Health & Medicine

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/

When someone collapses and stops breathing, an automated external defibrillator or AED can save their life. In Philadelphia, PA, a city with about 1.5 million people, AEDs are all around us. Near our homes, workplaces, and even grocery stores! Currently there is no comprehensive map and as a result AEDs are often not used when they are most needed. With the crowdsourced information we collect from our contest, we will build a map of AED locations in Philadelphia which can inform 911 services and the public.

There are three ways to play:

1. Find and photograph the most AEDs in Philadelphia County in four weeks (starting mid-January 2012) and win the $10,000 grand prize. The team or individual that finds the most "confirmed," "eligible" AEDs by the contest end date will receive the grand prize of $10,000.

2. Be the first to submit a photograph of a "Golden"AED and win $50. We have identified between 20 and 200 AEDs in Philadelphia County as "Golden" AEDs. These are unmarked and you won't know it's a winner when you photograph it.

3. Want to help but not compete for a prize? Submit addresses of locations without AEDs or that you wish had an AED - this is just for fun and it will help us with our map.

Read the Scistarter interview with the lead researcher here: http://scistarter.com/blog/2012/01/spot-the-most-defibrillators-in-philly-win-10k/

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!

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.

Beach WAtchers are volunteers dedicated to protecting Puget Sound through research, education and stewardship. Get 100 hours of university caliber training and craft a volunteer experience to give back 100 hours over two years.

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!

Stick a virtual pin in our online WORLD GRATITUDE MAP to mark a spot where you felt glad or wanted to thank someone.

Help us explore the concept of resilience (the science of bouncing back from adversity) and how an 'attitude of gratitude' can make us stronger, happier and healthy.

TuAnalyze is an application for recording and sharing measures of your diabetes. The application allows those touched by diabetes to track, share and compare their health information. Contributions will help advance diabetes care and public health response.

TuAnalyze is available to any TuDiabetes community member. The application supports sharing of diabetes information throughout the community and feedback of community-level diabetes information to users.

You can learn more about your diabetes by viewing information on your TuAnalyze app in the My Apps section of your profile. You can compare personal measures of your diabetes to community measures on the TuAnalyze map.

The TuAnalyze app is jointly developed by Children's Hospital Boston and TuDiabetes.org.

In the Health Tracking Network, people across the world work together to monitor common illnesses and discover factors related to illness.

When you join the Health Tracking Network, you:
* spend 2-3 minutes per week answering questions about cold and flu symptoms and other topics;
* earn money for charities of your choice; and
* can track your own health, fitness, or anything of interest to you with separate tracking tools.

The Health Tracking Network has no ads, and participation is free and completely anonymous.

We seek volunteers from across the world. You must be 18 years or older to participate.

The OPAL Biodiversity Survey needs citizen scientists in England to help uncover the diverse range of wildlife in hedges. By contributing, you'll help researchers learn more about the importance of hedges and how we can improve them.

Hedges support many animals by providing them with food and shelter. Berries and seeds are food for birds, while holes beneath the hedge are often home to small mammals. You’ll also discover caterpillars, shieldbugs and many other invertebrates living among the leaves.

By sharing your observations with the project, reseachers can instantly rate the condition of your hedge and offer suggestions on how to improve it.

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.

Wildlife Health Event Reporter (WHER) is an online, experimental reporting system for reporting and sharing the sightings of sick or dead wildlife. Individual reports viewed together can lead to the detection and containment of wildlife disease outbreaks that may pose a health risk to people, domestic animals and other wildlife. For smart phone users, the HealthMap mobile phone application, Outbreaks Near Me, is also available. It captures the same information that the web-based WHER application collects and allows users to upload photos. Go to http://www.healthmap.org/outbreaksnearme/ to download the application. WHER hopes to harness the power of the many eyes of the public to better detect wildlife disease phenomenon.

Additionally, WHER is run by the Wildlife Disease Information Node (WDIN) in partnership with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center.

The Master Watershed Steward program trains citizens across the state of Arizona to serve as volunteers in the protection, restoration, monitoring, and conservation of their water and watersheds.

We all live in a watershed, also known as a drainage basin or catchment. Each watershed is defined by an area of land that drains water downhill into a common water body. The health of watersheds is especially impacted as our growing population, and thus our demand for natural resources, increases. Learning to look past political boundaries and view land as divided by natural boundaries helps us better manage resources as a complete, more sustainable system.

