Chemistry

Help NASA find life on Mars by exploring the bottom of the lakes of British Columbia, Canada.

The Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) has been investigating the underwater environment with DeepWorker submersible vehicles since 2008. Now with MAPPER, you can work side-by-side with NASA scientists to explore the bottom of these lakes from the perspective of a DeepWorker pilot.

The PLRP team makes use of DeepWorker subs to explore and document freshwater carbonate formations known as microbialites that thrive in Pavilion and Kelly Lake. Many scientists believe that a better understanding of how and where these rare microbialite formations develop will lead to deeper insights into where signs of life may be found on Mars and beyond. To investigate microbialite formation in detail, terabytes of video footage and photos of the lake bottom are recorded by PLRP's DeepWorker sub pilots. This data must be analyzed to determine what types of features can be found in different parts of the lake. Ultimately, detailed maps can be generated to help answer questions like "how does microbialite texture and size vary with depth?" and "why do microbialites grow in certain parts of the lake but not in others?". But before these questions can be answered, all the data must be analyzed.

Science Hack Day is a 48-hour-all-night event that brings together designers, developers, scientists and other geeks in the same physical space for a brief but intense period of collaboration, hacking, and building 'cool stuff'. By collaborating on focused tasks during this short period, small groups of hackers are capable of producing remarkable results. Some Hack Days have a specific focus. There have already been very successful Music Hack Days and Government Hack Days. It's time for a Hack Day focused on science!

EcoSpark's Changing Currents program introduces grade 8-12 students from across the Greater Toronto Area (Toronto, Peel, Durham, and York school boards) to their area's watersheds. Students get outside, put on hip waders, explore a local river stream, and learn about its importance and quality.

By participating in the program students will:

use benthic macro-invertebrate bio-monitoring to examine the health of their local river or stream (it's easy!),
contribute to a GTA-wide study of watersheds, and
have the chance to take action around what they discover

Volunteers are needed weekly to collect water samples and other physical climate measurements, then identify species of phytoplankton under a light microscope while watching for potentially harmful algal blooms (HABs) and signs of environmental disturbance in our marine waters.

Get a snapshot of the health of the Boise River watershed by monitoring water quality! Citizen groups, schools, families, and individuals are invited to participate in this fun event which takes place at numerous sites along the Boise River and tributaries from Lucky Peak to Star. No experience necessary! A knowledgeable trainer will meet you at your assigned location to assist with monitoring.

The OPAL Water Survey needs citizen scientists in England to record what life they see in local ponds and to conduct simple tests for water clarity and pH. By contributing, you'll help scientists learn more about how polluted lakes and ponds in England actually are.

Animals living in the water can tell us a great deal about how polluted the water may be. Some species struggle to survive in polluted waters, while others are more tolerant. By telling us what life you see in your local pond you’ll discover more about the water's health and contribute to valuable scientific research.

This is one of five OPAL surveys across England to learn more about the state of the environment. Anyone can get involved. The studies are open to all ages and abilities, and your contribution will be important in helping scientists build up a picture of England's natural environment.

We are looking for volunteers for our upcoming Yuri's Education Day event at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View this April 8, 2011 as we honor the 50th anniversary of the first astronaut who entered into space, Yuri Gagarin. This upcoming year, we are expecting more than 6,000 attendees from the greater San Francisco Bay Area to join together in a one-of-a-kind experience, and we are excited to create an innovative and interactive learning environment with your help!

On April 8th, from 9am-3pm, bay area educators and students are invited to participate in a free educational extravaganza of science, art, math, technology, engineering, sustainability, and space-related fun. Join us in hosting thousands of elementary, middle, high school, and college students from around the San Francisco Bay Area in an eclectic learning experience featuring presentations, workshops, interactive exhibits, and hands-on activities by prominent scientists, visionaries, space-enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs from multiple disciplines.

You can contribute to a nation-wide effort this spring to provide more accurate juniper pollen forecasts! Juniper pollen causes severe allergic reactions in many people. The Juniper Pollen Project is a NASA-funded collaborative effort between the USA National Phenology Network and several universities in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to improve predictions of pollen release and allergy and asthma warnings.

You can join this effort by periodically checking individual juniper trees in your area for pollen cone development and reporting your observations via the USA National Phenology Network web page. Just choose one or more of our four species of juniper: Pinchot's juniper (Juniperus pinchotii), Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum), oneseed juniper (Juniperus monosperma), or Ashe's juniper (Juniperus ashei), make observations of your juniper, and report your findings via the USA-NPN’s online system, Nature’s Notebook.

