Blog: Citizen Science Projects, People, and Perspectives
By Eric Betz, Jul 30, 2021
On December 13, trucks loaded with coronavirus vaccine doses and dry ice poured out from Pfizer’s production facility in Michigan. Moderna’s own deliveries soon followed. And in the more than six months since then, nearly half of all Americans have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Researchers raced to create the much-needed drug and delivered one in … Read more “A Game Playing App May Have Just Helped Create COVID Vaccines for the Developing World”
Categories: Citizen Science News, Health
By Eric Betz, May 20, 2021
NASA is recruiting citizen science volunteers to help astronomers discover exoplanets hidden in observations from one of its space telescopes. A pair of citizen science projects, Planet Hunters TESS and Planet Patrol, are asking users to help sort through images from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and separate out potential exoplanet signals from those of planet … Read more “How Citizen Scientists Are Finding Exoplanets with NASA’s TESS Spacecraft”
Categories: Astronomy & Space
By Eric Betz, May 07, 2021
Happy Mother’s Day, Moms! You deserve some time off. So forward this to your kids so they can make their mama proud by joining citizen science projects in your honor! And don’t forget to add projects you love to your Project Dashboard. Memory Training Study For many people, our first memories are of our mothers. The … Read more “5 Citizen Science Projects To Celebrate Mother’s Day”
Categories: Newsletter
By Eric Betz, Apr 26, 2021
For most of human history, we slept under the stars. Instead of staring at electronic screens, our ancestors watched the light from the heavens. Things have changed dramatically in recent decades. Seven out of 10 people living in the U.S. today have never seen the Milky Way. Light pollution from street lights, homes, businesses and … Read more “Help Fight Light Pollution With a Science Experiment From Your Local Library”
Categories: Astronomy & Space, Other
By Eric Betz, Apr 19, 2021
In the past 40 years, butterfly populations have declined dramatically across the American West, both in cities and in the wilderness. Overall, butterflies are now declining at a rate of 1.6 percent each year. That’s what researchers using butterfly observations from citizen scientists and professional researchers found in a recent study. Their work, drawing from … Read more “Western Butterfly Populations are Plummeting, Citizen Science Data Shows”
Categories: Animals
By Eric Betz, Jan 19, 2021
The future of individualized medicine may depend on an army of one million volunteers. And scientists want you to get involved. Researchers with the National Institutes of Health are recruiting citizen scientists to enlist in a study of unprecedented scope and depth. The program, called All of Us, promises to take personal data from a … Read more “How One Million Volunteers Could One Day Revolutionize Medicine”
Categories: Health
By Eric Betz, Dec 23, 2020
Every year around Christmas time, tens of thousands of volunteer birdwatchers gather in familiar locations across the Western Hemisphere for a tradition that dates back more than a century. On select days between December 14 and January 5, volunteers with the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count take a census of every bird they see … Read more “How a Christmas Tradition has Helped Track Billions of Vanishing Birds”
Categories: Animals, Other
By Eric Betz, Oct 31, 2020
For many of us, the sound of fall is defined by honking geese overhead and the calls of familiar songbirds in our yards. Every year, billions of birds, bats and insects take to the air in an ancient migration that leads them from the northern reaches of our continent to more temperate climates in the … Read more “Radar is Revolutionizing the Study of Migrations, but Researchers Need Birdwatchers’ Help”
Categories: Animals
By Eric Betz, Sep 04, 2020
Around the world, millions of kids are headed back to school in a totally different way. Classes are online. Teachers talk to students in virtual classrooms. And parents are often left looking for new, hands-on science learning opportunities. We’ve got your back. Here are eight fun and easy science experiments that you can do at … Read more “8 Fun Science Experiments You Can Easily do at Home”
Categories: Education, Other
By Eric Betz, Sep 02, 2020
How long does it take planets to form in solar systems? Since 2014, tens of thousands of volunteers have helped NASA try to answer this question by looking at telescope images of solar systems as their protoplanetary disks are still forming. NASA’s Disk Detectives is a citizen science project that enlists members of the public … Read more “How do Planets Form? NASA Wants Your Help Finding Out”
Categories: Astronomy & Space
