Science Cheerleader

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.

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:

1. Asthma was found to be associated with irregular menstruation.

2. Asthma is higher in women with endometriosis (which also has a high correlation to infertility) than in the general population.

3. The more siblings you have, the less likely you are to have asthma.

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…

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…)

Designing housing that is affordable for city dwellers is challenging enough, even without considering green building standards.  However, the National Engineer’s Week Foundation is asking junior high school kids to design energy-efficient urban environments in this year’s Future City competition.  Now entering its 18th year, the Future City Competition invites seventh and eighth graders nationwide to create the cities of tomorrow, encouraging their interest in science, technology, engineering and math through hands-on applications.

This year’s challenge, entitled “Providing An Affordable Living Space For People Who Have Lost Their Home Due to a Disaster or Financial Emergency”, will require students to design an energy-efficient city using SimCity 4 Deluxe software and then build a model of their virtual city using recycled materials.  Each team is also required to write a research paper that describes the rationale behind their designs, as well as a second narrative that outlines the key features of their city. The registration deadline for this year’s regional and national competitions is October 31, 2009, but interested students can register early in order to obtain an information handbook over the summer.  This is a school-based competition, so interested students will need to obtain the support from their local school’s administration.  Registration costs are low ($25.00), so schools and students would mainly be responsible for the cost of the SimCity 4 Deluxe software (ranging from $14.99 – $43.99 on Amazon.com, though I assume an academic license might be available) and travel to the competition sites.

Also, former scientists and engineers can volunteer to mentor teams of students as they design their city.  This would be a great way for retirees to get involved in a local classroom near home and share all of their expertise!  Interested mentors can contact local schools directly to see if there is an interest in the Future City competition, or sign up here.

The “distributed computing” project known as SETI@home just celebrated its 10th anniversary. For the past decade, thousands of volunteers have loaned the experiment a little bit of their personal computers’ idle capacity to help in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe. There’s no sign of ET yet, but the San Francisco Chronicle’s Science Editor David Perlman reports that the quest continues–and has a lot to be proud of.

The same technology that stitches together 235,000 PCs around the world to create a supercomputer for SETI@home now powers nearly a hundred other such research projects, according to Perlman. These range from Rosetta@home, which helps chart possible new designs for proteins, to Einstein@home, which sifts satellite data for evidence that may prove Einstein’s prediction of gravity waves.

Want to volunteer your computer to pitch in whenever it’s not fully occupied? (Many of these programs have cool dashboards that let you tune in to the analysis and learn a bit about the underlying science.) Visit the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing and check out the list of projects to choose from.

Video games are everywhere these days!  And so, the next time you go to pick up your Wii controllers or log on to your favorite World of Warcraft server, take an hour or so to put your gaming skills to a more scientific use.  Scientists at the University of Washington are exploiting our societal love of video games to advance their research on protein folding by creating the game Foldit.

(more…)

Finally, you can add that very special member to your online social network—your houseplant.

Why would a plant want to join your network? To let you know when it’s thirsty, of course. Also to regularly report on its moisture level and to periodically thank you for watering it.

The network we’re talking about is Twitter, a group-oriented “microblogging” tool. This Web service keeps networks of friends, colleagues, businesses, and total strangers in contact through barrages of short messages known as “tweets.” And everybody from Barack Obama to the New York Times to my niece seems to be Twittering these days.

So why not Phil, the wilting philodendron that lives in your bedroom?

All you need is a clever do-it-yourself kit from a company called Botanicalls (cost: $89.95). With it you can build an electronic moisture-sensing system that enables one lucky houseplant to join your Twitter group. (Have a look at one houseplant’s tweets.)

This is a fairly geeky project, involving circuit boards, capacitors, ethernet cables, and a soldering iron, among other special equipment. But the kit’s instructions look clear, deliberate, and user-friendly. For a preview, see the company’s getting started and assembly page.

FYI, Botanicalls started out several years ago with a kit that enabled your plant to contact you by telephone, which they now call the Classic kit. If you need a break while you’re building the Twitter kit, I recommend you periodically watch the hilarious video that explained the Classic. It’s at the end of this post.

And, check out this scifi short story inspired by this Science Cheerleader blog post!

PROJECT SNAPSHOT

> Topics: Biology, plants, computers, electronics.
> Location: At home, or anywhere you have a plant.
> Duration: About 20 steps to assembly, then installation and testing. Maybe one long session or several separate sessions of a few hours each.
> Cost: $89.95 for the kit, which includes the required electronic components.
> Gear: Basic tools for assembling electronics such as needle-nose pliers, soldering iron, wire snips, etc. A computer with Internet access is also needed.
> Level of difficulty: Pretty technical.

Botanicalls “Classic Kit” Video (a hoot)

Want to gaze at stunning astronomical photographs and help astronomers do their research at the same time? Meet, GalaxyZoo.org, a Web site that enables amateur galaxy analyzers to work from the comfort of their computers.

You don’t need any specialized knowledge. After going through a brief tutorial and qualifying test, you can head to the Galaxy Analysis portion of the site and start reviewing images that need to be cataloged. Just look over each object’s shape and label it with the proper “profile”: spiral galaxy, elliptical galaxy, star, or don’t know.

Volunteers have turned out millions of galaxy classifications, which affiliated scientists will be including in upcoming journal articles. The site reports that last year, its “armchair astronomers” discovered more than “500 overlapping galaxies in the local universe when astronomers had previously only known of 20 such systems.”

PROJECT SNAPSHOT

> Topics: Astronomy, computers.
> Location: At home, office, or anywhere you can get to a computer.
> Duration: As short or as long as you like. It only takes a moment to classify each galaxy.
> Cost: Free.
> Gear: Computer with Internet access.
> Level of difficulty: Easy (after you do the tutorial).

The latest issue of Make magazine (number 15) is devoted to build-them-yourself, high-tech musical instruments. And the coolest of the bunch is this laser harp, at right, being played by its inventor, tech musician Stephen Hobley.

You coax out the computer-generated sounds by waving your hands to break the light beams and change their lengths.

To build a laser harp, you’ll need to be familiar with and fearless about such things as MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) technology, circuit boards, photo cells, voltage regulators, and computers. If you’re not a serious music technology geek who’s been tinkering for years in the garage, you’ll need to buy or scare up a significant amount of hardware and software.

Stephen’s article in Make does include a simpler project—a single-beam “laser theremin,” as opposed to the six-beam laser harp. But even that’s still a pretty complex gizmo.

Whether or not you dive into this project, we’re sure you’ll appreciate the sights and sounds of the harp in action. Check out Stephen’s video demo, below.

PROJECT SNAPSHOT

> Topics: Computers, electronics, music, light, sound.
> Location: At home, or in your secret laboratory.
> Cost: $19 for the plans and schematics; order from Stephen Hobley’s Web site. Significant additional cost for parts and equipment.
> Gear: Computer, MIDI utility software, software synthesizer, USB-MIDI interface, soldering equipment, insulated wire, wire cutters and strippers, multimeter, alligator leads, saw, drill, vise and clamps.
> Level of difficulty: Pretty technical.