At home

Humans shed about 1.5 million microscopic skin cells, and ten times as many bacterial cells, every hour. These cells are transferred to numerous surfaces in a home via touch. What type of biological impression are we leaving on our home environments? If you are moving to a new home soon, then we need your help to find out.

We are looking for 20 people (four individual bachelors or bachelorettes between 18-30, four couples between 25-65, and two families with couples between 35-45 and two children 15 years old or younger) to participate in our study. Those relocating within the Chicagoland area are preferred, but all are welcome to apply. Households with cats, dogs, or uncaged birds are not eligible.

The goal of this study is to collect and examine the unique biological material shed by individuals throughout the normal course of a day to determine how rapidly their unique community of bacteria - called a microbiome - is established in their new home environment.

This study examines microbiota associated with the hands, feet, and nose of each individual, as well as those present on the most-often used doorknobs, light switches, floors, and countertops. You collect the data! ***This material is collected using swabs every other day for two weeks prior to moving, and four weeks following a move into a new home.*** All collection and storage materials will be provided to you. The research team will also ask you to note your cleaning schedule and some basic information about guests and visitors to the home for one month after moving in.

The results of this study will demonstrate the way in which we interact with the living surfaces of our home, and the fundamental impact humans have on the composition of microbes in their houses. The experimental design allows for a detailed examination of variables that make up the home environment, such as temperature and moisture, and how they favor different types of microbes shed by the human inhabitants.

Hear more from the researcher, in his own words, in this SciStarter guest blog post! http://scistarter.com/blog/2012/02/whos-the-boss-home-or-human-microbiomes/

Bumble bees are important pollinators, and science needs YOUR help to conserve them. You can contribute to our knowledge of bumble bees and their lives all over the world. Your contribution will tell us about which bumble bees live where, the flowers they visit, and when they're active during the year. The photo group is administered by Athena Rayne Anderson, a doctoral candidate in Ecology at the University of Georgia, and author of the website www.pollinators.info.

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is offering a new online
course for educators focused on its successful citizen science program – *PBB
- 501 Project BudBurst: Introduction to Plant Phenology and Climate Change.
* This inaugural offering is *being offered at no charge *to K-12 educators
and is suited for both formal and informal educational settings. This
online course provides all needed information to implement Project BudBurst
(www.budburst.org) in the classroom and engage your students in a national
program by learning more about plants and climate change at a local level.

Act now and be part of the first online course from The BudBurst Academy
that begins on February 15 and take advantage of the *registration fee
being waived*.

Involvement in Project BudBurst will give students valuable experience
collecting data and will give them the opportunity to make meaningful
contributions to ongoing scientific research where scientists are very
interested in the observations students across the county are making.

This professional development course will provide you with detailed
information on Project BudBurst and how to participate including how to
select your plants and make observations, suggestions for structuring your
classroom involvement, classroom activities to engage your students in
making observations, analyzing data, as well as forming a community with
other K-12 educators within Project BudBurst.

Participants in PBB - 501 can sign up for optional graduate level
continuing education credits from Colorado School of Mines. The fee for 2
credits is $90.00

More information can be found at www.budburst.org/academy

Digital Fisher needs volunteers to help analyze deep-sea videos -- 15 seconds at a time. Volunteers watch a short video of the ocean and click on a simple response.

The NEPTUNE Canada observatory has recorded thousands of hours of video from underwater cameras, but there is currently no software sophisticated enough to automatically identify a wide variety of animals. This is where you come in!

With no training at all, you'll be able to help scientists unveil the mechanisms that shape the animal communities of the ocean. You'll help scientists answer fundamental questions about biodiversity, species behavior, and the impact of various environmental factors.

The Milky Way Project aims to sort and measure our galaxy. We're asking you to help us find and draw bubbles in beautiful infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Understanding the cold, dusty material that we see in these images, helps scientists to learn how stars form and how our galaxy changes and evolves with time.

I do research in child undernutrition and am working on a project to understand the important factors underlying child undernutrition in Fort Saint Michel – an urban slum of Cap Haitien, Haiti. We’re gearing up for a mapping exercise in Fort Saint Michel to capture the exact locations of important health-promoting and health-compromising factors in the area using GPS devices. But first, we need your help!

The problem: As you can see in the image, the commercial area of Cap Haitien is fairly well curated in Google Maps, but the densely inhabited areas of Fort Saint Michel and La Petite Anse are not.

How you can help: Street names, businesses, markets, footpaths – if you know it, we want to see it! If you have knowledge of this area of Cap Haitien, we’re asking for you to share your knowledge with the world!

