A new partnership between Microsoft and the European Environmental Agency is combining detailed scientific information on air and water quality with observations made by citizen scientists.

Ever wondered about the air quality in Copenhagen? Or perhaps the water quality in Paris?

Eye on Earth uses Microsoft’s Bing Maps to combine goespatial and environmental data from 22,000 bathing sites and 1,000 air quality monitoring stations throughout Europe. An “air quality model” provides the air pollution situation between air quality monitoring stations.

Citizen scientists can contribute their knowledge by clicking on simple user feedback icons. For each location, the map displays the average yearly value of all ratings submitted by citizen scientists. Users can then overlay the environmental data with their own observations with the click of a mouse.

If you submit any observations, we’d love to know! Feel free to share your experience in our Member Blog section, leave a comment on our Facebook Page, or tweet us.

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As record levels of snow blanket much of the United States this year, Science For Citizens is collaborating with an important climate research project at the University of Waterloo called Snow Tweets. We’re pleased that this is the first of many scientific projects that you’ll be able to do on Science for Citizens.

To help researchers track climate change, we’re requesting that you find a ruler, put on a warm coat, go outside, and measure the depth of snow wherever you happen to be. And then report the depth to us right here. That’s all there is to it! You’re simple action will help the planet. Your data will advance climate science, and you’ll get to see your depth report appear on our world map of snow tweets.

To help you get started, we put together this “How To” video complete with some empirical evidence from your fellow citizen scientists. Enjoy, and please share wildly on your social network of choice.

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Record and share wildlife encounters with WildObs' suite of smartphone apps. Photo: WildObs

Ever spotted an amazing critter and wanted to tell your nature-loving friends where it was located? Ever wondered where you could view a white-tailed jackrabbit? WildObs is the app for you!

Short for “wildlife observations,” the WildObs website and suite of iPhone and Android apps allow nature enthusiasts to record wildlife observations and then share photos, stories, and locations of these sightings with other interested people. In short, WildObs is working to connect people, places, and wildlife.

Want to know where to find a Bohemian Waxwing? Looks like one was recently sighted near Manchester, NH! Hoping to spot a baboon? Well, another fellow had luck seeing one in Amboseli National Park in Kenya!

Members post sightings and also list their hopes for sightings-to-come. The most wished-for observation these days is the reclusive cougar.

The WildObs iPhone collection, including Naturalist, Observer, Lookout, and Lookup allows spotters to record their viewing events in near real-time and to figure out what species they are looking at. The app uses GPS to tag the wherebouts of your own sightings, and will also let you see what animals fellow WildObs members have spotted near your current location. To learn how to use WildObs, check out their “how to” videos.

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Learn how RNA folds, then create your own shapes to test in the lab. Photo: EteRNA

What class of molecules dominated the primordial stages of evolution, and seems to function as an exquisite operating system for our cells? RNA — the single-stranded cousin of DNA. Scientists suspect that a better understanding of RNAs will allow us to more deeply understand healthy cells, and to design better treatments for those infected by disease. (See below for more RNA info.)

Now EteRNA, a collaborative online game, allows ordinary citizens to help biologists take a crack at solving a challenging RNA mystery, namely: what are the rules governing its folding? Players who assemble the best RNA designs online will see their creations synthesized in a Stanford biochemistry lab!

Drs. Adrien Treuille (Asst. Prof. of Computer Science at CMU) and Rhiju Das (Asst. Prof. of Biochemistry at Stanford) met while completing their postdoctoral research at the University of Washington, and collaborated on another online venture — FoldIt — aimed at understanding protein folding. Hoping that a similar approach could be used to crack the mysteries of RNA folding, they teamed up with doctoral student Jeehyung Lee to create a multi-player RNA-folding game. In an added twist, the RNA that players design is then synthesized in a Stanford biochemistry lab, to see if the folding pattern was indeed correct.

What’s so hard about RNA folding?

