Studying gravestones to track changes in Earth’s chemistry. Call for volunteers! EarthTrek presents a global Gravestone Project.
This project aims to map the location of a graveyards around the globe and then use marble gravestones in those graveyards to measure the weathering rate of marble at that location.The weathering rates of gravestones are an indication of changes in the acidity of rainfall between locations and over time. The acidity is affected by air pollution and other factors, and could be used as a measure of changes in climate and pollution levels.
From Dr. John: To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internets, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role of social networking in communication, team building, and group mobilization. The challenge is to be the first person to submit the locations of 10 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States.
Here’s how it works: The red balloons will be deployed on Saturday, December 5, in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads. Teams and collaborators will have approximately 9 days, until 12:00 PM (ET) on December 14, to collect the locations of the balloons and submit their entries. All locations must be submitted in latitude and longitude coordinates. The event is open to individuals of all ages irrespective of nationality or residency (except Federal employees and their spouses and dependents), but first you must register your team on the DARPA Network Challenge website.
Find the red balloons. Win $40,000. Do you have what it takes to be the next Balloon Boy/Girl?
While we most commonly associate Google with its ability to search the Intertubes for our favorite science FAILs, the tech giant is also opening new doors for citizen science. A recent article in the Public Library of Science (PloS) ONE highlights a new mobile phone application, powered by Google Maps and Google’s Android operating system, that allows professional and citizen scientists to gather, submit, and access research data from the field.
The application, called EpiCollect, was initially designed for epedimiological and ecological studies but has potential for a number of other fields, including economics, public health, and resource allocation. Individual users can input data records (variables, photos, GPS location, etc) into EpiCollect from their mobile phone, which is synchronized to a central database. An accompanying web application, located at www.spatialepidemiology.net, provides a common location for mapping, visualization, and analysis of the data by everyone involved in the study. The two-way connectivity between the EpiCollect mobile application and the central database could increase the collection and collation of data for community projects, particular in resource-limited areas.
Importantly, EpiCollect was developed as a free software using Google’s open-source Android operating system. Anyone interested in using the software is encouraged to contact David Aanensen in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London. The EpiCollect website also provides three sample epidemological datasets and a facility to geocode your own spatial data.
Do you know where your Congressional representatives and Senators stand on the health reform issue? Research!America (the nation’s largest not-for-profit public education and advocacy alliance), makes it easy to find out, through the “Your Congress, Your Health” constituent education initiative. Now, it’s as simple as visiting the website and typing in your zip code to learn more about your reps’ positions. And YOU get to weigh in with your opinions on this and other health-related legislative matters.
Thanks, subscriber Marilyn (who happens to work at Research!America) for calling attention to this terrific project! Here’s an excerpt from an email Marilyn sent us a little while back:
As President Obama and Congress proceed to revamp the American health care system, health reform will continue to dominate the national dialogue. Securing funding for medical, health and scientific research must be a critical piece of that discussion.
Your Congress-Your Health asks all members of Congress their positions and priorities on health reform, as well as health-related research. An initiative of Research!America and more than 20 partner organizations, the 2009 Your Congress-Your Health questionnaire is now online along with some initial responses from Congress. Knowing where Congress stands on these issues should be top of mind for your readers and all Americans.
There is important work to be done for health reform, but it does not mean that we should stop working on the future of health. Research is the only way to transform U.S. health care from a “sick-care” system to a system that prevents disease. Moreover, committing to a strategic investment in research will help lift America out of its current economic crisis by creating jobs and ensuring that we decrease the disease burden that hurts our health and our economy.
On the site, your readers can see if their members of Congress have responded to the survey and, if not, use links on the site to let Congress know that their views on these issues are important to their constituents. We also have public opinion poll data available featuring questions similar to those we are asking Congress.
Let me know if you have any questions about Your Congress-Your Health. Thanks for all you do for science and science advocacy. Regards, Marilyn J. Walker, Research!America
Here’s Sarah with a fascinating update to one of her previous posts.
