Difference between revisions of "Team:Costa Rica/Human Practices"

Science Through Dance

If there is something that we can be sure of is the primitive need that human being has to understand and describe the world that surrounds us. Both science and art, are avatars of human creativity, created to facilitate the process of understanding and expressing. Nevertheless, most people use to think about them as separated fields.

That’s why, using our background in science and the experience as a dance teacher of one of our team members, we fusioned them in a special show, named Science Through Dance.

The show Science Through Dance, gave us the opportunity to bring science and dance to the table, where dancers, scientists, dance parents, university teachers and many supportive people experienced, enjoyed, felt and learnt from it. It’s important to say that this space was also a way to demonstrate the capabilities of the country in these areas, which often go unnoticed or unconnected.

To achieve the goal, we contacted scientists, dancers from all ages and one of the most famous theatres in Costa Rica. First, for science section, we counted with Rosalind Innovations, a biotech-social entrepreneurship who spoke of the magnificence of nature and the unbelievable biotech projects that emerged from it. Also, 4 chemistry students from the University of Costa Rica, elaborated an incredible show, where they made and explained amazing experiments. Additionally, our team presented the project we are taking to the iGEM competition. As for the dance section, we counted with 90 dancers from 7 to 35 years old, from beginners to nationally and internationally recognized dancers.

Disciplines preformed were from Ballet to Jazz, Tap, Hip Hop, Contemporary, Lyric, Latin Dance, Antigravity, Break Dance and African Dance. All of them appreciated by 285 spectators. The show was covered by Novum Comunicaciones S.A., a company who took all astonishing photos you can see in the next slideshow.

iGEMxSDGs Challenge

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In collaboration with the 2019 iGEM teams from Taipei American School (Taiwan) and the University of Tübingen (Germany), we created a challenge related with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations. This three continents and different time zones collab, was born to promote the SDGs and show the iGEM 2019’s footprint in the advancement of a global sustainable development.

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iGEMxSDGs challenge’s inspiration is the current need to address the global challenges we are facing and we will potentially face in the future, confident that our challenge can impact teams in their fulfilment of the SDGs.

Every year each iGEM team targets at least one goal through their project and even more considering the human practice, collaborations and potencial outlook. Base on that, our challenge invited teams to match their targeting goals and post them on their social media. The strategy to encourage more teams consisted in a nomination chain, similar to the ice bucket challenge, where you accepted the challenge, posted your information and tagged three teams to do the same in the next 48 hours.

Considering the amount of tasks an iGEMer have to do this days, we elaborated a platform in our wiki (LINK) to facilitate the process. There, you just had to access from an iGEM account, select your team goals and easily create a collage for your social media. Also, we established a hashtag for our challenge named #iGEMxSDGs, to show all team posts and motivate other teams to do it.

Challenge Results.

A total 74 teams participated in the hashtag challenge. The list of them is located in Collaborations). We shall now discuss the most shared SDG’s among the participants of our challenge.

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SDG 3. Good Health & Well Being: This was the most frequent goal targeted by teams that took part of the challenge. According to the UN, ensuring healthy lives and promoting the well-being at all ages is essential to sustainable development. Since the 19th century, significant efforts have been made to eradicate all sorts of diseases, including polio, smallpox, and malaria in most developed countries. It is not a coincidence that most iGEM teams targeted this sustainable development goal, since one of the main applications of synthetic biology is the treatment of diseases. Whether they come from pathogens, or from pollution, most teams agree that the most important goal to have in mind is the well being a health of the general population. This, combined with efforts in promotion and prevention, provide local communities with the necessary tools to achieve sustainable development.

SDG 17. Partnerships for the goals: Most teams agreed that partnerships are the key to achieve major advancements in any field, specially if we are talking about development. For us, one of the main reasons why iGEM is unique, is because it promotes collaborations, and exchange of ideas between many different countries and disciplines. Even if a team has a project more oriented towards local issues, it’s important to document and share gathered information or data. You never know if someone across the world is trying to solve the same exact problem you are facing.

SDG 12. Responsible Consumption and Production: Climate is one of the major global concerns right now. It is necessary to adopt a responsible approach towards production and discard of every kind of goods (clothing, technology, food). It is extremely important to achieve efficiency, and to minimize pollution via recycling. Being responsible with the environment is one of the main axes of sustainable development. We need to shift our mindsets from “How can we produce more and cheaper?” to “How can we produce more efficiently, minimizing our environmental impact?”. A significant amount of teams agreed with this. Pollution is a small and large scale concern, and efforts have to be doubled in order to solve this problem. Most of the teams in this collaboration have projects related directly to reducing contamination in industrial communities.

