The Appropriate Technology Collaborative

Neonatal Incubator Made From Scrapped Car Parts

The incubator  is heated with headlights

Preterm babies often have difficulty regulating their temperature.  This can lead to organ failure.  Neonatal incubators are an important tool for reducing infant mortality.  Unfortunately for developing nations, modern incubators cost $40,000 and up.  They also tend to have very short life spans in the developing countries where power surges tend to damage their deilcate circuitry.  Fortunately, there is an appropriate technology solution.  The NYTimes is reporting the a consortion of Boston teaching hospitals and engineers have developed a rugged incubator that can be made from recycled car parts for a cost of about $1,000.  From the article:

Mechanically, incubators are simple devices, providing a warm, clean, womblike environment in which a baby can mature (though state-of-the-art models may have accessories like built-in X-ray machines and rotating mattresses). Low birth weight and other problems make it especially difficult for newborns to regulate their body temperature, a condition that can lead to organ failure.

In the car parts incubator, infants born at 32 weeks’ gestation or longer can receive supplemental oxygen while their lungs gain strength, antibiotics if they have infections, and low-lit quiet in which to sleep if their mothers are away or are otherwise unable to hold them. In an emergency, the incubator’s bassinet can be removed and carried to another part of the building or even to another hospital.

In truth, experts say, the developing world doesn’t need more incubators. It needs incubators that work. Over the years, thousands have been donated from rich nations, only to end up in “incubator graveyards” — most broken, some never opened. According to a 2007 study from Duke University, 96 percent of foreign-donated medical equipment fails within five years of donation — mostly because of electrical problems, like voltage surges or brownouts or broken knobs, or because of training problems, like neglecting to send user manuals along with the devices.

-Ben Connor Barrie

Solar Powered, Internet Enabled Classroom for Tanzanian Classrooms

The Linux desktop allows for up to 8 users reducing the systems total power usage

Just got back from MSU’s Design Days, where College of Engineering students present their semester projects.  There were a lot of great student projects, including a solar powered vaccine refrigeration system sponsored by ATC.  There were also some other great appropriate technology projects created my the Engineering students.  A group of students known only as “Team 2” had a really neat design to deliver computers to rural Tanzanian classrooms.  Their design uses a single desktop running Linux power up to 8 simultaneous user sessions at different workstations.  Team 2′s description of their project:

Lenovo is supporting development of a system to allow charging of batteries using solar panels, then powering one or more computers, a satellite Internet link, and 4-8 LCD-based seats. Prior work in 480, and by a team of Telecomm students, and by ECE personnel have produced a working system, but it is not maximally power-efficient and lacks the monitoring/control and safety features needed to make it usable in the field. The Fall ’08 MSU team and two EE students from the University of Dar es Salaam will explore technology tradeoffs, internet connectivity tradeoffs, and power monitoring/control, so that a user can look at an LCD panel and LEDs on the main module and determine solar charge rate, present power consumption, time until battery exhausted at current rates, internet connectivity, LAN connectivity, and a variety of fault conditions. Simultaneously, the teams will also implement open-source (Linux-based) software to allow users to browse the Internet, with the capability to restrict access to a specified list of sites.

-Ben Connor Barrie

Photo Credit: Team 2

6 Things You Missed if You Don’t Check the AIDG Blog

(1) Installation of a Ram Pump in Guatemala

Guatemala Ram Pump Install

Ram Pumps are ingenious inventions. Early designs date back hundreds of years. The essence of a ramp pump is to use shockwave pressure, imagine slamming shut a faucet, the water behind the faucet has a momentary large increase in pressure. The shock pressure forces a small amount of water uphill. A simple self running system can be set up where valves open and close on their own. As long as water is supplied to the pump it works.

Check out: Guatemala Ram Pump Install

(2) San Diego Pollution Solution

San Diego aims to fix a pollution problem by helping a Tijuana slum from Christian Science Monitor:

When it rains in Tijuana, it pours in San Diego. Runoff crosses the international border in gushes of floodwater, clogging everything in its path with dirt and debris.

A river, a wildlife-filled estuary, and the sea [plus nearby beaches] are all victims of this rainy-season menace, the product of a sprawling Mexican city where the poor often live without paved streets, running water, or sanitation.

Now, a cross-border team hopes to stem the tide of US-Mexican tensions and turn a Tijuana slum into an example of environmental activism. Their goal: Convince the community to devote its own time and effort to pave the roads in San Bernardo, a bustling neighborhood that becomes a bleak, muddy lake during heavy rains.

The story also includes a nice short audio segment.

Check out: San Diego Solution to Cross Border Pollution

(3) Don’t Wait For The Rain

YouTube Video Link

A rap in Swahili about how life can be better using the Kickstart Money Maker pump. In my opinion the Kickstart pump is one of the best inventions of the past 50 years.

Lyrics (they sound better with the music and in Swahili):

Hello Uncle!

“How can we go on farming if we can no longer depend on the rains?”
“Stop using old methods and buy a MoneyMaker pump.”