You may recall one of my posts from a few months ago where I encouraged everyone to become involved in CureTogether. (To summarize, CureTogether is a collaboration of people from around the world volunteering to solve real problems by reporting information about their chronic conditions. Patients self-report and rate symptoms and treatments for over 360 conditions. The top conditions at CureTogether are depression, anxiety, migraine, back pain, and vulvodynia.) I am pleased to report that I just received an e-mail from Alex Carmichael, one of the co-founders of CureTogether, with some fabulous news about the success of their citizen science projects.
According to Alex, after an analysis of data reported by 324 patients at CureTogether, patients who report infertility are 1.9x more likely to report having asthma than patients who don’t report infertility. Within the 34 people reporting infertility, 13 (38%) reported having asthma (the remaining 21 out of 34 specifically said they did NOT have asthma). Within the 290 people reporting “no infertility”, 58 (20%) reported having asthma (the remaining 232 specifically reported NOT having asthma). This 38% vs. 20% relative risk is statistically significant, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.4 – 2.6.
This finding is really important because using only user-reported data, CureTogether has confirmed the infertility-asthma association that has only been explored previously in clinical studies such as the ones I have listed below:
4. A big cohort study in the UK found no link between fertility and allergy-related diseases but also said that with asthma in particular there was a different relationship to fertility than with eczema and hay fever.
Obviously, this is a big step for citizen science – REAL disease correlations being confirmed just by people answering a few health questions. I encourage you all to log on to the CureTogether website and take a few moments to report data of your own! In the meantime, I have no doubts that they will continue to have more success to share with us in the coming months…
World Water Monitoring Day™ (WWMD) is an international education and outreach program that builds public awareness and involvement in protecting water resources around the world by engaging citizens to conduct basic monitoring of their local water bodies.
An easy-to-use test kit enables everyone from children to adults to sample local water bodies for a core set of water quality parameters including temperature, acidity (pH), clarity (turbidity) and dissolved oxygen (DO). Results are shared with participating communities around the globe through the WWMD Web site.
70,000 people participated in 2008. Monitor your local waterways through December. Get started here.
Call for citizen scientists, from Alaska! Here’s Sarah with a report.
Partnered by the Alaska Zoo, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, the Alaska Natural Heritage Program, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, the Alaska Bat Project is in need of local citizen scientists to report bat sightings throughout the fall and winter months. Most Alaskans are unaware that bats reside in their state, as there is very little known about basic bat ecology in Alaska. However, there are five species of bat that live in Alaska, with the Little Brown Bat being the most common species by far. The Little Brown Bat is known to feed and roost throughout Southcentral and Interior Alaska; however, only a small number of maternity colonies have ever been documented in this vast region. Their distribution and abundance during the summer months is also poorly understood, and even less is known about where they go in the winter. Although it is believed that Little Brown Bats from Interior and Southcentral Alaska fly south to hibernate where the winters are a little less severe, neither these migrations nor the actual locations of hibernating bats have been documented. By reporting any bats they see this winter, the citizens of Alaska will be filling in a large information gap needed to help conserve resources critical to bat survival.
The decline of bat populations is not just happening in Alaska either – bats around the world are in trouble, and mostly due to human-related factors. Everything from development/expansion of our civilization (and therefore, deforestation) to the use of pesticides (which alter the bat prey base) to killing these poor creatures in the middle of the night out of fear when they appear in your closet or bathroom vent (not that I am speaking from experience or anything) is detrimental to the preservation of bat populations everywhere.
I know bats are not the most cute and cuddly creatures, but that is probably why there is such a gap in the knowledge available to help preserve them. So my Alaskan readers, as halloween approaches, don’t just hang plastic bats and cotton webs along your porch to scare young children – fight your own fears and go out and check on a few real ones too.
PROJECT SNAPSHOT:
Topics: ecology, brown bats
Location: at home, close to home (if you are in Alaska, that is!)
