Author: Adam Clare

ForestWatchers Wants You to Look at Forests

Forests around the world are in danger and a new group, ForestWatchers, is looking to the average person to save all the trees. It’s a very simple idea: use people to scan tree lines from images to help scientists focus their efforts. Citizen science for the win!

We propose a new paradigm in conservationism based on the convergence of volunteer computing with free (or donated) catalogues of high-resolution Earth imagery.

This citizen science project aims at making possible to anyone (locals, volunteers, NGOs, governments, etc), anywhere in the world, to monitor selected patches of forest across the globe, almost in real-time, using a notebook, a tablet or a smart phone connected to the Internet.

Check out the ForestWatchers

How to Reduce Household Food Waste

It was recently found out that Canadians waste a lot of food, 51% of which is wasted inside the home. This means that there are ways that each individual can make a difference! The CBC has a tip sheet on what you can do at home to ensure you don’t throw out perfectly good food.

4. Don’t assume you need to buy in bulk
Grocery chains like Costco and Sam’s Club have enjoyed great success by convincing consumers that they will save money if they buy in mass quantities. But some experts warn against this purchasing strategy.

“People buy in bulk to make an effort to save money, but what they’re not realizing is that if they buy more than they need and throw away food that’s rotten, they haven’t saved money. They’ve actually wasted food and wasted money,” says Rosenbloom of Words to Eat By

Read more ways to reduce waste at the CBC.

The Social Capital Project

Have a lot of stuff you no longer need or want but is still in a good enough shape to be used? Well, you can take inspiration from The Social Capital Project which is one person’s idea to get rid of things she no longer wants. Instead of disposing of her stuff by throwing it out she is giving it away to a good home which does a good thing.

I have a lot of great stuff. Most of it I don’t need. I started The Social Capital Project to help me find homes for my stuff. I didn’t want my stuff to end up in a landfill, most of it is still awesome and not ready for the bin. I conceived of The Social Capital Project as a kind of “barter” system where I would offer up my stuff and in exchange the person receiving the item does something nice in their community to increase social capital.

How does it work? It’s very simple. I post an item up for grabs. You do something nice for someone or your community and comment about it under the item. Then you get the item. In short: You get free stuff. I give away my stuff. And the world gets to be a bit better. Yay!

More info can be de found at The Social Capital Project.

Thanks to Dan!

Physicists Open Up

Results from publically-funded research often ends up in places that the average person can’t access the findings because scientific (and other) journals where results are printed cost an arm and a leg. Physicists, who are already renowned for being open, have taken the next logical step and said that any research paid for by public funds will be available for all for free!

After six years of negotiation, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) is now close to ensuring that nearly all particle-physics articles — about 7,000 publications last year — are made immediately free on journal websites. Upfront payments from libraries will fund the access.
…
Mele says that the goal of SCOAP3 is to switch the discipline’s journals to open access without researchers noticing any effect on their grant funding or on the way they publish papers. The consortium will pay the contracts from an annual budget of €10 million, which is funded not by authors or research grants, but by pledges from more than a thousand libraries, funding agencies and research consortia across the world. In effect, existing journal subscription fees are being repurposed to provide the open-access funds.

Read more at Nature.