The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA is proud to present its annual Nanovation Competition.

Team ERAscience is once again honored to partner with CNSI (UCLA) for their annual Nanovation Nanoscience Competition for 2021.  Ten teams of 4-5 middle and high school students with a teacher leader and UCLA graduate student mentors will create cutting-edge design and technology business proposals based off of CNSI’s Nanoscience Institute workshop series.

The top 3 winning teams will be awarded science classroom supplies, and will be selected by a jury of UCLA professors and Los Angeles business professionals.

• First place: $2000 in classroom supplies.
• Second place: $1000 in classroom supplies.
• Third place: $500 in classroom supplies.

All ten finalist teams will receive an award for completing the pitch and final business proposal submissions.

Timeline of events

• January 4 – Call for submissions is officially open.
• January 29  – Submission deadline.
• February 12 – Finalists announced.
• March 5 – Kick-off meeting.
• May 21 – Final presentation video submission deadline.

FAQs

• When are submissions open?
  • See the timeline of events on our website for the most up-to-date information. No submissions will be accepted prior to the submission period.
• Who can participate?
  • We accept submissions from any middle and high school teacher who can lead a team with the correct number of team members. All participating teams must be able to attend our kick-off and final events.
• I have a lot of interested students! Can I submit multiple teams?
  • There is a maximum of 8 submissions per teacher per school, and a maximum of three teams from one school will be accepted as finalists. Each student may only be a part of one team.
• I’ve never taken a workshop with CNSI / I’ve done a lot of research on nanoscience and want to submit about a different topic. Can I still submit?
  • We welcome submissions related to any nanoscience topic. They do not have to relate to topics offered by our Nanoscience Institute series.
• I’m in the competition now! How do I get in touch with my mentor?
  • All mentor meetings will occur virtually, either by phone or online chat for 30 minutes with each mentor per week. It is the responsibility of the teams and teacher leader to establish the meetings with their mentors.
• My question wasn’t answered here. Who can I contact?
  • Additional questions can be mailed to education@cnsi.ucla.edu.

Submissions: https://cnsi.ucla.edu/education/nanovation-competition/

For prior Nanovation Competition results, please review older post in our News Blog.

Read about the very first UCLA CNSI Nanovation Competition in ERA Science News.

Many humans believed that the earth was flat because the naked eye cannot see the curvature of the horizon.  The same can be said about a nearly invisible single strand of virus that is potentially stronger, more powerful, more adaptable than our strongest muscleman.

What was just said sounds silly, perhaps even absurdly mundane.  Placing that level of importance on a lower life form over the most advanced species on earth would be dismissed simply as quackery.  Humor, for a brief moment, what earth's current demeanor really has in store for the current model of the human species.  Surely, silly speculations are easily dismissed, but consider that Albert Einstein's theories came to him in his dreams. As humorous as it may sound, by the end of this article, you will be wishing you payed attention to that guy parading at the street corner holding a sign stating "The End is Near."

One such respectful town crier in the form of Dr Nafeez Ahmed, Research Fellow at the Schumacher Institute, pragmatically states "The COVID-19 crisis is an urgent early warning signal for how industrial civilization is rapidly eroding the very conditions of its own existence.”

Endless scientific studies repeatedly point to the same end game scenario, where a rise above 3° C, equivalent to 37.4° F, will bake the planet extra crispy.  How you say?  Let's explore the scientific facts that explain the consequences of the global economy and our current state of chronic instability.

The probability of a global pandemic was dramatically increased by relentless and unregulated industrial expansion, which has destabilized ecosystems critical for planetary life-support. The same processes are driving other ecological crises which threaten to permanently undermine the health of the global economy.  Reinforcing Dr. Ahmed's findings, Dr. Aaron Bernstein, Director of Harvard Chan C-CHANGE, explains how a destablized ecosystem alters how we relate to other species and the opportunity for SARS-2 based viruses to evolve, he states "As the planet heats up, animals big and small, on land and in the sea, are headed to the poles to get out of the heat. That means animals are coming into contact with other animals they normally wouldn’t, and that creates an opportunity for pathogens to get into new hosts."

