Community STEM projects

It's quite an interesting thing, posting about STEM on Hive, well STEMGEEKS front end. If there are two things that struggle on Hive it's STEM and Politics as Hive is growing more towards that alt community and that's fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

On that note I wanted to talk about some of the work my wife's been doing in the STEM field which is something that we're pretty big on. Both of us work in the Health sector and STEM plays a big role and incorporates a whole sector revolving around STEM.

Health is an ever evolving sector with technological advancements not just producing better health outcomes for peoole in need but also saving lives.

My wifes alot more educated than me in the health field with a Bachelor of Nursing, Bachelor of Biomedical Science and a Grad Dip in BioMechanics, so as you could see we care very little about things that aren't rooted in scientific evidence and fact.

The thing that people can't quite grasp is that this sector is an ever evolving industry with new break throughs occuring leading to new ways of doing thing's. This came to head with COVID as I tried to warn people who wanted to be "Open" and "transparent" that people wouldn't be understanding of whats occuring, they weren't and people percieved that scientists didn't know what was happening and conspiracy theories filled the void.

Fastforward to since the pandemic started and health science has leaped in a way that future generations will thank us for. Contract tracing has changed as has how we track and deal with virus's and even test for them. For example during lock down our community experienced a blow out of syphilis and normally health staff would wait until people presented with symptoms, sometimes by this stage they would be that bad that they have caused further issues like blindness.

But employing the technology and techniques learned from COVID gave medical teams the upper hand and were able to genome sequence the strain and track it back to the people who had it providing care and stopping the outbreak. Amazing stuff! It's been eradicated from the west now (can never be 100% sure)

Even with the Pandemic itself we've seen vaccines and treatments in hospital advance at rapid rates. Soon this whole thing will be over not because we've eradicated it but because we've advanced our technological and scientific knowledge of the virus. Which is why it's always odd when I read or hear clueless politicians say "we need to live with it". Yeah we do, but not yet because we're not there yet.

[Source canva pro)

The debate about vaccines is something I often cringe about, people saying they're experimental. mRNA has been around for over a decade. Furthermore the "12 month" typical trials undertaken is in normal settings against small things. COVID gave a years worth of data and information in a week in India and many other parts of the world.

Which is why STEM is important because you can't actually teach it which is why it is a challenge and people can't grasp it. You can however, teach people how to do things with what we have now. The rest is pretty much innovation, the idea that no one else has had. It's the ultimate entrepreneur but of science.

Through practical hands on learning you test boundaries, you try new things and then ideas emerge which is why Hackathons are great, the ultimate brain storm. No idea is a bad one and if you think it can be done, do it. Find the right information and make it happen. It is this part where people learn to study, if you go to YouTube or a conspiracy theorists page for the wrong information and try to apply it.... you're in trouble.

Source
Which is why our community invests and funds a STEM centre targeted at youth to help build their understanding of apply their unbiased, unlearned mind to age old questions. You'd be surprised how much a kid can do and how much STEM not only enables them to be a better student but the broader community benefits like WiFi. Yup, that was invented in Australia at CSIRO. I believe at the centre in the western suburbs (I could be wrong about location)

Even throughout lockdown our local government with my wife elected continue to run these classes and invest in tomorrows free thinkers.

Tomorrows advancements are being forged today, if you want to learn turn off Facebook, turn of YouTube and pick up a peer reviewed book. No one changed the world yelling at people on the internet, someone got off their arse to make the internet.

Posted with STEMGeeks