A Call for Spider Hunters!

Are you a fan of Citizen Science, where volunteers assist real scientists in any of several ways? You'll want to answer a call from Dr Catherine Scott, a spider scientist. At the end of May 2022 she shared on Twitter a call for nature fans to report their spider sightings. She wrote:

Have you started to see candy-striped spiders out & about? Please help us to learn more about these introduced predators in North America by joining the Spider Hunters project! 

Dr Scott is an arachnologist and spider advocate, a natural historian and behavioral ecologist. She used to be afraid of spiders, but now she spends much of her time outdoors searching for spiders and learning new things about their lives. Dr Scott is also active in social media conversations about the natural world. You can find her posts on Twitter at @Cataranea. On July 6 she wrote:

Candy-striped spider season is now well upon us! Please keep an eye out for these spiders and submit your observations to @inaturalist, where they will automatically be added to the #SpiderHunters project. Thanks! 

If you're not on iNaturalist, please feel free to submit sightings to me directly: email photos to mail@spiderhunters.ca!

These candy-striped spiders are not dangerous to people! They hitchhiked a ride to North America on human ships. In North America, candy-striped spiders are an unexpected predator for insects that pollinate flowers.

Dr Scott goes on to add:

Do I know anyone in Saskatchewan? Do you? I am particularly keen to find out whether or not candy-striped spiders are there (yet)! There were records, but they turned out to be mis-IDs. This is the only province where they may not be!

Stink Bug Citizen Science!

Looking for a summer science project? Here's a note for volunteers and citizen scientists in British Columbia, Canada! 

There are stink bugs native to this region that are doing just fine, but in addition to them are new stink bugs. New to BC are Brown marmorated stink bugs ( BMSBs) from Asia. Invasive species of stink bugs have few local predators. They can become a real problem in gardens and farms, not only by drinking enough juices to weaken plants, but by spreading plant diseases. These BMSBs aren't too big a problem where they come from, as there's a kind of wasp that lays its eggs in the stink bug eggs. Now that wasp, too, has been found in BC.

Scientists in BC are looking for stink bug egg samples, to check how many of that kind of wasp are affecting stink bugs. That's where the volunteers come in. Check out this link for information on how to be a citizen scientist, gathering samples for study.

https://bcinvasives.ca/news/that-stinks-help-us-collect-stink-bug-eggs/

Science Communication Workshops March 6 at York U

Are you a science student, a budding journalist, or a member of the wide community of citizens interested in science? Here's a Sci/Why blog post for families with youths and teens rather than very young children.

There are two workshops happening that will be of great interest to you, on Wednesday March 6 at York University in Toronto. As York University Faculty of Science announced today on Twitter:

Communicating research findings to the media and wider public in a way that is accurate and captures their interest can prove tricky. How do you stay in control of the story and where does real and imagined fake news fit in?

Two free events open to the wider community on Wednesday, March 6 will explore those issues further with experienced journalists, communicators and a scientist – “Issues and Challenges in Science Communications” and “Communicating Science in the Age of Fake News.”

You can read all about these two public events by clicking the link here, at York University's website. Admission to either event is free, but seating is limited, so contact them to make sure there will be room for you to attend.

These workshops are not only for university people, but for students learning about science communication, and for people in the wider community. “Issues and Challenges in Science Communications” takes place from noon til 2pm, and “Communicating Science in the Age of Fake News” will follow that evening from 6 to 8pm. Either or both of these discussions among experts might be of great interest for students and their parents. If you're a youth interested in sciences or journalism, or the parent of one, these workshops might be just what you need.

And for those people not in the Toronto area, contact your nearest university or community college to see what is happening where you live. If there are no public science events planned in your area at present, that's your opportunity to ask for one. Talk about what you and your friends need, whether it might be Science Summer Camp, citizen science water sampling, or info sessions for high school vocational options. You'll be amazed what can be arranged in your own district. Even a high school, library, or recreation centre can help you. Some speakers will visit isolated communities in person, while others will visit by Skype and internet chat forums.