Now's the time to set up your American Kestrel nest box! This bird's population is experiencing long-term declines in North America, and existing data are insufficient for understanding the causes. The American Kestrel Partnership is an international research network designed to generate data, models, and conservation plans for kestrel habitat and populations at large spatial scales. The Partnership unites the data-generating capacity of citizen scientists with the data-analysis expertise of professional scientists by promoting research collaboration among citizen scientists, universities, government agencies, conservation organizations, schools, and businesses. The Partnership also fosters long-term conservation values and appreciation of science by engaging the public with hands-on research experiences.

The Flusurvey is an online system for measuring influenza trends in the UK.

In contrast to traditional surveillance methods, the Flusurvey collects data directly from the general public, rather than via hospitals or GPs. This is particularly important because many people with flu don't visit a doctor so don't feature in traditional flu surveillance.

Each week, participants report any flu-like symptoms they have experienced since their last visit. If you have no symptoms, this only takes a few seconds. We provide participants with regular updates on the epidemic, all the latest news and advice about flu.

This year, for the first time, we are coordinating with similar surveys in 9 other European countries, letting us monitor flu as it spreads across the continent. You can find out more on the "Join in" tab.

Count birds within a 15-foot area, anywhere in the Western states, for one hour on Thanksgiving Day; you decide the hour and the location.
Last year 431 counters in the eleven Western States and Alaska made 440 counts. They tallied 161 species of birds (plus a lot of mammals and other things, too). The top five species counted in these states were House Sparrow (1), Dark-eyed Junco (2), House Finch (3), Black-capped Chickadee (4) and European Starling (5). As predicted, the Pine Siskin dropped out of the top five last season, but should be more numerous this year. Participants should send in a report even if no birds were seen during the hour.

Harsh winter conditions significantly affect young turkeys. New York State Department of Environmental Conservation seeks wildlife lovers in every county to help them observe and count young male and female turkeys (also known as Jakes and Jennies), from January 2012 through March 2012.

N.H. Fish and Game's winter wild turkey flock survey invites you to help record sightings of wild turkey flocks in New Hampshire from January to mid-March each year. This effort helps biologists assess the impact of winter weather on our turkey population!

SOHO is the most successful comet discoverer in history, having found over one thousand eight-hundred comets in over thirteen years of operation! What's even more impressive is that the majority of these comets have been found by amateur astronomers and enthusiasts from all over the world, scouring the images for a likely comet candidate from the comfort of their own home.

Absolutely anyone can join this project -- all you need is an internet connection and plenty of free time!

The School of Ants project is a citizen-scientist driven study of the ants that live in urban areas, particularly around homes and schools. Collection kits are available to anyone interested in participating.

Teachers, students, parents, kids, junior-scientists, senior citizens and enthusiasts of all stripes are involved in collecting ants in schoolyards and backyards using a standardized protocol so that project coordinators can make detailed maps of the wildlife that lives just outside their doorsteps.

The maps that are created with these data are telling us quite a lot about native and introduced ants in cities, not just here in North Carolina, but across the United States and, as this project grows, about the ants of the world!

Help identify and catalog the trees in Philadelphia's urban forest! PhillyTreeMap is an open-source, web-based map database of trees in the greater 13-county 3-state Philadelphia region. The wiki-style database enables non-profits, government, volunteer organizations, and the general public to collaboratively create an accurate and informative inventory of the trees in their communities. The project was funded by a USDA Small Business Innovation Research Grant and is in support of the Philadelphia Parks & Recreation's 30% tree canopy goal and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's "Plant One Million" campaign. As more trees are added to the database, PhillyTreeMap uses the iTree software from the USDA Forest Service to calculate the environmental impact of the region's urban forest. So get outside and add some trees!

The Oklahoma Invasive Plant council needs Oklahoma residents to report data on invasive plants in their area.

Participants gather information about the invading species and its location, and then submit it on the project website.

By contributing, you can help the project facilitate management of invasive plants and protect the economic and natural resources of Oklahoma’s land and water.

Phylo is a game in which participants align sequences of DNA by shifting and moving puzzle pieces. Your score depends on how you arrange these pieces. You will be competing against a computer and other players in the community.

Though it may appear to be just a game, Phylo is actually a framework for harnessing the computing power of mankind to solve a common problem -- Multiple Sequence Alignments.

