As part of our ongoing series, “Citizen Science Test Drive,” first-person reviews of citizen science apps, platforms, tools and projects, we present a guest post from Hal Hodson, a science and technology journalist, based in London, UK.

There’s a misconception about astronomy, and it’s to do with the telescopes. Tell someone that you’ve got a degree in astrophysics and they’ll likely start asking questions about all your romantic late nights training telescopes to the skies, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, one star at a time. The Arecibo Dish, Mauna Kea, Chile’s desert-based and imaginatively named Very Large Telescope; they all lend astronomy a dramatic figure – late nights, just you and the universe.That’s not quite the truth.

Only the most masterful astrophysicists have any say in the operation of the most magnificent telescopes, although it’s true that anyone can do science in their back garden with smaller scale set up. Now the internet lets anyone flex their astronomer’s muscles online, applying their brain to help professional scientists analyze images from some of the world’s cutting edge telescopes. It’s called Zooniverse, a collection of astronomical citizen science projects which facilitates anyone with an internet connection and a computer to increase our understanding of galaxies, the Sun, Moon, supernovae, nebulae, and even exoplanets.

I start off with analyzing merging galaxies, million of stars flowing together, interacting gravitationally to form new shapes. When two spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way come together, it’s thought to result in a elliptical galaxy – a spheroid ball of stars. By picking the computer-modelled merger which best matches pictures of an actual galaxy merger, I can help astronomers refine their models.The website itself is simple, but works seamlessly. You need to make an account, but it takes 15 seconds with an email address and password. There’s no email confirmation, so you’re free to go straight to the science after sign up. Each project comes with a tutorial explaining how to use the application, or you can just dive right in. For instance, the Planet Hunters project gets you classifying light curves right away, but there is a tutorial available. (A light curve is a measurement of the light emitted by stars as their brightness varies, either due to planets or other stars crossing the stellar face, or natural variability ). Beyond just the satisfaction of contributing, you can also track your progress – how many stars you have classified, how many potential planets you’ve found.

I’m pretty excited about trying a project called “Search for exploding stars”. I’ll be finding candidate supernovas in sky surveys taken by the Palomar Observatory in California, candidates which astronomers may then follow up. But there’s a problem, the 640,000 people taking part in Zooniverse projects worldwide have polished off the Palomar data – all the supernova candidates have been found. Zooniverse informs me of this with a pop-up, and suggests I try “Solar Stormwatch“, which asks me to spot solar storms in images from Nasa’s STEREO spacecraft. The implementation of projects on Zooniverse is quite varied. Solar Stormwatch comes with a very slick interface, with great training on how to spot and measure solar storms. The galaxy merger project is much simpler, just asking me to pick best matches, requiring almost no training.

Behind all of the projects, the Zooniverse platform itself keeps track of your actions, measuring your progress across each one. Zooniverse also has a couple of outlier projects: using old shipping logs to model Earth’s climate; categorizing killer whale songs; even helping SETI look for alien signals in data from the Kepler mission. What’s so intriguing about the platform is that it harnesses your brain’s computational power and analytical ability to do things that even super computers can’t. In a world where software and hardware are doing more and more, it’s nice to know that old fashioned human brains are good for something.

As originally posted on USGS.gov:

RESTON, Va. — Thanks to citizen-scientists around the country, the USA National Phenology Network hit a major milestone this week by reaching its one millionth nature observation.

The millionth observation was done by Lucille Tower, a citizen-scientist in Portland, Ore., who entered a record about seeing maple vines flowering. Her data, like all of the entries, came in through USA-NPN’s online observation program, Nature’s Notebook, which engages more than 4,000 volunteers across the country to observe and record phenology – the timing of the recurring life events of plants and animals such as when cherry trees or lilacs blossom, when robins build their nests, when salmon swim upstream to spawn or when leaves turn colors in the fall.

Each record not only represents a single data point — the status of a specific life stage of an individual plant or animal on one day – but also benefits both science and society by helping researchers understand how plants and animals are responding to climate change and, in turn, how those responses are affecting people and ecological systems.

