Community 3D Print HUB Plan

A plan to consolidate a community's un-recycled material into filament to be used for a community 3D printing HUB. Users can vote / propose new products to be manufactured: Top voted products are assembled.

Different considerations: 

1) What if companies / manufacturers bid on the rights to manufacture --> sell the 3D printed products (Do users commit?)

2) Recycled material / funds are allocated and calculated per user: spent as currency to vote?

3) (similar to kickstarter) Any project / product can be printed as long as pre-determined goal/ cost is met. 

4) Accounts are only held by community/ local government? --> Needs prioritized and met as well with wants.

3 Projct Concepts

Nearly everyone uses stove to prepare certain types of meals, but stoves can be very inefficient. Here are three ways stoves can be improved. 

1. Stove designed to save time and energy. Heating plates of stoves rarely match the size of the pan/pot. In order to save energy heating plates could be made so they can be adjusted to the size of the pan. That way none of the heat from the plate can be lost to surroundings. During cooking, the heat that escapes from the cooking pot can be sucked up and then reused for heating. 

2. Multitasking stoves. Designed so cooking pots will absorb maximum heat and all of the lost heat can be used to charge small electronic devices like cell phones or batteries. Heat energy can be converted into electrical energy. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/dec/09/new-generator-creates-electricity-directly-from-heat 

3. Stoves designed specifically for cold climates. Fans can be used to distribute the heat from the stove during cooking around the house to keep the house warm during cold winters. 

4. I had a forth idea where sunlight energy can be used for cooking. In the places where it is sunny all year round like Hawaii or places hear equator, stoves can be using solar energy to heat up food.

Project Proposal

In the population with approximately 650,000 people, Seattle can benefit from having the existing green roofs to be transformed into food growing rooftops. As of a survey done in 2009, there are currently 8.5 acres of green roof tops with existing 13,1500 acres of roof tops available to be transformed. Of those 8.5 acres, only 3,631 square feet is used for food growing purposes, when converted to percentages, those 3631 square feet of soil for food results to a minuscule amount too small for percentages. My proposal is to transform the current green roofs into food production green roofs and have budgets set aside to transform the existing green roofs in Seattle.

By moving some food production into the city there will be a decrease in transportation miles which will reduce carbon emission. In addition, being in the city, it will be necessary to grow organically which benefits the consumers, farmers, and the environment. While the rooftops will be used to grow delicate greens, herbs, and fresh berries, the ground level landscaping will be used to plant fruiting trees. I believe that having such an environment will be beneficial to the city and environment since restaurants in the city will have access to fresher and better produce. It might also be possible that the foods grown within the city be sold to customers in the forms of farmers market.

3 concepts for project

dolphin 

about 20 thousands~30 thousands dolphin was killed cruelly in japan, still not get better this condition. 

Japanese government claimed that hunting whale is part of the culture which last more than 400 years, hunting whale was very important to fisherman as an way to maintain business there. 

dolphin was very sensitive to sound. fisherman use wall of sound to hunt dolphin and gather them around, then seal them.  

a relatively high amount of mercury was contained in the body of dolphin, which could cause serious reaction

most of Japanese even don’t know that what they bought on market was actually dolphin meat 

Japanese government don't restrict this killing motion and manipulate the member of IWC to exclude the dolphin from the list of protected whale.

consider to design an product that either could replace or change the need for dolphin meat or appeal to people to protect the dolphin.

Ecological footprint 

my CO2 emission annually = 20224, and U.S average is 16631.

most of emission contributed to the electricity used in heating/ ac and mobility.

3)   i was considering to make an new cooling and heating system that could reduce the usage of electricity. 

water 

reducing the usage of water 

most of water was wasted 

Project Ideas

New generation cooking stove. While cooking using a stove a lot of heat from the stove is lost to the surroundings. I've decided to come up with a new and more efficient kind of stove where all the heat is contributed to cooking and none is lost to surroundings. This would help people to save money on electricity and it would help the environment since less electricity would be used.

Smart water bottle. Water is essential for life and many of us carry around reusable water bottles that keep us hydrated when needed. However, there are many people out there who find reusable water bottle inconvenient. I was thinking about coming up with a new kind of water bottle that can be folded up. Instead of having an empty water bottle and throwing it away a smart water bottle would be able to be folded and can be put away virtually anywhere. This way it can be obtained and refilled anytime and not be a hassle to carry around while it's empty. This would help the environment and people.  

For my third idea I was thinking about focusing on culture aspect. I am not sure what I want to do yet but I was thinking it would be something along the lines of preserving languages. Maybe creating an app that would have all of the written languages in there so anyone can access it and study those languages if desired. 

Depleting Fisheries, Scrap Bike Tubes, the Mountain Pine Beetle

I decided to research three very different problems to potentially focus on for my project.

The first is the unfortunate reality that most fisheries are not being sustainably fished.  There are resources online to decide what fish to eat and which fish to avoid, based on sustainability and health benefits, but most people just don't know or care.  I think that the reason that many people don't care is because they see this as a "saving wildlife" issue, which many people just don't find important.  What they should see it as is a "saving my grandchildren's ability to enjoy fish as I have" issue.

I recently had to replace my bike wheel and tube.  The wheel is scrap metal, and is therefore valuable: someone benefits financially from recycling it.  At the moment, no one benefits financially from recycling my bike tube.  The tube is useless in this function, but it may not be useless in another application.  I would like to research and apply this material to a different application, instead of throwing it in the garbage and adding to already overflowing landfills.

As the climate has warmed, the Mountain Pine Beetle populations have run rampant; they are able to survive the winters in Canada and the PNW.  This means that more and more pine trees are being killed by this beetle.  This jeopardizes the habitats of animals in the forests as well as the jobs of those in the lumber industry.  I would like to address this by preserving the forest ecosystem as well as the employment of those involved.

Project Ideas

Urban Farming: Edible plants and trees in our community: Instead of visual pleasing plants that feed our eyes, having fruiting plants or produce plants along the urban area could potentially increase job for those who are homeless or those needing extra side jobs. Produce plants and trees can be visually pleasing as well with a return from it's edible parts.

Glucose Alerting System: Taking Princeton's developing technology of using a special type of infrared light to obtain blood glucose level, it is possible that with better research a new type of glucose monitoring device can eliminate the traditional prick testing. A wristband with the laser monitoring system will take periodic measurements of the patient, if the glucose is too low--the wristband will vibrate alerting the user of possible hypoglycemia. If the user ignores the vibrations and blood glucose continues to drop, an alarm will sound from the user's phone and connected phones alerting family that their loved one is having a low blood glucose complications. If the blood glucose continues to drop (below 30 mg/dL) medics are alerted because the user may be unresponsive with such low blood glucose. The glucose monitoring armband allows the user to better monitor their diabetes and the alerting system will relieve the family's worries.

Recipes by the People: Users can submit cultural recipes, which are reviewed and posted on website/mobile application. Each recipe will have a little background information of where it comes from and any special meaning behind the dish. Users can submit their recipes to the company for review and editing of background information.