Team:UESTC Software/Notebook
NOTEBOOK
We gathered the highlights of our project to the notebook below so you can effortlessly skim through the story of UESTC-Software! Now our project is coming to an end. However, we will continue to enhance our software and reach a new stage.
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March 24
The University tryouts which has lasted for nearly a month ended, and the name list of the selected members of the school team determined. Then we formed our team—UESTC Software. There are 11 members in our team, majoring in different kinds of departments: Biomedical Engineering, Biotechnology, Micro-electric Science and Engineering and Information and Software Engineering. Our leaders and instructors conveyed their great attention and expectations to us.
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April 11
At our first meeting, we introduced ourselves to others. We discussed the schedule and the main tasks at this stage, and confirmed the project what we would design as well. Refer to the project, we determined our project titles as MCCAP—Minimal Cell Construct and Analysis Panel. The team leader emphasized the discipline required during the iGEM competition. Then we divided 11 people into 3 groups and assigned jobs to them separately.
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April 18
We plan to do massive reading of academic papers on minimal gene set and each member is required to share and analyze the ideas that he or she got from reading these papers. In addition, members are separated into 2 groups to learn from the previous iGEM teams and conclude what we could obtain from them, both advantages and disadvantages. To sum up, innovation, functionality and visual effects play important roles in our initial work.
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May 2
We had a video conference this time. After a week’s efforts, to a certain degree, we determined several pars, including the following aspects: design of wiki—divided by modules; design of webpage—the whole style is partly referenced to the formal best-wiki, and it should be shown in big and dynamic pictures, which are in high definition; art design—freehand sketching and pictures; software—divided into iOS and PC, there would be an interesting game referring to the iOS part.
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May 18
Together with IGEM club and China—CD UESTC, we introduced the project, communicated experience and strived to do better. After the communication, the iGEM club which consists of many freshmen and senior students who show great interests on iGEM competition designed team uniform for us.
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June 2
During this time, in cooperation with members from HKU, we came to Chengdu No.7 JiaXiang senior high school, which is the best high school in Chengdu, for a lecture about the iGEM and synthetic biology. Students from high school showed great enthusiasm and interests about our work, for instance, they asked a lot of questions, including ‘can we design little games on the phone and push it to the markets’, ‘can we high school students participate in the iGEM competition’ and so on. I believe in the near future, they will become a member of iGEM, just like us, and will do better than us.
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June 18
We encountered some difficulties and problems, especially when it comes to the design style of wiki. We had three plans but it was hard to reach an agreement. After a heated discussion between members and our instructors, we came to a final plan. At the same time, our professor gave us a wonderful lecture about synthetic biology and our project.
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June 30
Today we did a summary after reading a large number of academic papers related to MCCAP and had a comprehensive knowledge of the iGEM requirements. We focused on the structure setting and the principal of running, both the software and the game named Find Father for iOS. Beyond that, we enriched our game, including background which contains the culture of ancient China, enjoyment and interaction as well.
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July 8
Our final examination came, so we have a period time prepared for our final. After the final, we tried our best to contact with students and instructors who are in charge of iGEM from different universities and senior high schools in southwest China.
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July 22
This time we hold a party—The iGEM Southwest Union of China. We set up an iGEM academic communication organization which promotes the idea exchanging of iGEM projects with students from different universities and senior high schools in southwest China. Each school did a presentation to introduce their projects and ideas. We also shared our stories, presenting the software development of minimal gene set in bioinformatics. This is a good start for the collaboration in southwest China and we hope a farsighted development in the near future.
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July 31
We were debugging our previous design, at the same time, making our wiki pages and poster. Giant Jamboree was waiting for us!
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August 10
Today we make a summary of our project to instructors and advisors. The wiki group shows the modified contents of the page and summarizes the current problems in the wiki. Teachers point out some constructive views. Next is the software group. There are still some problems need to complete and perfect. The last is the game group, their game is interesting, especially the vision part. However, their game also needs improvement.
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August 17
Today we invite an American professor's assistant of our own college to do English training. The training is composed of some knowledge of American ceremonial, different cultures and pronunciation practice. Hope it can help us more.
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August 28
Today we met some foreign students and invited them to play our games. We helped them download the game on their phones. After playing our game, we get good feedback, one of the students said:” The interface of the game is very fascinating! It let me know the half retaining strategy.” In addition, another told us:” The pictures are very delicate!”
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September 10
Today we have a Rehearsal for Giant Jamboree. We UESTC-Software team and CHINA_CD_UESTC team both did presentations. Almost ten teachers attended our rehearsal and gave us some useful advices. By the way, we will go to America 12 days later. That’s really exciting! Hope that we will achieve good results.