Noteworthy. (2015). Solutions 6(2): 6-11.
Idea Lab Noteworthy From Commutes to Corals: Reincarnating New York’s Subway Cars by Colleen Maney The secret is out: New York City has been quietly dumping its retired and decrepit subway cars into the ocean for years. But before you accuse the city of gross environmental crimes and large-scale pollution, consider that their unusual method of disposing of the cars actually serves a beneficial ecological purpose, but one not apparent to the eye. Once settled on the ocean floor, the sunken subway cars are assimilated
into the local ecosystem. The bare metal surfaces attract corals, eventually acting as frames and foundations for new coral reefs. Over time, the cars are overtaken by coral growth, creating artificial but substantial reefs. After ten years, the structures are nearly unrecognizable as the cars that once carried millions of New Yorkers, having traded crowds of commuters for schools of fish, with colorful corals bursting forth from the metal seats and hand rails. At a time when coral reef ecosystems have been greatly threatened and diminished by human activity, these subway car reefs act as restorative hubs, supporting coral regrowth.
This method is not unique to New York City; on one occasion, engineers sunk an entire aircraft carrier for the purpose of regenerating a coral reef system. Photographer Stephen Mallon has captured the intriguing process in a series of pictures taken over the course of three years. His collection slowly brings the viewer from indignation at the sight of apparent mass pollution to awestruck at the realization of the recycled purpose of subway cars, with the culmination of beautiful coral structures. His photos can be viewed at www. stephenmallon.com/photography/ next-stop-atlantic.
David Jones
Retired New York City subway cars are stacked on a barge in preparation for dumping into the Atlantic Ocean, where they will be repurposed on the seafloor as foundations for vibrant new coral reefs. 6 | Solutions | March-April 2015 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org
Idea Lab Noteworthy
Berkeley Lab
The Owensboro Innovation Academy curriculum will focus on technical skills in the STEM areas, with an emphasis on small group learning.
Innovative Education for Innovative Industries by Colleen Maney This fall, a new kind of public school will open its doors for a new era of students in Owensboro, Kentucky in the United States. The Owensboro Innovation Academy is demonstrative of the innovation it aims to teach. Housed in the local Center for Business and Research (CBR), and with a curriculum focused on technical skills and the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) areas, the Academy will foster an entrepreneurial and creative environment for its students.
The inaugural class of freshmen will have only 100 students. Dr. Nick Brake, the Superintendent of the Owensboro Public Schools, explained the small class size to Owensboro Living saying, “The small size of the academy promotes a positive culture of trust, respect, and responsibility. Students have exceptional ownership of their learning experience and environment and the CBR space is a perfect fit for creating this culture and building the workforce of the future.” Each student at the Innovation Academy will work with guidance counselors to choose a post-secondary pathway, culminating in a careeroriented technical program or a college degree. These pathways include:
• Computer Information Technology • Life Sciences and Bio-Medical • Industrial Engineering • Entrepreneurship and Innovation The Owensboro Academy will be the newest school in the New Tech Network, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help high school students attain the skills and education for success in the careers of tomorrow. Currently, the Network has 134 schools operating in 23 U.S. states, as well as in Australia. Armed with a strong, specialized education and critical thinking skills, the soon-to-be students of the Owensboro Academy are perhaps a glimpse of the future of technical education in the U.S.
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Idea Lab Noteworthy
Center for Neighborhood Technology
Rain gardens such as this one in Illinois are designed to absorb and filter runoff rainwater.
Building a Rain Garden by Audrey Pence Nineteen-year-old Sara Covelli is leading the charge at Union College in New York towards a more sustainable way of living. Covelli developed a passion for the environment as a child at summer camps and programs that fostered her mission to care for the environment. She designed her own major in Environmental Policy at Union College after being awarded a Seward Fellowship and became involved in the faculty, staff, and student-led U-Sustain Committee that focuses on implementing ecoconscious habits at the college. After her freshman year of college, she spent the summer working at the
environmental resource department of Nassau County, New York. Working on the county’s campaign to install rain gardens on Long Island lit a spark in Covelli, who was especially inspired by the beauty and accessibility of rain gardens and the impact they could have. Rain gardens are composed of a thoughtful mix of drought resistant plants and plants that can thrive in excess water, planted in areas that tend to collect excess water after rain. The gardens can absorb and filter the runoff rainwater before it reaches nearby watersheds or bodies of water. In a report by Hometalk, Covelli explained the sustainability of such gardens, saying, “If designed correctly, a rain garden will never need maintenance.”
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Covelli returned to campus on a mission and was awarded twice the funds of a Presidential Green Grant by the U-Sustain Committee to install a rain garden in the new senior college dorms. Covelli was also recently awarded $100,000 from the Green Fee Grant so that she can include and plan for solar panels to cover the entire roof of the new senior dorms. Such awards are generally only given in the amount of $24,000. The unusually large grant underscores the promise of Covelli’s innovative project. Her example not only inspires others to consider a rain garden at their homes or communities, but to also explore other ways to live a more sustainable life and and share these ideas with the world.
Idea Lab Noteworthy
Asim Bharwani
Cab companies in New York City have capitalized on providing female drivers for female passengers.