Science is not something that happens only in universities -- and even when it does, that kind of science is STILL meant to benefit all of us.

Retro Shows on Science from the CBC, and more!

By Paula Johanson

Summer is here, and a lot of people are out of school for months. Though it's time to be outdoors doing fun things like gardening and kayaking, nobody wants to turn their brains off for an entire summer. There's plenty of science to learn -- but where?

One of the things that works for science learning in the summer is finding free videos and audio recordings and podcasts to play when needed. Quiet evenings after vigorous activity, or during long rides in buses or cars -- those are good times to play these recordings. I find it good exercise for my brain, which complements all the good exercise for my body I get in summertime! Here are some of the science resources that might be handy for students and families this summer:

Hosted at the University of Victoria's archives website is an amazing profile of a citizen scientist extraordinaire!

Ian McTaggart Cowan was a true citizen scientist who was committed to sharing scientific knowledge with all Canadians. Click here for a link to the profile, with plenty of info on this man and the science he loved. He hosted three popular television series on the CBC: The Web of Life, The Living Sea, and Fur & Feather. All of his episodes  are available at this link -- and there's enough episodes to watch one every day till September or binge a series over a weekend! This profile could be a good resource for home learning projects or for students who just want to keep their science brains revving.

On CBC radio, the IDEAS program presents interesting ideas in just under an hour of thoughtful talk. Often these episodes are on science topics. On their website you can see links to recent broadcasts or scroll down to the link  "Browse Past Episodes" and find links to many episodes which you can play right away or download onto your phone, computer, or MP3 player. Some of these talks will inspire teenagers to discuss the topics with their parents and teachers or find books at the public library!

As well, IDEAS hosts the Massey Lectures every fall (five talks by a celebrated speaker), and the past lectures are available at this link. If you like listening to lectures and discussions and finding books on the same topics, you'll enjoy looking through the list of past lectures and picking out some to hear. In 2009, the Massey Lecturer was Wade Davis, speaking as a field anthropologist on "The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World." The traditional knowledge he discusses include practical science studies such as navigation and sustainable agriculture.

Canada's National Film Board has made most of their videos available online for free! (They have materials in French as well as English, y'know.) Check out their Subjects page on the Sciences at this link and pick out some videos both classic and recent for your summer viewing. There's also some teaching aids and material for younger children.

Bird Banding

My friends Robyn and Mark are bird-watchers. Oh, they do a lot of other things, too, that you can read about on their blog at this link. But it's their bird hobby that I'm envying today. On the first Saturday of October, Robyn and Mark were helping researchers by banding birds. It was a wonderful day for citizen scientists helping experts with hands-on gathering of data!

This bird is a hermit thrush, observing Robyn as carefully as she observes it!

As Robyn says:

This morning Mark and I volunteered with the Rocky Point Bird Observatory banding migrating song birds. We helped with retrieving the birds from the nets (37 today) and entering their info into a database. Very interesting work and it confirmed how much I DON'T know about birds

The nets used to catch birds are almost invisible, and suspended between.posts like a fence. Here's a Chestnut-backed chickadee caught safely in a net. A moment later, a researcher carefully untangled the bird and held it while Robyn and Mark helped to band the bird and write notes about it. The bird banding is also being done at night, when the researchers catch owls.

Here's the whiteboard with notes about the numbers of birds caught, and their types.The total count of birds banded by Rocky Point Bird Observatory after day 74.of their study? 2,486!

You can read more about Rocky Point Bird Observatory at this link to their Facebook page, or go to their own website at this link. 

The Sci/Why Blog has had another post written about volunteering for a bird banding event, and you can read it at this link.
If you want to volunteer with bird studies in your own area, start by looking up provincial resources and try the nearest university biology program to find out who needs you. Don't worry about handling the birds -- even if all you do is write down the information as fast as the expert can say it, you're doing useful work that lets the expert handle the birds. Maybe there's a birdwatching club at the local recreation centre, or a birding store at a mall. The public library will have books on birds and birdwatching as well!

