This is a guest blog post from Daniel Smith, a postdoc in the Computing and Environmental Life Sciences center at Argonne National Laboratory. His job is to examine communities of bacteria and describe how people effect, or are effected by, variations in the microscopic species constantly interacting with us and the environment.

Most of us are aware of the bacteria on the surfaces we come in contact with. The doorknob for the bathroom, coins and paper currency in our pockets, handrails in subway cars, computer keyboards and mice at the library… the list of built environments on which microbes thrive is nearly endless. In our preoccupation with concern for what might be transferred from these surfaces to our hands, we often completely forget that the microbes living on our hands are also being transferred to everything we touch. And as dirty as some surfaces are, they pale in comparison to you and I. Numerically speaking, human beings are 90% bacteria! Even washing our hands and gargling with mouthwash does not erase their presence from our bodies, which is fortunate, because these bacteria are essential for our health and well-being by helping us digest food and keeping away more dangerous microbes.

Each person’s collection of microorganisms is different. And in fact, the collection of bacteria on your right hand is different from the collection on your left hand, and the bacteria on your cheek are different from the ones on your chin. The compositions of these bacterial communities change very little day-to-day.

Now think about the light-switch in your bedroom. The one that only you touch, using the same hand, every day. Does it match the bacterial fingerprint for your hand? And if it does, did you put your bacterial community on the light switch… or, did the light switch’s bacterial community jump to your hand? And what about the other surfaces in your home that you interact with every day such as floors, doorknobs, and countertops?

I want to find the answers to these questions. To do so, my colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory and I are looking for volunteers who are about to move to a different house to join the Home Microbiome Study. They will be asked to collect samples every other day for six weeks to monitor how microbiomes of themselves and their house change in response to one another. This data will provide valuable information on how stable our microbiomes are, and whether our microbiomes colonize our house… or our house’s microbiome colonizes us!

Announcing Philadelphia’s newest citizen science project: MyHeartMap Challenge!

Automated External Defibrillator (AED)

This project aims to crowdsource the first-of-its-kind map of Automated External Defibrillators in Philadelphia by photographing AEDs.

When someone collapses and stops breathing, an automated external defibrillator or AED can save their life. [Home AEDs are available for purchase.] 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 collected from this contest, the organizers will build a map of AED locations in Philadelphia that can inform 911 services and the public.

The MyHeartMap contest will officially go live January 31, 2012 at 9am! Until then, you can download the app from the iPhone store and Android marketplace and start submitting entries. Clues will be posted at the project website myheartmap.org and philly.org. The contest closes on March 13, 2012, at 6pm ET!

There are three ways to play:

1. Find and photograph the most AEDs in Philadelphia County before March 13, 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. The organizers 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. Clues will be posted at the MyHeartMap project website.

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 with the map.

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Business Spotlight magazine is Europe’s leading magazine for international business communication in English.This month, the magazine includes a feature on “citizen scientists” (folks without science degrees who contribute to real science). The article gives a few nods to the work of SciStarter (formerly known as Science For Citizens) and the many projects featured in our Project Finder.

Here are two excerpts and a PDF version of the article. Sorry, the full article is not yet available online.

By taking a look at the world around you, the sky above you, the civilizations that have gone before you, or the molecules inside you, you can become a “citizen scientist.” In “Masters of the universe” (Business Spotlight 1/2012), Carol Scheunemann looks at how people are contributing to scientific understanding — through their hobbies.

And, here’s a shameless, self-promoting excerpt:

Besides folding proteins, hunting galaxies, or watch- ing snails, thousands of other activities for citizen scientists attract huge numbers of volunteers worldwide, says “science cheerleader” and blogger Darlene Cavalier from Philadelphia, co-founder of the Web portal SciStarter. The portal offers a central listing where citizens and projects can find each other. People can search in various categories, such as time, costs, or skills needed, and by specialty, or geographic area. Cavalier says that, while some people want to contribute to research, others “are drawn to citizen science because it connects them to — and helps protect — nature.”
When she’s not busy working on her Web sites, speaking at conferences, or writing for Discover, a U.S. popular-science magazine, you might find Cavalier and her four children adding to scientific understanding by digging in a bag of dirt from the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY, looking for bits of mastodon fossils.