“Our computational models are not yet sophisticated enough to correctly predict when a particular RNA design will fold correctly in practice,” Treuille said in an email interview. “It is easy to create RNA designs which computers predict will fold properly, but which will not when synthesized. … We hope that the EteRNA community will be able to put forth a more complete set of hypotheses about when RNAs fold properly, and use these hypotheses to design a set of new RNA designs that fold into exotic, and ultimately medically useful shapes.”

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Below, I’ve listed the top 10 Science for Citizen blog posts according to the number of visits. Thanks for joining our journey in our inaugural year. Wait until you hear what we’ve got cooking for 2011!

Happy New Year from the Sci4Cits team!

10. The hummingbird versus Godzilla–on video!

To fans of hummingbirds and “nature cams,” Phoebe Allens needs no introduction. She’s an intrepid little momma bird whose adventures in nurturing her young have been well documented by a Web cam pointed at her nest in a rose bush in Orange County, California. This spring, Phoebe bravely defended her nest from a lizard several times her size. She then removed a damaged egg so that it wouldn’t attract any more attackers.

9. What makes a good citizen science project–for you?

Before attending a panel discussion at the conference, ”Earth and Space Science: Making Connections in Education and Public Outreach,” Michael asked readers  about what makes a citizen science project successful for them. how important is it that you increase your own scientific knowledge as part of the project? How important is it that you contribute to scientific knowledge? Is it important to you that you do more than collect data?

8. Help needed: monarch butterflies in trouble

Monarch butterflies need our help! The regal butterflies, hit hard by the torrential February rains in Mexico, are at their lowest population levels since 1975, according to Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas. The storms killed 50 to 60 percent of the breeding colonies in northern Mexico; the butterfly population was already diminished by unfavorable conditions last summer.

7. Don’t know a chickadee from a warbler? There’s an app for that!
Looking for a convenient way to identify birds during your next citizen science excursion? Consider the WildLab Bird iPhone app, which uses photographs, audio, and maps to help you determine which bird you’ve spotted and makes it easy to share the observation with researchers at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. It’s wild!

6. Tracking Jellyfish around the globe

Have you seen a Jellyfish on a family vacation or on your yearly deep-sea fishing trip? JellyWatch is a new citizen science project that aims to create a database of jellyfish sightings across the globe. Just snap a picture if you can, and visit JellyWatch to record your sighting. If you went to the beach but didn’t see any jellyfish, that data can be used as well. And, the study is looking at more than just jellyfish — sightings of red tide, squid, or other unusual marine life will help build a long-term database that can be accessed and further developed by schools, policy makers, and the general public.

5. Spot the jellyfish – here or in Malta

One thing about Science for Citizens readers: they love Jellyfish! As this little guy (in the thumbnail) peers through a jellyfish on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, hundreds of citizen scientists are recording their jelly observations on the Mediterranean island of Malta. By reporting jellyfish that swim close to shore and identifying them using the project’s online guide, participants not only increase the public’s awareness about the types of jellyfish around Malta but also help others, as the site says, “avoid those stinging jellies!”

4. 10 back-to-school projects for citizen scientists

To keep young minds entertained as well as enlightened, we recommended 10 back-to-school projects for student citizen scientists. Teachers and parents, please note: Many of these programs provide materials around which you can build lessons. And there are lots more where these came from. Visit our Project Finder for a full list of citizen science projects for primary and secondary school students.

3. Picture Post: the art of citizen science
Sometimes, science is the happy companion of art. And sometimes, art is the happy byproduct of science, as in the citizen-science effort known as Picture Post. This project wants you to do like Richard Misrach: Take photographs of the same place over a period of time, monitoring how the landscape and vegetation change.	>

2. Citizen science goes to the beach

As Memorial Day approached  and Americans slide into summer vacation, we mixed up a little surf and science cocktail for the lazy summer days ahead. Here are half a dozen citizen science projects you can participate in while at or near the beach. To find more watery science to do this summer, browse through the Ocean and Water category in our Project Finder. If you’d like to recommend other ocean-based projects,

1. A university for citizen scientists

Bard College, a liberal-arts school in New York state, is hoping to foster a lifelong interest in science with its new “Citizen Science Program,” a three-week intensive regimen required of all first-year students. The course, ready to roll in January 2011, aims to give all Bard’s freshmen in-depth exposure to scientific problem solving. Congrats to our blogger, Liz, for crafting the most popular blog post of the year!

