A Method for Assessing the Sustainability of Design in Developing World Projects

Projects for the developing world usually find themselves at the bottom of an engineer’s priority list. There is often very little engineering effort placed on creating new products for the poorest people in the world. This trend is beginning to change now as people begin to recognize the potential for these projects. Engineers are beginning to try and solve some of the direst issues in the developing world and many are having positive impacts. However, the conditions needed to support these projects can only be maintained in the short term. There is now a need for greater sustainability. Sustainability has a wide variety of definitions in both business and engineering. These concepts are analyzed and synthesized to develop a broad meaning of sustainability in the developing world. This primarily stems from the “triple bottom line” concept of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Using this model and several international standards, this thesis develops a metric for guiding and evaluating the sustainability of engineering projects. The metric contains qualitative questions that investigate the sustainability of a project. It is used to assess several existing projects in order to determine flaws. Specifically, three projects seeking to deliver eyeglasses are analyzed for weaknesses to help define a new design approach for achieving better results. Using the metric as a guiding tool, teams designed two pieces of optometry equipment: one to cut lenses for eyeglasses and the other to diagnose refractive error, or prescription. These designs are created and prototyped in the developed and developing worlds in order to determine general feasibility. Although there is a recognized need for eventual design iterations, the whole project is evaluated using the developed metric and compared to the existing projects. Overall, the success demonstrates the improvements made to the long-term sustainability of the project resulting from the use of the sustainability metric

Identification of Functionally Important Residues of the Silkmoth Pheromone Biosynthesis-activating Neuropeptide Receptor, an Insect Ortholog of the Vertebrate Neuromedin U Receptor

The biosynthesis of sex pheromone components in many lepidopteran insects is regulated by the interaction between pheromone biosynthesis-activating neuropeptide (PBAN) and the PBAN receptor (PBANR), a class A G-protein-coupled receptor. To identify functionally important amino acid residues in the silkmoth PBANR, a series of 27 alanine substitutions was generated using a PBANR chimera C-terminally fused with enhanced GFP. The PBANR mutants were expressed in Sf9 insect cells, and their ability to bind and be activated by a core PBAN fragment (C10PBANR2K) was monitored. Among the 27 mutants, 23 localized to the cell surface of transfected Sf9 cells, whereas the other four remained intracellular. Reduced binding relative to wild type was observed with 17 mutants, and decreased Ca2+ mobilization responses were observed with 12 mutants. Ala substitution of Glu-95, Glu-120, Asn-124, Val-195, Phe-276, Trp-280, Phe-283, Arg-287, Tyr-307, Thr-311, and Phe-319 affected both binding and Ca2+ mobilization. The most pronounced effects were observed with the E120A mutation. A molecular model of PBANR indicated that the functionally important PBANR residues map to the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th transmembrane helices, implying that the same general region of class A G-protein-coupled receptors recognizes both peptidic and nonpeptidic ligands. Docking simulations suggest similar ligand-receptor recognition interactions for PBAN-PBANR and the orthologous vertebrate pair, neuromedin U (NMU) and NMU receptor (NMUR). The simulations highlight the importance of two glutamate residues, Glu-95 and Glu-120, in silkmoth PBANR and Glu-117 and Glu-142 in human NMUR1, in the recognition of the most functionally critical region of the ligands, the C-terminal residue and amide.UTokyo Research掲載「蛾の性フェロモン生合成と人のストレス・食欲制御の類似性」 URI: http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ja/utokyo-research/research-news/similarities-in-moth-pheromone-synthesis-and-human-stress-appetite-control/UTokyo Research: "Similarities in moth pheromone synthesis and human stress/appetite control" URI: http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/utokyo-research/research-news/similarities-in-moth-pheromone-synthesis-and-human-stress-appetite-control