Week 2

Background information

Water is scarce in some places in places like third world countries such as Libya, Western Sahara, Yemen, etc. Normally, most countries with greater than 90% of households with improved water have an average GDP per capita of more than $10,000-$15,000. People with lower incomes tend to have on access, these countries lack clean water sources and do not have the resources to buy clean water from other countries.

Death rates are high in lower-income countries, particularly across Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Rates there are often greater than 50 deaths per 100,000 - in the Central African Republic and Chad this was 100 per 100,000.

As compared to higher income countries like the European countries, death rates are below 0.1 deaths per 100,000 which is greater than 1000-fold difference.

The issue of unsafe sanitation is therefore one which is largely limited to lower and lower-middle income countries.

Product Decision: A machine which can extract water and carbon dioxide from air and potentially making it into sparkling water at a cheaper price.

Reason: This product is suitable for areas with limited fresh water supply as water can be produced just from air. At the same time, extracting carbon dioxide from air help to combat climate change as greenhouse gas is removed from the air. With the carbon dioxide collected, it could be turned into sparkling water for consumption.

Literature Reviews

Group Reflection

In week 2 lesson, we have learnt literature reviews. There are many types of literature reviews, some of which we have learnt the importance of literature review, which are assessment of the current state of research topic, identification of the experts on a particular topic, identification of key questions about a topic that need further research and to steer clear of inadvertent plagiarism. 

For assessment of the current state of research topic, this allows us to determine what is already known about the topic and how extensively the topic can be researched. Secondly, by identifying the experts on a particular topic, we can research more on the experts on their researches which could help us greatly. Thirdly, identifying key questions or research gaps can help us by exploring more on the experiments that weren’t conducted, giving us more ideas and motivation to do our research. Lastly, we have steer clear of inadvertent plagiarism as we do not want to steal any credits from the original author and editor.

For evaluating research, we done it by using a few methods taught during lessons such as analysis, compare & contrast, inference, and interpretation and generating possibilities. A source needs to be analysed to identify what we are searching for in the research, then we must compare one source with another. Comparison can be done by comparing one source with another source, especially comparing it with peer-reviewed sources as it is usually more reliable. Then we separate facts from opinions, make the meaning of the data we have obtained so we can identify the major findings and make connection between resources before we can generate ideas of our own.