SDG 9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: The fourth most shared SDG among the teams is one of the most fundamental in matter of development. Progress is absolutely necessary for sustainable development, and innovation is key to progress. Whether it comes from the improvement of already existing processes, or the creation of completely new technologies, iGEM teams agree that to make a change, it’s important to create something new and relevant. This also closely related to the very theme of iGEM, which is the development of synthetic biology, through interdisciplinary innovation.

Booklet

“Synthetic biology has expanded and evolved substantially from its initial rather narrow focus to appreciate and use more fully the diversity of mechanisms found in natural biological systems” -Christina D. Smolke.

Nevertheless, this accomplishment can only be achieved is there is enough dialogue between the parts involved in Synthetic Biology improvement. In Costa Rica, as in many countries, there is still a lot to learn and discuss in this areas. And so, resources, bureaucratic processes and the lack of scientific diffusion to general public are some of the problems frequently found in synbio investigations in our country.

Therefore, our team worked in the study and vinculation of synthetic biology segments needed to be strengthen in our country. These sectors include National Politics, Healthcare Systems and general public.

To gather information about the state of the art of National Politics in terms of Synthetic Biology, we interviewed experts in the topic:

As for the Healthcare System, we wanted to approach to medical centers and doctors as a primary source of information and future distribution channels of synthetic biology health solutions. Therefore, we got in contact with:

Collected information from the interviews (explained below), we decided to elaborated a booklet looking forward to inform the three segments mentioned before. You can see the material here. (que “here” sea hipervínculo al diseño del folleto, que va a estar al final).

National Politics

Health Care System

In a meeting with Dr. Fernando Morales and Dr. Gustavo Leandro, we talked about the prospects of synthetic biology in health. In regards of their interest on the topics discussed, they helped us organize a broadcast event in the National Hospital of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Dr. Raúl Blanco Cervantes Hospital, which is also a WHO collaborative center.

The event was attended by 72 health professionals (the list of attendance is shown in the following table). Participation was not only from the Dr. Raúl Blanco Cervantes Hospital, but also from the infectology department of San Juan de Dios Hospital, both of them belong to the 29 public hospitals of our country. It was important for us to exchange ideas with experts of both institutions because they frequently attend cases of multidrug resistant bacteria, which could eventually be treated through synthetic biology solutions.

During the event, we were able to share with the audience the concept of synthetic biology, how it is applied in Costa Rica and the possible use of bioengineered microorganisms as treatment. The response of the participants about the topic was positive; however, we were interested to know if they considered that a bioengineered probiotic as a therapeutic was a possible option in our healthcare system. Among the comments we received, doctors reaffirmed to us the importance of divulging this new kind of treatments, so that the public is more recipient of it and less scared about its side effects. In words of one of the doctors: “if you publish, communicate and socialize your treatment, then it is easier for us to suggest it as a therapeutic to patients that have heard about it, in contrast with those who have not”.

Hand in hand with the above, another engagement activity we did in the Dr. Raúl Blanco Cervantes Hospital consisted in providing the information of the booklet to various patients and companions. As this hospital is specialized in the elderly, we were able to share about antibiotic resistance with a vulnerable public. Must of patients were really interested on the topic and they took their time to read the information provided and ask us questions. Therefore, in the hospitals we were able to bring synthetic biology as an alternative closer to the Costa Rican healthcare system and final beneficiaries.

Academic Talks

Costa Rica is recognized as one of the leading countries in terms of education in Latin America. However, for Costa Rican educational policy and practice there’s a lot to improve in the field of science and technology. Within it, synthetic biology is undoubtedly an unexplored topic in Costa Rican education.

Therefore, our team gave the booklet and talked to high school and undergrad students who aren’t able to learn of it in order place. We introduced basic concepts of synthetic biology such as genetic modification, recombinant proteins, domain fusions, among others. We also explained our project diffEASY, raised awareness about the situation of Costa Rican politics regulation and mainly, motivated them to don’t lose their interest to understand their surroundings.

Press Release

Our booklet aimed to engage synthetic biology with Costa Rican society too, considering the beliefs of general population, some of them based on disinformation. Therefore, we reached different press media from our country to help us inform a larger public. It is important to emphasize that this kind of involvement with general public is key in the improvement of an informed and critical society, in order to create awareness of the possibilities with GMOs and their limitations.

Fortunately, we were featured in multiple press releases, including social media, radio and television. Notably, TV interviews were hosted in the main TV news channels of the country. Also, thanks to Kantar Media Ibope, software for press monitoring used by ITCR, here we show you a summary with all the press publications and their reach, which had a total of 204 373 people.

Our booklet design

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