A sequence alignment is a way of arranging the sequences of DNA, RNA or protein to identify regions of similarity. These similarities may be consequences of functional, structural, or evolutionary relationships between the sequences. From such an alignment, biologists may infer shared evolutionary origins, identify functionally important sites, and illustrate mutation events. More importantly, biologists can trace the source of certain genetic diseases.

Traditionally, multiple sequence alignment algorithms use computationally complex heuristics to align the sequences. Unfortunately, the use of heuristics do not guarantee global optimization as it would be prohibitively computationally expensive to achieve an optimal alignment. This is due in part to the sheer size of the genome, which consists of roughly three billion base pairs, and the increasing computational complexity resulting from each additional sequence in an alignment.

Humans have evolved to recognize patterns and solve visual problems efficiently. By abstracting multiple sequence alignment to manipulating patterns consisting of coloured shapes, we have adapted the problem to benefit from human capabilities. By taking data which has already been aligned by a heuristic algorithm, we allow the user to optimize where the algorithm may have failed.

All alignments were generously made available through UCSC Genome Browser. In fact, all alignments contain sections of human DNA which have been speculated to be linked to various genetic disorders, such as breast cancer. Every alignment is received, analyzed, and stored in a database, where it will eventually be re-introduced back into the global alignment as an optimization.

Let's play!

Help scientists recover worldwide weather observations made by Royal Navy ships around the time of World War I. These transcriptions will contribute to climate model projections and improve a database of weather extremes. Historians will use your work to track past ship movements and the stories of the people on board.

SKYWARN is a national network of volunteer severe weather spotters. The spotters are trained by local National Weather Service Forecast Offices on how to spot severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, and flooding. In some parts of the country, spotters also report snowfall and ice accumulation.

During hazardous weather, such as severe thunderstorms, floods, tornadoes, snow and ice storms, SKYWARN volunteers report what is happening at their location. They are asked to report whenever certain criteria are met such as when one inch of rain has fallen, four inches of snow is on the ground, a thunderstorm is producing hail, or trees have been blown down.

Reports arrive at the forecaster's office via the telephone, fax, Internet, and amateur radio. The reports are combined with radar and satellite data to determine what the storms will do next. Spotters provide the "ground-truth" to forecasters. Radar may tell us that heavy snow is falling, but it can not tell us how much snow is on the ground or if rain is mixing with the snow. Spotters do. The reports are used by forecasters to send out public statements, warnings and advisories, and short-term forecasts.

Two-thirds of SKYWARN volunteers are licensed amateur radio operators. Amateur radio plays a big role in the SKYWARN program. During severe weather, amateur radio volunteers man a radio station at our office. They talk to our spotters in the particular area that a storm is hitting and request information needed by the forecasters such as hail size or rainfall accumulation. Large storms such as hurricanes can knock out phone service. SKYWARN amateur radio volunteers help us when there are communications outages so that we can continue to receive weather reports and feed warnings and other critical information out to communities.

SKYWARN volunteers are people who either have a strong interest in weather or are public service oriented. This includes amateur radio operators, REACT members, or emergency response personnel. Our spotters are all ages beginning as young as 14 and range well into retirement age. We have farmers, pilots, engineers, housewives, lawyers, television cameramen, teachers, students, firemen, and more. Our volunteers are truly diverse but with a common interest in weather and a strong desire to help their community.

The Bird Conservation Network Census needs citizen scientists to record bird distribution and abundance information for birds in the Chicago region.

Bird monitors can participate at different levels:

- If you have a special interest in a particular site, you can become a regular monitor at that site and keep a year-round watch on the birds that nest, winter, or migrate through that site.

- You may help track changes in nesting populations by conducting point count surveys during the breeding season.

- You may visit a site during the nesting season and record numbers and species of birds just as you would on a Christmas Count.

- If you do not have the time to become a regular site monitor, you can still contribute your sightings.

The Bird Conservation Network has created a set of standardized methods for studying the birds of the Chicago Wilderness region. These methods can serve a variety of research purposes while also allowing birders to participate at different levels of intensity. Participants commit to making five or more visits to the site each year with at least two of those visits coming during breeding season (June). Also, participants should be able to recognize Illinois birds by sight and sound. By general rule, a birder should have about at least three years of experience with field identification of birds in the Illinois area.

The goals of this study are to generate a general picture of bird distribution in the region, to collect data to assist land managers and conservation planners in decision making, and to create a database compatible with other types of habitat data being gathered in the region which can be used by researchers investigating specific ecosystem questions. If you are an avid birder at a Chicago Park District nature area, you are encouraged to become a bird monitor.

