My thoughts on biology, teaching, life, and exploring the living world via the digital one. Only my opinions are represented by these postings, they do not represent the viewpoints of any funding agency or Geospiza, Inc.
I am a digital biologist, teacher, and entrepreneur. My passion is developing instructional materials for 21st century biology (Digital World Biology).
One of the many interesting sessions I attended at ScienceOnline 2010 (#scio10) covered the questions of trust and critical thinking.
Sitting in the audience, I couldn't help but think of a mash-up (like on Glee!) between this session the one on Fact checking.
Granted, I know I'm a nitpicky scientist with an obsession for minutiae but I kept hearing statements during the session that I either wondered about or I knew were completely wrong.
Here's our first mashup tweet from docfreeride from David Dobbs:
Writing 1st book, description of bit character in mid/late 60s... after book came out, found out she was 48. D'oh #scio10
Have you ever wanted to volunteer your talents and help with fun projects like these:
* Refurbish computers for schools
* Teach students how to use popular software or online services
* Build a database for a nonprofit
* Help out in your school's computer lab
* Become an online mentor for students across the country
In the spirit of MLK day, Serve.gov is calling on educators and tech people to participate in connecting schools and non-profits with tech needs to those who can help. You can use the widget below to find projects in your area.
To quote Serve.gov, and Dr. King:
"Life's most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?"
BTW - MLK day is only the beginning. The projects will last more than one day.
ScienceOnline 2010 was one of the most amazing meetings I've attended in a long time and it's going to take some time to process it all, but in the mean time, it seems other bloggers (phylogenomics, CogSci, and Ed) have started one of those meme things and so, here goes.
At ScienceOnline 2010, I learned:
More than I ever wanted to know about the intimate details of duck sex. courtesy of Carl Zimmer!
That meeting all you - bloggers, educators, librarians, mathematicians, journalists, scientists - in person would be more wonderful than I could imagine.
Thank you all and extreme kudos to Bora and Aton! I can hardly wait for ScienceOnline 2011!
Hey readers, did anyone learn anything unexpected either at ScienceOnline 2010 or via all the social media?
Okay, I'll grant that visiting Second Life can seem a bit uncomfortable, especially at first, but it does open some new doors and present an alternative to travel.
In flu season, virtual visits could be the next best thing to being there. (Yikes, that sounds like an ad. No more yahoo news for me!)
Is there a place for citizen scientists in the world of digital biology?
Many of the citizen science projects that I've been reading about have a common structure. There's a University lab at the top, outreach educators in the middle, and a group of citizens out in the field collecting data.
After the data are collected, they end up in a database somewhere and the University researchers analyze them and write papers. At least that's my impression so far.
It seems to me, that with all kinds of databases out there, on-line, there should be plenty of opportunity for both citizens and student groups to participate in analyzing the data.
A common theme I hear in talks on personalized medicine, is that increased access to genomic data and medical literature are changing the relationship between doctors and patients. Patients are through being passive recipients of paternalistic health care. They are demanding to participate and be treated as partners with health care providers.
Citizen science can serve a similar role.
Just as personalized medicine is starting to make it possible for individuals to monitor and participate in their own personal health, citizen science is making it possible for people to participate and monitor the health of their communities.
With our environment endangered by growing concentrations of CO2, and global climate change happening faster than predicted, these efforts are timely and greatly needed. The best tool we have for fighting ignorance is to get citizens involved in science. I'm sure we'd have fewer people believing silly things on Fox news if they were doing experiments and looking at the world outside instead of listening to ideological nonsense on TV.
Communities don't have to be passive receptacles for pollution and waste. They don't have to sacrifice biodiversity for development or clean water and air for jobs. They can make a choice.
Making good environmental choices however, depends on information. You can't protect or monitor the environment without knowing what's in it. Citizen science empowers communities by making the scientific process transparent and allowing citizens to become involved.
Thank you all for posting an amazing collection of links to citizen science projects going on throughout the world. I never realized there were so many projects out there. It's encouraging to know there are so people out there who care about our world.
When I was a post-doc, I spent a few months seriously thinking about changing careers and teaching high school. I might have followed through on that plan, too, but I didn't know how to pay for it.
Today, if you have a background in science, technology, math, or engineering, you can retrain to become a teacher and the National Science Foundation will help. The Robert Noyce scholarship program has funds to help ease that transition to the classroom.
Do citizen science efforts ever go beyond "feel good" contributions? Do the data get published in peer-reviewed journals?
In an earlier post, I started a list of citizen science projects that allow students to make a contribution. Many commentors are graciously adding to that list and I thank you all! I'm glad to learn there are so many interesting projects and ways for people to get involved. Science is so empowering!
My question today concerns things like outcomes and deliverables. We'd like to assume that good things are coming from citizen science because people are involved, but I don't know if that's really true and being a scientist, I want to avoid over-doing the assumptions.
Does the research from citizen science ever get published?
Last Wednesday, at the University of Washington, I learned about one such study. If you know of others, I'd love to see citations in the comments.
These days, DNA sequencing happens in one of three ways.
In the early days of DNA sequencing (like the 80's), labs prepared their own samples, sequenced those samples, and analyzed their results. Some labs still do this.
Then, in the 90's, genome centers came along. Genome centers are like giant factories that manufacture sequence data. They have buildings, dedicated staff, and professional bioinformaticians who write programs and work with other factory members to get the data entered, analyzed, and shipped out to the databases. (You can learn more about this and go on a virtual tour in this nice video from Washington University).
At the same time, Universities expanded their core service laboratories and these labs began offering a greater number of sequencing services. Today, much the non-genome center sequencing happens in core labs. Scientists obtain samples and send them to the core labs. The core lab staff prepare the samples, carry out the sequencing reactions, and deliver data to their customers.
This system worked fine until the Next Generation DNA sequencing (NGS) instruments came along.
This January issue of Nature Biotechnology has two articles (1, 2) that address the role cloud computing can play in helping smaller laboratories cope with the large volumes of data produced by NGS.
In preparation, I'm compiling a set of links to projects that involve students in citizen science. If you know of any good citizen science efforts, please share them in the comments.
I am a digital biologist, teacher, and entrepreneur. My passion is developing instructional materials for 21st century biology (
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