Duration: all throughout the year, though particularly in the fall and winter months
Cost: free
Gear: a stamp to mail in the observation form, amd maybe a coat since it is cold in Alaska
Level of Difficulty: SO easy – their observation form is ridiculously straightforward
In this report from Dr. John Ohab, we see how public participation in government activity is but a heartbeat away…in the Executive Branch, that is. Congress still lags far behind. In the coming weeks, I will have an update on the status of our efforts to create a participatory mechanism so the public can become informed–and weigh in–on, science and technology policy issues BEFORE Congress drafts legislation. Some exciting things are underway!
Here’s Dr. John with a report on how YOU can now access government data and mash it up ’till you heart’s content….
In 2008, Vivek Kundra, then-Chief Technology Officer for Washington, D.C, was looking for innovative ways to use information technology to improve the city’s government. He looked no further than its citizens.
In 2008, Vivek Kundra, then-Chief Technology Officer for Washington, D.C, was looking for innovative ways to use information technology to improve the city’s government. He looked no further than its citizens.
Kundra created a public contest called Apps for Democracy, which challenged citizens to create their own software applications using DC government data and popular products like iPhones and Google Maps. For years, the DC Data Catalogue had provided public data on crime, construction projects, and government operations. Apps for Democracy rewarded citizens that could think one step further and develop the most cost-effective, accessible ways of re-packaging this data for use by the general public and the government.
The city invested roughly $50,000 in Apps for Democracy, and in just 30 days, produced 47 software applications with an estimated savings of $2,300,000. The effort was so successful it even spawned a follow-up, Apps for Democracy: Community Edition, which asked citizens to develop applications for submitting online requests for city services. (more…)
Do you ever wonder what is really coming out of the faucet when you turn on your water? If you participate in World Water Monitoring Day on September 18, you will be one step closer to finding out! World Water Monitoring Day is an international education and outreach program that protects the quality of local water resources around the world by enlisting citizen volunteers to conduct basic monitoring of their local water bodies. This project is organized by the Water Environment Federation (WEF) and the International Water Association (IWA), and they hope to expand participation to one million people in 100 countries by 2012.
Though there are celebrations being held in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta this year on September 18, anyone can organize their own event right in their neighborhood. An easy-to-use test kit enables everyone from children to adults to sample local water bodies for a core set of water quality parameters including temperature, acidity (pH), clarity (turbidity) and dissolved oxygen (DO). Each test kit, which is recommended to be used in a group of no more than 5-10 people, contains:
1 Instruction booklet (English/Spanish)
1 Sample collection jar
1 pH test tube
1 Dissolved oxygen vial
1 Secchi disk decal
2 Temperature strips (14-40°C and 0-12°C)
50 pH reagent tablets (enough for 50 tests)
100 Dissolved oxygen reagent tablets (enough for 50 tests)
1 Color chart for determining DO, pH and turbidity test results
1 Mini pencil
1 Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)
The results of the study are then reported through the World Water Monitoring Day website. Though World Water Monitoring Day is officially celebrated on September 18, the monitoring window has extended for the first time this year from March 22 (World Water Day) until December 31. Participants are encouraged to celebrate anytime during the extended window, making this a perfect project for classrooms this fall! (All the materials are even included, so schools and/or their teachers will not have to shell out extra dollars for supplies.)
PROJECT SNAPSHOT:
Topics: water, analytical chemistry
Location: at home, close to home
Duration: until December 31, but if you are going to a local river or stream, probably in the warmer months!
From Sarah: This photo was taken while I was painting ceramics by the beach of our Cancun resort…and I’m sure you observant readers can detect the sunburn on my face even though we had only been outside for 30 minutes. (And by the way, don’t think I wasn’t coated in SPF 50 sunscreen!) I am not one of those lucky people that can tan easily…or at all. My skin is two colors: as close to albino white you can get without being clinically albino, or bright red…and so, I am indebted to the folks at the Maryland Science Center for studying those pesky UV rays.
Earth by Aura is an ongoing research program sponsored by NASA and the Maryland Science Center that focuses on determining how accurate forecasters are at predicting the daily UV index. Citizen scientist researchers go out into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor daily to take UV radiation readings and interact with other citizens, encouraging them to protect themselves from UV radiation and to get involved with the project. (more…)
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