Feb. 7th Nonmentor Meeting

At our Nonmentor Meeting this week, we focused on updating and editing our NSF proposal. We spent time working on writing our respective portions and adding in references as needed. We had to overhaul the basic structure of the proposal because it was not conveying what we wanted it to focus on. After we worked on it, it now emphasizes our experimental work, such as the modeling with COMSOL and the icebox experiments. At the end, we sent this version to Dr. Shah for his review and submission to the university. We are going to meet Thursday to finalize the proposal.

Ravi

FRESH Start!

Thanks to Divya who took the minutes before I arrived! The meeting was scheduled at the Engineering Building, not the Kim Building. Today, I learned that the Engineering Building is a part of the Math Building, and isn't in the Kim Building. Anyways..about our meeting!

Here's a brief recap of our meeting:
1) Outreach Program at BCC: Students interested in learning more about our project will get back to Amanda by February 15th, 2011 to determine when they can come and visit us.
2) NSF Proposal:
- Dr. Shah went over his edits and for our NSF proposal. The biggest problem was the little attention to scientific background, and too much justifications/broad impacts. We need more analysis on the technical components of our research, such as the implementation of the PCMs, geometry of integration of the ice box, and what is novel about what we are doing?
- We need to include references! Our rough draft only had three references. This is an anomaly from the other papers we've written which had more than enough.
- Dr. Hwang has agreed to put his name on our proposal. He will need to look over the paper before we submit it to NSF.
- We will be submitting our edited NSF proposal back to Dr. Shah by Tuesday, February 8, 2011.
3) Syllabus:
- Currently, we have very few goals after March. We must make it a priority to set more goals for the rest of the semester. By March 20th, 2011, we must set new goals for the semester.
- Marketing subgroup needs more goals. It should be their goal to add details of the marketing plan, such as finding a template.
- Blog Updates: The Minutes Keeper for the week posts minutes for both meetings and updates the blog. For subgroups, each member will rotate to see who posts on the blog that week.
- Attendance Policy: 2 excused/scheduled absences are allowed. If you are 20 minutes late, it counts as 1 unexcused absence
4) Deadlines:
- February 17,2011 - Finish the previous goals we have before Rebecca and Dr. Wallace (Gemstone staff) comes to visit
- March - Before the students from BCC come to visit, we must complete the goals regarding the icebox experiments. We want to share with the students the experiment experience we have.
- Spring Break - Prepare the end-of-the-semester deadlines, prepare to build the prototype, and finish writing parts of the Thesis so we can edit when we come back from break.
- April 22, 2011 - Undergraduate Research Day - Chance to share our research with the school
5) Miscellaneous
- Non-mentor meetings will take place on Tuesdays, from 10pm-11pm
- The Sensors Subgroup will change to the Materials/Building Subgroup
- Mentor Meetings will be at 3:45PM

This semester, we are hoping that there is more fluidity amongst the sub-groups. We want to make sure everyone everyone is participating. If you find yourself doing nothing, bring it up at the mentor/non-mentor meeting. We should all strive to do something to help our research progress.

Looking forward to a great semester!

-Young

First Non-Mentor of the New Semester!

All the members survived the "snowstorm," and we had our first non-mentor meeting for the new semester! As the semester begins, we immediately set out to work on our Gemstone project. The very first goal was to edit the syllabus for our team. Before we got started, we had to share some good news. We now own a Greenbox to run tests, and we found a group of students from Chevy Chase HS that are willing to come and visit us to gain some lab experience.

Some changes to the syllabus include:

- Reinstatement of the late fee. The penalty will be $0.25/min for a maximum of $5

- Every member is allowed two mentor/non-mentor schedule absences

- Keeping up with blogs

• The Minutes Keeper for the week is responsible for posting on the blog twice a week after the non-mentor, and mentor meetings.
• Each subgroup will update the blog after their meetings. Members in the subgroup will rotate to see who posts on the blog.

Expect a lot more of posts from Team FRESH!

-Young

Colloquia and Plans Forward

Last Tuesday, we presented to Gemstone freshmen and sophomores on the progress of our project so far.  Divya detailed the cold chain using our animation created by Vishnu Ganti at the Maryland Institute of College of Art (you can check out a low-resolution version here: http://vimeo.com/16537015).  After that, Jason went over the design criteria and plan for our ice box, and Kelly explained the CompSol diagrams.  Our presentation was well received and we got a few questions from the freshmen about materials we will eventually use to construct the ice box.  After our presentation we had a post-Colloquium celebration where we enjoyed Chipotle and then watched Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire at Divya's place.  