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Clam Gardens Revisited

Ever dig clams on a beach? If you had to race razor clams as they ducked away in sand, it's easy to think "There HAS to be a better way!" But if you scraped for butter clams only a few inches down in the stony muck of a clam garden, you'd know that clam gardens ARE a better way.

Clam gardens are beaches modified by First Nations people on shorelines along the West Coast, to increase and improve the habitat for clams that are particularly tasty and easy to gather. Back in 2011, I was lucky to be a volunteer helping biologist Amy Grosbeck in her study of clam gardens, and wrote for Sci/Why about the experience. Click here to read that post and see some excellent photos by that scientist. Amy Grosbeck and her colleagues went on to write a journal article about their study (and it's really interesting to read).

Amy called me up this summer to offer another chance to volunteer to help her with another study. Hurray! My spouse Bernie and I were glad to join her on Quadra Island, to take some samples and tidy the clam gardens she was studying this summer. We stayed a few nights in a bunkhouse maintained by the Tula Foundation for the Hakai Institute, which supports intertidal biology research by Amy and many of her colleagues.

At 4am, you better have a headlamp!

Studying intertidal biology means getting up before dawn, and getting to our launch point at Granite Bay before low tide.We left the bunkhouse at four o'clock in the morning, after a quick breakfast. Amy and Bernie paddled a canoe loaded with pails of scientific gear, while I paddled alongside in my inflatable kayak (The Lagoon is a very practical boat, sent to me by Advanced Elements, and a big improvement on the already excellent version I paddled on my 2011 trip with Amy.)

When the sun came up, we could see clouds, fog, and rain all around Kanish Bay.

Paddling in a light drizzle of rain at 4:30am was made more interesting by the swirls of phosphorescence in the water. Every time our boats moved, the water would sparkle with tiny specks of light made by plankton. If there had been a moon or lots of electric lights, the dim sparkles wouldn't show. On that dark early morning, the swirls of light were amazing. Each stroke of a canoe paddle left big swooshes of light, and my kayak was skimming on waves of sparkles. Then we paddled over a bed of kelp, which lit up with the movements of fish and shrimp. Too bad the sparkles are too dim to photograph well with ordinary cameras. The light show made getting up so early seem worthwhile.

It seemed even more worthwhile when we got to the clam garden and learned how much work Amy had been doing there. Quickly she showed Bernie how to take samples of the beach material -- stony sand mixed with broken clam shells and muck -- while she and I gathered up sample bags she had fastened to metal rods driven into the beach at intervals.

Somehow we got all the samples taken, all the bags gathered, and all the rods retrieved before the rising tide covered her sample sites. The beach was tidied up at the end of Amy's study season, and our work was done.

And then we did it all again the next day on new beaches. Science! Paddling at 4:30 am in the rain for science! Soaked to the skin all day for science! It was worth it, and I'll go again when Amy calls me to come do for a few days what she does over and over many times a year.. To be an intertidal ecologist for a few days, gathering data for scientific studies, is a wonderful opportunity.

Citizen Science: A Way To Become Involved

By Margriet Ruurs

Definition - noun cit·i·zen \ˈsi-tə-zən also -sən\   \ˈsī-ən(t)s\
Citizen science (also known as crowd science, civic science or volunteer monitoring) is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists.

Are you a citizen interested in science? Have you always had a secret wish to be a scientist, but instead you ended up being a bookkeeper, a manager, a writer? There is still hope! You can participate in, and contribute to, science projects around the globe. Making use of the internet, scientists have come to realize the enormous wealth of manpower available to science by using volunteers. You can be an amateur bird watcher and contribute to the knowledge of the American Ornithologist Union. Or you can help track anything from bees to killer whales. You can count moths or collect microbes in your own home - all as a “citizen scientist.”

