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Notebook

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Building our own BioLab

The thing that sets us apart from most IGEM teams is our ultra-tight budget and our desperate attempts at making our own lab equipment. In Hindi, this is called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad "Jugaad"]. Apart from the pleasure of having your own incubator which is pink in color, these exercises help us understand the science better. In these images, we have our laminar air flow, a centrifuge and an incubator. We built our own lab by constructing a geodesic 10 feet dome which will house the entire lab and will function as the future ArtScienceBLR headquarters / community BIOlab.

Experiments at NCBS

We worked in the labs at NCBS, under the watchful eye of Navneet Rai.

The BioGeographer's toolkit

Every BioGeographer needs a toolkit to collect and store their samples.

The First Prototype:

Slab to store Epindorf tubes after soil sampling:

The Epindorf Bag

Soil Sampler ..for stylish soil extraction

The Post-Natural BioGeographer

Sidharta poses with his Soil Sampling toolkit

Outreach with (skeptical) Friends

As we all know aerial photography is quite expensive; owing to our tight budget, we had to come up with a simple and cheaper way of the same- balloon mapping.

We invited students from our campus to show them our cost effective way of aerial photography. They were quite impressed of how a easy it was to make a useful gadget out of simple day to day objects- helium filled balloons, a strong thread and a digital camera.

Watching some David Cronenberg

Shivers (a movie directed by David Cronenberg) is about a doctor’s attempts to bring out the inner sexual animal in man, using a parasite. He fooled his co-workers, and sponsors, into thinking that he was working on creating an alternative to organ transplant, by using parasites. The doctor was unable to accurately predict what the modified parasite would do. This lead to the parasite spreading from his teenaged mistress to quite a few other residents of a “sterile” high-end apartment block, and spreading uncontrollable sexual desire. This movie highlighted the unpredictable nature of the effects, the consequences of any modifications that we make in any organisms. It also highlights the unpredictability of the behaviour of the organisms. The behaviour of the modified organism in the laboratory is not adequate enough to predict its behaviour in the outside (real) world. The parasites modified an entire society and, in a manner, the entire purpose of a community.

We also watched The Fly...and here are a few of the reactions!

Some Early Speculative ideas

Brainstorm of Soil Mapping

Urban Bacterial Theater

Desire Line Drawing Capture the paths of people on a park using Stop Motion Sample along those paths

Hospital Waste Samples Human Parts thrown out back? Nurse Costume

Family History

Super Hero Saving the Day Radiation / Mutation i.e. Spiderman, Incredible Hulk

Disaster Mapping Fukishima, Chernobyl, Bhopal etc... E-Waste Sites

Retracing a walk Recursion / Remembering Gandhi Sea March Silk Road Ghengis Kahn

Topography / BioTrekking

Farmer / Drought / IR Mapping

Costume = Bullet Belt

Blood Soil Conflict Areas / Borders Israel / Palestine Kashmir Tropic of Cancer - Bhuj

Tea Plantation Basket Costume for Collecting samples Terroir

Ant Hills / Termite Mounds Costume = A Bacteria Zoologist / Arcehologist

Paranormal Activity Soil Ghost Hunters

Soul in the Soil Graveyard / Tower of Silence

Sending Soil on a Journey Put a potted plant on a train and take samples at each end

Soil Sadu Ask for soil samples instead of alms Wiseman / karma

Culture Soil Compare different cultures / paint clothes

National PCR Compare national data (GDP, GINI) with PCR data

Sunrise Sampling Grab samples as the sun comes up across the world

Airplane dust Collect samples on the plane

Sea beds Since it is no ones land. International waters

Oil Refinery / Shipping Ports Look for oil contamination / Map the flow of energy

Shadows & Soils Micro-climates on ONE site based on where sun hits or doesn't

Zoology of the Future

Old vs New Old vs. New Airport in BLR Oldest Building in BLR and site that is being built on now Schools vs. Old Age Homes

Royal Soil Difference between "holy" soil & normal soil

Neighborhood Soil

Cultural Soils

Walking / Imagery of Feet

Lake / Garbage Disposal

Evolution Mapping the evolution of borders/city limits Soil samples along different border

Trace a day Follow a cow/street dog/goat across the city, and take soil samples along the path say, every 30 mins. Follow people from "contrasting" walks of life