The Edric Ljosalfr Better World Grant.

[powersthatbe]

 

Grant Mechanics

The winner of the grant competition will be settled on by player vote, taken at the time the grant projects are turned in on the 29th.  Characters are free to decide on their own department projects, & there are some suggestions below.

If no projects are selected by the 13th, default projects will be assigned by the mods - but any department assigned a project will have a 5-vote handicap assigned.  Please be as specific and imaginative as possible with your submissions - brainstorm in the comments, feel free to argue and question and come up with a dozen ideas before settling on just one.  

Characters who sabotage projects, bribe faculty, or play at departmental politics may assign additional vote penalties to their opponents at the mods’ discretion, depending on how it plays out.  Getting caught doing these things will impose a penalty on one’s own department.

The success or failure of the Investigation is dependent on which project wins; the Trumps have a favorite and may indicate it via hints in Liminal Space.

Suggested Projects

Technical Systems & Support: Restoring advanced computer systems, upgrading the generators, upgrading the radio tower, demonstrating the functionality of a new device or a freshly reverse-engineered one, creating more durable and survivable tech for the wastelands, scavenging something truly important or surprising.

Ecological Sciences: developing a new strain of crop with a useful trait; cleaning terrain more efficiently; modeling or understanding the wastelands better; advancing medical treatment for chemical or radioactive contamination; documenting a novel mutation in a plant or animal species; collecting & saving a new species from the Wasteland.

Cultures & Humanities: restoring a lost work of cultural significance, translating an obscure document with measurable & practical importance, achieving an innovation in technique or medium; demonstrating a nuanced anthropological approach - unfortunately Cultures & Humanity projects are likely to be a little more subjective, winning hearts & minds more than demonstrating utility.

Progress

(none so far)

Comments

Re: Ecological Sciences

[howexciting]

There could easily be a plant mutation whereby it sucks up radiation, stores it, and can later be disposed of. Then the soil and water in that area would be far reduced in radiation levels! Leonardo would be all for this once he learns radiation = bad.

[amadine]

It wouldn't necessarily even have to be a mutation, since there are plants that will accumulate and store radioisotopes as long as they're rendered processable. IIRC, the more effective ones can reduce the contaminant level in soil they're planted in by up to 3% per growing season just as the wild type plant. They could work on a project pairing selective breeding for that trait to up the percentage with more effective soil treatments to render radioisotopes more accumulable by plant life, maybe?

(Or use symbiotic bacteria or radiotrophic fungi somehow possibly, instead of direct soil treatment.)

[morbirdinterest]

Maybe we could combine a couple ideas... Let's say that there's a plant that's already known for helping cleanup radiation, and a certain patch of it's been found to have some kind of mutation that makes it more efficient at what it does. The grant proposal could be to study the mutation with the aim of creating a strain of this plant that has the mutated trait.

I think this could also work with radiotrophic fungi or bacteria... It's a matter of figuring out what kind of plant would be most plausible for the department to find/know about and easiest to grow in the tower's climate, really.

[resummon]

I'm not sure how much help this can be but reckon I'd throw it out here anyway.

Botan's infiltrator background involves researching about radiation decontamination from plant life but I imagine that without grant (and tbh equipment since gene splicing isn't a thing that can be done yet iirc?), it'll mostly be in the theoretical side of things. She might be of help...?

That aside, I think unleashing a new wild plant or bacteria life might play more havoc with the ecosystem (despite how wrecked the current one is) so I'm more for selective breeding a plant that's fairly populous within the nearby surrounding regions. It's supposedly France, isn't it? Maybe we could choose something from here.

[howexciting]

I like the tree idea. Clean up some of the CO2 in the air probably as well since I'm sure that was never fixed before the apocalypse happened. Fungi are also a very likely choice - France has all manner of mushrooms, like truffles, button mushrooms, chanterelle, etc. and they might be a little easier to grow in irradiated soil.

[resummon]

They can probably further market it from the perspective that if this succeeds in decontaminating the atmosphere, they could also have their next step related to decontaminating the rest of the food chain as well.

That might be moving a little too detailed into things, granted.

[howexciting]

Ooh! Perhaps they can prove this gene is common in other plants as well, by having a few different specimens who exhibit it? They could start breeding for it in a lot of plants.