When you check the list of possibilities, it is hard not to get excited about the contribution you can make to science by doing what you already enjoy doing, simply by signing up as a volunteer and making your actions count. Thanks to mobile phones, for instance, you can help to improve accuracy of magnetic navigation systems. Sounds impressive, right? All you need to do is download the app and send in your magnetic data.

You can turn your daily stroll along the shore into scientific research by listening for orcas and submitting your findings to The Whale Museum on Washington’s San Juan Island.

Being a volunteer scientist is not restricted to your regular daily life at home either. Tens of thousands of people in The Netherlands, for instance, contribute to the preservation of wildlife or natural areas by tagging butterflies, by constructing bee-houses or by planting trees. One website offers to pay all transportation and accommodation if you want to spend four days planting sea grass in the muddy tidal flats of northern Holland or Germany. You can also spend two weeks living in a lighthouse, in complete isolation and surrounded by the sea at high tide, counting seals and taking an inventory of sea birds. You just sign up as a volunteer caretaker for the Dutch National Nature Conservancy (Staatsbosbeheer).

If you’d rather go on night patrol on a Costa Rican beach, you can do so by joining a GoAbroad.com project to protect sea turtles. The Earthwatch Institute has also realized the enormous potential of using keen citizens to contribute to scientific research. They invite you to explore Nicaragua’s geology. You’ll be setting up high-tech scientific instruments in and around the Masaya’s crater. You’ll hike through the forest to record information on pollinating insects and to collect plant, water, and soil samples. You’ll be part of a field research team which may make this a more memorable holiday then simply lying on a beach. Of course, in a case like this, you’ll pay your own travel and accommodation.

Whether you use your daily stroll or dedicate your entire holiday to science, doing something meaningful for the environment will, no doubt, be a rewarding experience if you become a citizen scientist.

For previous Sci/Why columns on citizen science projects, just type "citizen science" into the Search box on the right side of this page.

All photos by Margriet Ruurs.

Robert Ballard, science explorer

By Paula Johanson

It's good to have heroes. There are science heroes for us all to admire and aspire to imitate. One of the greats is Robert Ballard.

There's plenty to read about Robert Ballard in September 2015's issue of Popular Mechanics. Or on the CBC's website where he was profiled in August. I heard him on CBC Radio One's show All Points West, talking about his youth and his entry into ocean science. When he was a child, he wrote to Scripps Institute saying he wanted to be an oceanographer. They gave him a scholarship when he was old enough to study there. It took years, but he became part of that world of wonders.

The name Robert Ballard might not be recognised right away. You've heard of the black smoker vents at the bottom of the ocean? Ballard discovered them in 1977. But you might know of him as the person who found the Titanic. Remember him now?

This photo is borrowed from Popular Mechanic's Sept 2015 issue.

Now his exploration vessel Nautilus (of course. it's named the Nautilus for the amazing vessel in Jules Verne's book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea!) is run by the Ocean Exploration Trust, of which Ballard is president. Most of his corps of scientists are university students and graduate students in oceanography, geology, biology, archaeology, engineering, or film-making. And like most students, more than half of them are women. When Ballard is not on board the Nautilus, he is connected to its amazing technology by phone and the internet. So are dozens of experts all over the world, consulted at any hour of the day or night by the intrepid crew of the Nautilus during its explorations.

The scientists make use of two submersibles that are essentially robot submarines with cameras and tools that can be controlled from on board the ship. At the end of August 2015, the ship was off Vancouver Island, assisting with the NEPTUNE and VENUS programs, which you can read about at this link. Or check out the interesting photos of sea life swimming by NEPTUNE's monitors on the sea floor, thousands of metres underwater, at this article about the robot submersibles.

The educational element alone of the Ocean Exploration Trust is amazing. Over 500 educational videos are created a year by this team, sharing their day-to-day work and discoveries. If you're interested in ocean science and citizen science, these are people to know. It's easy to see Ballard as a superhero for science learning for youth. You can follow the adventures of the Nautilus and its explorers at nautilus.org or oceannetworks.ca.