“My dream is that through the wonders of modern technology and the National Phenology Network we could turn the more than six billion people on the planet into components of our scientific observing system,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “We could make giant leaps in science education, improve the spatial and temporal coverage of the planet, lower the cost of scientific data collection, and all while making ordinary citizens feel a part of the scientific process.”

Jake Weltzin, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist and the executive director of USA-NPN, concurs. “Hitting the one millionth observation is exciting because researchers and decision-makers need more information to understand and respond to our rapidly changing planet. More information means better-informed decisions that ensure the continued vitality of our natural areas that we all depend on and enjoy.”

Read the full article, here.

Come join the SciStarter team at that “Woodstock of Science,” the Philadelphia Science Festival this Saturday, April 21st. Stroll along the beautiful Ben Franklin Parkway amid hundreds of hands-on science experiments and exhibits! And, on Tuesday, 4/24, meet SciStarter founder Darlene Cavalier, Azavea (creators of Philly Tree Map, see below) CEO Robert Cheetham, and SciStarter contributor and birder extraodonaire Kate Atkins when they talk about citizen engagement in science at WHYY TV as part of the Philly Tech Week celebration! RSVP to this free event, here.

But first, on Saturday at the Philadelphia Science Festival, your SciStarter team will host our own exhibit (Booth 11 in the Blue Zone) featuring two different opportunities to participate in hands-on scientific research. Come say hello and check out our cool featured projects, including:

Mastodon Matrix Project In 1999 a yard project led the Lozler family of Hyde Park, NY to discover a nearly intact 14,000 year old mastodon skeleton. Now you can help scientists understand the ecology of the late Pleistocene era by sifting through the actual matrix (”dirt”) it was found in. Sign up to have some of the matrix mailed directly to your house so you can sift through it on a hunt for bits of shell, bone and plants. Your findings will be shared with the Paleontological Research Institution and combined with the work of thousands of other citizen scientists for an emerging picture of the environment in which mastodons once thundered.

PhillyTreeMap What is the economic and environmental benefit of the tree in front of your home? PhillyTreeMap will help you find out through this open-source, web-based map database of trees in the Philadelphia region. And they need your help identifying and cataloging other trees in Philadelphia’s urban forest.

We hope to see you on Saturday at the Philadelphia Science Festival and on Tuesday at the Philly Tech Week event!

This is a guest blog post by SciStarter contributor Jacqueline Lewis (who will also be at the Philadelphia Science Festival!).

Registration is open for the Conference on Public Participation in Scientific Research (citizen science, volunteer monitoring, community-based research, crowd science).

August 4th and 5th, 2012 in Portland, Oregon.

$30 with registration for ESA meeting, $95 for this event only.

Now accepting poster abstracts and scholarship applications until May 4, 2012.

With the rapid growth and innovation of public participation in scientific research, researchers and practitioners are in need of a venue for sharing insights across projects and fields of study. This landmark event will convene science researchers, project leaders, educators, technology specialists, evaluators, and others from across many disciplines (including astronomy, molecular biology, human and environmental health, and ecology) to discuss advancing the field of PPSR.

The PPSR Conference is being held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), a venue that has long been supportive of citizen science and welcomes relevant insights from diverse fields.

The conference aims to engage a broad range of participants through a call for posters, open now. Those in need of financial support to attend are encouraged to apply for scholarships. Go to CitizenScience.org/conference/2012 now!

May 4, 2012 deadline for poster abstracts and scholarship applications

June 14, 2012 deadline for ESA early bird registration rates

The first blog post in our new series titled “Citizen Science Test Drive,” (where we present first-person reviews of citizen science apps, tools and platforms) featured reviews of three nature apps by SciStarter contributor Lisa Gardner.  Today, we bring you Kate Atkins, a regular SciStarter contributor and avid birder. Here, Kate shares her list of personal, favorite apps for birding.  If you would like to contribute to this series and share your experiences with our community, email john@scistarter.com.

The best citizen science apps for birding used to be iOS-only. I’ve known many an Android birder to switch to iPhone or buy an iPod Touch because the apps on that side of the divide were so darn good. But with Android smartphones now commanding more than half of the market, the gap is starting to close.  Here’s the best of both worlds.

