This week in the Public Lab community newsletter, check out some incredible data milestones Public Labbers have reached, join the nonprofit team in Portland and attend meet-ups in Taipei and Washington DC. Enjoy!

Announcements

Public Lab contributors passed a milestone on SpectralWorkbench this week! There have been 20,000 open source spectra contributed by ~2800 contributors. View the stats here: https://spectralworkbench.org/stats

The Public Lab nonprofit is hiring a Civic Kits Initiative Manager based in Portland, Oregon. Please see the job posting here and pass on to folks who might be interested: http://publiclab.org/notes/Shannon/04-10-2014/public-lab-is-hiring-job-posting-kits-initiative-manager

The Public Lab Archive is about to reach 300 maps: http://publiclab.org/maps

How does the Public Lab community collaborate? Here are some new slides giving an overview: http://publiclab.org/notes/liz/04-11-2014/presentation-on-how-we-collaborate

Upcoming events

This Monday, April 14th, join Public Labbers in Washington DC during State of the Map for an aerial mapping and imagery workshop. The workshop is free, but pre-registration is required! More information here.

Join a Public Lab meet-up in Taipei, happening this weekend: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/publiclaboratory/xndGXVNl1GA

Are you located in Washington DC? Public Lab will have a table at the USA Science and Engineering Festival April 25-27 and we could use your help! If you’re interested in volunteering, please email liz@publiclab.org.

New and ongoing projects

Mapping the urban biosphere in Jerusalem: http://publiclab.org/notes/hagitkeysar/04-10-2014/mapping-urban-biosphere-in-jerusalem

Kite mapping in Far Rockaway, Queens (New York): http://publiclab.org/notes/jenmansta/04-11-2014/kite-mapping-in-far-rockaway-queens

Big ideas for the Thermal Flashlight: combining it with photo sensors for color-based chemical sensing and other monitoring approaches: http://publiclab.org/notes/donblair/04-07-2014/open-lux

Infragram Point & Shoot research progress: http://publiclab.org/notes/warren/04-10-2014/mobius-action-cam-infragram-tests

Pat Coyle explores how to calculate the volume of a waste pile from kite photos! http://publiclab.org/notes/patcoyle/04-07-2014/using-free-sfm-tools-for-automatic-volume-calculation

Can e-cigarettes be used for chemical analysis? http://publiclab.org/notes/warren/04-08-2014/selenium-detection-methods-ideas-on-e-cigarette-atomizers-for-diy-analysis

Research Note highlights

• Union Square MBTA mapping (posted by kgradow1)
• AMS Science Club: Toxics skycrane and projected impacts (posted by donblair)
• DataLogger: Part 2, hardware design (posted by JSummers)
• Reducing reflections in foldup spec (posted by Liz)
• Comparisons: Canons, Mobiuses, fruit (posted by donblair)

As always, if anything was missed, please post a research note or send a message to the list. Have a great weekend everyone! Shannon

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