Chandra Clarke

Award-winning entrepreneur. Author. Professional Optimist.

Citizen science games: the ultimate list

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This week, by request: a huge list of citizen science games you can play and enjoy while contributing to the greater good. Go have fun!

Astro Drone – Created by the European Space Agency, fly your Parrot AR drone in virtual space and compare yourself with real-life astronauts. Data from your successful flights will be used to train robots on how to navigate their environment. Website: http://www.astrodrone.org/. iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/astro-drone/id597477649?ls=1&mt=8. Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.rwb.spacegame

Apetopia – Run over a landscape and then choose the door with the colour that best matches the sky at that moment. Collect coins and avoid obstacles too. The game helps determine perceived color differences; player choices are used to model better color metrics. Website: http://colors.htw-berlin.de

Beat the Bots – Are you smarter than a spambot? VouchSafe has built an anti-spam program that uses the way humans think to try to outsmart spammers. Draw a line with your mouse to join an object to its best match, or circle the object that doesn’t belong. Yeah, okay, this isn’t really citizen science, but defeating spam is definitely for the greater good, don’t you think? Facebook: https://apps.facebook.com/beatthebots/

Cell Slider – Join the effort to defeat cancer by reviewing images to spot cancer cells. http://www.cellslider.net/ NOTE: This project is now archived.

Collabio – Participate in social psychology research. Collabio is a Facebook application that wants you to guess tags that other friends have used to describe an individual. Points are awarded according to the number of other friends who have agreed with each tag. Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/collabio/

Cropland Capture – Want to help improve the world’s food security? Help to improve basic information about where cropland is located on the Earth’s surface. Website: http://www.geo-wiki.org/games/croplandcapture/

Dizeez – Help researchers link various genes to diseases. The game is very simple: You are shown one gene name, and five diseases. Pick the disease that is linked to the gene to get points, and get as many points as you can in one minute. Website: http://sulab.scripps.edu/dizeez/

Eterna – A beautiful visual puzzler. Help design RNA strands in this wonderfully rendered game. Website: http://eterna.cmu.edu/web/

Eyewire – Another gorgeous looking game, this one has you mapping and manipulating neurons in 3D. Gameplay helps researchers discover how neurons connect and network to process information. Website: http://www.eyewire.org/

Foldit – Solve puzzles involving protein molecules. Knowing the structure of a protein is key to understanding how it works and to targeting it with drugs. Website: http://fold.it/portal/

Fraxinus – Help scientists learn why the ash tree is susceptible to a fungus with this Candy Crush-like puzzler. Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/fraxinusgame/

Forgotten Island – An explosion has destroyed the island’s biology lab and scattered living specimens across the strange landscape. A robot named DOC73R-CY3N53 demands that re-classify his specimens and rebuild the island. Website: http://www.citizensort.org/web.php/forgottenisland

Happy Match – In this one, players participate in scientific research by playing a card/memory style game, classifying photos of animal, plant and insect species (currently moths, rays, and sharks.) Website: http://www.citizensort.org/web.php/happymatch

Malaria Hunters – Diagnosing a single case of malaria can take up to 30 minutes of a technician’s time, and drastically slows down a health care system’s ability to respond to an outbreak. This game aims to create a global network of “spotters” to speed this process up. The original browser game is MalariaSpot (malariaspot.org), or you can play it on your Apple device (iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/malaria-hunter/id736229727?mt=8) or your Android device (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotlab.malariaspot&hl).

Martian Map Room – Help secure the future of humanity by exploring a potential home away from home. Explore Mars and help map it in the Martian Map Room by NASA. http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/maproom#/WhyMapMars

NanoDoc – This game wants you to design new nanoparticle strategies and nanovehicles to kill tumors. One of the biggest problems in cancer therapy, for example, is knowing what dose to give. Too little and you don’t kill the cancer. Too much, and you start killing healthy tissue. Playing this game refines our understanding. Website: http://nanodoc.org

MOLT – Help diagnose pathologies by examining microscopic data. This game has proven that non-professional gamers diagnosed malaria infected red-blood-cells with an accuracy within 1.25% a trained professional. All you need to do is spot and click on an infected blood cell. Website: http://biogames.ee.ucla.edu/

OneUp – This is a two-player metatagging game, and the best description entered wins. By tagging in this game, you are helping to preserve archival images, videos, and audio clips for future generations. iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/one-up/id787595098?mt=8

OpenCorporates – Help keep big corporations accountable by datamining their SEC filings. Website: http://opencorporates.com/games/secfilings

Play to Cure™: Genes in Space — Collect a fictional substance dubbed Element Alpha, which is really genetic cancer data. Map a route through the densest parts of the Alpha, shoot asteroids to collect points and upgrade your ship. iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/play-to-cure-genes-in-space/id784643890?mt=8. Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.guerillatea.elementalpha

Phlyo – This game contributes to genetic research. Move colour blocks on the screen to match patterns and come up with new combinations. Website: http://phylo.cs.mcgill.ca/

Phrase Detectives – A language annotation game. Help researchers create a linguistic resource by noting the relationships between words and phrases; this helps train future generations of language tools. Earn points, get promoted, and see your name on the leaderboard. Website: https://anawiki.essex.ac.uk/phrasedetectives/. Facebook: https://apps.facebook.com/phrasedetectives/

Project Nightjar – Help scientists learn more about human perceptual abilities by trying to spot nightjars (birds) or their nests. Website: http://nightjar.exeter.ac.uk/story/games

