Citizen science News

The BrightFocus Foundation has announced that EyesOnALZ, the first-ever crowdsourced project to engage the public in Alzheimer’s research, has achieved a major milestone by exceeding 10,000 citizen scientists.

Detroit - As part of a crowdsourcing challenge gamers, playing a bespoke game called Foldit, have folded a protein into a new shape ahead of professional scientists.

London - A huge citizen science project, utilizing more than 850,000 volunteers, has recently expanded its reach to include projects across all of the U.K.

Yellowstone National Park - If you love to take photographs and participate in citizen science projects, they sure don't want you in Wyoming, and if you unknowingly take photos, perhaps for a photography contest for The National Weather Service, you may wind up in jail.

Cheyenne - Wyoming has, in essence, made citizen science a crime. The state has placed restrictions on people photographing the environment and then making any comments about any deterioration to the natural world.

Toronto - Now spring is here, Nature Watch and the Toronto Zoo are encouraging Canadians to get into their backyards and local parks and contribute to scientific research through citizen science projects.

Scientists in the U.K. are asking people to report sightings of rabbits and hares as part of a conservation effort. Little is known about the exact numbers found in the British Isles.

Numbers of bats from the the most common species found in the U.K. are stable or increasing following several years of decline. The rise in bat populations has come from a key citizen science project.

Miami - A sixth grader’s science project on the salinity tolerance of lionfish has been proved spot on. An academic researcher has confirmed the student’s results. The data expands knowledge about an invasive species.

Houston - Mission 5 of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) is scheduled to launch to the space station on July 11. The investigations represent a diversity of subjects from bacteria to tadpole shrimp and locations from Massachusetts to Arizona.

Microbes are a rich source of medicines and it is thought that many life-saving compounds are still awaiting discovery. To help trace possible candidates, citizen scientists have been called on to help.

Boston - A group of citizen-scientist gamers have helped a team of scientists explain how the retina processes motion. The research has revealed direction-selective computation in the retina.

A new online competition provides an opportunity for citizen scientists to design RNA molecules to generate a target structure for new medicines.

A new "citizen science" study has shown that households with dogs are home to more types of bacteria - including bacteria that are rarely found in households that do not have dogs.

The findings of a massive five-year citizen science project called the Opal Project have been published. The report contains , more than 25,000 surveys, produced by more than 500,000 people,

A growing citizen science movement has become increasingly successful. A recent U.K. report has heralded the success of science activists.

The Whale Song Project, presented by Scientific American and by the Citizen Science Alliance within its Zooniverse project suite, is inviting citizen scientists to help study whale communications and document their observations online.

Tens of thousands of citizen scientists will spend part of this weekend counting birds in parks, wildlife refuges, and in their own backyards. Last year, 93,600 checklists were sent in, providing the largest single “snapshot” of bird populations ever.