Act and learn
Audience
TypeDiet
Open Food Facts
Open Food Facts (https://world.openfoodfacts.org/) is a food database made by everyone, for everyone.
Open Food Facts is a non-profit citizen project created by thousands of volunteers around the world. You can contribute by adding a product from your kitchen, and there are plenty of exciting projects you can participate in in lots of different ways.
More than 440,000 products are referenced on the application which can be downloaded from the site.
Note the also existence of Open Beauty Facts on the same model, site dedicated to cosmetics https://world.openbeautyfacts.org/
Archeology
Paleoart
Do you like strange animals straight from the Paleolithic era?
Paleoartist Nobu Tamura brings these creatures from another time back to life!
Architecture
Hobbit house
Creation of Simon Dale who now lives in the Lammas project, an eco-village in Wales (West Wales).
Hobbit house : http://www.simondale.net
Lammas project : https://lammas.org.uk/en/welcome-to-lammas/
Astronomy
Space archive
WikiArchives.space is a collaborative website containing photo galleries. It aims to host all the photos taken from space under a public domain or CC-NC license, to redistribute them for free to everyone.
Each photo added is carefully and manually processed by an archivist, to ensure that you get the date and place where it was taken, with a detailed description and its source.
There are currently (March 2021) nearly 60,000 photographs.
https://www.wikiarchives.space/
Project Apollo Archive
The Project Apollo Archive brings together all the photos from the Apollo lunar expeditions, which are now in the public domain. This is made possible by the fact that NASA allows free access to all of its archives, except for the indication of contrary copyright and logo, because of its Freedom of Information Act. One can thus find some educational materials or simply rare images of Pluto !
Biology
The tree of Life
When did this species appear? Is it endangered? What do we know about it?
What is the most recent common ancestor of man and fern?
The tree of life answers these questions based on current knowledge!
http://www.onezoom.org/life.html
GBIF
The GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility — which is an international network and research infrastructure funded by world governments with the aim of providing everyone, everywhere free access to data on all life forms on Earth.
Coordinated through its Copenhagen Secretariat, GBIF’s network of participating countries and organizations, operating through Participant Nodes, provides data-holding institutions around the world with common standards and open-source tools to share information when and where the species were observed. This knowledge comes from multiple sources: from museum specimens collected in the 18th and 19th centuries to georeferenced photographs recently shared by an amateur naturalist using his smartphone.
Mushroom Observer
The purpose of Mushroom Observer is to record observations about mushrooms, to help people identify mushrooms they don’t know about, and to expand the community of people who engage in the scientific study of mushrooms (mycology).
Some wonder what a fungus is. The site has taken a very broad approach to this. Although the main focus is on fleshy fungi, other fungi such as lichens, rusts and molds, as well as fungal-like organisms, such as slime molds, are all welcome.
Ultimately, we hope the site will become a valuable resource for both amateur and professional mycologists. We like the idea that the site is seen as a living guide to mushroom identification or as a collaborative mycological field diary.
Plants For A Future
Plants For A Future (PFAF) is a UK not-for-profit organization that provides a resource website for people interested in useful and edible plants from temperate regions. The project has a station in the South West of England, where most plants are grown on a trial basis, and maintains a small mail order catalogue. The organization emphasizes perennials.
PFAF has adopted strong ethical principles and the following objectives:
“The goals of the work are to advance public education by promoting all aspects of vegan organic agriculture and horticulture with an emphasis on trees, shrubs and other perennial species; to undertake research in this type of horticulture and agriculture and to disseminate the results of this research. »
The online site contains a database of over 7000 species of plants which can be grown in the UK, the data is collated by Ken Fern and can be viewed and used online free of charge, or downloaded upon payment.
https://pfaf.org/user/Default.aspx
Proteopedia
Proteopedia is an online encyclopedia, presenting 3D images, operating on the principle of wikis. It deals with proteins and other molecules related to biology.
The encyclopedia site offers a page for each entry in the Protein Data Bank (more than 77,000 pages), but also pages concerning the description of the structures of the constituents of proteins in the broad sense and related articles relating, for example, to acetylcholinesterases , hemoglobin or Photosystem II. These 3D descriptions use images elaborated via Jmol, a Java applet. The images highlight functional locations (called sites) and ligands (molecules with their bonds).
https://proteopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Worms
The aim of a World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) is to provide an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms, including information on synonymy. While the highest priority goes to valid names, other names in use are included so that this register can serve as a guide to interpret taxonomic literature.
The content of WoRMS is controlled by taxonomic and thematic experts, not by database managers. WoRMS has an editorial management system where each taxonomic group is represented by an expert who has the authority over the content, and is responsible for controlling the quality of the information. Each of these main taxonomic editors can invite several specialists of smaller groups within their area of responsibility to join them.