Pyramid Tag – This is a single-player image tagging game, where the best descriptions win. This metadata game gathers new information about archival materials. By playing this one, you make it easier to for the world to find and use digital media from collections in libraries, museums, and universities. iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/pyramid-tag/id787644980?mt=8

Quantum Moves – Help build a quantum supercomputer. Every time you play, your mouse movements simulate laser beams used in a real quantum lab to move atoms onto their correct pathways. Achieve the best scores in “QComp” and “Beat AI” labs to win. Website: http://www.scienceathome.org/

Stall Catchers – Play a game, speed up Alzheimer’s research. https://stallcatchers.com/main

The Cure – A biology-based card game where you try to assemble the best hand to win. The combos you make actually help researchers make better predictions about breast cancer, e.g., whether a cancer will metastasize and how quickly. Website: http://genegames.org/cure/

Train Robots – Help robots become as smart as humans. Players teach the robot how to move blocks using clear and correct commands. Website: http://www.trainrobots.com

Volunteer Science – Play games and take surveys to help scientist.s answer the big questions. https://volunteerscience.com/

Wordrobe – Play a word game and help improve the Groningen Meaning Bank (GMB), which in turn will improve natural language software tools. Website: http://wordrobe.housing.rug.nl/Wordrobe/public/HomePage.aspx

 

Have I missed any? Let me know in the comments below!

Screenshot image credit: Fraxinus

Addicted to Candy Crush? Put your addiction to use for science

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If you’ve spent any time on Facebook lately, you’ve probably seen posts about a ridiculously simple, but strangely addictive game called Candy Crush Saga. If you’ve enjoyed that game, and especially if you’re currently stuck on a level (I’m looking at you, number 29), you might want to consider a similar game called Fraxinus.

In the UK, the ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior, hence the game name) has been infected by a fungus called Chalara, which in turn causes a disease called “ash dieback.” Scientists want to figure out why the ash tree is so susceptible to Chalara, and why some trees are able to resist it. The game uses real genetic data represented by coloured patterns that you manipulate to help give scientists data on how the disease works at the genetic level. It involves matching and rearranging patterns of leaf shapes which represent nucleotides.

The game isn’t as mindless as Candy Crush, and adds a nifty competitive component. As you create a pattern, you create a score, and the better your match, the higher your score.  Closely matched sequences earn high scores and allow players to “claim” patterns. If another player uses the same pattern to achieve a higher score, they can “steal” the pattern and claim it. Each so-called theft helps make the data more accurate; top scorers will have their names included in public databases and publications.

What’s at stake? If researchers don’t figure out ash dieback, they predict that 90-95% of ash trees in the UK could die; and of course, diseases rarely stay confined to individual countries any more. Many creatures depend on the ash, including the lesser stag beetle, owls and woodpeckers (for nests), and bullfinch (eats ash seeds). Ash woodlands support flowers like dogs mercury, bluebells and ramsons, and butterflies like the high brown fritillary, the dingy skipper, and the grayling.

Ready to play? You can go to http://apps.facebook.com/fraxinusgame/ right now and get started, and in true Facebook fashion, don’t forget to invite all of your friends to play. You can read more about the ash dieback problem here.

Is there a power plant near you? Finding out could win you the game

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If climate change concerns you — and it should — then today’s post is all about how you can help.

Power plants that burn fossil fuels contribute more than 40% of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions every year. Although the number and location of such facilities is reasonably well-documented inside the United States (try this Google search for US power plants), data on the rest of the world is harder to come by. The Ventus Project led by Dr. Kevin Robert Gurney at Arizona State University wants to change that.

To take part, you can provide the exact location of a single power plant near your home or work, or you may contribute information regarding a series of power plants including location, power generation, fuel type and CO2 emissions.

You can register at this link, and find out more about how to enter your data on this instructions page.

And just in case you needed an incentive, this project has a game aspect. For each piece of useful data you provide, you receive a point. In 2014, project organizers will identify the individual with the highest total score and crown them Supreme Power Plant Emissions GURU. The title comes with a trophy, bragging rights, social media fame, and a listing as a co-author on a paper about crowdsourcing science.

Photo by Daniel Larionov on Unsplash

Do extreme 3d jigsaw puzzles: fold proteins!

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screenshot from foldit game
3d puzzles galore: can you pack a protein?

Instead of spending computer time planting corn or throwing birds around, why not put your clicks and swipes to use solving puzzles involving proteins?

Proteins are extraordinarily important in biology:  they are present in animals, humans, bacteria, and viruses. There are hundreds of different types, and they all have different roles: everything from acting as catalysts for biochemical reactions, to breaking down food, to sending signals to the brain. They’re also incredibly complicated structures. Proteins are made up of amino acids, and a protein might have 100 or it might have 1000 amino acids.

Knowing how a protein folds up, or in other words, what shape it takes, is critical to knowing how drugs might interact with it, and the ‘protein folding problem’ is one of the toughest facing biology at the moment. Researchers are attacking the problem two ways: with computers and the Rosetta@Home project, and with humans and a cool game called Foldit.

With Foldit, you can play with a protein model on screen and attempt to fold it up. You’ll want to avoid creating empty spaces, keep the sidechains that don’t like water on the inside, keep the sidechains that do like water on the outside, and make sure you aren’t trying to have two atoms occupying the same space at the same time. In other words, this is a 3d jigsaw puzzle like nothing you’ve ever done before.

You can get started here, and here’s a complete backgrounder on the science of proteins.