Citizens as scientists

Earlier this week the New York Times Bits blog had a post about a new research project at ARM Holdings, the British chip designer. Called mbed, ARM has put together a kit for a microcontroller, which is a basic, low-power computer on a chip. ARM provides a set of software tools for bringing that microcontroller to life and linking it with other interesting items like accelerometers, gyroscopes, cameras, displays and thermometers.

According to the Times, the mbed device can plug straight...