On family trips to India as a child, Deepika Kurup often saw kids like herself forced to drink dirty water – as a result, at age 14, this Mighty Girl became determined to find to a way to ensure that everyone has access to safe drinking water. For an 8th grade project, the Nashua, New Hampshire teen invented a water purification system that uses a photocatalytic composite and sunlight to clean water – an invention which earned her recognition as America’s Top Young Scientist in 2012. Three years later, the now 17-year-old scientist has spent several years improving her purification system and is currently one of the finalists for the 2015 Google Science Fair!
According to Deepika, access to clean water is a global crisis; “one-ninth of the global population lacks access to clean water,” she explains “and 500,000 children die every year because of water related diseases.“ On the trips to India, her immigrant parents’ native land, Deepika saw the struggle for clean water first hand: “[My parents] would have to boil the water before we drank it. I also saw children on the streets of India… take these little plastic bottles and they’re forced to fill it up with the dirty water they see on the street. And they’re forced to drink that water, because they don’t have another choice. And then I go back to America and I can instantly get tap water.”
Her early investigations into water purification methods found that many of them were expensive and potentially hazardous. “Traditionally, to purify waste water, they use chlorine, and chlorine can create harmful byproducts,” she points out. “Also, you have to keep replenishing the chlorine, you have to keep putting chlorine into the waste water to purify it.” She wanted to invent a new way to clean water that would be both cheap and sustainable.
Deepika came up with the idea of using a photocatalyst – a substance that reacts with water’s impurities when energized by the sun – that also filters the water. The combination of the reaction and the filtration can remove most contaminants for a fraction of the cost of chlorine purification. She determined that her system reduces the presence of coliform bacteria by 98% immediately after filtration and by 100% within 15 minutes. Another advantage is that her catalyst is reusable: “a catalyst doesn’t get used up in the reaction,” she says. “Theoretically you can keep using my composite forever.”
Deepika’s efforts have already by widely recognized – in addition to being named America’s Top Young Scientist in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, she was also the recipient of the 2013 President’s Environmental Youth Award and the 2014 U.S. Stockholm Junior Water Prize, and she was named one of Forbes Magazine’s 2015 “30 Under 30 in Energy.” She’s also excited to meet the other finalists at next week’s Google Science Fair’s Finalist Ceremony – even if it means missing a few days of classes at her new school, Harvard University, where she plans to study neurobiology. Most of all, she’s looking for forward to taking her research from the lab to real life: “It’s one thing to be working in a lab, doing this, and another thing to actually deploy it and see it working in the real world. So that’s one of my steps in the future.”
To learn more about Deepika’s research, you can visit her Google Science Fair project page at http://bit.ly/1NjpQIq
I am so freakin proud of her. Desi girls doing good things ❤️
Legends say that hummingbirds float free of time, carrying our hopes
for love, joy and celebration. Like a hummingbird, we aspire to hover
and savor each moment as it passes; embrace all that life has to offer
and to celebrate the joy of every day. The hummingbird’s delicate
grace reminds us that life is rich, beauty is everywhere, every
personal connection has meaning and that laughter is life’s sweetest
creation. –Papyrus
I…Ah…hmm.
Look, it’s a great photo. The photographer kicked butt. They should be very proud of this photo.
But hummingbirds are not carrying your hopes for joy around. I am sorry. Have you met hummingbirds? Hummingbirds believe strongly that they should be eighteen feet tall and have flamethrowers. They are a half ton of pugnacious wrapped up in a half ounce of feathers. Given the choice, hummingbirds would fly around with “Ride of the Valkyries” blasting out of tiny speakers on their wings, putting the eyes out of their enemies.
They do not fear humans, but if they learn that humans will provide feeders, they will become very demanding. They are fiercely territorial. They are…kind of jerks, actually.
Also, there are papers indicating that female hummingbirds engage in what can only be termed “nectar-based prostitution” where they trade sexual favors to males in return for access to particularly rich nectar sources.
If your hopes for love involve nectar and your hopes for joy involve crushing your foes, seeing them driven before you, hearing the lamentations of their nestlings, etc, then possibly the hummingbird may carry them around, otherwise…uh…have you considered vultures? Vultures are very pleasant, affectionate, and social birds. You should probably give them your hopes and dreams. They would be better at it.
Did I mention it’s a great photo?
VULTURES, NOW.
this is Jack.
Jack (full name: Jack Sparrow) lives at the Hawk Conservancy. (He’s missing some toes because he was rescued from Vulture Smugglers.)
When you interact with Jack, you can tell he’s at about the level of … something between a ferret and a dog. Funny short little attention span, and a weird face to look at, but a human reads him as curious, friendly and interested in people.
When you meet a working vulture, you realize that they are definitely a wild predatory animal and very instinctive, but with a
consciousness that extends to interest in their surroundings; like, he’s
very much focused on THE SNACK, but before and after the SNACKTIME he
also wants to have a chat about your day and look at your face and peer into your camera and ask to look at the pictures you took and then say “hey now take one where I’m doing duckface” and you’re like “ok Jack go ahead”
Contrast with owls, which are typically pretty, but which are basically as interactive as a pop-up ad. They exist to land on things and eat them. They are not complicated. Vultures are hey-whatcha-doin. They’re yeah I’m a psychopomp but my real hobby is DJ-ing. They’d like to couchsurf next time they’re in town. You’d let them.
I would give Jack my dreams to carry. He would hold them well, in his big black lovely inky eyes, in his broken gentle feet.
EY FATTY BOOM BOOM 