Participants will engage in community-based water quality reporting, data sharing, and analysis. Get involved in water quality issues in Toronto, Canada.

"Juturna" is a web-based geographic information system that supports the collection, analysis, data sharing and reporting of community collected water quality data. It is currently implemented to support EcoSpark's "Changing Currents" program that links water quality monitoring to environmental and science curriculum in schools. This project addresses requirements of data sharing and monitoring specified in Annex 4 of the Canada-Ontario Agreement. It provides a collaborative mechanism among researchers at York University, the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and the civil society organization EcoSpark (formerly Citizens Environment Watch) to monitor environmental conditions of local watersheds. To learn more about Ecospark visit http://www.ecospark.ca/

Watershed Watch increases the understanding of New Mexico's water quality, river ecology and fisheries health through hands-on science in a real-world context. Students gather data on biological, chemical and physical indicators and make presentations to local data users including acequias (irrigation canals), school boards, federal agencies and watershed groups. Students become engaged in environmental studies of issues beyond the classroom to that address critical water issues in local regions.

The Colorado River Watch Network supports volunteers who monitor the water quality at strategically located sites across the Colorado River watershed from West Texas to the coast. The network serves as an early warning system that alerts the Lower Colorado River Authority to potential water quality threats.

The network's mission is to encourage and support community-based environmental stewardship by providing citizens, teachers, and students with the information, resources, and training necessary to monitor and protect the waterways of the lower Colorado River watershed.

Volunteer monitors submit data for approximately 120 sites each year, with an average annual total of roughly 1,000 monitoring events reported.

The mission of the Chordoma Foundation is to rapidly develop effective treatments and ultimately a cure for chordoma, while improving the diagnosis, treatment, and quality of life for people affected by this devastating bone cancer of the skull and spine.

Currently, no effective chemotherapies exist, and a lack of valid chordoma cell lines is preventing the development of new treatments. The Chordoma Foundation needs your help to assemble a panel of well-characterized chordoma cell lines that can be shared with researchers and companies across the world. Cell lines in this panel should represent the diverse set of clinical manifestations of the disease, including chordomas of the skull-base and spine from primary, recurrent, and metastatic tumors from adult and pediatric patients.

The Chordoma Foundation will award a $10,000 prize for each cell line that is determined by the Chordoma Foundation to meet the requirements listed in the Detailed Description and Technical Requirements. The prize will be made as an unrestricted award to your institution to be used for scientific and educational application. In return for the award, Solvers and their institutions are expected to grant rights to the Chordoma Foundation to freely use, store and distribute the cell lines for all research and development purposes. The terms of the grant of rights are included in the Challenge-Specific Agreement for this Challenge. If required by your institution, the Chordoma Foundation also will work with you to execute an appropriate material transfer agreement to govern sharing of your cell line.

Discover how to submit your cell lines in the Detailed Description and Technical Requirements for the Challenge.

Florida LAKEWATCH is a volunteer water-monitoring program that facilitates "hands-on" participation in the management of lakes, rivers, and coastal sites through monthly sampling activities. Participants work with researchers at the University of Florida to collect samples that, when analyzed, will contribute to the understanding of Florida’s water bodies.

All volunteers attend a two-hour training session on how to collect water samples and monitor lakes. As a trained LAKEWATCH volunteer, you will help develop a database of water chemistry for your particular lake, river, or coastal site. These data can then be used to establish trends and develop an overview of how your site fits into the overall picture of Florida water bodies.

Volunteers receive a free newsletter subscription and invitations to free Florida LAKEWATCH volunteer appreciation meetings. Don't miss out!

Volunteers are needed to help the South Yuba River Citizens League, based in Nevada City, California, collect monthly water quality data at 45 different sites in the Yuba Watershed.

We are the leading regional advocates for creating resilient human and natural communities throughout the greater Yuba River basin by restoring creeks and rivers, regenerating wild salmon populations, and inspiring and organizing people—from the Yuba’s source to the sea—to join in our movement for a more wild and scenic Yuba River.

We train participants to use pH and conductivity meters and to conduct dissolved oxygen titrations in the field in order to collect information on the health of their rivers and streams. We also offer volunteers the opportunity to be involved in other monitoring activities, including health assessments of meadows, sampling of benthic macroinvertebrate and algae, surveys of river vegetation, and temperature logging.

