It is time for a new sequel on ‘how to become an amateur biologist’, edition 102! More and more I am becoming a true Gamboadian, but more importantly an amateur biologist! Little by little I start to recognize different birds’ songs, calls, colours and shapes and know how to name them. And I love it!! The same accounts for insects, butterflies and to a much lesser extent bats, all thanks to Kitty, Andy and my friends at STRI. At the animal rescue I am also learning so many fun facts about the sloths 🙂 Did you know that sloths are the only mammals whose hair grows downwards instead of to their extremities? No, me neither!
The past three weeks I have been working on multiple things. I have been gathering more information about agouti’s and bats. A few times I had the privilege to join STRI’s Bat lab on their netting expeditions, feeding training and experiments. Leonie, a bat scientist, has taught me so much about Trachops. Trachops are frog eating bats that locate the sound of the Túngara frogs, and with that the frogs itself, with echolocation. Even when the frogs have stopped croaking the bats know where to locate them because of the ripples they make in the water. So, very cool bats. Also, they also just get bonus points for being so darn cute.
Besides observing bats and agouti’s, I have been trying to study them by modelling something of their behaviour in P5js, an online JavaScript editor which allows you to program visually. I organised a small workshop where scientists got an introduction to this programme and got to try out their own ideas about their own subjects of study. Andy and I also reorganized the hardware room, so things are way easier to find now! 🙂
Next to my big project, I am also creating toys for the animals at the rescue center. Last week I, with the help of Andy and some residents at Adopta, have created a first prototype of a food enrichment toy for the spider monkeys. This toy is entirely made out of recycled plastic (besides the metal zip ties which connect the recycled pentagons)! I am very curious what the monkeys think of it, and whether the design works or not. Only time will learn. In the future I want to make other recycled plastic toys, for example cubes with bells, rocks or anything that can make sound. Monkeys love making noise, so I would love to make their life more noisy (and more irritating for us 😉). Serena, my new lab buddy, arrived last week and from the beginning she was thrown deep into the Dinalab hole. Together with Jessie, Andy, Serena and I we made a device where the strength of a butterfly can be measured!
Besides studying animals, programming and creating toys, I have had several very inspiring meetings with a few member of the Gamboa community. I met with Mulget Amaru. Yes that is right. It is the man who is running from Patagonia all the way to Alaska. Because of the pandemic his journey was being put on hold, and he stranded in Gamboa. He has told me some amazing stories about his adventures across the Americas, and he has taught me wonderful things about his home country Ethiopia. Next, Patricia and Yoel, besides being my neighbours and landlords, are two amazing artists which excel in different artistic disciplines such as piano, theatre and visual art. I have had some lovely talks with them over coffee and I hope there will be many more to come. Patricia and Yoel also brought me in contact with Grace. Grace is a writer and a poet. She writes amazing poetry based on her sharp and detailed scientific observations. I also came to know that her husband was Ray Solomonoff, one of the founding fathers of the field of Artificial Intelligence, which is so cool! Unfortunately, she was leaving in a few days since I met her, but she really has inspired me with her poetry and the amount of wisdom that she has. So, putting that in my back pocket for the future 🙂
Preparing ‘hutspot’
Potluck Dinner Party!
Bottom of the Volcano
Top of the Volcano
Amazing Grace
Canopy Tower view
Of course there was also lots of time to have fun in the past three weeks. I have been to a music festival, organised a potluck dinner party, went on a trip to Boquete and climbed Volcan Barú, sneaked up on the canopy tower, again had some nice sunset hangouts and ate pizza every week at the local bakery here. The next upcoming month I am going to experiment with Arduino and have lots of fun with it. Can’t wait to tell you more in ‘How to become an amateur biologist 103’!
These past few weeks at Dinalab have just flown by. I have already seen so much amazing flora and fauna, met so many cool and nice people, and learned a lot about laser cutters, 3D-printing and plastic recycling. My first week here was mainly about settling down, exploring Gamboa and meeting the community. I went on my first hikes in the jungle and I also got to be acquainted with Teri, the plastic version of cookie monster and learned about p2 and p5 plastic.
In my second week I started exploring and reading about the framework that is the basis of my project here, namely Umwelt. This concept concerns the subjective realities/worlds of other organisms. Every organisms’ world is constructed on the basis of its sensory perceptions and how they interact with their environment. In simpler worlds, I am interested in how other animals and organisms see, or rather experience, the(ir) world(s) and what these worlds look like. I hope to get a better idea of these worlds by studying and experimenting with them, and hopefully be able to create an output where people can experience these worlds themselves.
