In the Public Lab community newsletter this week, read about air monitoring projects, thoughts on design and community engagement and browse through some of the interactive media pieces featuring Public Lab collaborators that have come out this week. Enjoy!

Announcements

Hagit Keysar shares thoughts about community engagement and design in her note on where maps go, how they are used and how people are incorporated into the design process.

Events

Parts & Crafts hosted a “Toolshed-raising” (i.e. Mini Barnraising) event today focused on water quality monitoring in Somerville. Read more here: http://publiclab.org/notes/Hudonnoodles/11-17-2013/public-lab-boston-area-toolshed-raising-parts-crafts and here: http://publiclab.org/wiki/boston-toolshed-raising-2014. Activities included oil pollution spectroscopy, cheap thermal mapping and more! Check back for updates and research notes soon.

New and ongoing projects

Information on the DustDuino was posted this past week. You can follow some of the conversations happening with this tool on the air quality Google Group.

Read a proposal for using the DIY spectrometer in Louisiana to look at flares from refinery stacks.

Hot topics on the mailing lists

Scientific papers on wine, beer, and olive oil spectroscopy: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/plots-spectrometry/2lmg_WuNsZM

Discussion of coordinating Gowanus Canal PAH sampling with a formal lab: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/plots-spectrometry/HIxndo8mSFI

Public Lab in the media

Exposing the Invisible has released a short film called "From my point of view," that features DIY aerial mapping in Jerusalem. The Public Lab resource page for the film can be found here.

Enabling Cities v.2 is now out and features a short intro to the citizen science section by Public Lab organizers.

“What does Open Science mean to you?” by the CITIZENS OF SCIENCE podcast, is out.

Research Note highlights

1. Data logger (posted by JSummers)
2. Pine Hill (posted by cfastie)
3. Using ICA for spectral analysis (posted by nathanathan)
4. Conductivity Meter (posted by JSummers)
5. White balance for all (posted by cfastie)

If anything was missed, please make sure to post a research note or send a message to the list. Have a great week everyone! Shannon

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