Citizen scientists around the world finally have their own anthem!

Monty Harper, an Oklahama-based educator and entertainer, has released his latest song, “Citizen Scientist,” featuring SciStarter! We’ve adopted this as our theme song. Harper drew inspiration from the research of Dr. Janette Steets, a botanist at Oklahoma State University. And the best part is that Monty is a citizen scientist himself! He has personally participated in most of the projects mentioned in the song.

If you like the song as much as we do, please share with your friends, family, and anyone who else you think might be interested in learning about real science projects they can do.

Monty has been educating and entertaining children with his music about reading, creativity, and science since 1992. He’s the host of Born to Do Science, a live program and podcast that uses music to connect kids and families with scientists and their work. If you’d like to listen Monty’s other songs, selections from the program are featured on Harper’s Songs From the Science Frontier CD.

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In a former life, Darlene Cavalier was a cheerleader for the Philadelphia 76ers. Today, she’s the founder of SciStarter and Science Cheerleader, two websites dedicated to spreading the word that science is something anyone can do (as you know!).

Discover Magazine author, Katie Palmer, recently sat down with Darlene to get the inside scoop on SciStarter and a host of other topics.

What led to the creation of SciStarter? What are Darlene’s favorite citizen science projects? What got her interested in communicating science 
to the public?
 Can hands-on 
activities really help us make sense of the 
complexities of 
climate change?

Read the story to find out!

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.

In this video from the U.S Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Comet Lovejoy takes a death-defying journey through several-million degree solar corona as it passes the Sun on December 15th, 2011 (EST). The comet defied the expectations of many experts by not only surviving its solar plunge but re-emerging as strong and bright as before.

“It’s absolutely astounding,” says Karl Battams, computational scientist at NRL. “I did not think the comet’s icy core was big enough to survive plunging through the several million degree solar corona for close to an hour, but Comet Lovejoy is still with us.”

Comet Lovejoy zooms toward the sun. This is the SECCHI COR-1 (inner coronagraph) image on the STEREO-B satellite. (Image: STEREO/SECCHI image courtesy NASA/NRL)

The imagery used for this video was gathered from NRL’s Sun-Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI)/EUVI-A instruments, which are a part of the NASA Solar Terrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) mission. STEREO consists of two space-based observatories – one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind. With this new pair of viewpoints, scientists are able to see the structure and evolution of solar storms as they blast from the Sun and move out through space.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, Comet Lovejoy was discovered on Dec. 2,  2011, by a citizen scientist — Terry Lovejoy of Australia. As it turns out, it’s not all that uncommon for comets to be discovered by citizen scientists from the public. For years, NRL’s Sungrazing Comets Project has asked people to help discover new comets.

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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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Amy Mayer at Schools.com wrote a nice story about citizen science, featuring a few insights from Science for Citizens contributors Drs. Lisa Gardiner and John Ohab.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

Aspiring research scientists, environmentalists, mobile technology aficionados and video game buffs all can contribute to myriad citizen science projects, along the way joining a global community of regular people contributing to research science. It’s usually fun, often free and typically takes only the amount of time you want to give it.

Although the term “citizen science” is relatively new and increasingly common, the concept is longstanding. In the 19th century, for example, amateur naturalists aided experienced ornithologists by keeping track of the various species of birds they encountered. Today, modern technology and creativity have expanded tremendously the types of projects the public can participate in. All have in common the fact that volunteer public efforts really contribute to ongoing scientific research.

Getting involved is easy

John Ohab with the Science for Citizens website says his database has over 400 projects that have a way for people to sign up and contribute their own data. Some of the more readily accessible projects simply ask you to make an observation (such as when buds appear on trees, what birds are at your feeder, or the snow depth wherever you are) and send in your data points. In most cases you submit your data via a website or Twitterfeed. SnowTweets, for instance, lets participants dash off their measurements from their phones via Twitter. Cyrosphere researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada collate the snowfall data and use it to check data from satellite observations.