Citizen Scientists Sampling Seawater Radiation

By Paula Johanson

If you've ever worried whether radiation from Fukushima after the tsunami in 2011 might be washing up in the ocean along Canada's west coast, there is a website for you at Fukushima inFORM. And the news is good!

There are trained scientists monitoring seawater samples from offshore, and test samples from marine life. They're working together with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and with Health Canada. As well, citizen scientists assist with collecting water samples at several places along the shoreline. The samples are processed by the Fukushima inFORM team of scientists at the University of Victoria, and their partners across Canada and the USA.

Regular updates from Fukushima inFORM show that they are looking for two radioactive elements in particular, Cesium 134 and Cesium 137. Their test results so far show that while they are able to find in the samples small traces of Cesium 137 radiation from Chernobyl and from the nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s, they are not finding any from Fukushima. Also, they are not finding any Cesium 134 radiation from Fukushima, which has a much shorter half-life than 137. This is very good news.

Citizen scientists are a valuable part of the sampling process. These ordinary people are trained by a scientist to gather seawater samples for testing. Many of these people bring their friends or grandchildren along when collecting seawater samples. It's a good way to be part of the process of monitoring our environment!

The Best Dog-gone Study Ever!

Post by Helaine Becker

Do you love dogs?

Of course you do.

How 'bout science?

Yes,  you love science too.


Then you will double-dog love this new Citizen Science project that you - and your dog - can participate in!

It's easy - all you have to do is wait for your dog to poop. Then stoop, scoop - and mail that poop to Oregon State University.

Yes, you read that right.

Researchers at the university would be most grateful if you mailed samples of your pet's poo to them for a study on dog microbiomes. They want to find out what's going on inside dogs' guts, and what mini-critters live in there. And the best way to figure it out is by looking at pooches' poo under the microscope. Lots of poo.

So go, ahead, stoop for science! You can find all the deets  on how you and your dog can enroll here.

Not a fan of 'pooping a letter' in the mailbox?  You can still participate in great dog-related science investigations. You'll find many other research studies, some as easy as answering a dog-related quiz, at the Dog Science Group.

<a href="http://cliparts.co/clipart/2939649">cliparts.co</a>

Calling All Citizen Scientists - Check out your Toilet!

By Helaine Becker

You've probably heard it - that water goes down a drain differently on the north and south sides of the equator. But is it true?

The Internet, which knows all, seems to be out on this pressing subject. While there is solid theoretical backing for the difference in spin  - thanks to the Coriolis Effect - there is no solid evidence to back it up. Pardon the puns.

It's time to fill the information void once and for all!

Here's how we play:

You take a video of your toilet flushing, and post it to the comments section here along with your latitude. Eventually, your humble sci-why contributors will watch the videos and tabulate the data. with a large enough (stool) sample, ;) we can determine the truth, once and for all.

So on your marks, get set, flush!

Here is my video contribution, from greater Toronto, Canada (N44):

Drift Cards for Citizen Science

Science is done not only in labs by people with white coats and clipboards, but also in the field. And "in the field" can mean on the water, and on the beach. So paddlers and beach-walkers can keep your eyes open this month for some citizen science opportunities on the Salish Sea!

These opportunities aren't as high-tech as the Neptune and Venus projects off-shore on the continental shelf. I've written about those before on the Sci/Why blog. Nor are they as specialized as the clam gardens research done on Quadra Island that was noted on the Kayak Yak blog, too. Nope, these current opportunities for ordinary citizens to participate in a science project involve picking up cards.

This photo is from the Raincoast Conservation Federation website.