As a Master Watershed Steward you can help to improve the health of your watershed. The project's informative, research-based training will give you the knowledge to make better, more informed decisions related to your own land, community and watershed. Master Watershed Stewards are highly trained volunteers working closely with the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. Stewards may come from a variety of backgrounds, but all have a passion for our environment! To become certified, Master Watershed Stewards participate in over 40 hours of course and field work to learn the basics of watershed science.

You work with community organizations including watershed partnerships and various state agencies to implement projects throughout Arizona to monitor, maintain and restore the health of our watersheds. Ongoing volunteer projects include: photopoint monitoring in the Tonto National Forest and Saguaro National Park, riparian assessments along urban and preserved corridors, outreach at Arizona Project WET Water Festivals, free private well testing and collaboration with NEMO to develop Watershed Based Plans.

The Master Watershed Steward Program is a partnership of the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. Funding provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Water Act and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality's Water Quality Division.

Eye on Earth brings together scientific information on air and water quality with feedback and observations from millions of ordinary people. You'll be able to view air and bathing water quality for the majority of Europe as well as provide your own feedback.

Eye on Earth represents a partnership between Microsoft and the European Environmental Agency. It includes information on the water quality for more than 22,000 bathing sites throughout Europe. It also includes information on air quality for more than 1,000 air quality monitoring stations throughout Europe.

Over five years, the site will grow to include information on many other environmental topics and turn into a global observatory for environmental change. It will broaden the thematic spectrum of environmental information by integrating prominent environmental challenges of our times, such as ground level ozone and other forms of air pollution, oil sills, biodiversity, and coastal erosion.

Join the fun!

The North Carolina Sea Turtle Project trains volunteers to monitor sea turtle activity along the entire coast of North Carolina.

There are a number of ways that your citizen science efforts can help protect sea turtles in North Carolina. Volunteers are needed to:

- walk small sections of beach each morning from May to August to look for turtle tracks and nests
- help guard the nests as they become ready to hatch each evening from July to October
- respond to strandings
- transport injured turtles to rehabilitation centers

All the data collected by the project are organized and disseminated to the state and federal agencies that use the information to make management decisions.

The North Carolina Sea Turtle Project, run by the state Wildlife Resources Commission's Division of Wildlife Management, is committed to monitoring North Carolina's sea turtle population. The project would not be possible without the help of hundreds of volunteers!

Adopt-A-Peak volunteers agree to visit a peak or trail section in the Appalachian Mountains periodically during the growing season. Volunteers will help track long-term trends in plant flowering, fall foliage, and visibility conditions on the mountain they adopt.

Hikers are great resources for frequent reporting from remote areas that could not be observed otherwise. Adopt-A-Peak focuses our monitoring efforts on a specific location year after year. Volunteers are needed for forest and alpine flower monitoring from late May through August, but this effort intensifies in June, which is Flower Watch Month. Fall foliage monitoring can begin as early as September and go through the end of leaf drop.

Visibility is monitored on every visit by taking a photograph. Volunteers are encouraged to monitor both plants and visibility.

Individuals, school groups, outing clubs, flower groups: Adopt-A-Peak!

By participating in Mountain Watch's Visibility Reporting, you become an important part of understanding how haze pollution affects mountain views and the recreational experience. Volunteers provide their opinion of whether visibility on a hike through the Appalachian Mountains, from Maine to Virginia, was "acceptable" or "unacceptable." These observations provide resource managers with information on the value of clear views to the hiking public.

Poor air quality in the eastern United States directly affects hikers and others who recreate outdoors. Haze pollution diminishes scenic views and can negatively affect respiratory and cardiovascular health.

Here is how you can help: Simply hike to your favorite vista along a trail in the Appalachian Mountains, take a photo from your viewpoint, and record your opinion of the view. Email your photo, and send in the data sheet.

It's that easy to contribute to real science that will help us understand how haze pollution affects mountain views.

Seabird Ecological Assessment Network (SEANET) volunteers conduct beached bird surveys along the east coast of the United States in order to identify and record information about bird mortality. Volunteers examine the spatial pattern of bird carcass deposition and how it varies across time.

The project brings together interdisciplinary researchers and citizen scientists in a long-term collaborative effort to identify and mitigate threats to marine birds.