SoundCitizen is a community-based water sampling network in the Puget Sound area of Washington state. We’d love your help.

SoundCitizen focuses on scientific investigation and knowledge discovery of the chemical links between urban settings and aquatic systems. We study fun compounds (cooking spices) and serious ones (emerging pollutants).

We are staffed by undergraduate students at the University of Washington, whose individual research topics help define the overall scientific aims of the program.

SoundCitizen encourages involvement with citizen volunteers and school groups, who voluntarily collect water samples from aquatic systems, perform a series of simple chemical tests, and then mail samples to the lab to be analyzed for cooking spices and emerging pollutants. Our scientific findings illustrate strong seasonal links between household activities (cooking, cleaning etc.) and the subsequent release of chemical “fingerprints” of these activities in aquatic and marine environments.

Seward Park in Seattle, Washington, needs citizen volunteers to conduct water chemistry tests during visits to the park.

Participants will use water chemistry test kits to monitor phosphates, dissolved oxygen, nitrates/nitrites, pH, and temperature at three locations around Seward Park.

After a short training course, volunteers are welcome to check out a kit and run the analysis any time. The more data, the better! Volunteers can even conduct tests during a lovely walk around the park -- it's exercise with a subplot!

Seward Park in Seattle, Washington, needs volunteers to create a library of the DNA fingerprints of all the eagles who live in or visit the park.

You can help with this project in two ways:

1. Collect the eagle feathers you find at Seward Park.

2. Spool the DNA (prepare samples for testing) from eagle feathers and run the gel electrophoresis. Gels are run on Saturdays every 6 to 8 weeks or whenever project organizers get enough feathers.

Join in! It's like CSI for animals!

Georgia Adopt-A-Stream needs citizens to monitor and improve the state's streams, wetlands, lakes, and estuaries.

The project goals are to increase public awareness of Georgia's water pollution and water quality issues, provide citizens with the tools and training to evaluate and protect their local waterways, encourage partnerships between citizens and their local government, and collect baseline water quality data.

Georgia Adopt-A-Stream has teamed up with government and non-government groups to provide access to technical information and assistance for citizens interested in preserving and restoring the banks and vegetation along their waterways. This network will help local governments, educate citizens about the importance of protecting riparian corridors, and provide landowners with the information they need to reduce erosion, improve water quality, and provide wildlife habitat with native plantings.

The Community Aquatic Monitoring Program works with volunteers to monitor the health and marine productivity of Canada's water ecosystem.

Volunteers collect biological data from live small fish and crustaceans that are captured and released. These data include the identification of fish and crustacean species; the numbers of fish and crustaceans; water temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen; general aquatic vegetation profiles; and sediment and water samples.

With this information, scientists working with government agencies and universities can undertake nutrient analyses, organic loading assessments, and identify changes in the aquatic community structure. With this in hand, identification of cause may be determined and actions put into place to mitigate potential negative impacts.

Vital Signs (www.vitalsignsme.org) brings scientists and novices together to investigate species - particularly invasive species - in Maine.

People can participate in many ways (see http://www.vitalsignsme.org/ways-participate ): going outside to look for and document invasive and native species with digital images, location and habitat observations; then entering their observations into our online application; and commenting on shared observations from the comfort of their own homes.

GSWA's Stream Team monitors the five streams in the Great Swamp watershed, a 55-square-mile region in New Jersey's Morris and Somerset Counties.

Monitoring includes both chemical and visual assessments. The primary goal of the chemical monitoring program is to measure the volume of water, nutrients, and sediments flowing into the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. The main purpose of the visual assessment program is to help gather data for the Watershed Association and the State on water bodies that are not currently being assessed by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. All of this data helps to generate a picture of the overall health of our streams and identify areas where where water quality improvements could be made.

The streams within the watershed are the Upper Passaic River, Black Brook, Great Brook, Loantaka Brook, and Primrose Brook, all of which flow into Great Swamp and exit as the Passaic River via Millington Gorge.

Archeology Dig started by Louis Leakey to study the origins of Early Man in the Americas. Volunteer on site in the California high desert or process artifacts in the San Bernardino County Museum under the direction of Dr. Dee Schroth, SBCM Curator of Anthropology, and Calico Project Archaeologist.

Students from five diverse New Jersey high schools use kits purchased with funding from the EPA , the CMX Community Foundation and the RBC Blue Water Project of the Royal Bank of Canada Foundation to measure water quality variables such as dissolved oxygen, water clarity and phosphorus. They are also collecting and identifying macroinvertebrates such as dragonfly nymphs, blackfly larvae and snails that indicate pollution levels in a waterbody.