Which citizen science projects in our Project Finder were the most visited in 2010? Check out the top 10! Is your favorite on this list? If not, tell us about your favorite citizen science project(s) on your very own (free) member blog!

10. Foldit: Solve Protein Puzzles for Science

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research. Researchers are collecting data to find out if humans’ pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern-folding tasks. If this turns out to be true, researchers can then teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins faster than ever!

9. REEF Volunteer Fish Survey Project
Keep track of the fish you see while scuba diving or snorkeling, and submit those observations to an online database. You can start anytime, with or without a training class, as long as you can POSITIVELY identify the fish you see. This is a worldwide program for Pacific Coast, Tropical Eastern Pacific, Tropical Western Atlantic, Hawaii, and northeast U.S. and Canada.

8. Project Squirrel

Project Squirrel is calling all citizen scientists to count the number of squirrels in their neighborhoods and report their findings. The goal is to understand urban squirrel biology, including everything from squirrels to migratory birds, nocturnal mammals, and secretive reptiles and amphibians. To gain data on squirrel populations across the United States, citizen scientists will also be asked, when possible, to distinguish between two different types of tree squirrels – gray and fox. Anyone can participate in Project Squirrel!

7. Moon Zoo
Moon Zoo invites you to help astronomers count and analyze craters and boulders on the surface of the moon. You will examine images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which show the lunar surface in remarkable detail, including features as small as about one and a half feet across. While exploring the lunar surface, who knows what else you might find.

6. Texas Bee Watchers: 52 Gardens, 52 Weeks

Texas Bee Watchers aims to increase awareness and knowledge of native bees in Texas. In 2010, the Bee Watchers are challenging Texans to plant 52 Bee Gardens in 52 Weeks. To watch native bees, you only need to find some blooming plants. Once you see these hard-working insects, you may want to try catching a few native bees with a net, cooling them down in an ice chest, and looking at them close-up. Or maybe you’ll want to practice your photo skills and photograph them? Sounds fun? It is!

5. Sound Around You Project

The Acoustics Research Centre at the University of Salford is building a sound map of the world as part of a new study into how sounds in our everyday environment make us feel. They’re asking people across the world to use their mobile phones (or another audio recording device if their phone is not compatible) to record 10 to 15 second clips from different sound environments, or “soundscapes”–anything from the inside of a family car to a busy shopping center. Then, volunteers upload the clips to a virtual map, along with their opinions of the sounds and why they chose to record those particular sounds.

4. Stardust@Home

Join Stardust@Home in the search for interstellar dust!  On January 15, 2006, the Stardust spacecraft’s sample return capsule parachuted gently onto the Utah desert. Nestled within the capsule were precious particles collected during Stardust’s dramatic encounter with comet Wild 2 in January of 2004; and something else, even rarer and no less precious: tiny particles of interstellar dust that originated in distant stars, light-years away. Together, you and thousands of other Stardust@home participants will find the first pristine interstellar dust particles ever brought to Earth!

3. Gravestone Project

Help researchers map the location of 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.

2. Firefly Watch

Firefly Watch combines an annual summer evening ritual with scientific research. Boston’s Museum of Science has teamed up with researchers from Tufts University and Fitchburg State College to track the fate of these amazing insects. With your help, the project aims to learn about the geographic distribution of fireflies and their activity during the summer season. Fireflies also may be affected by human-made light and pesticides in lawns, so researchers hope to also learn more about those effects.