These surveys provide baseline information about bird mortality and help to detect mass mortality events such as oil spills, algal toxins, and disease outbreaks. Marine birds can serve as indicators of ecosystem and human health; monitoring the threats they face and their mortality patterns can teach us about the health of the marine environment.

This project relies heavily on a working partnership between concerned citizens with an incomparable understanding of local ecosystems and natural phenomena, and scientists with the training and knowledge to synthesize and verify the data generated by local residents. Through this synergistic relationship, scientists exponentially increase the amount and range of data they can access, and residents come to see the larger patterns and trends of which their local ecosystem is a part.

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.

RNA World is a distributed supercomputer that uses Internet-connected computers to advance RNA research. This system is dedicated to identify, analyze, structurally predict, and design RNA molecules on the basis of established bioinformatics software in a high-performance, high-throughput fashion.

The RNA World project is based at the Rechenkraft.net e.V. research facility located in Germany.

For a more detailed description of this project, see this Web page: http://www.rechenkraft.net/wiki/index.php?title=RNA_World/Project_description/en

Donate your DNA to science! If you have used genetic testing services such as 23andMe or Navigenics, you can offer your genetic data to DIYgenomics for a variety of medical studies.

DIYgenomics is now recruiting participants for its first study, which will examine the effect of a common mutation on vitamin B metabolism.

In a gene called the MTHFR gene, two small mutations prevent vitamin B9 (or folic acid) from being metabolized into its active form (folate). People who lack this form of vitamin B may develop nutritional deficiencies and symptoms associated with diabetes complications, including damage to blood vessels and nerves. Up to 60% of people may have some form of MTHFR mutation.

DIYgenomics aims to:
--Find people with MTHFR mutations by collecting data from volunteers who have used genetic testing services.
--Ask them to try simple interventions, such as taking over-the-counter vitamin B supplements.
--Ask participants to share results from blood tests performed at commercial labs.

BEACH volunteers monitor high-risk Washington state beaches for bacteria. Beaches are considered high-risk when they have a lot of recreational users and are located near potential bacteria sources.

Monitoring can indicate pollution from sewage treatment plant problems, boating waste, malfunctioning septic systems, animal waste, or other sources of fecal pollution. BEACH volunteers monitor for an indicator bacteria called "enterococci." The presence of this bacteria at elevated levels means there is a potential for disease-causing bacteria and viruses to also be present.

BEACH is intended to reduce the risk of disease for people who play in saltwater. The program strives to educate the public about the risks associated with polluted water and what each of us can do to reduce that risk.

State of the Oyster Study volunteers help monitor bacterial contamination levels in edible shellfish collected from privately owned Washington state beaches in Hood Canal and throughout Puget Sound

Volunteers collect oyster and clam samples from their beaches at specific times during summer months. Washington Sea Grant arranges for laboratory testing of these samples, which are analyzed for the presence of harmful bacteria or for bacterial indicators of fecal contamination. (Volunteers must cover the lab fees.) Washington Sea Grant then helps participants interpret their test results and, if needed, works closely with them to identify and remedy the sources of observed contamination.

Through the years, State of the Oyster has has helped waterfront residents on more than 300 Washington state beaches learn what makes for safer oysters and clams and how to minimize fecal contamination in their waters.

Six out of 10 people in the US have never seen our Milky Way Galaxy arch across their night sky from where they live. And the problem of light pollution is quickly getting worse. Within a couple of generations in the U.S., only the national parks will have dark enough skies to see the Milky Way.

Too much outdoor lighting not only affects being able to see the stars, but also wastes energy and money, about 2 to 10 billion dollars a year. And it has been shown to cause sleep disorders in people and to disrupt the habits of animals like newly hatched sea turtles that try to find their way back into the ocean but are disoriented by streetlights.

Light pollution may be a global problem, but the solutions are local. To help people “see the light”, an international star-hunting program for students, teachers, and the general public was created called GLOBE at Night. GLOBE at Night is now in its 5th year and is hosted by the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

This year, the annual event takes place March 3-16, each night from 8-10pm, when there will be no Moon and the constellation, Orion, will be visible to naked eyes from almost any location on Earth. Everyone around the world is invited to participate.

Through this program, children and adults are encouraged to reconnect with the night sky and learn about light pollution and in doing so, become citizen scientists inspired to protect this natural resource. Teachers like the GLOBE at Night program, because it lends itself to cross-curricular learning: astronomy, geography, history, literature, and writing. The possibilities are great.