did the preliminary research, it does not appear to be a scam, the parent organization SciAccess grew out of conversations at scientific conferences about equity and inclusion in STEM. Both ZERO-G social media pages have confirmed the partnership
“The goal of this mission is to bring together the largest and most diverse group of disabled crew members in a weightless environment, with the hopes to learn how to adapt and make accessible outer-space travel for disabled space explorers, scientists, and researchers. The Mission: AstroAccess parabolic flight is scheduled to take place on October 17, 2021, launching from Long Beach, California.
“Our mission is to change outer space and change the world. If you are a disabled person who is confident, enthusiastic, playful, and literally willing to float upside down to change the future, we are looking for you!” says Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Bowling Green State University.”
There is an impressive team behind AstroAccess, you can find the full list on their site here.
Here’s a couple of those bios.
“Anna Voelker is the founder and Executive Director of the SciAccess Initiative, an international program dedicated to advancing disability inclusion in STEM. Through SciAccess, they lead numerous science inclusion initiatives, including an annual conference launched by their receipt of the 2018 Ohio State University President’s Prize. Anna specializes in accessible space science outreach for diverse learners and has worked extensively with blind and low vision students using 3D printing and data sonification. In June of 2021, Anna joined the Aspen Science Center as its new Executive Director. Anna is a 2018 Brooke Owens Fellow and previously worked at NASA Kennedy, NASA Goddard, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the International Astronomical Union’s Office of Astronomy for Development, and the Aerospace Corporation.”
“Eric Ingram is the Founder and CEO of SCOUT Inc., a company de-risking space operations with sensor suites that enable spacecraft to see and understand the area around them. He also currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Space Frontier Foundation. He was previously an Aerospace Engineer for the Licensing and Evaluation Division of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, where he gained expertise in the regulatory environment. Prior to this, Eric was an engineer for Deep Space Industries, where he designed cubesat subsystems for testbed missions. Outside of the space industry, Eric previously served as the President of the United States Wheelchair Rugby Association, leading the USWRA to its largest budget surplus in its 30+ year history. Eric has competed in the sport of wheelchair rugby for 15+ years, competing domestically for several club teams, and internationally with the US Developmental team. Eric holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Old Dominion University, most of a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Houston, a sport pilot certificate, and is working towards SCUBA certification.”
“Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen is an associate professor of linguistics at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Along with various aspects of astrobiology, her research interests include social aspects of human colonization, disability, the relationship between language, embodiment and thought, language evolution and ways in which alternative sensory inputs could influence the evolution of scientific thought. She is on the board of SOCIA (Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology and METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) International.”
“Dr Jamie L. Molaro is the Executive Director of Disabled for Accessibility in Space (DIAS). Dr. Molaro is a planetary scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and located geographically with host institution the Caltech/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her research focuses on understanding the way that rocky and icy materials fracture and break down, driving landscape evolution on asteroids, comets, and moons. She is also a team member on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve a sample of rock from an asteroid surface. Service is an integral part of Molaro’s career, including organizing and running exhibitions and workshops on science and data-driven art, and leading DAIS (Disabled for Accessibility in Space). DAIS is a peer networking, support, and advocacy group for disabled and chronically ill people in space science and related fields and professions, and proud collaborator in Mission: AstroAccess.”
Science Friday is partnering with citizen science platform Zooniverse to help a team of astrophysicists identify galaxies showing an astronomical phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.
Gravitational lensing occurs when the light coming from a galaxy, quasar, or other bright object is bent and distorted by a massive object in front of it, giving the light the appearance of passing through a “lens,” like how an image appears through a magnifying glass. These lenses are rare, but incredibly neat.
The light distortion caused by a massive object provides a zoomed-in view of the galaxy or quasar behind it. The amount that the massive object in the foreground bends the light of the object behind it can provide a measure of its mass. So, a gravitational lens essentially allows us to weigh a galaxy. Pretty cool, right? But, we need yourhelpto find more lenses! With the aid of the citizen science website Zooniverse, everyone can take part in this real, cutting-edge area of research. You can help contribute to making a realdiscovery!