Bird Atlas 2007-11 needs volunteers in the United Kingdom to help produce maps of distribution and relative abundance for all bird species that breed and winter in the area.

Bird atlases provide a fascinating periodic insight into the status of all of the bird species of an area. This project will allow researchers to assess changes in bird distributions since previous breeding atlases in 1970 and 1990, and since the last winter atlas of the early 1980s. Atlases have been immensely important for furthering bird knowledge and conservation, and Bird Atlas 2007-11 is destined to set the agenda for the next decades of ornithology in Britain and Ireland.

Fieldwork will span four winters and four breeding seasons, starting November 1, 2007, and concluding in 2011. There are two ways in which you can help:

1. Timed Tetrad Visits - record all the birds you see and hear in a 2km x 2km square. Visit for an hour or more in the winter and breeding season.

2. Roving Records - any bird, anytime, anywhere. If you see it, record it, and, the project coordinators will map it.

The Bird Atlas is a huge project that will synthesize millions of individual bird records. Don't miss this chance to make an important contribution.

Bird Ringing at the British Trust for Ornithology is a network of more than 2,500 trained and licensed volunteers in the United Kingdom that ring--or tag--more than 900,000 birds every year.

Bird ringing involves the fitting of small, uniquely numbered metal rings on the legs of birds. By identifying these birds as individuals, researchers can start to understand changes in the survival and movements of bird populations.

Bird ringers come in many types, from individuals working in urban areas to large groups working in a wide geographic area, and can start at any age. Though you definitely don’t need to be a bird expert to ring, it does help if you have some prior bird knowledge. Anyone who wants to participate in the project will need to gain field experience with a qualified trainer.

You’ll no doubt find that ringing is a very satisfying activity. Not only will you be adding to 100 years of data used directly by conservationists, but you will also enjoy the experience of seeing birds close up. Whether you want to train to ring birds in nest boxes, gardens, or a local gravel pit, your contribution is vital to the project's success.

BirdTrack is a free, online bird recording system for birdwatchers to store and manage their own records from anywhere in Britain and Ireland. Everyone with an interest in birds can get involved by recording when and where they watched birds then completing a list of the species seen and heard during the trip.

Exciting real-time outputs are generated by BirdTrack, including species reporting rate graphs and animated maps of sightings, all freely-available online. The data collected are used by researchers to investigate migration movements and distributions of birds and to support species conservation at local, national and international scales.

BirdTrack is year-round and ongoing, making it an ideal project for getting children enthused about birds and migration. Teachers are encouraged to add their school grounds as a BirdTrack site then help their students to record the birds they see and hear.

The success of BirdTrack relies on YOU. Get started today!

BeakGeek allows citizen scientists to share information about birds and bird sightings using freely available and simple social networking tools such as Twitter. BeakGeek adds value to the data created with these tools by providing map based visualizations and monitoring for terms such as "Rare Bird Alert".

The Mastodon Matrix Project needs citizen volunteers to analyze actual samples of matrix (the dirt) from a 14,000 year old mastodon excavated in New York! Learn the process of science and work like a paleontologist on real research material!

Volunteers sort through the matrix to find shells, bones, hair, pieces of plants, and rocks from the time when the mastodons lived and roamed the Earth. The matrix and discoveries are then sent back to the Paleontological Research Institution, where they will be cataloged and further analyzed by paleontologists to help scientists form a true picture of the ecology and environment of the late Pleistocene.

Mastodons are extinct relatives of modern elephants. Mastodons were numerous and widespread in North America up until around 10,000 years ago, when they became extinct--with many other species--at the end of the last glacial period.

Celebrate Urban Birds provides an opportunity for everyone across the country to watch birds and participate in activities focused on birds and neighborhood habitat improvement.

Participants learn about 16 species of birds and watch an area about the size of half a basketball court for 10 minutes to see if they can find any of those birds. Urban Bird Celebration provides all of the necessary materials to get you started.

An important part of the celebration is to help scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology collect information about the 16 key species of urban birds. The scientists have created a project that will use data collected from participants in the celebration to study these resident and migratory birds - their numbers, their behavior, their interaction with the urban habitat.

Students’ Cloud Observations On-Line (S’COOL) is a citizen science project in which volunteers make and report cloud observations from sites of their choosing, such as a field trip, vacation, or even a backyard. The project aims to collect data on cloud type, height, cover, and related conditions from all over the world. Observations are sent to NASA for comparison to similar information obtained from satellite.