Finding Birds

BirdsEye
iOS, $19.99
Demo | Apple Store
Figuring out where the birds are and when can be a challenge, particularly for new birdwatchers. Not so with BirdsEye from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

BirdsEye is precisely a bird-finding app, based on the citizen-driven eBird database. Want to see a specific bird? BirdsEye will show you the most recent, closest sighting and give you directions. Want to see what birds have been observed at a specific hotspot over the last 30 days? What rare or notable birds have been seen near you recently? Done and done.

Bird information is something of an aside, but it’s top-shelf sidematter: images from VIREO, sounds from the Macauley Library, and extra tips per bird from Kenn Kaufman.

While helping people find and view birds, this app also teaches newer birders which birds can be found where and when. Yes, this one is still iOS only, but an Android version is likely to materialize soon.

Audubon Birds – A Field Guide to North American Birds
iOS $19.99
Android $9.99
Demo | Apple Store | Android/Google

The Audubon Birds app recently added bird-finding functionality via eBird to their existing field guide app.  Study birds at home, on the subway, or in the park, then go find and observe birds in the real world with a little help from your friends at Cornell and Audubon.

Recording Sightings

A good birder keeps field notes. A citizen scientist shares the data. Cornell’s eBird is the key crowd-sourced database, so the ability to either directly submit to eBird or to export lists in eBird format is a must-have feature for any logging app.

If you are not familiar with the project and wish to report your bird sightings using one of these apps, I strongly urge you to first create an eBird account and use it in a browser before taking the plunge with mobile data-logging.

BirdLog
iOS, $9.99
Android, $19.99
Demo | Apple Store | Android/Google

Very simply, this app records and uploads sightings to eBird, from your fingers straight to Ithaca. I’d like to see it more deeply connected to my eBird account, but for base functionality and total simplicity, BirdLog is indispensable.

Birdwatcher’s Diary
iOS $12.99
Demo | Apple Store

A nice option if you want the bells and whistles BirdLog lacks. This app is pre-loaded with US, Mexico and UK bird lists. Add your locations via GPS, and list for them again and again. Exports to both eBird and Google Map formats so you can easily share your adventures.

The developers have carefully crafted interactions for use in the field. Big day and group count usage is well thought-out, and as your list archive grows, the more fun it will be to study your own patterns. This app makes a compelling case to trade in your notebook for your phone.

Extensive feature run-down complete with screenshots here.

Study & Skill-building

Before, during, and after birding, reference materials and study guides are key elements to the birding life. Most marquis field guides have wonderful app versions with extra illustrations, photos, audio files and links to web resources.

Each is a little different, so it’s worth some thought before purchasing one over another. I’m partial to the Sibley guide for its illustrations, audio files, and side-by-side bird comparison, but beginners may prefer iBird for its guided search.

Field guides

• The Sibley Guide to the Birds of North America
• iBird Explorer
• Peterson Birds of North America
• National Geographic’s Handheld Birds

Birding by ear

• BirdJam
• Larkwire (web app)

Honorable mention

• Nemesis Code’s Bird Codes and Band Codes apps. If you want to be a real ace in the field, these apps will teach you the 4-letter banding codes for birds. Learning these will cut your data entry time, and help you interpret bands if you see them on birds in the wild.

I use some non-birding specific apps to enhance my days in the field. If you’re as phone-fiddly as I am, and like tramping around outside, find out what my home screens hold at Birding Philly.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy recently announced the “Big Data Research and Development Initiative.” This may be of interest to researchers and practitioners of crowd sourcing and citizen science.

For example, as part of this effort, the National Science Foundation will fund a $10 million Expeditions in Computing project based at the University of California, Berkeley, that will integrate three powerful approaches for turning data into information – machine learning, cloud computing, and crowd sourcing.

Here’s more from Tom Kalil via the OSTP blog:

Today, the Obama Administration is announcing the “Big Data Research and Development Initiative.”  By improving our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data, the initiative promises to help accelerate the pace of discovery in science and engineering, strengthen our national security, and transform teaching and learning.