1. Laser Harp: Build It Yourself

Tech musician Stephen Hobley’s laser harp was the most popular project in our Project Finder. After building your laser harp, you’ll coax out the computer-generated sounds by waving your hands to break the light beams and change their lengths. We first found out about Stephone’s harp in recent issue of Make magazine that was devoted to build-them-yourself, high-tech musical instruments. Sounds awesome, huh?

Steve Haddock from JellyWatch will be joining the Science for Citizens exhibit at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. (Photo: John Lee Pictures)

There’s only one more day until this weekend’s USA Science and Engineering Festival Expo in Washington, DC!

The Science for Citizens team has been hard at work putting together an engaging, interesting, and fun exhibit featuring some terrific citizen science projects. Remember, we’ll be at Section PA-13, Booth Numbers 1229 and 1231, on Pennsylvania Ave NW from 10 am-5:30 pm on Saturday and Sunday. Stop by to meet the entire Science for Citizens team and our collaborating partners.

All this week, we’ve been featuring short Q&As with our collaborators to give you an idea of what you can do at the Science for Citizens exhibit. So far, we’ve covered coyote tracking with Anne from Earthwatch, bird research with Mary from Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology, and macroinvertebrate sampling with Lindsay from Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to Steve from JellyWatch. That’s right–jellyfish! And, to top it all off, we’ll even have real jellyfish at the exhibit.

Take it away, Steve!

Steve, tell us about yourself.

I’m Steve Haddock. I’m a marine biologist and researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Monterey, California. I study the diversity and bioluminescence of different kinds of jellyfish. The JellyWatch project was created along with Katherine Elliott.

What is your citizen science project?

Our project is jellywatch.org –a website that gathers and shares reports of observations of marine animals and especially jellyfish. We are trying to establish a baseline for what are high- and low-jellyfish years, in waters around the world. This will help us determine whether and in what ways the ocean might be changing. The data can also be downloaded by anyone for their own curiosity or research project.

What can people do at your demonstration?

We will be showing our site, along with some of the great photos and sightings that people have submitted. When people stop by, if they recall a jellyfish sighting they encountered, they can add it to our database on-site. We’ll also have some JellyWatch magnets to help spread the word.

What is your favorite part about working in citizen science?

Interacting with the global community is extremely rewarding. On any given day we can have sightings from three or four different continents, and it really is a great feeling. It is also interesting seeing the photos of jellies from all over. Interacting one-to-one with people at facebook.com/jellywatch is also a fun way to engage curious nature-lovers.

Dr. Kevin McLin is the Director of the Global Telescope Network. (Courtesy Photo)

Whether tackling the mysteries of the universe or studying birds in the backyard, citizen science projects rely on collaboration between scientists, volunteers, teachers, students, and many other dedicated participants.

One great example from our Project Finder is the Global Telescope Network, an informal association of amateur astronomers who partner with scientists to conduct cutting-edge astronomy research. Using small telescopes around the world, Global Telescope Network members observe and analyze astronomical objects related to several NASA missions. Members participate in a variety of activities, including gamma-ray burst photometry analysis, surveillance data analysis, and galaxy monitoring, and by donating telescope time.

I recently had the opportunity to ask Dr. Kevin McLin, director of the Global Telescope Network at Sonoma State University, a few questions about the network, its members’ contributions, and what excites him about the field of astronomy.

Dr. McLin, who makes up the Global Telescope Network?

It’s a fairly far-ranging and diverse group of people. We have some university observatories that are members, and we have amateur astronomers who have their own backyard observatories. In addition, we have high school observatories. It’s a mix of professional, amateurs, and educators.

Can you describe how a member of the Global Telescope Network accesses, controls, and gets images from the robotic GORT telescope?

We share time over the Skynet system headed by Dan Reichart at University of North Carolina. We use the Skynet interface to give access to our student members who do not have their own observatories. These are both high school and undergraduates, typically. The Skynet system allows the students to submit jobs to a queue, and then to retrieve their images when the jobs are complete. They don’t have to stay up all night with the telescope this way either, which can be an important part of a project for a high school student.

