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$ 5000 IDEAS Prize
$ 3000 IDEAS
International Technology Prize Humanitarian Demining Tool Kit
$ 3000 IDEAS
Prize
$ 3000 IDEAS Prizes Science Education in Pakistan Group (Mobile Science Lab)
$ 2000 IDEAS
International Technology Prize
$ 2000 IDEAS
Prize Novel Endotracheal Tube Design (a.k.a. Nerdvana)
http://kinkajou.designthatmatters.org/ The Kinkajou projector is a low-cost LED microfilm projector. It fills a need for students who are faced with limited resources such as lack of AC electricity, high textbook costs, and poor access to educational materials. The idea of using microfilm projection as a low-cost library for developing countries was engendered, in the 2002 Design that Matters seminar, by the design team of David LoBosco, Saul Griffith and Timothy Prestero. In the fall 2002 term, a 2.009 team designed and built an alpha prototype of the Kinkajou projector. The Kinkajou projector is able to project microfilm images from a personal size to an image large enough to be viewed by a classroom. World Education
(WE), a non-governmental organization, is eager to implement the
projectors in their classrooms within the next year. The Kinkajou
projector has also been selected, out of over 200 applicants world-wide,
as one of ten finalists in the Saatchi & Saatchi Award for Innovation
in Communication. We will know by May 6th whether or not we will
win the Saatchi prize. Download Proposal
De Barrio a Playa is a workshop for young people living in marginal settlements in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The program seeks to provide youth with a unique and formative educational experience. The workshop will begin with an outdoor retreat that will cultivate leadership and teambuilding skills. At the same time, participants will learn about environmental and health issues affecting their own community and will brainstorm ways to effectively address these problems. Upon returning home, they will tackle an aspect of the issues affecting their neighborhood by enacting a real community improvement project. De Barrio a Playa fills a gap in the educational opportunities available to children in the barrios, where school resources are stretched and extracurricular activities are scarce. The workshop is innovative in that it combines an educational outdoor experience with follow through on a real project back home. Participants will be encouraged to be imaginative and to make a positive impact – however small – in their community. The goals of this project are achievable: to give participants a valuable experience and to make them feel empowered to come together to address an issue facing their community. De Barrio a Playa will give youth the skills, knowledge, and confidence necessary to create change in their environment. This pilot project will also provide adult leaders from local institutions with a Workshop Toolkit to continue implementing the workshop in the future.
Landmines are extraordinarily cruel weapons laid by both military and guerilla forces during war. Buried landmines remain active for over 50 years, lingering long after hostilities have ceased. Mines are indiscriminate in their destruction and maim and kill about 26,000 civilians each year, most of them women and children. The UN estimates up to 120 million landmines in over 70 countries worldwide, mostly clustered in the developing world. In addition to inflicting physical and psychological damage on civilians, landmines disrupt social services, threaten food security by reducing land available for farming and hinder the return and resettlement of refugees and displaced persons. To combat mine use, military forces employ high tech and expensive demining techniques. However, in most developing countries, humanitarian deminers operate on extremely limited budgets using low-tech instruments such as gardening tools. Most casualties that occur on the humanitarian demining field result from either the "use of wrong tools" or "misuse of right tools". To date, there is no established toolkit-of-choice that can be issued to each individual deminer, primarily because demining tools are locality-specific. Cost, size, weight, manufacturability, materials, usability, comfort are other concerns. We propose a low-tech low-cost toolkit made from indigenous materials containing tools that are "hard to misuse", emphasizing how simple low-tech changes can make a difference in safety. This work is an improvement over an existing kit designed by our current collaborators in Zimbabwe. The toolkit aims to encourage a global indigenous demining capability within all landmine infested countries. Download Proposal 
The energy in an alkaline cell costs less than 1 penny by grid prices. There are tons of batteries which end up in land fills every year. With this realisation, a distribution model based around leasing cartridges and selling the energy was envisioned and a vending machine for processing and conditioning rechargeable NiMH batteries was built. The idea is to have a machine that would take the batteries in, clean, and recharge them, and vend a recharged battery "instantly" at a much lower cost than a new physical battery. A network of such a physical infrastructure that supplies a service whilst digesting its own waste - a network of such battery vending machines negates the need for single use cells. the sales model is one of leasing the hardware cartridge, and paying for the energy. We would like to test the idea in a closed community such as MIT as a useful demonstration project. We describe it as an industrial ecosystem which takes care of its own waste.
Access to safe water remains an urgent human need in many countries. Tremendous human suffering is caused by diseases that are largely conquered when adequate water supply and sewerage systems are installed. The need for a simple, inexpensive and effective water treatment technology is great. This proposal is for funding for the development of a new household water filter that costs less than $1 USD ? the BioSand pitcher filter. Developed specifically for use by poor people in developing countries, this technology has much to offer as a purveyor of safe household drinking water. System strengths include simplicity, effectiveness, economic sustainability, social acceptability, and reliance on local resources. The author plans to work in collaboration with Bhikku Maitri, the head of the International Buddhist Society in Lumbini, Nepal (a Buddhist center and local health clinic), to implement a pitcher filter pilot project in the region.
SEPG is an acronym for Science Education in Pakistan Group. The project’s aim is to provide access to scientific equipment and enable students in villages in Pakistan to perform experiments using a mobile science lab. In order for students to understand the basics and develop an intuitive understanding of the material experiments and visuals are of vital importance. No village in southern rural Punjab has access to scientific equipment. Rural Pakistan is plagued with poverty, a lack of infrastructure and discrimination between genders. Our solution for the lack of scientific equipment is to build a mobile science lab. Through a mobile science lab we hope to provide students with access to the equipment and through the physical resources and the classes our current aims involve:
Waterborne illness associated with unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation is still a major cause of death in the developing world (World Health Organization, 2002). These casualties could be avoided through improved water supply, water quality, hygiene education and sanitation. The MIT UV-Tube Project focuses on improving water quality for people in developing areas where other water treatment methods are not applied consistently because of their cost, inconvenience, complexity, or energy requirements.
Pending laboratory test results, field tests are planned for June 2003 in Borgne, Haiti where manufactured, off-the-shelf UV disinfection systems have been previously introduced. The new Borgne Environmental Technology Center / Idea Exchange focuses on inspiring community involvement and creativity in environmental problem solving. The field test of the ferro cement UV-Tube will be the initial project of the center. We hope to build at least three prototypes to replace the three solar powered manufactured UV systems in Borgne (which have had maintenance issues). We also plan to test the microbiological effectiveness of the UV-Tubes in the field and to collect user feedback on the design. Finally, if there is community interest in the technology, we hope to begin a discussion about how the ferro cement UV-Tube might be incorporated into the local culture.
Novel Endotracheal Tube Design (a.k.a. Nerdvana) Endotracheal tubes are used to delivery air to patients (over 200 million/yr.) in critical intensive care situations. The polymeric tube, with an inflatable cuff at the trachea protects the lungs from any foreign materials that may be aspirated into the trachea. The current tracheal tubes in use cause problems from irritation to severe morbidity to death because of intubation. The endotracheal tube design that will be used is meant to ameliorate the complications of the present inflatable cuffs inflated at the trachea by alleviating the high constant pressure and placing it with a low-pressure system. A design patented by Dr. Everard Cox, a retired surgeon who has agreed to let us work on the improvement of this tube, needs additional prototyping and testing. His design will bring the pressure on the trachea from 50mmHg to 5mmHg. |