The components of a destabilized eco-system; deforestation, loss of habitat, carbon dioxide emissions, species extinction, polluted and piosoned water sources, over-population are the very same ingredients for such conditions giving rise for COVID-19 to dictate our global economy and our bumbling reaction and relationship to all other segments of the eco-system. This is earth's new reality, not just an epidemic, but a runaway world-wide pandemic, larger than previous pandemics in relation to the context of the world being in the "advanced" modern age.

As Dr. Ahmed coins our current state of affairs: "humanity faces a heightening risk of cascading breakdowns across interconnected social, economic and political systems. Without a transition to a lifeboat economy, markets cannot be recalibrated to protect public health and natural systems."  Meaning, humans lose, the virus wins.

Sources:

https://nen.press/2020/11/15/pandemic-signals-breaching-of-planetary-tip...

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/subtopics/coronavirus-and-climate-...

Image courtesy of Town of Princeton, North Carolina (https://www.myprincetonnc.com/covid19).

United Nations issued a warning of the rising levels of toxic brine in earths oceans.  The UN study concluded that 50 percent of the brine produced by desalination plants were underreported.

Recent study by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (Canada), Wageningen University (Netherlands), and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (Republic of Korea) analyzed a newly-updated outdated statistics to revise the worlds desalination plants.

Desalination plants extract potable water from ocean seawater, lakes and rivers either through thermal desalination or membrane processes. 16,000 desalination plants have been built throughout the planet and operate to counter the decreases in dependable water sources and drought, and the maintenance of habitation on arid lands.

In conjunction to high operating costs; high consumption of kilowatts per hour per water litre, resulting carbon emissions, environmental footprint, and chemicals for treatment, the discharge of waste chemicals and leftover treated brine are more difficult to mitigate.  Most operators simply dump that chemical-laden leftover brine back into the ocean.

Raising salinity levels, beyond the capacity of the ocean to disburse large quantities of waste, decreases oxygen levels, suffocates animals and plants.  Along with other chemicals such as chlorine, hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide, the discharge from large-scale desalination processes affect plankton and phytoplankton, which form the base of all marine life by forming the base of the food chain.

Huntington Beach Desalination Plant Proposal

For decades, the California Coastal Commission has struggled to restore Bolsa Chica Wetlands and its endangered marine life as well as a deteriorating water inlet.  Lack of capital to reverse erosion and industrial damage along the coastline have thwarted plans to restore Bolsa Chica and all life that depends on a healthy eco-system.

After the drought of 1998, Poseiden Water proposed a desalination plant in Huntington Beach where they successfully lobbied Santa Ana Regional Water Board for an approval to the measure.  The proposed plant will impact marine life from Palos Verdes to Dana Point.

In recent studies of the Poseiden Water Desalination Plant operating in Carlsbad, California, the Coastal Commission issued no less than 82 environmental violations including raising salinity levels as far as 80 miles out from the coastline as well as fining Poseiden Water tens of millions of dollars in penalties.

In the course of needing to address the deteriorating wetlands of Bolsa Chica, an amendment to the proposal required the same developer to restore and safeguard the wetlands habitat and maintain the water inlet so crucial to the survival of endangered species and plant life.

Sources:

https://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/un-warns-of-rising-levels-of-to...

https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-water-scarcity-increases-desalination-...

https://www.un.org/depts/los/global_reporting/WOA_RPROC/Chapter_28.pdf

https://voiceofoc.org/2020/09/conservationists-split-over-poseidon-desal...

https://www.coastkeeper.org/advocacy/desalination/

https://sciencing.com/pros-cons-of-desalination-plants-13425360.html

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190131143433.htm#:~:text=B....

https://www.surfrider.org/campaigns/desalination-plant-huntington-beach

https://greengarageblog.org/12-biggest-pros-and-cons-of-desalination

Photo by Crishazzard, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons

On April 4, 2019 team ERAscience was honored to host Dr. Jane Goodall’s 85th birthday celebration in Los Angeles at the home of ERAscience’ founders.
ERAscience is proud to align our mission with that of the Jane Goodall Institute. Dr. Goodall travels the globe over 200 days a year raising awareness of the fragility of our planet’s ecosystems and the need for united efforts to stem the tide of destruction caused by climate change and overuse of natural resources. According to a UN report, one million species of animals are near extinction. Let’s all join Jane in her fight to sustain our planet.

Please support the Jane Goodall Institute and Jane’s Roots and Shoots program.