And there are beautiful pictures ;)
https://www.marinespecies.org/
Xeno-canto
xeno-canto is a website dedicated to sharing bird sounds from all over the world. Whether you are a research scientist, a birder, or simply curious about a sound that you heard out your kitchen window, we invite you to listen, download, and explore the bird sound recordings in the collection.
But xeno-canto is more than just a collection of recordings. It is also a collaborative project. We invite you to share your own bird recordings, help identify mystery recordings, or share your expertise in the forums. Welcome!
Data
Our world in data
Lots of data in graphic form about our world.
Engineering
Blueprints under Free Licenses
The goal is the construction at a lower cost, from basic elements, of some basic machines. He calls it the “civilization starter kit”.
https://www.ted.com#t-124573/talks/marcin_jakubowski_open_sourced_blueprints_for_civilization
https://www.opensourceecology.org/marcin-jakubowski/
Engineer guy
Do you want to know how a NERF, a retractable pen, a music box or optical fiber works?
Bill Hammack explains this to you. His videos are on Youtube and his personal website:
https://www.billhammack.org/index.html et https://www.youtube.com/user/engineerguyvideo/videos?ucbcb=1
My human kit
My Human Kit is an association aiming to develop health for all through the invention, sharing and manufacture of technical aids for disabilities that can be made for and with the people concerned.
It invites people with disabilities to become the center of gravity of their project, that is to say to transform their limitation into motivation. To be involved in solving their problem to federate a team using the combined strength of solidarity (Tous Ensemble), homemade (Do It Yourself) and digital fabrication (FabLab).
The objective is to demonstrate and propagate “Humanlab”, workshops where humans will learn to self-repair all over the world.
OpenLCA
OpenLCA is a free, professional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and environmental footprint software with a wide range of features and many databases available. This software was created by GreenDelta in 2006 as an open source software.
The software is available in several languages.
In addition, it is possible to connect to a database search (free of charge or not depending on the data sets).
Furniture
OpenDesk
The principle of OpenDesk: Share plans for the construction of furniture, as well as the assembly instructions!
Place the plan on boards, trace and cut. The assembly is simplified to the maximum to be accessible.
On the site, there is even a map of handymen and people who can provide tools or equipment.
You can also vote for your favorite designs.
Pharmacopoeia
Open Source Drug Discovery
Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) is a CSIR led team India Consortium with global partnership with a vision to provide affordable healthcare to the developing world by providing a global platform where the best minds can collaborate & collectively endeavor to solve the complex problems associated with discovering novel therapies for neglected tropical diseases like Tuberculosis, Malaria, Leishmaniasis etc.
OSDD is a translational platform for drug discovery, bringing together informaticians, wet lab scientists, contract research organizations, clinicians, hospitals and others who are willing to adhere to the affordable healthcare philosophy agreeing to the OSDD license.
Sciences
HAL
HAL is an open archive where authors can deposit scholarly documents from all academic fields.
Consultation of the site is free and does not require a user account.
This CCSD platform (Centre for Direct Scientific Communication) contains nearly 700,000 scientific documents!
https://hal.science/
Note that there are other platforms such as arXiv.org for the so-called “hard” sciences or Open Edition, for the humanities and social sciences.
Made available by the author with his consent for free distribution.
MinuteEarth
MinuteEarth is an exciting channel of Science and stories that answers a whole bunch of questions that we ask ourselves (or not ;) )
Simple and visual explanations.
https://www.youtube.com/user/minuteearth?ucbcb=1
OpenCourseWare
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a research institution and an American university, specialized in the fields of science and technology. The institute is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, close to Boston, northeast of the United States. MIT is often regarded as the one of the best Science and Technology University of twenty first century in the world. Currently, MIT is a world leader in teaching and research in science and technology, but it is also known best in other areas such as management, economics, linguistics, political science and philosophy. The institute entertains approximately 2,000 students under above listed fields.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) mainly emphasizes on scientific researches and technological development, whereas it is mandatory for the students to participate in these valuable and worthy researches. MIT was the first university to establish the online educational system, which was launched in 2001, with the great variety of courses. That project was named as “MIT Open Course Ware”.
Thousands of courses, exams, tools, notes, exercises... are translated into several languages.
Public Library of Science
PLOS is a nonprofit, Open Access publisher empowering researchers to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.
Techniques
Floss Manuals
The Floss Manuals website provides free manuals about free software on its site.
You can order paper versions, collaborate on writing or consult the books (in progress or finished).
Paper lovers can also order printed version, which also helps this beautiful project to develop.
This project is multilingual and it is also possible to translate books.
Instructables
Instructables is a website that specializes in DIY (Do it yourself) projects created and uploaded by members of the site, which are then commented and rated by other members. It was created by Eric Wilhelm, a mechanical engineer, and was launched in August 2005. Users post instructions to their projects, which are often accompanied by visual aids, and interact with other members as well in the comments section at each stage of the project only in forums dedicated to this purpose.
The goal being reproducibility, most tutorials are under Creative Commons License
https://www.instructables.com/