with firefighters from the Public Security Fire Brigade of Shijingshan District in Beijing. Through interviews, we learned that fire brigades' current plan against grave emergencies is basically about the coordination between the various teams in different departments. The equipment for different environments and different destinations is simply divided into three levels. But in case of emergencies, firefighters only have time to wear the most basic equipment.

At the same time, firefighters have to carry equipments of nearly 20 kilograms when in mission, and for them, too heavy or too large equipments will badly affect their efficiency, which confirms our idea that besides meeting basic needs our device should be as light and portable as possible.

At the same time, we have also learned that firefighters will wear personal dosimeter in their missions, which can detect most of the toxic gases and radiation, and give warnings as early as possible. But all of these devices adopt physical methods, which can not reflect the damage to organisms caused by the environment at that time. This also confirms our idea that our project can resolve the above problem.

After interviewing with experts and target users, we continued to improve the project based on their comments and suggestions and the discussions within the team. We then updated the experts and firefighters on our new improvements.

After learning about our further experimental progress, Ms Yu believed that the current idea of emergency testing under the unexpected conditions and unknown chemical concentrations had made new progress in feasibility. At the same time, she suggested that we should do the corresponding mathematical modeling. We followed her suggestions promptly.

Ms Yu also reminded us of the tolerance of the device, that is, if our device is intended for long-time use, we should try to make it well-tolerated and endurable. To solve this problem, we decided to get more efficient promoter by point mutation and increase the sensitivity of the device.

Our improvement in terms of hardware, to minimize the weight of the device, has won the approval of the firefighters. But at the same time, they also hope that our device can help them to find out the environmental condition before they step in so as to better serve as a danger indicator. This gives us a good direction for project improvement. One of the goals of our project is to provide convenient and prompt monitoring and detecting through mobiles. To realize this goal and meet the firefights’ expectation as well, we must strive to optimize our device.