If you see Chuck, take a picture and upoad it, today!

How can social media be used to accomplish a seemingly impossible task? Today, a social experiment called the “Tag Challenge” sends 5 individuals to roam the streets of New York, DC, Bratislava, Stockholm, and London. The task is to locate them before the sun sets based only on their mugshots. You can contribute by taking and uploading pictures of these individuals if you see them, or even just inviting others to participate!
The $5000 prize will be distributed among the participants, to those who submit pictures as well as those who recruit.

For the CrowdScanner team (which includes SciStarter),  the challenge is a chance to study how information propagates through social networks and what it takes for a message to go viral. The lessons we  learn will help us understand successes and failures of social media in recent events. You can become part of the challenge and help the study by joining our team at www.crowdscanner.net

For more info, or to sign up, go to:
http://bit.ly/H4JXtG

Who’s the CrowdScanner team?
The team consists of a group of researchers from MIT, UCSD, Masdar Institute, and University of Southampton (including the guys who won the Red Balloon challenge).

What’s Tag Challenge?
Tag Challenge is a competition to acquire pictures of 5 volunteers, each in public in a different major city, in a single day. Due to its geographically distributed nature, the competition can only be won by the crowd-sourced efforts of people like you and me. More at http://www.tag-challenge.com

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.

Mia joins in a citizen science 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.

Neufeld office Cyphotilapia frontosa. Photo credit: Eric Wheeler

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.

Trumpeter Swans - image courtesy of Adrian Binns

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.

Trumpeter Swan sightings, March 2012, eBird

Amateur science enthusiasts can join forces with top researchers through Your Research Mission—a new partnership between DISCOVER Magazine and SciStarter.com.

NEW YORK, NY. (March 1, 2012) – A “citizen science” movement is sweeping the country. Now, amateur enthusiasts who want to collaborate with leading scientists can visit DiscoverMagazine.com to join cutting-edge research projects.

DISCOVER is teaming up with SciStarter.com to present Your Research Mission, a dynamic project showcase. Each week, it will feature curated citizen science tasks, ranging from analyzing distant galaxies to monitoring frog, firefly and whale populations, to detecting home and body microbiomes. The projects will make it simple for everyone to jump in and get their hands dirty with science.

“This partnership moves DISCOVER into the fast-growing realm of citizen science,” says Corey S. Powell, Editor in Chief of DISCOVER magazine. “Our readers tell us they’re eager to help study and explore the world, but it can be difficult for them to know where to begin. Now we’ll be offering projects vetted, sorted and aggregated by SciStarter to our two million monthly online visitors.”

“DISCOVER has enormous credibility in the scientific community. Its print and online readers are enthusiastic and intelligent, and their participation in research projects will be invaluable to researchers,” adds Darlene Cavalier, Founder of SciStarter.

Select SciStarter projects will be featured on DiscoverMagazine.com each day beginning in March. Researchers and team leaders who want their project featured can submit it to the SciStarter.com Project Finder for consideration by the SciStarter editors.

About SciStarter.com

SciStarter aims to enable people to contribute to science through informal recreational activities and formal research efforts. The website creates a shared space where scientists can talk with citizens interested in working on or learning about their research projects.

Darlene Cavalier founded both SciStarter and Science Cheerleader.com, a popular blog that works through NFL and NBA cheerleaders-turned-scientists and engineers to promote science literacy and to involve citizens in science and science-related policy.

About DISCOVER

DISCOVER makes science entertaining and understandable through beautiful writing, stunning images, and clear explanations. The monthly magazine covers all of science, from astronomy to human origins to the environment. DiscoverMagazine.com is one of the top science destinations on the Internet, with more than two million monthly visitors. It features daily science news coverage, image and video galleries, and a lineup of popular science blogs including Bad Astronomy, The Loom, and Not Exactly Rocket Science.

This is a guest post from Victor Naroditskiy, a postdoc in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

For most people, a citizen science project provides a way to address a specific scientific challenge with the help of volunteers. For a group of researchers from MIT, UCSD, Masdar Institute, and University of Southampton, it is also an opportunity to study what motivates people to join the project.

Would you rather receive a badge, appear on the leader board, or become the top-contributor among your friends? Is a dinner with the project organizers a better motivator? Or, are payments more appropriate for different types of projects?

