Gaia Desert

Here is a report  that summarizes  the reusable grocery bag ban trend that is hitting the US for the past 4 years. The article is written by the reason foundation , a libertarian institute in California. The article summarizes many points developed by a  lifecycle assessment on plastic bags , a report developed by the UK's environment agency. That lifecycle assessment has many scientifically valid studies that the average grocery shopper never encounters. The Reason Foundation's report summarizes many of the findings.   Here is a useful table that details most of the bags available for users.  If I had to choose, I would use the cotton bags simply because they are washable, bleach-able and easy to disinfect.  All the others don't hold up well in the Washing machine. There is fabric technology that integrates disinfectants for infection control scenarios. That would also be an interesting choice. 

So I had a crash on my 3dr IRIS in Peru and the details are here. Here are some of the photos from the timelapse series. Everything going normal and the IRIS is hovering Uh oh..loiter doesn't work, I'll try altitude hold...  Oh no, those don't work..I'll try to get it back in stabilize...  Maybe RTL...nope...I'll try fly mission...maybe it will go back to California....Stabilize isn't working and it has now started on its fly away... Still no response... Click on the picture below you and you can see me starting to run in an attempt to grab the up-and-coming wreckage before someone else does. It is not easy to run/walk through a sewage wetland at 12,500 feet. Add caption LUCK #1 - Thankfully it crashed into a bush in a little lake side park. The Mobius camera was in good condition. LUCK #2 - A nice man saw it and stood next to it for a while and then handed it to me when he saw me running over.

In a previous blog post , I discussed some ideas on open hardware air sensor designs that could work well for the Environmental Justice community in the Eastern Coachella Valley (ECV). After some months of tinkering, talking and planning,  I realize that that the technology development is probably only about 30% of the innovation required for this type of air monitoring citizen project. I'll approach this from the end result and talk about goals and objectives first. A reasonable goal would include the end health outcome while also hypothesizing the method for how that objective will be achieved. Here are some examples from similar star grants: By improving indoor air quality  (IAQ) and reducing environmental asthma triggers this study intends to reduce  asthma symptoms related to tribal home-&-school childhood exposures.  Some don't list a clear goal on the project description page but have hypothesis and an approach such as this one on water and this one on toxico