Make sure you’re on Santa’s “nice list” this year. Consider helping researchers help the planet this holiday season. Here are a dozen opportunities to get involved in real research during the 12 days of Christmas!

On the first day of Christmas, Missouri gave to me…an opportunity to help stem the threat of invasive pear trees in Missouri’s urban forest and in other parts of the U.S.

On the 2nd day of Christmas, the UK’s British Trust for Ornithology gave to me….the Nest Record Scheme, a citizen science project to monitor the the turtle dove, the UK’s most most threatened farmland bird, and many others.

On the 3rd day of Christmas, Iowa gave to me…the Greater Prairie Chicken Project ensure these future hens remain in Iowa.

On the 4th day of Christmas, the National Audubon Society gave to me…the world’s longest running citizen science project, the Christmas Bird Count.

On the 5th day of Christmas, Nevada gave to me…the chance to collect monthly water quality data at the Yuba River, which is affected by gold mining.

On the 6th of Christmas, Seattle Audubon Society gave to me… the chance to help seabird researchers create a snapshot of geese density on more than three square miles of nearshore saltwater habitat.

On the 7th day of Christmas, the Swan Society of the University of Melbourne gave to me…the My Swan project to report sightings of tagged black swans around the world.

On the 8th day of Christmas, Zooniverse gave to me…the Milky Way Project, a chance to help scientists study our galaxy, as well as the Milky Way advent calendar and even Milky Way tree ornaments!

On the 9th day of Christmas, the Science Cheerleaders gave to me…1300 young ladies cheering for citizen science as they set a new Guinness World Record for the World’s Largest Cheer!

On the 10th day of Christmas, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums gave to me…FrogWatch, an opportunity to help protect frogs-a-leaping.

On the 11th day of Christmas, Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology gave to me, Science Pipes, a free service that lets you connect to real biodiversity data, use simple tools to create visualizations and feeds, and embed results on your own web site or blog.

On the 12th day of Christmas, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation gave to me…the Ruffed Grouse Drumming Survey to help hunters survey the population of ruffed grouse during breeding season.

If you’re fortunate to experience a white Christmas, consider sending your snow depth measurements to cryosphere researchers at the University of Waterloo’s Snow Tweets project. They want to use your real-time measurements to help calibrate the accuracy of satellite instruments currently measuring snow precipitation.

Happy holidays from the SciStarter team!

Sign up for the SciStarter email newsletter!

Something in the east, something in the west.

Help keep an eye on the health and abundance of wild turkeys prior to breeding by observing and counting young turkeys in New York state. Or, join biologists in New Hampshire studying the impact of winter on New Hampshire turkeys by reporting any sightings of female turkeys and their young.

In states west of the Appalachian mountains, help researchers take the census of winter Monarch butterflies several mornings during Thanksgiving season. Or, spend one hour on Thanksgiving Day, monitoring winter bird populations within a 15-foot diameter in a location of your choosing.

Of course, there are hundreds of other opportunities to tap your inner scientist during this long weekend. We hope you find your perfect match using the SciStarter Project Finder.

Happy Thanksgiving from the SciStarter team!

Welcome to the new and improved Science for Citizens…now known as SciStarter!

The upgrade was designed to make it easier for you to find, learn about, and get involved in citizen science projects of interest to you. Now, you can search by topic (birds, astronomy, etc) or by activity (while at the beach, on a hike, etc). We’ve also made it simpler for researchers and project organizers to add their projects to our robust Project Finder.

Please take some time to click around the site, and let us know what you think. What do you like? What improvements would you like to see? We’ve built this with you in mind, so your feedback is very helpful. Feel free to leave a comment, below, or email us at info@scistarter.com.

This weekend, SciStarter is featured on the popular Forbes site, Techonomy: Revolutions in Progress. Here’s an excerpt from that story:

When an earthquake shook the mid-Atlantic states this summer, the US Geological Survey got help gauging the accuracy of its seismographic equipment from Science For Citizens users who Tweeted details about their location and the impact they felt. University of Waterloo researchers have also relied on Science for Citizens for help calibrating weather-reading instruments by comparing satellite-based estimates to the site’s users’ measurements of actual snowfall where they live. And scientists at the Paleontological Research Institution who recovered a mastodon fossil from Hyde Park, NY, a decade ago are still learning about Pleistocene ecology from Science for Citizen volunteers who have been sifting through the 22 tons of matrix that was excavated there.