Want start hunting for gravitational lenses and contribute to scientific discovery? Go to spacewarps.orgto help astronomers identify these special gravitational mirages or click here to learn how to participate!
CITIZEN SCIENCE: The Journal Science Just Published aPaper with 30780 Authors
Andrew J. Westphal, with 65 other listed authors and 30714 Stardust@home citizen scientists: “Evidence for interstellar origin of seven dust particles collected by the Stardust spacecraft”. Science 15 August 2014: Vol. 345 no. 6198 pp. 786-791
Seven grains of interstellar dust reveal their secrets[Science/AAAS]
Eight years after a NASA mission brought them back to Earth, seven grains of interstellar dust keep giving scientists fresh puzzles to ponder.
NASA’s Stardust spacecraft has been collecting cosmic dust: Aerogel tiles and aluminum foil sat for nearly 200 days in the interstellar dust stream before returning to Earth.
Citizen scientists identified most of the 71 tracks where particles were caught in the aerogel, and scanning electron microscopy revealed 25 craterlike features where particles punched through the foil.
By performing trajectory and composition analysis, Westphal et al. report that seven of the particles may have an interstellar origin. These dust particles have surprisingly diverse mineral content and structure as compared with models of interstellar dust based on previous astronomical observations.
I am currently reading The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel, about the women who worked at the Harvard College Observatory in the late 19th and early 20th century.
And yesterday in a moment of serendipity I came across Project PHaEDRA, organised by the Wolbach library, using volunteers to crowdsource transcriptions of the notebooks kept by these pioneering astronomers.
I’m starting with just the plate numbers. I’ll work my way up to transcribing full pages. But it is really exciting being able to read what these women wrote (even if I don’t understand most of it).
Side note: the Star Notes part of the project is hosted on a website which also lists lots of different citizen science projects. There are at least three others I want to get involved in. I need more hours in the day…
The City Nature Challenge is a worldwide bioblitz taking place April 30-May 3 via iNaturalist! All you need to do to participate is make and/or identify observations during the time period (note: if you don’t live in one of the participating cities you’ll need to join the global project on iNat). The time frame is a lil unfair to us northern folks since a lot of organisms will not be active yet, but still a good excuse to get outside and go for a nature walk.
MeetMegasoma actaeon johannae, one of the largest beetles in the world! This mysterious giga beetle was only recently described by one of our Citizen Science colleagues. Believe it or not, planet Earth still holds a great deal of secrets for us! #NatureistheGreatestShow
Megasoma actaeon johannae is a subspecies of one of the largest beetle species on Earth. The new subspecies was discovered and described using a specimen from our collections. We possess the holotype (i.e., the reference model) and numerous paratypes of this imposing creature!
It is already impressive by its dimensions alone. As its name indicates (Megasoma, literally “with a large body” in Greek), the Megasoma actaeon johannae, with its 14cm, is one of the five largest beetles in the world, along with the Goliath beetle (over 11cm) and the Hercules dynast (almost 17cm), among others. Megasoma beetles are sometimes also called elephant beetles because they are so large and heavy: they can weigh more than 150 grams!
The male beetles also impress by their horn, which can reach almost 4cm in length. This allows them to assert their dominance when fighting over females. They can even use it to lift their opponent up and knock him down! This horn explains its second name “actaeon”: in mythology, Actaeon was turned into a deer as punishment for watching Diana bathe, and thus received horns. Its third name is dedicated to the wife of one of the scientists who described the beetle, Johanna.
Megasoma actaeon johannae is mostly found in South America: in northern Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador…. But if you come across one, don’t panic! Despite its size and impressive appearance, it feeds exclusively on rotten fruit and sap.
TheMegasoma actaeon johannae differs from its close cousin, the Megasoma actaeon actaeon, in that it remains shiny and silky black even after death, rather than fading. It lives for an average of only 6 months in adult form (called an imago) after spending more than two years as a larva… live fast, die young!
ive been thinking about making an inaturalist project thats set up like a scavenger hunt, that anyone can join
im thinking i make it a traditional project so people just add their observations that fit the scavenger hunt list. id make a list every month of various stuff to find that should be univeral enough - for example, maybe a mushroom, a purple flower, an animal track, etc, but NOT specific organisms bc they might not be found globally so it would be unfair (like, finding an american giant millipede would be rude to everyone not in the eastern half of north america)
depending on how it goes i might make themed lists but thats a discussion for a later time. also, expect the lists have a mix of difficulty levels because if its all easy or all hard its no fun
would anyone be interested in joining something like this? anyone have ideas and input?