Refrain:
Don’t wait for the rain.
There’ pump called MoneyMaker.
It’s the best tool to end poverty.
(repeat)

Stop complaining about rain shortages every day.
Nowadays the rains are no longer reliable.
Why wait for the rain when your crops are drying up.

It is better if we become smart and start irrigating.
Use MoneyMaker and you can live a better life.
MoneyMaker Pump is the best I can tell you
For pumping water from wells, rivers, and ponds.

It’s easy to use and it’s affordable.
It’s easy to carry and easy to repair.
It doesn’t need electricity or fuel.

There is no more poverty with Money Maker pumps.
Use MoneyMaker for farming, irrigation and gardens.
Use MoneyMaker for car washing.

Even pump water to fill reservoir tanks.
For watering and washing livestock.
Water pressure is enough to pump a long distance.

If you own a MoneyMaker pump what else do you need?
You will plant and harvest all year round.
Your poverty will end. You will be able to
Educate and feed your children,
and even save some money.

refrain (bis)

It’s such a good pump that other’s try to copy it.
So take care when you buy one.
Make sure it has a serial number and
it comes with a one year guarantee.

etc. etc.

Check Out: Don’t Wait For The Rain

(4) San Diego aims to fix a pollution problem by helping a Tijuana slum

from Christian Science Monitor:

When it rains in Tijuana, it pours in San Diego. Runoff crosses the international border in gushes of floodwater, clogging everything in its path with dirt and debris.

A river, a wildlife-filled estuary, and the sea [plus nearby beaches] are all victims of this rainy-season menace, the product of a sprawling Mexican city where the poor often live without paved streets, running water, or sanitation.

Now, a cross-border team hopes to stem the tide of US-Mexican tensions and turn a Tijuana slum into an example of environmental activism. Their goal: Convince the community to devote its own time and effort to pave the roads in San Bernardo, a bustling neighborhood that becomes a bleak, muddy lake during heavy rains.

The story also includes a nice short audio segment.

Check Out: San Diego Pollution Solution

(5,6) Two Books By/For/About Social Entrepreneurs

A few good books by/for/about social entrepreneurs:

The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan

Economist Review:

The gist of the book is that established businesses should carefully watch—and be ready to invest in—various forms of social entrepreneurship, which tend to be good at spotting profitable opportunities in unlikely places, not least amongst poorer consumers at the so-called “bottom of the pyramid”. Mr Yunus has showed that even the poorest borrowers can be good customers, and as a result huge amounts of profit-seeking capital have flowed into the microfinance industry all over the world. Ms Hartigan and Mr Elkington reckon that social entrepreneurs will uncover other profitable new industries…..

In the early days, social entrepreneurs saw themselves as an alternative to business or government. Today, they want to be partners, seeing business and government as assets to be leveraged. This is probably a good thing, provided it does not dull their creativity or cause them to be more reasonable.

 

Paul Polak’s Out of Poverty:

From Publisher’s Page:

In this hard-hitting new book, Paul Polak tells why traditional poverty eradication programs have fallen so short, and how he and his organization developed an alternative approach that has succeeded in lifting 17 million people out of poverty.

Based on his 25 years of experience, Polak explodes what he calls the “Three Great Poverty Eradication Myths”: that we can donate people out of poverty, that national economic growth will end poverty, and that Big Business, operating as it does now, will end poverty. Polak shows that programs based on these ideas have utterly failed—in fact, in sub-Saharan Africa poverty rates have actually gone up.

These failed top-down efforts contrast sharply with the grassroots approach Polak and IDE have championed: helping the dollar-a-day poor earn more money through their own efforts. Amazingly enough, unexploited market opportunities do exist for the desperately poor. Polak describes how he and others have identified these opportunities and have developed innovative, low-cost tools that have helped impoverished rural farmers use the market to improve their lives.

There are dozens of other recent posts that are a must read. Check out: AIDG Blog

Afrigadget Redesigned

New Afrigadget Header

Afrigadget – one of my favorite blogs – has undergone a makeover. In addition to having a new and very cool look, Afrigadget is expanding their coverage of inventive things in Africa.

From Afrigadget:

2 New Things:

You’ll notice two buttons just beneath the header. We’re working on a number of items, two of which we’re ready to unveil.

The AfriGadget Grassroots Reporting Project
We’re intent on getting more AfriGadget contributors from all over Africa. Part of that plan is to find potential editors and set them up with a mobile phone with which to take pictures and do interviews. If you know someone that would make a good fit, let me know.

The AfriGadget Store (phase 1)
The first phase of the store is making some AfriGadget gear (t-shirts and mugs) available to everyone (hint: you can customize any design and select any type of shirt/color to put it on). The next step is to create a full-featured store with some of the items that are made by the entrepreneurs shown on AfriGadget. This would include products, as well as plans.

One of the big goals here is to create a service that doesn’t just publish interesting stories about African micro-entrepreneurs, though we do plan on continuing that, but to also explore ways that we can be a conduit back to those very same people. This redesign already has our future plans for dealing with entrepreneurs built into it. Part of that is the future phases of the AfriGadget store, but we’re also looking at ways to partner with others and encourage direct investment into worthy entrepreneurs businesses.

Via: Afrigadget