During this week, I also started volunteering at APPC and met Valencia the taipir, Lupe the nyeke, Lucy and Lucio the spider monkeys, Marco Antonio the tortoise and dozens of cute sloths. Furthermore, we went to the Mola museum, organised a bike repair with Andy, photographed and modelled for Chelsea’s cute selfmade earrings and had some nice sunset hangouts 😊
The third week was more about creating a plan for my project for the upcoming weeks and months. Together with Andy we created a plan and I filled in some form for my programme in Leiden. Andy and I started putting together the plastic extruder, went on a cool night hike and as icing on the cake I went to Coiba and Santa Catalina with lovely people from STRI.
In the fourth week, I started experimenting and studying my first organism in questions, the Leafcutter Ant. I learned about their pheromone trails, for example how they can be manipulated (😈) and that they can (at least) reach to 70 meters (🤯). Also it was interesting to see how well-organised the trails look from above, but when you start zooming in you see how every ant doesn’t really know what its doing; what a relief, they are just like us 😜. 99% of the time the ants will bump into each other, walk one way and then from one moment to the next the other way and they will carry leaves that are way too heavy which are dropped multiple times on the way. Fun fact: they also like chiliflakes and garlic.
This week I am learning more about bats and agouti’s, stay tuned!
Just connect something metal between Analog Port A0 on your Arduino to the metal insides of the tire (preferably a chain or something that gives you some distance!)
Make Garbage Masks into Useful things! Like ear savers to wear more masks!
For those who just want to get to the meat of this How-to, here’s the basic recipe: -Slice up a mask and keep the two outside layers (throw away the middle) Heat the layers between parchment paper at 200C/400f
Fold and Reheat the Plastic to desired thickness
Laser cut your design into the plastic sheet -Enjoy!
Full Instructable Herehttps://www.instructables.com/Ear-Savers-From-Garbage-Masks/?cb=1604517248Disposable blue masks have become iconic on faces and unfortunately, littered about the streets. The ubiquity of disposable masks is helping fight the pandemic, but all these single-use plastics have an environmental toll as well. This is a simple project demonstrating how to turn waste PPE into other covid-fighting safety materials. Also I just liked the kind of meta-idea of turning old masks into new mask accessories!
With the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s Q Digital platform, we were commissioned to make an educational game about the life cycle of leaf-cutter ants. Explore how the colony works by chopping leaves to feed the fungus, defending the ants from parasites, and finding new mates to spread your leaf-cutter empire!
We created a CoViD-19 simulation game for Q?-Bus at STRI. The goal is to let people get a better understanding of how diseases spread, and the effectiveness and consequences of different approaches.
Created by Brian Boucher and Andy Quitmeyer for STRI Q-Bus
In panama, when the government started the world’s only gender-based (and highly transphobic ) Covid Lockdown, we helped out a local activism group make signs out of discarded cardboard to fight against this cruel system.
The future of the biological field station is not large fancy lab dropped in the middle of a jungle, but rather a network of mobile laboratories distributed throughout an ecosystem.
Lab assistant, Alister, helps test out an early iteration of the mobile lab deep in the jungle
we are combining Digital Naturalism Laboratories’ previous research in Mobile Makerspaces like the Philippines “BOAT Lab” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0L-SNO4A5w) with the decades of experience that the sustainable architecture firm, Cresolus (https://www.cresolus.com/), has experience building in building tropical architecture like homes and field stations in national parks. We are creating modular, mobile laboratories that scientists can bring directly to their field sites around the world.
Video overview of the BOAT Lab – floating biological makerspace
What is the challenge?
Field biologists and conservationists are faced with a
paradox: The goal of their work is to protect and understand natural
ecosystems, but the mere act of accessing their field sites generally requires
some amount of environmental destruction. Almost all travel for field biology
relies on the burning of fossil fuels, which are destructive not only in the
original drilling, but also in the pollution they give off into the very
environments being studied. Moving vehicles back and forth between field sites
also introduces physical destruction and noise pollution to natural areas which
may negatively impact the work being done to begin with.
Additionally, most conservationists and field biologists are
constrained for time and space by the samples they collect. Researchers need to
get to the sites, collect their samples, and get them back to labs for
processing within a limited time-window. This means that these trips to field
sites are often a constant, daily commute which takes a toll on the environment
(as well as the researcher’s and their projects!).