SciStarter.com, a new and improved iteration of Science for Citizens that launched this week, is designed to facilitate more of this kind of crowdsourced science by matching citizen scientists with research projects that need their help. Whether it’s collecting volcanic ash, tracking diabetic health, or taking microbial samples from their water heater tanks, SciStarter volunteers will find hundreds of opportunities to contribute to science in their spare time. Researchers can tap the resources of the growing citizen science community by posting projects there.

The only website of its kind, SciStarter could also prove useful in emergency response and public health crises. Founder Darlene Cavalier says the site is already equipped to respond to pop-up crises and pandemics, with projects such as SafeCast—the radiation detection and reporting system enacted recently in Japan—ready to go in the SciStarter database.

We encourage you to read the full post here.

Thank you for choosing to be part of our growing community. Keep experimenting!

-The SciStarter Team

Join us on Facebook and Twitter!

Warning: a little shameless self-promotion here. We loved this write up about our site and participation in the World Maker Faire last month. This blog post is currently featured on Wired.com’s popular GeekDad blog. Here’s a snippet:

“While at the World Maker Faire my daughter had a chance to sort through the matrix from a mastodon found in upstate New York. The project was part of the booth being run by Science for Citizens, a website that lets people volunteer to help scientists collect and analyze data on different projects across multiple disciplines. Looking for an outdoor project in your area? The websites has a search that lets you choose from a number of criteria including whether the project is suitable for children…..Science for Citizens is doing a great job of tapping into the vast network of people who are interested in science and craving more participation than just reading about it.”

Read the full piece here.

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Meet the Science Cheerleaders. This team of more than 100 NFL and NBA cheerleaders-turned-scientists and engineers is ready to cheer for citizen science. ScienceCheerleader.com, our sister-site, aims to inspire the 3 million little cheerleaders in the U.S. to consider careers in science and engineering, while playfully challenge stereotypes and encouraging participation in any of the more than 400 citizen science projects featured on ScienceForCitizens.net .

The Science Cheerleaders have been featured on CNN, NPR, ESPN, The Scientist, Nature, Science, Discover and more. They are supported by the National Science Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and others eager to draw more women and minorities to the field of science. They travel the country spreading the gospel of science and citizen science!

Next stop: Vegas. On Saturday, September 10th, 1pm, in Las Vegas, NV, right at the iconic Welcome to Las Vegas sign! That’s right, VEGAS! Home of our favorite Vegas science super stars, Penn & Teller. Below, you can a cheeky video the Science Cheerleader did with Penn & Teller.

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Scientists want you to record and share rain measurements and other on-the-ground observations in part to help pinpoint hurricane Irene’s actions, determine her next steps, and better predict and react to future storms. In addition to your help recording on-the-ground rain precipitation, scientists rely on watershed volunteers to provide important clues about the effects of storm-water runoff, carbon cycles of waterways, etc. Here’s a list of opportunities to get involved in local watershed monitoring efforts. To help scientists record on-the-ground rain measurements, you will need a high capacity rain gauge.

Don’t have a rain gauge? Enter here to win a free one so you can join in next time! Through the Changing Planet series, a partnership with National Science Foundation, NBC Learn, and DISCOVER Magazine, we’re offering up to 20 of these gauges to our members, free of charge ($25 value).

(Note: Safety first. Please heed all evacuation recommendations issued in your area. )

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Here are three ways you can report earthquake-related information and contribute to a global map of critical earthquake data.

Did you feel it? Help researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey learn more about the recent earthquake that shook parts of the east coast. Did you feel it? Share information and contribute to a map of shaking intensities and damage. Simple, no fuss, easy to navigate webform.

The US Geological Survey’s Twitter Earthquake Detection Program gathers real-time, earthquake-related messages from Twitter and applies place, time, and keyword filtering to gather geo-located accounts of shaking. Simply tweet your location and observations to @USGSTed .

Stanford University’s Quake-Catcher Network links existing networked laptops and desktops in hopes to form the world’s largest and densest earthquake monitoring system. You’ll need Quake-Catcher Network software (free), and a USB sensor (price varies).

If you participate in any of these projects, consider posting a review in the comments field, below this post. We’d like to share your experience with your fellow citizen scientists.