#science hacking

Last night we met for the first meetup of Science Hacking at Technarium.

We have been inspired by the success of Science Hack Day Vilnius 2018 and decided to run these meetups every last Thursday of each month, and hopefully more long term projects develop over the year!

We looked over the hacks of SHDV18, and shared and discussed some new project ideas that we could pursue.

opit had an idea to do one of the two projects: monitoring of microplastics in Lithuanian drinking water, which would make people more aware of plastic pollution, and take action; and swine farm pollution monitoring, which is a big issue in Lithuania - but it’s very difficult to prove sources of pollution.

Next time we decided to work on a DIY isothermal amplification device that could detect DNA & RNA in field samples. It could be used to detect RNA of porcine viruses in water bodies, which is a very specific indicator of pollution with pig waste! The method could be accessible enough for citizen scientists, especially living around sources of pollution, to test water bodies near pig farms and find solid proof of inappropriate disposal of waste. That could then be used to keep the offending farms in check.

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) shield for Arduino DNA detection - figure from Velders, Schoen & Saggiomo (2018). BMC research notes, 11(1), 93.