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Glowing bacteria, their DNA tagged with a fluorescing protein, will help students in Bard College's citizen science course learn about infectious diseases. Photo: Dr. Brooke Jude

Bard College, a liberal-arts school in New York state, is hoping to foster a lifelong interest in science with its new “Citizen Science Program,” a three-week intensive regimen required of all first-year students. The course, ready to roll in January 2011, aims to give all Bard’s freshmen in-depth exposure to scientific problem solving.

The director of the new program, Dr. Brooke Jude, spoke with me about this exciting venture, explaining that “the idea is to teach science to everybody. Even if a student doesn’t want to be a scientist later on, this will give them a chance to see how to do science in everyday life.”

The goal is for students to come away with a deeper understanding of how to formulate and test a hypothesis, as well as how to critically examine the science reports they see in the news.  Jude hopes that by mixing students who like science with those who are less scientifically inclined, “we’ll see an infectious liking-of-science bubble over to students who were nervous about it before.”

Speaking of “infectious” — the course will focus on “Infectious Diseases,” a topic deeply connected to the biology of bacteria (including the development of antibiotic-resistance) as well as to the policy side of modeling and controlling the spread of disease. During the course, every student will take part in three week-long modules: a biology lab, a computer modeling lab and a section on problem-based learning. In the biology lab module, students will perform experiments aimed at the question “How do viruses infect bacteria?” Some experiments will show DNA that’s been labeled with green fluorescent protein (GFP) moving between cells, allowing students to understand how the genes for antibiotic resistance can be traded between bacteria. Says Jude, “The beauty of working with bacteria is that they grow really fast.  You can do an experiment in a day!”

Not only can the Citizen Science program increase science literacy, says Jude, but it’s also a chance to foster connections with the world outside Bard’s walls. She is eager to get the students involved in the community, both as citizen scientists and through other outreach programs, including teaching science in elementary schools and working with groups such as Habitat for Humanity. One exciting aspect of this initiative, says Jude, is “reorienting first year students to there being civic engagement opportunities out in the community.”

Imagine: A whole new generation of citizen scientists!

Einstein@Home analyzes data from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. Credit: Cornell University

Our pal, Elsa Youngsteadt, at Sigma Xi (one of the oldest and largest scientific organizations in the world) asked us to invite you to participate in an online conversation taking place right now over at The World: Science.

Elsa co-produces the popular science podcast for The World, a daily international news magazine broadcast on public radio stations across the United States.

Some of her most interesting subjects extend beyond the podcast to online forums. One such example includes the physicists who run Einstein@home: Bruce Allen and Benjamin Knispel, from the Max Planck Institute of Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany. Einstein@Home asks volunteers to donate their computers’ idle time to search for gravitational waves and new astronomical objects. Recently, three of their volunteer citizen scientists were credited with discovering a new pulsar!

From The World: Science website:

In a study published in the journal Science this week, the scientists report Einstein@Home’s first discovery – a pulsar, some 17,000 light years from Earth. Pulsars are rotating neutron stars (leftover cores of dead giant stars). They spin rapidly and emit pulses of electromagnetic radiation. Those radio waves are picked up by radio telescopes like the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which was used in this study.”

Elsa, Bruce, and Benjamin are participating in an online science forum, hosted by The World: Science, and they want to share with you information on how scientists are working with citizen scientists–and their computers – to make discoveries in space. (You’ll also find more details about the pulsar discovery–it’s a rare type called a “disrupted recycled pulsar.”)

They also want to hear from you. Do you participate in distributed computing projects? Care to share your experience? Is there anything you would like to ask Bruce and Benjamin?

If you’d like to participate, simply visit the Volunteer Computing online forum. But do it soon. This forum ends August 25th.

And if you learn something the ScienceForCitizens.net community might find interesting, be sure to tell us about it on your Sci4Cits member blog.