The eradication of malaria is hampered by the ability of current diagnostic tools to detect very low-density infections in asymptomatic patients. In response to this, the aim is to employ loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), an innovative and novel technique to test for asymptomatic malaria. This low-cost technique is faster and more accurate compared to currently employed diagnostic tests. In Kenya, the aim is to (1) conduct a hotspot identification campaign using LAMP techniques to detect the malaria parasite, and (2) build capacity to ensure sustainability and local participation in the hotspot identification campaign. Results of this hotspot identification campaign will become an essential tool in future anti-malaria interventions.
Anti-malarial pills are among the most highly counterfeited drugs in Africa. Malaria kills between 1 and 3 million people every year, with 90% of those deaths in Africa. This reduces productivity in Africa by $12 billion and devastates local economies. The project aims to identify counterfeit anti-malarial drugs by developing a new technique to detect the concentration of artemisinin (the active ingredient) in these pills. Due to the prevalence of counterfeit drugs that have minimal amounts of this active ingredient, identifying its concentration in a pill has become important. The innovative aspect of this technique Spot-It!, is that it achieves the challenging task of measuring the concentration of active ingredient by combining two elementary methods, Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) and a simple chemical reaction.
The causes of child stunting, a nutritional status indicator defined as poor height for weight, include inadequate caloric intake, low protein consumption (particularly of animal source protein), frequent diarrheal illness, and poor nutrient absorption in the gut due to chronic latent infection. Probiotic supplements, paired with an adequate diet, are a promising strategy for addressing child stunting. This project aims to promote the feeding of safely prepared yogurt to children between 6 months and 5 years of age in households throughout Bajura. Local women’s expertise in dahi production and child feeding will determine the best methods of efficiently and safely producing high quality yogurt, and prepare it with locally available fruits so that children enjoy the taste. These “best practices” will then be disseminated throughout the district at the monthly mother’s group meetings.
4.6 billion people across the developing world lack adequate treatment of their feces and urine. ElectroSan will apply electrochemical cells that recover nitrogen from human urine. This product will be used to disinfect human feces and produce income as a fertilizer, making sanitation affordable in low-income communities like Mukuru, an urban Nairobi slum. This intervention can catalytically improve public health and environmental quality by treating and creating value-added products from waste.
InversionParaTodos.com.ar is a web based educational platform that will provide a set of tools that help individuals to manage debt, savings, public benefits, investments and other money related issues more effectively. The platform will target four million individuals from Argentina, between the ages of 20 and 40, who come from a low and middle class background, and who have access to the internet. These educational resources will take a holistic approach, including interactive graphs, tables, video lessons, and even live lessons with an instructor via the Skype API. The easy to use interactive platform will allow users to discover how inflation affects their personal assets and exposes them to liabilities. The main tool will allow users to enter their financial information, overlay different projections, and recommend an adequate course of action. The overall goal is to help people improve their personal finance knowledge and protect their savings against inflation. As a result, they will improve their economic status in the long term.
The Employment and Life Skills Academic Competition is a program that teaches teenagers resume writing, job interview and oral presentation skills, and financial literacy. The objective is to prepare high school students for life after graduation by not only making them competitive for the workforce but also teaching them information about managing their finances. The student participants prepare for the Academic Competition through an enriching afterschool program. A Resource Guide, which serves as an outline of the various skills and financial concepts to be mastered, is then distributed to all student participants. The Academic Competition includes four categories in which students will be evaluated as individuals or part of their high school team. The categories include an oral presentation, a mock job interview, a written essay focusing on financial literacy, and an objective section where the high school teams compete to answer financial-based questions in a game-show format.
The project strives to establish a communication between the United States and Russia that will discuss issues through authentic and open dialogue using social media. As a first step, the team will make a movie showing how Russian adopted kids have been raised in America. It will be a way to demonstrate that a recent politically-motivated ban of adoptions in Russia by American citizens hurts thousands of innocent kids.
The Food Bikery seeks to prove that food bikes are an economically viable, safe, and legal alternative to food trucks. In transitioning mobile food off of trucks and onto bicycles, the Food Bikery will: 1. Lower oil consumption; 2. Stimulate economic opportunities for low-income food entrepreneurs; 3. Increase physical well-being and health; 4. Foster awareness about the power of bicycles. The Food Bikery will harness the positive aspects that food trucks foster (economic opportunity, bringing fresh food into “food deserts” and community space), while minimizing their harmful environmental impacts. A prototype will be built of a scalable, turn-key food bike that can be used as a model to boost small business ownership among aspiring, environmentally conscious entrepreneurs, while shifting the current mobile food-business portfolio towards a low-carbon model.
Traditional lithium-ion batteries are produced at an increasing rate and each year at the end of their lives, they introduce over a hundred million pounds of chemical waste into the environment. The project’s main objectives are to develop a supercapacitor that serves as an energy storage alternative to traditional mobile device batteries and to create a paradigm shift in how people understand energy storage. The project aims to engineer an energy storage alternative that can be manufactured with little to no impact on the environment, produce a nominal amount of chemical waste, be fully charged in seconds and supply power for long periods of time.
