Human practices
Naukas span 05/25/2019
The 25th of May, we attended Naukas PAMPLONA, an event where the objective is scientific dissemination with humoristic touches, in in the Congresses palace Baluarte.
In this event, we could learn about different scientific fields: chemistry, biology, astronomy, engineering, and we had the opportunity to speak privately with Carlos Briones, a recognized scientist, specialised in biochemistry and molecular biology. He advised us and mentioned some obstacles that we will have to take into account for our project, such as the atmosphere and soil of Mars. Moreover, he spoke about extremophiles, which can be very helpful for us since they are organisms that live in extreme conditions such as those of Mars. Your feedback was very positive and encouraged us in the early stages of our project.
Here there is a nice tweet of one person who attended the event. She says that the picture shows one of the most marvelous moments of the event was when Carlos Briones was speaking with the youngest people:
Technoscience Fair in Plamplona´s Planetarum 06/08/2019
The 8th of June, we attended the Technoscience Fair in the Pamplona’s Planetarium were we were able to listen to many scientific talks of about 5 minutes. During the morning’s break, we could talk to Hugo Salas, a member of the UPNA’s team, that together with us will form the only two iGEM Navarre teams. Afterwards, Sara Iglesias and him explained their project, which has the aim of creating a system that works as a biosensor.
In the afternoon we attended a talk given by three officers of the autonomous police force of Navarre. In their presentation, the agents of the Scientific Police Division talked about the importance of DNA in their investigations. As members of the Criminalistics Laboratory Brigade, they explained how to obtain and examine evidence. They did not only talk about it but they also carried out several experiments.
At the end of the talk, the first Biogalaxy team presented their project as part of the Technoscience Fair 2019. When they finished their presentation, the relay took place, where we assumed the continuation of the project and they gave us their banner in a symbolic way.
International Plant Physiology Congress 06/26/19
On wednesday 26th of June we attended the International Plant Physiology Congress in the Congress Palace Baluarte in Pamplona, the capital of Navarra. During the morning, we voluntarily worked as staff members, helping the speakers with their scientific posters and guiding them throughout the building. In addition, we took advantage of every opportunity to tell them about our project and we also listened to them in order to learn as much as possible.
Moreover, during the morning, there was a journalist of Agency EFE to interview the speaker Natalia Dudareva. This interviewer needed a person to help him translate what the speaker said, so Arantza Arrizurieta offered herself to translate from english to spanish and vice versa throughout the interview.
At lunch time we gathered together with the members of NavarraBG2018, which told us about their experience after participating in iGEM. We also had the opportunity to talk with two of the members of the team iGEM UPV from Valencia, last year’s iGEM winners with their project PRINTERIA.
In the afternoon, we attended the session “Young people in plant science” and the team iGEM UPV and NavarraBG2018 presented their respective projects just as they did in Boston last year.
Subsequently, we met Raúl Herranz and José Eduardo González-Pastor that along with Carolina González de Figueras and Alicia Villacampa Calvo explained us their experiment of Simulation of absence of gravity. They are researchers of Plant Cell Nucleolus, Proliferation & Microgravity Laboratory of CAB-CSIC, that belongs to Astrobiology Center of Madrid and collaborates with NASA.
Our trip to Madrid 27/08/2019
In August we went to Madrid for two important missions for us: first, we met meet the other Spanish High School Team (you can see our experience in “Collaborations”) and second, to learn more about the astronomy part of our project in order to complete it.
We were luck to be able to spend the day at CAB-INTA (Astrobiology Center- Institute of Aerospace Technique) from the hand of Juan Angel Vaquerizo, Scientific Culture Unit.
He toured us through all the departments, explaining what was done in each of them and he showed us the machines they used to work. Among them, the ones that caught our attention were the machines that simulated the impact of meteorites, machines that recreated the conditions of planets in order to know if bacteria can survive or not ....and the one we liked the most due to the proximity to our project: the machine that recreated the conditions of temperature, pressure, humidity and even cycles of sunlight on Mars. Also with enough space inside to put a small plant!!
During this day we learned a lot from the planets, how we work to know and know more about it, from upcoming missions ... and all the information we obtained we use it to improve and finish completing our project.
Maitane Alonso and Iñaki Ordoñez 08/31/2019
In our “Public Engagement” section you can see that this day in the afternoon we had an event in the Planetarium in order to publicize our project but, in the morning we were lucky to meet two very interesting persons: Maitane Alonso and Iñaki Ordoñez.
Maitane Alonso Monasterio is a researcher, inventor and developer whose main project ‘Food preservation, not perversion. Development of a new preservation method for alimentary products.' has been awarded several prizes at national and international competitions the last ones being second award at microbiology at Intel ISEF (2019) and first sustainability award from ASU. MIT's Licoln Laboratory is going to give her name to an asteroid. She is a medicine student at UPV-EHU and also gives conferences to spread science and awaken scientific vocations. She speaks five languages and has travelled around the world giving conferences. She also loves art, sports and music. She does volunteer work teaching children with learning problems and as a judge and organizer at science fairs.
When he told us, we realized everything that could be done if you felt like it. We told her our project and she gave us her feedback, she liked our idea and giving us advice on how to improve some aspects. Throughout our project she has been aware of our evolution and of advising us if we had any doubts.
We also met Iñaki Ordoñez, who works in collaboration with NASA. He gave us the keys to understand what we need to know about Mars for the viability of our project; since he works with the rover and obtains data from the extreme conditions of Mars, such as Darshdevils phenomena.