This was something I wanted to do with the tumblr inat project but I’m too busy to coordinate. Would you be interested in being a co-moderator of the tumblr inat group and running the scavenger hunts through there?
It’s New Year’s Eve, and after a tense three days of searching in the heart of the South Australian outback, Professor Phil Bland has finally found the impact site. After leaping off his quad bike and running across the salty mud flats, he falls to his knees and thrusts his hand straight into a hole smashed into the landscape. His arm disappears nearly half a metre into the earth - and when it emerges again, there’s a mud-slathered rock clutched in his fist.
“It’s an iron meteorite, mate!” are Bland’s first, breathless words. He holds it reverently, wiping off the thick, clay-like mud. He’s kneeling on Kati-Thanda, also known as Lake Eyre, and what he holds in his hands is a hunk of rock older than the Earth itself.
It’s also the first proof that the Desert Fireball Network works.
Built by Professor Bland’s research team at Curtin University, WA, the Desert Fireball Network is an automated meteor tracking system made up 49 digital cameras dotted across the Australian outback. Over the next few years, it’s projected to watch a third of Australian skies - and it does exactly what its name says. It looks for fireballs.
Asmeteors from the wider solar system plough down into the Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic velocities, they burn up. For fleeting moments, they sear across the sky and light up the darkness. Often, bits of these meteors hurtle all the way down to the surface. The multiple cameras of the Fireball Network can spot a fireball and triangulate its path through the atmosphere, so its trajectory can be reconstructed in 3D. This can give information about the meteorite’s mass, its orbit and origins in the Solar System, and the location where it smashed into the surface.
On November 27th last year, Professor Bland’s team got the heads up from their network that a fireball had blazed through the atmosphere and fallen to Earth in the middle of South Australia. Its landing site was narrowed down to within a small area in the bed of Lake Eyre, a massive salt lake, and so they knew they had to get to it fast: if too much rain came, any trace of the impact could be washed away. They organised to fly a spotter plane over the area to get eyes on the impact site, then the team flew across states, rented 4WDs and camping gear, got permission from the Arabana people, who are the traditional custodians of Kati-Thanda… Then finally, on December 31st, Bland pulled the meteorite from the mud just hours before heavy rains swept across Lake Eyre.
It turns out that the meteorite itself is fairly ordinary - if you can call any 4.6 billion year old object ordinary - but the most interesting thing is that the Fireball Network could attach an orbit to it. It was traced it back to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where it used to be part of a larger asteroid that broke up in an impact. This gives it incredibly useful context that other meteorite discoveries don’t have.
If the team can observe and study enough meteorites and their original orbits, they’ll be able to make a geological map of the solar system. This will give invaluable insights into the solar system’s formation, especially the formation of the planets. Hopefully, it will help answer questions like: how did the Earth form? How are planets made?
If you want to keep updated on the project, you can download their app - which also lets you contribute by reporting fireball sightings of your own, from anywhere in the world!
Reading about science on the internet is cool, sure, but sometimes you just want to get out there and contribute. Hundreds of citizen science projects are available across the world, both online and hands-on, and anyone who has an interest in science can have a go. I’ve compiled an incomplete list below, so check them out and get sciencing!
Biology
EterRNA: A puzzle game where players design models of DNA using four nucleotide bases, participating in the creation of a library of synthetic RNA designs
Phylo: A game that explores how DNA and RNA sequences are arranged
Foldit: A puzzle game where players fold proteins with the eventual aim of having players map the structures of unknown proteins and design new ones
Mapper: NASA gets players to analyse and tag photos from the bottoms of Pavilion Lake and Kelly Lake in British Columbia, studying microbialites and lake features in hopes of helping find life on other planets
AgeGuess: Guess people’s age in a simple game, which investigates the differences between perceived age and chronological age as a potential aging biomarker.