Many people take for granted how powerful clouds are in our atmosphere. It is clouds, in part, that affect the overall temperature and energy balance of the Earth. The more that scientists know about clouds, the more they will know about our Earth as a system. The S'COOL observations help validate satellite data and give a more complete picture of clouds in the atmosphere and their interactions with other parts of the integrated global Earth system. Citizens benefit from their participation in a real-world science experiment and from their access to a variety of background material. Educational materials for teachers are also available.

Related Material:
http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/SCOOL/Rover/

Do you have absolute pitch, the ability to identify or recreate a musical note without any reference? If so, researchers at the Perfect Pitch Test need your help. The Perfect Pitch Test is a study to determine whether absolute pitch differs systematically for different timbres. Your participation involves a brief survey and a pitch-naming test and will make an important contribution to auditory research.

The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual four-day event during which bird watchers count birds to create a real-time snapshot of where birds are located across the continent.

Scientists and bird enthusiasts can learn a lot by knowing where birds are. Unfortunately, no single scientist or team of scientists could hope to document the complex distribution and movements of so many species in such a short time.

Anyone, from beginning bird watchers to experts, can participate in the The Great Backyard Bird Count. It takes as little as 15 minutes on one day, or you can count for as long as you like during each day of the event. It’s free, fun, and easy, and it helps the birds. In addition, yearly data collection makes the information more meaningful and allows scientists to investigate far-reaching questions.

Related Material: http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/2009/02/great_backyard_bird_count_is_this_weekend/

Stellar Classification Online Public Exploration needs the help of citizen scientists to observe and classify stars never before classified. The goal is to mine data from photographic images of star spectra, which result from light absorption in the outer surface of a star. Star spectra are made available online where citizen scientists can compare them to stars with known spectra.

Don't wait--be the first to classify one of hundreds of thousands of stars that have never been seen before!

Related Material: http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/2009/06/when_you_wish_upon_a_star/

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. No matter where you live, city or suburb, from the Midwest to the East Coast, Canada to California, if squirrels live in your neighborhood, you are encouraged to become a squirrel monitor.

The scientists at Project Squirrel will also use this project to understand the effect that participation in citizen science has on participants. By contributing to Project Squirrel and documenting your experience, you can provide valuable information that will eventually be used to recruit other citizen scientists.

Related Material: http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/2009/04/gray_squirrel_gray_squirrel_shake_your_bushy_tail/

The Citizen Weather Observer Program is a group of ham radio operators and other private citizens around the country who have volunteered the use of their weather data for education, research, and use by interested parties. There are currently over 8,000 registered members worldwide and over 500 different user organizations. Their weather data are used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and distributed to user organizations.

The Citizen Weather Observer Program is a public-private partnership with three main goals:

1. Collect weather data contributed by citizens
2. Make these data available for weather services and homeland security
3. Provide feedback to the data contributors so that they have the tools to check and improve their data quality.

The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) is a unique, non-profit, community-based network of volunteers of all ages and backgrounds working together towBy using low-cost measurement tools, stressing training and education, and utilizing an interactive website, our aim is to provide the highest quality data for natural resource, education and research applications.

Each time a rain, hail, or snow storm occurs, volunteers take measurements of precipitation from their registered locations (reports of 'zero' precipitation are encouraged too!). The reports are submitted to the website and are immediately available for viewing. It's educational, but moreover, fun! Just wait until you start comparing how much rain fell in your backyard vs. your neighbor!

The data are used by the National Weather Service, meteorologists, hydrologists, emergency managers, city utilities, insurance adjusters, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, engineers, mosquito control, ranchers and farmers, outdoor and recreation interests, teachers, students, and neighbors in the community.

Related Material: View the 'Story of CoCoRaHS' here: http://www.youtube.com/cocorahs

Track Local Rain, Hail, and Snow Precipitations (Science Cheerleader) at http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/2009/01/track_local_rain_hail_and_snow_precipitations/

Citizen Scientists Weathered the Tornado Outbreak (Talking Science) at:
http://www.talkingscience.org/2011/05/citizen-scientists-weathered-the-tornado-outbreak/

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research.

We’re 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, we can then teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins faster than ever!

Knowing the structure of a protein is key to understanding how it works and to targeting it with drugs. A small protein can consist of 100 amino acids, while some human proteins can be huge (1000 amino acids). The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many, many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers.

Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins.

Related Material:
A New Way for Gamers to be Scientists in Their Spare Time (Science Cheerleader): http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/2009/04/a_new_way_for_gamers_to_be_scientists_in_their_spare_time/