In addition to data collection, we emphasize two other common ways of providing a relevant contribution to crowdsourcing projects: recruitment of new participants and verification of collected data. Recruitment is crucial to the success of any crowdsourcing project. Can we help the search for volunteers by providing referral incentives to participants who already signed up? Our team is led by Manuel Cebrian and Iyad Rahwan, the winners of the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge, where payments for referrals proved to be effective.

For many projects, collecting data is only half of the story. What if some of the reports are inaccurate due to honest mistakes and misunderstandings, or worse, due to malicious participants? In most projects, the amount of data is so large that verification must be crowdsourced as well. How does one perform verification with the least overhead and the highest degree of confidence? We are looking for answers by experimenting with various ways of distributing verification tasks and incentives to complete them.

While there is not going to be a one-size-fits-all approach, we expect to identify which set of incentive and verification techniques is most likely to be effective for various classes of crowdsourcing projects. We are currently participating in the MyHeartMap challenge that was recently featured on SciStarter.

Join our team to help us learn more about incentive and verification mechanisms, while creating a life-saving Automated External Defibrillators map in Philadelphia. And, stay tuned for more developments as we explore ways to enhance the experiences of both the citizens and the scientists involved in projects featured right here on SciStarter.

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How cool! Imagine if 1,000 people took a photo of the same landmark in a park, let’s say, over a set period of time. We’d realize what’s in that part of the park all the time and what’s there temporarily. Changes in nature (phenological changes, in particular) and other activities would be recorded and trended but what if near infrared filters were also placed on those cameras? We could then compare sensor data from the cameras to make good estimates about the temperatures in that park and compare that to usage statistics in that same park over the same time. We might be able to predict the day when leaves will fall from the park’s trees…and so much more.
Watch this short video to learn about other possible outcomes of using visual data for scientific study in the future. The possibilities seem endless.
From Intel Labs:

“In this video episode everyday photos are turned into visual data points to aid in the collection of data for scientific study. This segment is part of Vibrant Media, a series created by Intel Labs devoted to envisioning new ways to use Technology and Media.”

If you live in or near Philadelphia, here’s a recent piece from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Sandy Bauer, on wildlife citizen science projects for you!

We especially like this excerpt:

And if you REALLY want to get involved, check out SciStarter, which is considered to be the largest aggregator of citizen science and crowdsourced projects.

You can get started by picking one of more than a dozen topics — astronomy, say, or birds or weather. Or you can pick an activity — at home, at the beach, on a hike.

Read full post.

The PPSR Conference takes place in Portland, Oregon, on August 4th and 5th, 2012. Photo: NASA

Our friends at the National Phenology Network and Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology shared the following with us:

A Conference on Public Participation in Scientific Research (PPSR) will be held in Portland, Oregon on August 4th and 5th, 2012. 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 that always welcomes practitioners from diverse fields. PPSR Conference attendees may be interested in staying in Portland to attend – or even give a talk or poster at – the ESA conference that runs August 6th -10th.

ESA’s call for abstracts is now open, with a February 23rd deadline (please note that this call is for ESA only, NOT for the PPSR Conference): http://www.esa.org/portland/contributed.php.

More details about the PPSR Conference are available at CitizenScience.org/conference/2012, including the agenda, information on a forthcoming call for posters, and a poll for an early headcount.

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Your friendly neighborhood Downy Woodpecker, courtesy of Jerry Acton, NY

On the morning of Friday, February 17, I will wake up before work, pour myself a cup of coffee, and stare out my window for 15 minutes. As long as I submit my observations to the Great Backyard Bird Count, my 15 minutes of zone-out time before I jump in the shower will qualify as productive science.

The Great Backyard Bird Count runs from Friday the 17th through Monday the 20th, and it’s as easy as using a few pajama moments to participate.

Wherever you are, simply stop in your tracks and take a look around for birds. You can in your backyard, outside of the your local cafe, at the playground, or around your driveway — anywhere! Anyone can participate, and the coolest part is that even a report of a single robin matters more than usual, because people across the world will be observing and reporting all at once. In 2011 alone, this huge concerted effort yielded 1,044,346 robins alone!

The data are collected by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, The National Audubon Society, and Bird Studies Canada, and are used to gauge how birds have fared over the winter. With the help of citizen scientists everywhere, researchers get a widespread snapshot of bird abundance and distribution right before migration heats up.

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