 That doesn't sound very science-y at first. It doesn't sound like it has anything to do with kayaks, either. But hang on. These yellow cards are biodegradable plywood cards with detailed labelling, and they're being released at particular locations on the Salish Sea. If you find one while you're out in a boat or on a beach, pick it up and contact the scientists, who are part of a team involving the City of Vancouver, the Raincoast Conservation Federation, and the Georgia Strait Alliance. You will have helped track the way that floating items drift in real-life, real-time conditions.
There's an article about this drift card release on the CBC website at this link, and another more detailed article on the Vancouver Observer website at this link. You can also go to the website for the Salish Sea Spill Map, where the locations of card releases and recoveries are being tagged on a map. Is your home base on this map? Maybe you're planning a paddling trip and want to look up that location. Maybe you're thinking about what could happen if, instead of cards, there were other things released such as fossil fuels from a tanker? And now, this project makes a little more sense.

A close-up of one of the cards, from the Vancouver Observer article.

 Citizen science is not only about allowing ordinary untrained people to participate in projects by real scientists. It can be about seeing real science in use in the lives of ordinary citizens. We citizens interact with the environment when we're out on the water in our small boats or walking along shorelines. We can gather data in many more places than a scientist could ever get funding to cover. We get to be part of the community of learning.

Bioblitzing: A New Outdoor Entertainment

by Jan Thornhill

A bit more than a month ago my friend Tony invited me to help with the fungi portion of the 2014 Ontario Bioblitz.

"Bioblitz?" I said. "What the heck is a Bioblitz?"

When documenting fungi for a Bioblitz, you document all fungi, like this
Rhytism americanum, a tar spot that attacks native maples. 

A Bioblitz, it turns out, is a pretty cool event. It's an intense 24-hour study of a specific area's flora and fauna during which professional biologists lead teams that document all the living things they can find. It's essentially an exercise that highlights biodiversity. Though ornithologists and entomologists worked through the night looking for owls and moths and other nocturnal critters, since I was working with the fungi team, led by Jean-Marc Moncalvo, Senior Curator of Mycology at the Royal Ontario Museum, and fungi don't move around a lot, we didn't have to forgo sleep and focussed on collecting samples when they were visible—during daylight hours.

A fresh specimen of Gloeoporus dichrous. During the Bioblitz,
we only found a dried up one from the previous fall.

Bioblitzes are a perfect introduction to citizen science, since the public is usually encouraged to help. This year's May 25 event was focussed on the Humber River Watershed. There were lots of activities, including guided walks with professional biologists, batbox-making workshops, and field-sketching workshops. But the main event was documenting species, and the main event was wonderfully successful. From the 24-hour period, a total of 1,563 species have been identified so far, including 109 arachnids, 121 birds, 27 fish, 500 insects, 100 non-insect invertebrates, 18 reptiles, 94 lichens, 21 mammals, 78 mosses, 450 plants, and 45 fungi.

That's a millimetre rule behind these fuzz-covered Lasiosphaeria ovina.

The fungi numbers were low—we only found about half the number of species documented on each of the first two Ontario Bioblitzes in 2012 and 2013, but we have an excuse: May 25 is never a prime fungi-finding time, on top of which there'd been almost no rain for two weeks.

The honey locusts growing in our Bioblitz fungi-hunting area were treacherous! 

Undeterred, Tony and I explored a scrubby woods not far from the McMichael Gallery parking lot. It was so dry that, at first glance, it looked as if we weren't going to find anything at all other than a few gnarly, desiccated, insect-ravaged tree-growing fungi from the previous fall (they still counted, though!). But once we got down on our hands and knees, (and wiped off the blood from being stabbed by the wicked thorns of honey locust trees), and started turning over fallen branches, we found a few interesting specimens. Admittedly most of these were tiny interesting specimens, but they included some exquisite, snow white, mini stemmed cups bejewelled with dew, and a quite beautiful parasitic rust fungus (featured in my fungi blog post, here), as well as a single, charismatic, and delectable, morel. 

We had to use a microscope to nail down the identity 
of these half-millimeter beauties, Lachnum subvirgineum.

It was fun. It's always fun looking for fungi. It's like a treasure hunt. So I was delighted to get an invitation to attend another Bioblitz. This one is at the Alderville First Nation Black Oak Savanna, located southeast of Rice Lake. The savanna is very special place, Canada's easternmost prairie habitat and one of the most endangered plant communities in Ontario, where the primary goal is to restore land that has previously been used for agriculture by planting and nurturing native tall-grass prairie species.  