Projects appeal to different people depending on their specific interests. Ohab says those that, like SnowTweet, harness the power of smartphone technology, often appeal to high school and college students.

Expanding the scientific community

One collaboration among a dozen science centers around the country is developing a smartphone app for the public to help gather data on the Urban Heat Island Effect. C3: Communicating Climate Change is a project that hopes to develop a robust database of the temperatures along the urban-rural gradient–in other words, amassing large datasets so that meaningful interpretations can be made. According to the Maryland Science Center’s website, the difference between the temperature of a metropolitan area and the rural areas that surround it, or the Urban Heat Island, “is not an effect of climate change, but rather of human activity shaping our environment. One may ask, if we can make changes on a local scale, are we also responsible for changes globally?” Citizen scientists will provide the raw data that researchers use to explore this and other questions.

Read the full story at Schools.com.

Click for all the details

On Tuesday, July 26 at 9pm ET, The Weather Channel will air the “Changing Planet” Town Hall focused on clean energy and green jobs. Science for Citizens is a partner in this three-part series.

Here’s more information from NBC News:

This town hall broadcast is the second in a 3-part series that brings together scientists, thought leaders and students for a discussion on the issues of climate science.

The Weather Channel announced that it will air a “Changing Planet: Clean Energy, Green Jobs, and Global Competition” on Tuesday, July 26th at 9 PM/ET. NBC News Chief Environmental Affairs Correspondent Anne Thompson moderated the event, which was hosted by George Washington University. The town hall meeting is the second in a three-part series produced under a partnership between NBC Learn (the educational arm of NBC News), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Discover magazine.

The “Changing Planet” town hall series is intended to encourage student learning and to open a dialogue about climate change by gathering scientists, thought leaders, business people, and university students to discuss the facts of climate science, understand their implications, brainstorm solutions and even get involved in real research through citizen science projects on ScienceForCitizens.net.

“Today’s technology allows us to think about new energy options that impact the planet less and help the economy more,” said Thompson. “It is critical that we have these important discussions about how clean energy and the economy can go hand in hand, in order to bring the best solutions to the spotlight.”

This edition of “Changing Planet” brings together over 100 students and features four leading experts from the science and business communities: Chris Busch, Director of Policy and Program at Apollo Alliance; Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, Chief Executive Officer of Green For All; Timothy Juliani, Director of Corporate Engagement at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change; and Ken Zweibel, Director at the GW Solar Institute.

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Citizen science is taking off in Puerto Rico!

According to a story at Ciencia PR, citizen scientists are playing an important role in the conservation efforts for the Hacienca La Esperanza Reserve, which houses the only coastal forest in Northern Puerto Rico. Through the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust’s Citizen Science Program, volunteers have the opportunity to explore and observe the forest life, and learn about the geography of the area.

The full article also has a nice shout-out to Science for Citizens!

Here’s a quick excerpt from the English version:

Scientific questions arise from curiosity, an innate quality of all humans. You may think that only scientists can find the answers to scientific questions. Then you should know that with citizen science we can all contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Through citizen science, the public can put their curiosity at the service of scientists, by helping them “do” science —collecting or analyzing data— that would be otherwise hard for them to carry out.

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Christine Goforth is an entomology Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the aquatic insects of the Sonoran Desert, especially the parental care behaviors of the giant water bugs and using aquatic insects to indicate and manage water quality issues in Arizona.

In July of 2009, a friend and I arrived at a lake to collect water samples for work. We had worked at the lake many times, but something was different that day: several hundred dragonflies were flying over the grass.

We often saw dragonflies, but there were 50 times the usual number and they weren’t in their usual places. We knew something exciting was happening, so we jotted down notes. I returned to the lake twice to record more observations of the swarm and simply appreciate the marvel of nature that I witnessed. Then they were gone.

That experience changed me. I am an aquatic entomologist with an interest in dragonfly behavior, but that swarm captured my attention like nothing else. I needed to know more about it! I looked into the scientific literature to find answers, but discovered that little is known about dragonfly swarms.

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