Science you can do right now!
Let's celebrate "Citizen Science Month" by actively participating in many different scientific endeavors and contributing to ongoing scientific projects. In this post I'm going to talk about a few ways you can help scientists and get involved in some real-world projects. Whether you are an educator, a student, and anyone who is curious about science this is your chance to be a citizen scientist.
As a National Geographic fan I would like to start by introducing you two connected apps: iNaturalist and Seek. If you love spending time in nature all you need is to download the free apps, turn on the camera and take pictures of plants, fungi, mollusks, insects or any other species to take part in biodiversity projects. You then not only get to use the computer vision algorithm to help you identify the species you also get to interact with fellow naturalists to help you narrow down or correct your identifications.
On my last walk I made 20 observations and identified 8 species.
You can find more information about iNaturalist and Seek here:
iNaturalist for iPhone users: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/inaturalist/id421397028
iNaturalist for Android users: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.inaturalist.android
Seek App info: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app
Would you like to help synthesize RNA molecules and RNA medicine from the comfort of your home? Then join Eterna (https://eternagame.org) and be a part of development of stable mRNA vaccines that can reach everyone anywhere in the world. Eterna is a game-based environment that sets you on a journey of tasks and challenges while teaching about base-pairing, folding and structure in RNA molecules to prepare you for real problems scientists are currently working on. If you enjoy playing video games the way I do this will be a fun way to avoid those spring allergens.
What is Eterna?
Do you need a break from the biophysics of RNA? Do you want to venture into multiple projects that harness the power of people to unlock mysteries of our time and contribute to real discoveries? Then Zooniverse (https://www.zooniverse.org) is the place for you. You get to participate in a myriad of ongoing projects and identify owls, classify frog songs, characterize terrains on Mars, and label gravitational waves. If you want to help Dr. Karl Gebhardt with classifying galaxies as distant or near, you can join his AstroTinder and swipe left if the galaxy is distant and swipe right if it's nearby. To learn more about the research of Dr. Gebhardt and his team, you can watch a recording of his recent talk. I attended his talk last month during the Texas Science Festival organized by UT Austin.
If you are one of those activists craving social change while helping solve local issues then check out SciStarter (https://scistarter.org/). Many projects featured on SciStarter aim to provide data to local leaders to bring about meaningful change. You can help your local community, NGOs and universities by participating in a variety of projects. SciStarter enables you to look up projects by location so you can find projects that affect your community.
You can also contribute to global projects, from anywhere at any time.
Have you ever wondered if some languages sound more pleasing than others? If you are curious to know the answer, why not try playing your part in being the answer to this question. (Check out project details here: https://scistarter.org/music-in-our-ears-do-some-languages-sound-more-ple).
An image of your hand positioned around a cup can help scientists develop an AI algorithm that aims to identify perpetrators by processing patterns of knuckle creases. (Check out project details here: https://scistarter.org/knuckle-down-id)
Do you want to be happy? Who doesn't? Then maybe you want to contribute to "The Happiness Project" conducted by Rutledge Lab at Yale University. In this project you play a video-game that tests your decision making and helps scientists develop mathematical equations that relate happiness to how we make decisions. If you seek the mysteries of happiness I also highly recommend you take this free course on Coursera: "The Science of Well-Being” at https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being.
This year no matter how you decide to celebrate the "Citizen Science Month" remember to share the joy with others and don't forget to spread the word and empower science communities to harness the potentials of billions of intelligent minds and hopefully spark some to start the first step of their journey as a scientist.
I’m planning to celebrate the month by trying out a debris-tracker app and participating in a project about brain health but that’s another story for another post.