Students are entering their collected data into a Web-based program created by NJDEP, found at www.preemo-msu.org, that allows them to analyze data and compare it with data collected at other sites.

The Passaic River Institute PREEMO web site provides links to relevant educational materials and links to other data sets about the river. It will provide a forum where students can post their impressions and questions about ecology and environmental science.

At the end of the school year, the students come together at Montclair State University for a student conference where they present a study they have conducted involving their work on the Passaic River.

Monitor the waters of six counties in Central Wisconsin: Fond du Lac, Green Lake, Marquette, Waushara, Waupaca, and Winnebago. We are a waders on, in-the-muck environmental group.

Performed monthly on local waters within these six counties, we test for dissolved oxygen, turbidity, temperature, and stream flow. At the beginning of summer we also perform a Biotic Index and habitat assessment. Information is entered into a state database for tracking purposes.

Klamath Riverkeeper is excited to bring citizen monitoring to the Shasta watershed in 2010 with our first citizen water quality monitoring initiative. We’ll start by training citizens to collect water quality data at points on Yreka Creek and the Shasta River this spring & summer.

The goals of the program are to:
1) Fill a recognized scientific monitoring gap in the Klamath and Shasta River watersheds,
2) Add monitoring capacity to existing and future restoration and stream assessment projects,
3) Provide an educational outreach opportunity to the public in the City of Yreka.

WV Save Our Streams trains citizen scientists in West Virginia how to monitor and become watchdogs over their local wadeable streams and rivers. The program focuses on a biological approach to stream study, which includes the collection and evaluation of the benthic macroinvertebrate community and an assessment of the stream’s basic physiochemical conditions.

Our volunteer monitors help to track the health of the Willamette River in northwestern Oregon. By describing current conditions and identifying trends, we can detect and document changes in water quality and work toward a cleaner river.

The data we collect can be used to protect the health of those who depend on the river, be they human, plant, or animal. The data is also made available to the community, and can also be used to address problems in water quality by indicating when water-related regulations are not being met. Water Quality Monitoring is one step in the process of encouraging community growth that is compatible with the surrounding environment. Our monitoring program’s existence depends on dedicated volunteers who collect quality data each month.

Participate in the validation of chemistry on the internet. Chemistry on the internet needs to be curated as there are so many errors. ChemSpider is a public resource for chemists of over 20 million compounds from over 300 different data sources. Chemical names, properties and data need validating. The database can be expanded with your own data so if you are a chemist and your own data to the database for the community to access.

The Shermans Creek Watershed Monitoring Program calls on citizen scientists to conduct water quality sampling and to measure biological factors that indicate the health of the Pennsylvania creek and its response to pollution. Volunteers measure nitrate, temperature, dissolved oxygen, alkalinity, pH, and turbidity, and conduct regular bacteria monitoring and macroinvertebrate sampling at sites throughout the watershed.

The data will be used to provide public education, target areas for restoration and protection projects, and help the county and municipalities with land development plans that protect Shermans Creek.

The National Science Digital Library encourages citizens to help enlarge and strengthen their library of high quality resources and tools that support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Developers of content in these subject areas, National Science Foundation grantees, educators and learners, and all other members of the community are welcome to recommend digital resources for the library. These resources include activities, lesson plans, Web sites, simulations, or any materials that help educators meet the demands of an increasingly complex technology-based world.

As a national network of learning environments, resources, and partnerships, the National Science Digital Library seeks to serve a vital role in educational cyberlearning for the nation, meeting the informational and technological needs of educators and learners at all levels.

EnvironMentors provides mentors to high school students from under-represented backgrounds for college degree programs in environmental and related science fields. The program matches minority high school students with college and university faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and science and environmental professionals, in one-to-one mentoring relationships. Working together, students and mentors develop rigorous environmental science research projects over the course of the academic year.

In the spring, EnvironMentors students present their projects to elementary school classes in their respective school districts and to a team of judges at each chapter's EnvironMentors Fair. The top three students from each chapter travel to Washington, D.C., to present their project at the National EnvironMentors Fair.

EnvironMentors' integrative approach to identifying pressing environmental issues through hands-on application of the scientific method supported by a mentor has proven beneficial all students and life-changing for some.

Related Material: Call For EnviroMentors (Science Cheerleader blog): http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/2009/08/call_for_environmentors/

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/