Lab+Eight

Natalie Jeremijenko explains that the Environmental health clinic she founded is based on the redefinition of what counts as health by departing from the erroneous idea that health is internal, individual, genetically predetermined and pharmaceutical to motivate society to recognize that health is EXTERNAL, its shared and its course can be altered. People come to the clinic with environmental heath concerns instead of medical concerns, and are given prescriptions on things that they can do improve environmental health versus prescriptions for pharmaceuticals.

Jeremijenko discusses some new technologies that have been developed as an opportunity for social transformation. One of the is tadpole bureaucrats, which are tadpoles that are raised in a sample of water as a means of examining how human beings are affected by the water in their environment. The use of tadpoles is helpful because their biosenses are more sensitive, yet quite similar to human senses since they use the same hormones. This enables them to respond behaviorally and developmentally to industrial contaminants known as hormone emulators or endocrine disruptors that are connected to cancers and obesity among other things. Another new technology she discusses is the creation of engineered micro landscapes next to fire hydrants that infiltrate harmful pollutants that would otherwise wash into harbours. Social transformation occurs because of the awareness individuals gain about the environment as they witness such actions occurring around them. Eventually it is the aggregation of these activities improves local environmental health.

Shrimp

The process of making shrimp begins through the Aquaculture- the controlled cultivation of a body of water known as a shrimp farm. This is done by planting a fixed number of shrimp per squared meter in a body of water. Shrimp farm workers are responsible for feeding and monitoring the shrimp in addition to pond maintenance. Once shrimp reaches an appropriate size they are taken from their body of water they go to a plant that processes them by altering, enhancing and then packaging them. At this stage technology can also be used to create value-added products such as breaded shrimp.

Fortune Cookies

The popular fortune cookie is made from four simple ingredients- eggs, sugar, water and flour. The process is quite mechanical – as a machine is required to squirt the mixture onto griddles that rotate on a rotating wheel that is passed through an oven. A mechanical arm is responsible for grabbing a fortune note that has been loaded onto a tray and placing it on the cookie which is then folded by the machine. Once the cookies are cool and hard they are inspected and meet quality standards they approved to be individually wrapped.

As part of our systems analysis and design process it is important to understand how stuff is made so that if an issue/problem arises with our product we have an understanding of how to rectify it. It would be difficult to identify the cause of a system failure for instance if we had no concept of how the component parts of our system work, interact and affect each other. Also when it comes to the iteration or revision of a design the ability to identify the parts that are efficient and those that need to be redesigned is essential in order to create a better product.