On Thursday we had our usual meeting where we discussed goals for these last few weeks of the semester.  The technical team has a few questions they will look into:
-Why do vaccines need to be kept in the 2-8 degree Celsius range?  How was this range determined?
-How can we get CompSol to stop logging out during data collection?
-What other variables should be considered for our ice box experiments? 
-What other PCM's can we test?
-How can we can get vaccines to test inside the ice box?
-How can we learn from existing products to refine our design?  For example, the Greenbox model uses a small storage space and a lot of PCM to stabilize the temperature for about 28 hours.  This seems like a lot of materials used.  


By Thanksgiving we hope to do the following:
-Finish CompSol modeling
-Find new PCMs (at least 4)
-Further understand existing models like the Greenbox
-Receive colorimetric sensors samples (by end of Thanksgiving), and test them immediately when we return


The technical hopes to use the help of our Roosevelt HS student lab assistant to complete ice box experiments by the end of the semester.  Next semester we would like to compare the model with physical testing and optimize dimensions.  


The non-technical team hopes to complete the cost-analysis by Thanksgiving weekend and start working on an outline of our Gemstone thesis.  The five sections are Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Results, and Future Directions.  We aim to complete a draft by the end of winter break.  We hope to also get our education program off the ground next semester.  Let us know if any of you would like our team to present at your high school! 

Non-Technical Team Update

This week, the non-technical team will add to our comprehensive list of current technologies. We want to compare some of these technologies to our design criteria and see how our device will match up.

Soon we hope to look more in depth into the timeline of the cold chain to see exactly how long the vaccines take to get from one stop to the next.

What is the Cold Chain?

“This porridge is too hot!  This porridge is too cold.  Ahhh, this porridge is just right.” 

These few lines should send you on a trip down memory lane all the way to the cabin with the Three Bears.  Now replace “porridge” with “vaccine.”  You’ll find it’s not so easy to be Goldilocks.  It’s hard to figure out which vaccines are “just right” enough to inject people with.  Stored in extreme heat or extreme cold, vaccines can go bad.  Vaccines need to be at the right temperature so that they can protect people from disease. 

The cold chain is the sequence of events required to transport temperature-sensitive products through refrigerated units.  Products typically include vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs.  In fact, based on a recent study conducted by PharmaCommerce, seven of the ten top global pharmaceutical products in 2014 will require cold-chain handling.[1] The general chain is made up of five locations: manufacturing headquarters, international airport, regional ministry of health, local hospitals/clinics, and community centers.  To get from one step to the next, products are transported by plane, truck, motorcycle, or bicycle.  In rural areas where roads are not developed, they are transported by foot. 

It seems simple enough, but the task of maintaining temperature has puzzled the world for centuries.  The practice of using refrigeration dates back to 1797 when British fishermen used ice to preserve stock piles.  Shortly after in the 1870s, frozen meat was moved across oceans.  The 1950s brought companies that specifically wanted to transport pharmaceutical and medical supplies to the world.  By the 1990s, the world was literally shrinking thanks to the Internet, but there were still big distances for products to travel physically from origin to destination. 

Even today there are big differences from country to country, town to town, or city to city in terms of how the cold chain is carried out.  In underdeveloped areas where electricity is unreliable, vaccines go bad fast.  Think back to when you lose power during a thunder storm; when the storm subsides, you have to throw away all the food in your refrigerator.  The worst part is that often the vaccines are not thrown out.  Where electricity is totally unavailable, more compact ice-lined refrigerators are used to store products.  A major problem exists in using the different refrigeration equipment at every stage of the cold chain.  Health workers need to know how to monitor the vaccine temperature and what to do if something goes wrong.  Communication is key to a smooth operation. 

Making sure the cold chain is tightly regulated will be crucial to rolling out vaccines and drugs in the future.  From both an economic perspective and a human perspective, it is critical to keep improving the cold chain. 

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[1] http://www.fiercebiotech.com/press-releases/todays-global-biopharma-cold-chain-market-5-1-billion-growing-6-6-billion-2011

Today's Meeting

In this mentor meeting, we first went over relevant goals and things accomplished over the past week. Matt was able to model water in an open container on Compsol, but not phase change yet. This is a priority goal for Thursday. The sensor team believes conductivity sensing to be the best way to monitor PCM state, but color temperature sensitive labels could be another option/backup. The Ice Box experiment was started on Sunday, with data being collected continuously since. They will look over this data in the coming days.  The nontechnical team will look for real world data about how often vaccines ship, how many people are stationed at a center, and how long vaccine shipments take. This information will then be organized into a chart showing a timeline for each step of the cold chain, and we can create a mock protocol for how our container can be shipped and refrozen. The nontechnical team also started benchmarking existing products, and made a google doc with 18 current products. The technical team will look over these products, and will rate them and rank them accordingly. We plan on transferring all our google docs and files to groupspaces soon, and imbedding this blog onto our team website. We concluded this meeting by discussing upcoming goals, such as asking experts about the feasibility of our design, analyzing PCM geometries, benchmarking products, choosing a sensor, and making a detailed cost estimate. We also plan on compiling all of our archived sources.

- Sahil