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10-10-2012
Vote for iSPEX in the Labyrinth Academic Award 2012
| Submitter: | Ramon Navarro |
| Description: | The Academic Year Prize (Academische Jaarprijs) is for the best translation of scientific research to a broad audience. An expert jury chaired by Paul Schnabel decides who gets the first prize of 100,000 euros to implement the plan. In addition, we/you get to vote which of the three finalists wins the Labyrinth Audience Award (Publieks Prijs). The winning topic will be central in a later broadcast of Labyrinth, an organisation that brings science to radio and TV in the Netherlands. For reasons that will become clear below, we at ASTRON are rooting for the iSPEX project. "iSPEX will be one of the greatest citizens science projects ever in the world," says Frans Snik of team iSPEX. The team created a simple but clever extension piece for the (camera of the) iPhone, which allows people to measure the concentration of particles in the atmosphere. The result can then be sent to a central location, where it will be combined with others. The plan is to measure the aerosol concentration with 10,000 people distributed over the Netherlands on a clear day in 2013. ISPEX team is a very diverse team, with backgrounds at KNMI, NOVA (Research School for Astronomy), SRON (the Dutch Institute for Space Research) and RIVM. Everyone institute has their own goal. RIVM, in collaboration with the Asthma Foundation, investigates if this new method is suitable to identify dust sources and to estimate health risks. For the KNMI and SRON the topic of interest is the influence of aerosols on the climate. NOVA/ASTRON uses the method of iSPEX in the search for exoplanets. If the team wins the Academic Year Prize, it will be able to manufacture the proposed 10,000 iSPEX pieces, and to develop the iPhone app that performs the measurements and communicates the results. Everybody can participate, performing valuable scientific measurements. All the measurement together contribute to a better understanding of the effects of aerosols on your health. Please vote for iSPEX here: http://www.wetenschap24.nl/programmas/labyrint/publieksprijs.html and forward this message to all interested. Thank You! The iSPEX team |
| Copyright: | http://ispex.nl/ |
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