This week in the Public Lab newsletter, map invasive species in Massachusetts, check out, and help create, curriculum for the spectrometer and read new articles on small data and mapping Western Carolina University from the Public Lab community. Enjoy!

Assessing invasive species in MA. If you're in the Northeast region, join other Public Labbers for WATERCHESTNUTS, where you'll BBQ, test out kite flying, near-infrared photography and then apply what you've worked on to looking at invasive aquatic species. Please RSVP at this link.

Spectrometer curriculum. The Public Lab Education Working Group has been developing curriculum for teaching about spectrometry. If you'd like to get involved in the conversation, please join plots-education@googlegroups.com.

RevUp2050 Finalist. We're happy to announce that Public Lab is a finalist for the RevUp2050 challenge sponsored by NBC Universal and Feast for Good.

New articles from Public Lab. TechPresident posted an article from Jeff Warren on "The Promise of Small Data". Adam Griffith posted on OpenSource.com about mapping Western Carolina University using MapKnitter.

NASA DEVELOP collaboration. Gulf Coast Public Lab organizers spent Wednesday evening working with NASA DEVELOP national program on using the desktop spectrometer for looking at flares from refineries. Keep an eye out for a note to be posted soon.

Ready to fly? Spare parts for the balloon and kite aerial mapping kits are now available in the Public Lab store.

Research notes Smoothing macro using SpectralWorkbench API (posted by warren) Post-ITP aerial mapping at FreshKills, pre-aerial mapping with high school kids! (posted by christinameilene) Enhancing sensitivity of DIY spectrometers (posted by phillippg) Balancing act (posted by cfastie) Comparison visual analysis of infrablue photography (posted by gonzoearth) Kite video test: City Park (posted by eustatic) 3D tundra (posted by cfastie) Jeff demos salt spectra (posted by 100ideas) Infrablue minutiae (posted by cfastie) SpectralWorkbench improvements (posted by PeterDavidowicz)

As always, if anything was missed, please email the list, post a research note, or message shannon@publiclab.org for inclusion in the newsletter next week. Have a great weekend! Shannon