Like a surgeon cutting through healthy flesh to find a
disease, these researchers will never be able to completely stop causing some
damage to get to the places they study, but we can work to greatly reduce the
damage caused.
Instead of having thousands of researchers around the world
commuting between field sites just to bring samples back to the laboratory, we
think that the whole laboratory should be brought to the field.
One Solution
These laboratory “Pods” can be towed or floated to field sites deep in forests or up rivers while withstanding inclement weather or hazardous terrain. Advances in sustainable energy harvesting coupled with the miniaturization of technology means that researchers can process their data and samples on-site (even genetic sampling labs can be miniaturized!). Thus field biologists and conservationists can make fewer unnecessary trips back and forth between the field and lab and increase their productivity while minimizing their own footprint in these areas.
We have already tested functional prototypes of these modular labs with many researchers and conservationists around the world including those from the Smithsonian, National Geographic, and many major universities.
Helping field biologists and conservationists destroy less of the environments they are trying to save and understand.
Key Targets
1. The reduction energy of moving
scientists back and forward to labs (your point).
2. The modular lab trailer that can
be used multiple times in different configurations therefore reducing the cost
of dedicated lab space in a building.
3. The trailer is made from reused
car parts (the differential, axel and wheels come from a jeep, the chassis from
a Toyota pickup).
4. Because it is a trailer it
requires very little energy to move (vehicles would be traveling to site
anyway).
5. It allows studies/research to
continue for greater length of time (often scientists have to travel to a
country multiple times to create their data sets this could help reduce that).
6. Allows scientists to work in
tropical conditions more efficiently (ie it could be bug proof and weather
proof so they don’t have to leave the site so often)
7. Allows scientists to sleep in the field (Can be adapted to provide accommodation so they don’t have to travel back to sleep somewhere)
Collaboration Inspiration
Both Digital Naturalism Laboratories (Dinalab) and Cresolus are concerned with getting researchers access to incredible ecosystems in sustainable ways. We met while repairing bridges on “Pipeline Road” nature park in Gamboa Panama. Pipeline is one of the most heavily researched areas in the past century, but unfortunately, due to bureaucratic disagreements with the local field station and government entities, many parts of this historic field site have fallen into ruin preventing most visiting scientists and conservationists from conducting their work here. We set up our own volunteer initiative to restore access to these field sites using sustainably sourced and upcycled materials (here’s a time-lapse of one bridge we completely rebuilt
While spending days toiling in the hot jungle, on a volunteer initiative to rebuild bridge and trail infrastructure for a historic research and conversation site (Pipeline Road in Panama), Dinalab and Cresolus got to learn about each other’s work in mobile labs and sustainability design. We also got to hear the laments of the field biologists discussing the paradox of how they do field research because they love nature, but that in order to do it, they currently cause lots of pollution in the form of constantly driving back and forth to bring samples from the field to the lab.
This led us to the inspiration that, maybe instead of
constantly bringing field samples to the lab, maybe we should bring the lab to
the field!
No, we are taking Cresolus’s mobile architecture studios they bring to jungles when building parks and outfitting them with scientific tools. These initial tests proved not only functional, but can help increase productivity! Now we just need to design and test more!
Design Challenges
In our early research
(https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3196709.3196748), we established a hierarchy of needs for labs
that starts with
1) Protection
2) Organization
3) Work
Surfaces
4) Light
5) Information
Access
6) Power
Most people we discuss this challenge with automatically
assume that getting power to a mini-modular field station deep in a remote
field site would be the biggest challenge, but actually with solar power,
pre-charged battery banks, inverters, and sustainable designs (e.g. passive
cooling), getting power to the research equipment will not be our main
challenge.
Instead the key aspects of the design are creating a modular
system that can facilitate the research of many different types of scientists
and conservationists while keeping the sensitive tools protected, organized,
and easy to work with.
We already have many tested and experimental designs with workstations and lab equipment, for example, that expand from a trailer or pack into modular pelican cases.
Users
Scientists and Conservationists doing remote fieldwork. Tens
of thousands of researchers visit established field stations per year, like the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institution in Panama, but generally still need
to travel long distances from the field stations to their field sites. Most of
these researchers are forced to spend long days commuting back and forth from
the labs at the field station to their sites in the field, and because of the
time-sensitive nature of the data they are collecting and samples to be processed,
cannot simply stay out for longer durations. Due to the generally treacherous
nature of back-country travel, each additional trip also increases the chance
of physical or mechanical danger to the researchers and their vehicles.