Because there are a number of species at risk at the Alderville Black Oak Savanna site, this Bioblitz is not geared towards the public's participation in the same way that the much larger Ontario Bioblitz is, but if you'd like to visit the site you can book a tour by calling 905-352-1008. They also have programs and resources for schools, as well as an annual eco-friendly "Prairie Day," which, this year, is on Saturday, September 10. 

*You can read about a few interesting things we found during the Alderville Bioblitz on my Weird & Wonderful Wild Mushrooms blog.

Rockhounds Find Dinosaur -- In A City!

By Paula Johanson

There are everyday miracles and wonders all around us much of the time. There are wonders to be found even in cities where the marks of feet trampling the ground tend to hide anything unique. In some cities it seems that everything is the colour and shape of footprints! There are a couple of ways I try to see everyday wonders underfoot -- one way is by being a rockhound.

Rockhounds are people who do a very informal kind of citizen science. They collect rocks and learn about many kinds of stone. Here's a link to a pamphlet on rockhounding from the Geological Survey Branch of the British Columbia Ministry of Energy and Mines. 

I love to poke around at loose stones and also big rocks that stick up through the ground. Everywhere I go, I try to scrabble up hills and down gullies to find local rocks. There are often park trails to follow, but if all I have time to do is walk in a playground or along a beach, I do it. There's always a pebble or two in my pockets when I go home, except in places like Dinosaur Provincial Park where visitors are asked not to take away rocks that they find.

Bill Graveland took this photo of paleontologist Darla Zelenitsky as she pointed out the eye socket of a pachyrhinosaur skull found in the town of Drumheller, AB.

Now I'm reminded that scientists from universities are rockhounds too, and they are finding everyday miracles and wonders in unexpected places. Take Drumheller, Alberta, for example. This small city was the end point for my kayaking trip on the Red Deer River. I've walked through much of Drumheller on a few visits to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, and can report that there's a layer of amber-coloured dust over almost everything in town. The marks of footprints are everywhere that isn't paved. And in one well-trampled part of town, what looked like a bumpy rock turned out to be a dinosaur skull when some rockhounds took a closer look.

To be fair, after 60 million years in the ground it was also a bumpy rock. The skull had been preserved in rock as a fossil. How many dinosaur fossil fans have stepped on this big ol' fossil in recent years since the museum and rockhound stores were opened? No one knows.

I figure this dinosaur skull is a lesson to be aware of wonders and miracles underfoot and all around us. Instead of dividing the world into "Exciting Places" and "Oh Well -- Dull Old Home" I'm going to practise my rockhound skills at home as well as in distant places.

Origami Citizen Science

How can someone help in the medical search for a treatment for AIDS, without being a research scientist in a lab or a doctor in a hospital? There's a new way now to be part of medical research, and it includes people who have no medical training at all. This kind of citizen science requires access to a computer, and an interest in playing games.

This picture from Foldit is a model of a streptococcus molecule.

The game used to help in the search for an AIDS treatment is called Foldit -- click here to go to their website and learn how this game shows different ways that proteins can be folded. To put it simply, proteins are long molecules that aren't just straight like beads in a necklace. Proteins are folded into crooked shapes. Some proteins are useful when folded in a certain way, but not useful when folded a different way.

This picture from Foldit shows the same model, unfolded.

Medical researchers study the shapes of proteins, sometimes using nuclear magnetic resonance to see these tiny shapes. Sometimes a computer program is used to make models of all the possible ways to fold a protein. It's a bit like the Japanese art of origami - if a piece of paper is folded one way, a cup is made. Fold the same piece of paper another way to make a toy bird. (Here's a link to a website about origami.)

There's an article by Ed Yong describing how the game Foldit was used to solve the shape of a particular protein. It turns out that no matter how good a computer program is at folding shapes, people are still better than computer programs at picking the right places to try small changes. People playing Foldit took three weeks to solve a question about one particular protein that AIDS researchers have been studying for years.


