Blog: Citizen Science Projects, People, and Perspectives
By Arvind Suresh, Sep 17, 2014
On September 18th of each year, the World Water Monitoring Challenge (WWMC) encourages people around the world to test the quality of the water near them, share their findings, and become inspired to protect one of the most important (if not the most important) resource on our planet. In celebration of the WWMC, our editors are floating … Read more “Citizen Science and Water Monitoring: How Healthy is the Water Near You?”
Categories: Citizen Science
By Arvind Suresh, Aug 28, 2014
August 28, 2014 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE In its history, the Earth has been repeatedly struck by asteroids, large chunks of rock from space that can cause considerable damage in a collision. Can we—or should we—try to protect Earth from potentially hazardous impacts? How about harvesting asteroids for potential economic benefits? What do we do if … Read more “Informing NASA’s Asteroid Initiative: Your Chance to Participate!”
Categories: Citizen Science
By Arvind Suresh, Aug 20, 2014
Editor’s Note: Earlier this month MuseHack, the site “dedicated to getting your creativity active” interviewed Darlene Cavalier, the founder of SciStarter about citizen science, SciStarter and making a difference. Here are some excerpts from that interview. I spoke about the mission of SciStarter – but how would you describe your mission? First and foremost, we … Read more “MuseHack Interview with Darlene Cavalier, Founder of SciStarter”
Categories: Citizen Science
By Arvind Suresh, Feb 28, 2014
Contribute to light pollution research with the Loss of the Night Android app! Citizen science after hours…here are some citizen science projects you can do at night. I’m going to take a quick bet and guess that every one who is reading this post has at least once gazed up at a clear sky and … Read more “Loss of the Night: Stargazing and Citizen Science”
Categories: Astronomy & Space, Citizen Science, Nature & Outdoors
By Arvind Suresh, Feb 19, 2014
Public Lab’s DIY spectrometry kit makes it possible for citizen scientists to do their own spectrometric analysis at home. Come to your senses! SciStarter has curated a list of citizen science projects for all five senses. Spectrometry. Listen to yourself say it out loud. Admit it. It sounds cool just to say “spectrometry.”(Whoa you … Read more “Spec-tacular Science: Use Public Lab’s DIY Spectrometer to find out what stuff is made of!”
Categories: Apps, Biology, Chemistry, Citizen Science, Computers & Technology, Ecology & Environment, Ocean & Water
By Arvind Suresh, Dec 08, 2013
Winter is here! Check out more winter weather themed citizen science projects at Scistarter. You know what the atmosphere is. But have you heard of the cryosphere? No, it’s not a giant frozen ice-cream sphere, if that’s what you’re thinking. (That’s not what you were thinking? Never mind then!) The cryosphere, as Wikipedia most sagely … Read more “Winter + Citizen Scientists + Twitter = Snowtweets!”
Categories: Citizen Science, Climate & Weather, Ecology & Environment, Geology & Earth Sciences
By Arvind Suresh, Nov 21, 2013
The hills are alive with citizen science. More musical projects for your ears and brain. This morning, I woke up after a good night’s rest, ready to take on the world. I was still lying in bed, thinking about how great it would be if I could just lace up and go out for a … Read more “Hooked – Can’t get that song out of your head? Here’s how you find out why!”
Categories: Citizen Science
By Arvind Suresh, Oct 14, 2013
If you ever asked me how many kinds of spiders were there in the world, I would say there are two that I know of. The one with thin long legs that inhabit the walls of my house and keep me up at night, and the enormous one with hairy legs that inhabit theater screens … Read more “Spidey Sense Alert: Tracking Spider Populations With Where’s My Spider?”
Categories: Animals, Biology, Citizen Science, Ecology & Environment, Insects
By Arvind Suresh, Sep 13, 2013
This post is part of this week’s featured projects about other tree projects. Branch out into citizen science and take a look! A couple of weekends ago, I was up in the impressive Adirondacks in upstate New York for a getaway with friends. One of the interesting things I noticed while driving through the winding … Read more “Want to know which tree that leaf is from? Let Leafsnap come to your rescue!”
Categories: Citizen Science, Ecology & Environment, Nature & Outdoors
By Arvind Suresh, Aug 19, 2013
This is one bait you should take. What possibilities could you think of to use a super strong ‘molecular’ hook? That’s what the inventors of Super-Biotin are asking you. This challenge appears on Marblar, a startup that “crowdsources market applications for emerging and existing technologies” as Mr Daniel Bayley, project organizer and part of the … Read more “Hook, Line and Sinker! Marblar’s Super-Biotin Project”
Categories: Biology, Chemistry, Citizen Science