To launch the initiative, six Federal departments and agencies will announce more than $200 million in new commitments that, together, promise to greatly improve the tools and techniques needed to access, organize, and glean discoveries from huge volumes of digital data. Learn more about ongoing Federal government programs that address the challenges of, and tap the opportunities afforded by, the big data revolution in our Big Data Fact Sheet.

We also want to challenge industry, research universities, and non-profits to join with the Administration to make the most of the opportunities created by Big Data.  Clearly, the government can’t do this on its own.  We need what the President calls an “all hands on deck” effort.

Some companies are already sponsoring Big Data-related competitions, and providing funding for university research.  Universities are beginning to create new courses—and entire courses of study—to prepare the next generation of “data scientists.”  Organizations like Data Without Borders are helping non-profits by providing pro bono data collection, analysis, and visualization.  OSTP would be very interested in supporting the creation of a forum to highlight new public-private partnerships related to Big Data.

Tom Kalil is Deputy Director for Policy at OSTP

Today, we are launching a  series of SciStarter blog posts titled, “Citizen Science Test Drive” where we will present first-person reviews of citizen science apps, tools and platforms. If you would like to contribute to this series and share your experiences with our community, email john@scistarter.com.

Here’s my review of three mobile apps for exploring nature!

I often get sidetracked after using the W-A-L-K word out loud in front of my dog. Sometimes, I am looking for misplaced sneakers or sunglasses, but today I am downloading a few citizen science apps to my iPhone in hopes of turning our midday walk into an urban naturalist adventure.

Mila, a fluffy herding mix, sits at attention, impatiently staring at me with her “didn’t you say we were going for a walk?” expression as I poke at the phone and the app icons appear on the screen.

For most dogs and the people attached to the far end of their leashes, a walk around the neighborhood is a regular part of the day. This is especially in urban areas where fenced in backyards aren’t common. Taking the dog for a walk around my city is one of my favorite things to do, especially on a sunny afternoon, and this happens to be a sunny afternoon. If we are going to make a transect through the neighborhood, why not be a citizen scientist along the way?

I choose three citizen science apps: SciSpy, iNaturalist, Project Noah. They sound like the high tech naturalist gear I’ll need. All three center around the same idea – that with all the people on our planet wandering around looking at plants and animals, why not capture the information they see? It could be useful, or at least fun.

Five blocks with SciSpy

Tree! Crow! Some sort of vine! I take pictures and make several observations in the first couple of blocks of our walk. There is also a “pets” category, so I take a picture of Mila and add that too. In this app, one must take a picture to submit for each spotting, which means that wildlife that isn’t photogenic (like the tiny birds that I can hear more than I can see) don’t seem like good candidates to record. The interface and data entry view are easy to use even when I am entering the information with one hand while my other hand clutches the leash. I’m not quite sure if there is any scientific need for this data, but it is fun and easy to make observations and it’s getting me to look at my neighborhood in a different way. I’m on an urban treasure hunt for wildlife.

Five blocks with iNaturalist

On the maps screen, I see my blue dot wandering about and I add observations as we walk with pictures, species names, and location. On all of these apps, the location information is automatically generated by the phone’s global positioning system (GPS), which seems to be on the right block. My blue dot wanders a few more blocks and I find another couple of plants to add. Mammals seem to be scarce today unless you count people and dogs.

I discover that I need to login to sync my observations with the iNaturalist database and allow researchers to use the data. It’s a little cumbersome to do the signup process on the phone since I have to go to the iNaturalist web site, then check email for confirmation, then go back to the website and login with the app. This is a bit challenging when there is a dog tugging at her leash and we wander on.

Five blocks with Project Noah

Aha! I can join missions, which seems like a much more direct contribution to scientific research! Mila, like most dogs, seems like a natural contributor for Project Squirrel so I choose that mission. But, alas, Mila is chasing the squirrels away, and I am unable to take their pictures for the mission. The “new spotting” button comes in handy when I see pigeons wandering the sidewalk. I’m not sure if there is a pigeon mission, but this way I can capture the observation as it is happening instead of browsing the missions.

