Forbes: The Entrepreneur Who Is Using Video Games And Cryptocurrency To Protect Biodiversity. “A free app, QuestaGame has captured the imaginations of children and adults alike. Players take photos of flora and fauna with the app on their phones. They earn points for sightings and the rarity of their location and season and gain special powers as they climb to higher levels.”
citizen science
The Verge: Why NASA wants you to point your smartphone at trees
The Verge: Why NASA wants you to point your smartphone at trees. “NASA would like you to take a picture of a tree, please. The space agency’s ICESat-2 satellite estimates the height of trees from space, and NASA has created a new tool for citizen scientists that can help check those measurements from the ground. All it takes is a smartphone, the app, an optional tape measure, and a tree.”
Scale force: citizen scientists reel in data on salmon and sea trout (The Irish Times)
The Irish Times: Scale force: citizen scientists reel in data on salmon and sea trout. “The Minister of State with responsibility for inland fisheries, Seán Canney, is seeking assistance from anglers to become citizen scientists for the National Salmon Scale Project. The initiative aims to collect information through scales from salmon and sea trout which will contribute to the conservation of wild salmon stocks.”
Google Blog: More science in more places with Science Journal and Google Drive
Google Blog: More science in more places with Science Journal and Google Drive. “We first launched Science Journal in 2016 so that students, teachers and science enthusiasts could conduct hands-on science experiments using their phones, tablets and Chromebooks. Since then, we’ve heard one request from teachers loud and clear: students need to be able to access their experiments no matter what device they’re using or where they are. Learning doesn’t just happen in the classroom, it happens outdoors, at home and everywhere in between. So today, we’re bringing a new Google Drive syncing feature to Science Journal. Now, you can access your experiments on any device using a Google Account.”
Arizona State University: Go ahead, try this at home
Arizona State University: Go ahead, try this at home. “From phone apps that measure light pollution to crowdsourced maps that track parasites, the process of collecting scientific data has never been so accessible or so scalable. ‘Scientists are looking for information, and people like to contribute. Citizen science is making that happen on a major scale,’ said ASU Librarian Dan Stanton, who specializes in citizen science and is coordinating Arizona State University’s participation in the fifth annual Citizen Science Day, a global event scheduled for Saturday, April 13.”
University Affairs: How apps and online databases are helping conservation science to thrive
University Affairs: How apps and online databases are helping conservation science to thrive. “Science is not always done by experts cloistered in ivory towers. Increasingly, ordinary people are getting involved in gathering data – on local birds, insects, plants, climate and more – through citizen science initiatives. Enlisting the public in these schemes allows researchers to reach much further afield in their data collection efforts, and the spread of digital apps and online platforms is extending the reach of conservation scientists more than ever.”
Our partnership for 2019: Operation Weather Rescue (British Science Week)
British Science Week: Our partnership for 2019: Operation Weather Rescue. “This year, our Zooniverse citizen science partnership is with Operation Weather Rescue. They’re a team of researchers who are working tirelessly to digitize old weather records. Their project utilises the tried and tested method of people power; drawing on invaluable help from members of the public by asking them to enter pieces of historical weather information into their database. For British Science Week, we have identified two decades of important historical weather data that has never been digitised – and we need your help to rectify this.”
