Gaia Desert

From http://publiclab.org/wiki/kite-balloon-hybrid A NEW Community Mapping Approach : Balloon Mapping BRIEF WORKSHOP #1 DATE/TIME : 10/29/14 - 0800  LOCATION:  Evans Hall turnout in Loma Linda University off of Anderson 24785, Stewart St. Loma Linda, CA 92354 Meet by the Loma Linda University sign in the grass. My grey truck will be nearby. WHAT IS IT?  Balloon (and Kite) photography is a participatory technique used to acquire aerial photographs and qualitative data from participants. It is a fun outdoor activity that takes a little planning and produces a lot of images. It has been used to document contamination from the BP oil spill, neighborhood environmental health issues, urban development issues and many other topics.  The unique thing about balloon mapping is that it requires a team approach and is therefore a qualitative method. Researchers can acquire lots of relevant information from the planning and organizing phase; these facilitate conversations, expl

We wanted to use a balloon to do aerial mapping rather than a drone. Before the Peru trip we assumed that a tethered weather balloon would be more sustainable than using a drone for aerial mapping  which can include a downward facing camera gimble. Mario Melgar students at Laguna Chacas with an aerial mapping weather balloon. PRE-TRIP hypotheses: My hypotheses of why a balloon would be preferable to using a quadcopter equipped with a downward facing camera: Inexpensive: helium is the largest expense at about $40 for one balloon. Less accident prone and less costly if an accident happens.  If I crash my quad-copter, the cost could be a few hundred dollars. A balloon won't crash and if something happens, the string will break and you have to go hunt for it.   Faster planning. You just need a balloon, camera and helium. The outsider excitement and alarmist perspective may vary: A community response to what we know as a "DRONE" has some fear associated with

In the last few years there has been an upswing of infection control research within the context of US healthcare. The APIC and other groups are starting to accumulate an enviable amount of fun environmental microbiology field based studies. Scientists are ev aluating contamination and health risk of curtains, hands, linens, gowns, tap water and anything else that you can find in a US hospital. My favorite are the copper hand washing sinks.  Those are deluxe! The biggest source of global fecal contamination still appears to be largely unstudied. A recent editorial in Lancet Global Health discusses this. Stephen Luby states that we still do not have enough data to generate sufficient evidence about the relationship between sanitation and health. He says that this is true because of the wide variety of pathogens, climate, environments, cultures and individual behaviors.  The Luby PDF is here .  More research is certainly complicated but also necessary. I find this promising.

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

In Ethiopia the Oromo of Gimbie say that the Devil is in the middle of a dust devil and will possess you if it passes over you. There are a few more myths of dust devils here on the wikipedia page . Dust Devils are one of the top ten reasons why I love the desert. These mini-tornadoes are spooky, very common, yet not quite acknowledged in modern society. Freeway drivers don't notice them and weather stations don't report them. How can we not acknowledge a 500 foot tall genie that appears in the desert? They are a striking feature of the American desert that increase in frequency as human development progresses. I see them often during drought conditions, dry agricultural fields, or development projects that have gone bankrupt. My friend Jaime Lopez was driving around the eastern Coachella city limits and came across this one. That brave tractor driver was going where no tractor driver has gone before...