Female Drivers Tackle Gender Based Violence in Transport by Audrey Pence At a time when using public transportation can instill fear in a woman, cab companies from India to New York City are providing safer options for travel. Meru Cab chief executive Siddhartha Pahwa launched a new initiative called Meru Eve at the start of 2015. Meru Eve is a line of taxis in Delhi to be driven by women. These female drivers will be armed with pepper spray and have panic buttons that will notify Meru if the drivers find themselves in a dangerous position. Delhi’s Special Commissioner of Police (General Administration and Planning and Implementation) Vimla Mehra
told The Wall Street Journal, “You don’t see many women professionals in India. Programs like this build confidence in women to earn a living. They become role models.” However, some worry that programs like this only work to segregate women from the rest of society instead of solving the actual issues of gender equality. Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told The Washington Post, “It’s appalling. It’s a way for a patriarchal society to announce it’s not going to protect women. It’s simply going to segregate women and restrict their freedom, instead of securing it.” However, 20-year-old Aishwarrya Kapoor defended the use of female cabs in the same article saying, “Because in India, even though we are in the 21st
century, with any [male] cab driver, it’s not really safe.” This kind of business has been capitalized on in the West as well. SheTaxis was launched in the fall of 2014 in New York City and employs only female drivers to transport only female customers. One of the drivers of SheTaxis, Josephina Soto, told The New York Times, “I love the whole SheTaxis thing. Most of the time, there’s a lot of men-to-men stuff, but it’s not usually about the women.” With sexual harassment and rape reports continuing to pile up against taxi services, including a case against the ridesharing company Uber in Delhi, this kind of service offers a level of comfort to female passengers and empowers female drivers by giving them a job that they can feel safe and confident in.
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Idea Lab Noteworthy Mosha the Three Legged Elephant by Maisam Alahmed Landmines are an old weapon that were used heavily in WWII and continue to pose a threat today in many developing countries. CIn Cambodia, land mines have claimed more than 64,000 casualties since 1979. Humans are not the only casualties. Land mines in the outskirts of Cambodia along the Thai borders claim the lives of many wild animals as well. One of these animals was seven-month-old Mosha, a young female Asian elephant. In 2007, Mosha stepped on a landmine near the Cambodian border, causing her to lose her front right leg. She was immediately transported to the Friends of the Asian Elephant Hospital in Thailand. Upon her arrival, veterinarians feared for her life as she refused food, was antisocial with other elephants, and showed signs of depression. Dr. Therdchai Jivacate, who runs a foundation for human amputees, was interested in Mosha’s case. His foundation had made prosthetic limbs for over 16,000 people at the time but had never fitted one for an elephant before. With sheer determination, Dr. Jivacate was successful in creating a new limb for Mosha made from plastic, sawdust, and metal and was suitable to support her weight and allow her to move around at a normal elephant’s pace. Soon enough, with daily exercises prescribed by the doctor, Mosha was eating again and was happy around others. With her rapid growth, however, she had to be fitted for a new leg in 2009. She has since been fitted with two more legs as she continues to outgrow her older ones.
Denish C.
This disabled elephant named Sama lost her right front foot to a landmine in Sri Lanka. She was fitted with an artificial foot and treated at the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage in Central Sri Lanka.
Mosha became famous as the world’s first elephant to be fitted for an artificial leg and was spreading hope for others of her kind. Since the hospital opened in 1993, it has attended to 15 elephant landmine victims. In 2009, a patient named Motala became the second elephant to receive a prosthetic leg.
My Dream Partner— A Young Turkish Changemaker by Maisam Alahmed At age two and a half years old, young Duygu Kayaman of Turkey lost her sight due to a lump behind her visual nerve. Not willing to give up,
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she began her educational journey at Turkan Sabanci Primary and Vocational School for the Blind and graduated from Haliç University with a degree in psychology. Now aged 26 years old, Kayaman has channeled her disability towards great social innovation in her country. Kayaman created a mobile application called “My Dream Partner” in an attempt to make daily activities for the visually impaired easier and simpler through using voicerecognition technology. With the support of Turkcell, a leading mobile phone operator in Turkey, Kayaman developed an application that gave blind people the ability to access news, articles, books, and many other resources. The application also provided them with training
Idea Lab Noteworthy
tedxistanbul
Duygu Kayaman speaking at TEDx Istanbul in 2014.
and easy access to primary locations including hospitals, banks, schools, markets, and pharmacies. As of February 2015, more than 110,000 visually impaired Turks are using “My Dream Partner.” When the “Innovators Under 35 Competition” of MIT Technology Review included Turkey for the first time in 2014, Duygu Kayaman was
awarded “Social Innovator of the Year.” She was the winner of the first regional edition along with 10 other Turks and one of three women under the age of 35. She is now an “inside sales specialist” working at Microsoft. In addition to her phone application, Kayaman worked in the “Blind Leaders” Project of the Young Guru
Academy, an establishment that raises socially conscious leaders, which she later became the leader of. This initiative, which supported the development of the application, became one of Kayaman’s various venues to share her experiences and journey to encourage other youths with disabilities in her country to break barriers together.
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