In the “fieldguide”, there is a screen that allows me to see what wildlife has been spotted nearby. Someone spotted a duck in a nearby park yesterday and the plants on a green roof. And there is a silver maple on 11th Street. A fox squirrel was spotted near the library several months ago. I wonder where he is now. Someone spotted a spider at the state capital last year.

In summary, I realize that while the three apps have their differences, all changed the way I was looking at my city. Smartphones are usually thought of as a tool to make us oblivious of the environment that we are in. When focused on the screen of the phone, we are not noticing our environment. So many of the people I pass on the sidewalk are holding smartphones. How many are uploading pictures of the plants and animals they see along the way?

So, I challenge you all to download an app that gets you focused on the environment around you and test it out for yourself. Get out your phone, spy on the wildlife, take pictures, and join the wildlife paparazzi!

This is a guest blog post by Dr. Josh Neufeld, an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on understanding microbial diversity through next-generation sequencing, characterizing the function of uncultured microbes, and better understanding nitrogen cycling in terrestrial and aquatic environments.

Sergei Winogradsky discovered nitrifying bacteria in 1890, recognizing that these microbes convert ammonia to nitrate (via nitrite). In aquatic environments, ammonia toxicity to fish is avoided almost exclusively due to the activity of these bacteria…or so it was thought. The ability to remove (or oxidize) ammonia was discovered recently in Archaea, which are an entirely different group of microbes from the bacteria. This discovery overturned a century of dogma regarding nitrogen cycling in the environment.

In 2009, I was beginning a study of wastewater treatment plants and the roles of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and archaea (AOA). To test our protocols, I asked an asked an undergraduate assistant to test our DNA-based detection assay on a sample of sponge filter. Having worked in a large Montreal pet store selling fish for 10 years, I was well aware that AOB were assumed to metabolize ammonia that fish produce. The initial test results from my office were shocking: we could not detect AOB in the filter. Instead, our assay demonstrated lots (and lots!) of AOA DNA.

To confirm this initial observation, we  wanted access to aquariums – dozens of them. For this, we needed help from citizen scientists! We didn’t need to go far. The Kitchener Waterloo Aquarium Society (KWAS) is a large group of hobbyists that meet monthly in a local community centre. We contacted them ahead of their upcoming meeting and requested as many filter samples as we could get, providing careful instructions for sampling both filter and water samples. We also visited aquarium stores in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge; these unsuspecting store managers became voluntary citizen scientists as well.

The results from the aquarium filter in my office were reflected in the aquarium filters we sampled. AOA were dominant ammonia oxidizers in most of the filters – AOB were not detected at all in nearly half of the freshwater aquarium filters. Interestingly, aquaria with higher concentrations of ammonia (overfed, overstocked) had higher proportions of AOB.

So, what started as a test of our protocol on an office filter turned into an exciting citizen science pilot project. Along with my graduate student, Laura Sauder, we returned to KWAS with our results, acknowledged them in our publication in PLoS ONE, and will publish a summary of our study in the next issue of their newsletter. We are also working to expand the citizen science study (stay tuned) to see if we can identify factors that influence the diversity and composition of AOA communities, using aquariums as controlled and distinct microenvironments.

Citizen science is the only way this research would be possible.

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Spring is in the air, and birds are finally on the move. A recent push of southerly winds through the middle of the United States have put early migrants – particularly geese and swans – on the fast track to their breeding grounds up north.

This weather pattern is set to continue through this week, so keep an eye out for special species, particularly the Trumpeter Swan. This beautiful species was once on the brink of extinction, but with the help of folks like the Trumpeter Swan Society, it is recovering and expanding its territory. Key to the continued success of the species is an accurate picture of where it winters, migrates, and breeds. The Trumpeter Swan Society tracks reports of the birds in eBird, but also accepts email reports.

A few sightings have popped up in Pennsylvania this month, which is pretty special, so get out there and get looking. If you have a pond, reservoir or lake nearby, grab your binoculars – and don’t forget to eBird what you see.