Natural Products Discovery Group: They’ll send you a soil collection kit to return, and they will then screen the fungi in the sample for bioactivity against a variety of diseases to help in drug development.
Animals
FrogWatch USA: Contribute to frog conservation all throughout the US
Global Bio Blitz, AmphibianandReptile: A project that seeks to document species of amphibians and reptiles throughout the world
eBird: A massive online database of bird observations that you can add to
Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count: The world’s oldest citizen science project takes place in December and January, mainly in the US and Canada but also in some places in the Western Hemisphere
Celebrate Urban Birds: Make ten-minute observations of birds in your neighbourhood to help investigate how birds inhabit urban areas
The Great Sunflower Project: Focused on bee conservation, participants grow Lemon Queen sunflowers and make regular observations to count bees that visit them during the blooming season
Native Buzz: Study the nesting preferences and distribution of solitary bees and wasps throughout the world
Dragonfly Pond Watch: Study the migrations of sixteen dragonfly species in North America
The Lost Ladybug Project: Find and photograph ladybugs in your neighbourhood to help collect information about various ladybug species, especially the rapid shift in populations
iNaturalist: On this site you can share photos and details of plants and animals, and maintain lists of your discoveries worldwide
National Geographic BioBlitz: A twenty-four hour inventory of every living species in a specific area—check for an area near you.
The GLOBE Program: This project involves students of all ages and in all countries, teaching them how to collect scientific data and make scientific discoveries
Project NOAH: Document your observations about wildlife and plants around the world, and even get other people in the community to identify them
Wildlife Health Monitoring Network: Participants can help compile data about wildlife disease patterns around the world and how they might affect humans and domestic animals
Mushroom Observer: Less than 5% of the world’s fungi species are known to science, so help out by uploading images and observations of mushrooms and other fungi near you
Project BudBurst: Help collect data on plant phenology (when difference plants grow leaves and produce fruit) to show how different species in the US respond to changes in climate.
Journey North: Help make observations of migrating animals in North America
IceWatch: A Canadian citizen science program, you can help by monitoring the freezing and thawing dates of freshwater lakes and rivers, thus building up data about how these cycles change
Weather Detective: Uncover important weather records hidden in the logbooks of ships that sailed the seas around Australia in the 1890s and 1900s.
Galaxy Zoo: Examine real images of galaxies, classify them, and help determine how they form
Lowell Amateur Research Institute: There are a number of projects you can help out with, depending on what you’re interested in, your location, your time, and what software or equipment you have access to—most projects are aimed at serious amateur astronomers.
Moon Mappers: Analyse photos of the moon taken by the Linar Reconnaissance Orbiter
GLOBE at Night: By comparing the sky above you to charts provided by the project, you can help measure the impact of light pollution on the visibility of stars
Stardust@home: This is an online search for interstellar dust, using images of samples captured from the comet Wild 2 in 2004
Target Asteroids: Help compile information about Near Earth Asteroids (must have access to a telescope)
Higgs Hunters: Help search for unknown exotic particles in the LHC data!
Zooniverse: This is a collection of projects, mostly in astronomy (like looking at infrared images to find star-forming regions, studying wind patterns on Mars, and classifying images of the Moon’s surface) but some in climate, nature and archaeology too (like transcribing papyri and classifying bat calls). Click through to read about them.
The list above was compiled with a focus on widespread projects that are available across continents and throughout the world, but there are so many more out there. Lots of them are local, so get researching and find out what else is in your area!
Note: I’ll be adding to the list as I find out about other projects, so if you know of one I’ve missed, please shoot me a message.
Time to bring this back around! Get involved in real science without even leaving your house!
So far, the lists of weeds at each of the Weeds of Boise sites look pretty similar, with several weed species showing up at nearly every site and other species only occasionally making an appearance. This isn’t a surprise really. The flora of any region typically has several species that are dominant, along with species that occur less frequently. Wild urban flora – or in other words, the…
“The most valuable asset in the Public Lab community is community itself: our research culture grows out of the diverse range of skills, perspectives, and sensibilities that Public Lab members share with each other.” —Jeffrey Warren and Mathew Lippincott of Public Lab