Citizen science is getting to be pretty popular these days. There are many ways for ordinary citizens to assist trained scientists in the gathering of data, such as the volunteers who assist in bird-banding programs. An international website allows people to report finding a bird with a band around its leg. There are other programs such as Neptune, where people can log in to observe a few minutes of video (or hours, if you prefer) recorded at the bottom of the ocean near Vancouver Island, and alert the researchers about anything interesting that happens at particular points of the video. At Sci/Why, we wrote about a teenager who made a discovery on Neptune video.

For origami fans, there are other scientific discoveries about this art of folding. One recent invention is a sheet of plastic that can fold itself into two different forms -- check out this article from Scientific American magazine! Another article in Scientific American notes that other kinds of plastic origami might be useful for shaping cells into tiny containers for future medical uses.

Citizen Science Recovering History!

Science is for more people than a few professors in white lab coats. These days, citizen science is an expanding field. Citizen science programs make opportunities for just about anyone who wants to get involved in some kinds of research -- people of any age, and anywhere in the world.

We've had posts on our Sci/Why blog before about citizen science. You can click here to read about young Kirill Dudko, and his discovery. But science isn't all about only physical sciences like geology or biology -- there are social sciences too, as well as the expanding field of digital humanities, where computers are used to help for research in the arts and language study.

There's a post on a blog called RadioLab, which you can read here at this link, which talks about a citizen science project in which people can help to copy the words from papyrus scrolls that are thousands of years old.

This photo of Egyptian workers at Oxyrhynchus appears on the website ancientlives.org

When Egyptologists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt and their team of locally-hired diggers discovered the garbage dumps of the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt in 1896, they found an astonishing amount of old paper records made from papyrus reed. There were marriage records, Greek poetry, fragments of the gospels and many older papyrus pieces. This discovery was the beginning of the science of papyrology: the study of ancient papyrus records.
700 boxes were brought to Oxford, holding a total of some 500,000 pieces of papyrus. Only a few of the boxes have been edited by scholars.

There is a computer program now, which shows images of many of these papyrus pages. Volunteer researchers can go to a website, view a page, and record any letters written in the Greek language. Volunteers don't need to read Greek, just match the shapes of the letters. Any work by volunteers is sent on to scholars for formal study. You can read about this exciting project at the Ancient Lives website.

Radiolab website has many interesting short articles and audio recordings about science. Check out their 18-minute podcast on The Greatest Hits of Garbage, including the papyrus found in the trash heap at Oryrhynchus, Egypt.

Teen Citizen Scientist Spots Deep-Sea Discovery

There's good news hot out of the University of Victoria (where I'm currently studying), and their good news is making the rounds on the Internet. A young "citizen scientist" found a great way to exercise his interest in biology when he learned about the Neptune program. This is a program from the University of Victoria, which has placed several underwater ocean observatories on the sea bottom near Vancouver Island. Neptune is gathering so much data, including hours of video, that the call has gone out for interested people to watch their sea-bottom videos and report anything interesting.

A young man in Ukraine, named Kirill Dudko, has been watching Neptune's videos. When he sees something interesting, he posts the clip on his YouTube channel. On January 12, 2013, he spotted a hagfish on the sea bottom as it was snatched up by a large marine mammal. He posted the video clip, and notified Neptune. They were glad to report that Kirill is the first person ever to spot a northern elephant seal feeding on the sea bottom at 894 metres!

Here's the news that Neptune posted about Kirill Dudko -- check out their website here. It's a well-written article with a nice photo of Kirill that I've copied above. They've also edited the clip of video that Kirill posted into a short, two-minute video that explains about Neptune and what this sighting means.



Neptune's article goes on to explain how people can become part of the citizen science team that can look at the live video streams. Check it out! This can be a good activity for family members using a computer together, or for students to do for extra credit at school, but mostly it's interesting and fun.