Instead, visiting researchers will be able to rent our labs and bring them directly to their field sites. There, they can stay, conducting their work, with a modular selection of the laboratory tools they need, and make one final trip after their research has been finished.
Scientists will be able to rent our mobile laboratories and
bring them directly to their field sites to conduct and process their work in
nature. The pods are designed and tested for rough-terrain to get to off-road
sites, and can be loaded onto pontoons to function as floating laboratories in
aquatic environments. We also offer services to deliver the pods into the
research sites for the scientists, and pods are made to perfectly fit in
shipping containers to they can be used anywhere around the world.
Costs
The environment bears most of the cost currently that we
hope to address. At a time when fuel
costs are absurdly cheap and biology and conservation budgets are small, many
researchers feel forced to carry out their work the traditional ways, meaning
lots of travel back and forth to field sites. The damage caused is not only
from the drilling to extract the fossil fuels, or the pollution strewn across
the target environment, but the constant back-and-forth travel disrupts the
ecosystem and introduces noise-pollution which may impact the studies the
researchers hope to conduct in the first place.
Additionally, many existing laboratories and field stations
are still heavily dependent on fossil-fuels. Our pods, on the other hand, will be
equipped with renewable power sources or pre-charged from our solar arrays.
Similar Projects
Mobile labs are not a completely new concept. Many research ships function like this already (famously like Jacques Cousteau’s floating labs), and other designers/researchers have launched similar projects such as Marko Peljan’s “Makrolab,” a modular lab that could fit into shipping containers and shipped around the world.
Other projects we know of include Steven Roberts’s “Nomadic Research Labs”, Marko Peljan’s Makrolab prototype for a mobile art and science workstation, The Hackteria Network’s outdoor DIY art-science workshops, American Arts Incubator’s “Waterspace” Project building a floating art-science makerspace, Jacobs and Zoran’s work with mobile digital craft labs and hunter-gatherer tribes in the Kalahari, and the Signal Fire Arts and Activism Residency that doubles as a backpacking trip.
Unfortunately, many scientists, especially small research groups, or grad students lack the funding needed to invest in such larger infrastructure. Our pods are customized with equipment for the individual researcher or small group and delivered to the field at minimal costs. Cresolus, as an established sustainable architecture firm working in national parks around the world, already has offices and the ability to make and deliver these pods to the field sites already used by many researchers in Central America and Africa.
Moreover, all our designs will be open-source, so researchers
can further add on to the designs we have and contribute to better mobile labs
for everyone.
What are your Team’s primary work tasks and activities
over the next 3-6 months? (optional)
We already have functioning prototypes tested with
scientists in key research areas (Pipeline Road). Our goals for the very next
stage of the project are to do another round of more formalized testing and
evaluation and to develop further features to add to the pods’ designs.
We aim to enroll existing scientist clients such as such as Dr.
Rachel Page’s Bat Lab with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and Corey
Tarwater’s Avian Ecology lab from the University of Wyoming who both do
extensive field work on Pipeline road. We will provide their researchers with
reduced rate use of the pods.
Modular features that we intend to design into the projects
that we will be working on over the next several months include:
-Mesh networking
-Safety equipment/signaling
-Sterile lab
-Expandable Flight Cages
-Dry ice storage / Peltier Coolers
-Expandable work stations
-Built in 360-camera traps / Acoustic monitoring
What are your project needs over the next 3-6 months in
terms of resources, skills and knowledge? (optional)
To complete our next steps, we primarily need a little bit
of funding to carve out some design time between our two organizations to
dedicate to further develop the prototypes we already have.
We already have most of the materials, electronics, field
sites, and evaluators available, we just need time to put these together and
continue testing and sharing these designs.
What are your project goals?
For the very next stage of our project our main goal is to
get one of these pods functional and consistently rented out to different researchers
visiting our field sites over the next year.
Our longer-term goal is that within two years, we will have
three of these pods available at the different field sites Cresolus works in,
such as Gabon, or Belize.
Finally, we hope that within 5 years, we will have had and
documented enough uses of these mobile laboratories that the idea of renting
them out has become commonplace within research communities. We will have many
pods available for conservationists and biologists around the world, and other organizations
will replicate many of the ideas we have shared and tested.
As a raffle prize helping out donations for the local indigenous group and vegetable delivery service, we made some nice cute cookie cutter designs. They are free to download, use, remix, do whatever you want! just sharing love for these nice animals!
