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Scientists turning to crowdsourcing to gather more information about earthquakes - 1 views

  • In the past, seismologists have had to rely on information provided by just a few sensors in the vicinity of an earthquake to get information about it
  • afterwards, on anecdotal evidence provided by people that had experienced the quake first hand
  • new sources of data are becoming available that are giving scientists much more information about an earthquake,
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  • example is Twitter. Because it’s a public system, scientists can use filters to pinpoint messages being sent about a specific topic, in this case earthquakes
  • researchers can watch in real time as people send messages about it, outpacing the quake itself
  • new sources of data are becoming available as well as more people become interested in helping scientists gather data
  • Seismic monitors can now be purchased by ordinary citizens, for example, and attached to buildings, private or public where they send data via WiFi to designated research facilities
  • Other new sources of data are becoming available as well as more people become interested in helping scientists gather
  • Smartphone apps are now available as well that can be used to turn a phone into a vibration sensing device during times when the phone is not being carried.
  • earthquake scientists have also begun to set up websites with query forms that people can fill in to add what they know about an earthquake to an existing database
  • seismologists are able to create a far more detailed picture of an earthquake
  • helps in understanding what led to it occurring and the more detailed information scientists receive the more accurate their prediction models should become
  • Citizens have long participated in earthquake science through the reporting, collection, and analysis of individual experiences
  • Today's communications infrastructure has taken citizen engagement to a new level
Mars Base

Crowdsourcing the Hunt for Potentially Dangerous Asteroids - 0 views

  • new partnership between the European Space Agency and the Faulkes Telescope Project, which will encourage amateur astronomers to look for asteroids
  • providing educational opportunities that will allow students to discover potentially dangerous space rocks, too.
  • ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program is part of an international effort to be on the lookout for space hazards – not only asteroids but disruptive space weather and space debris objects in Earth orbit
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  • asteroids pose a problem
  • hard to see because they can be very dark
  • can approach rather too close before anyone sees them
  • often spotted only once and then disappear before the discovery can be confirmed.
  • ESA is turning to schools and amateur astronomers to help as part of Europe’s contribution to the global asteroid hunt
  • UK’s Faulkes Telescope Project will become the latest team to formally support the SSA program
  • Spain’s La Sagra Sky Survey, operated by the Observatorio Astronomico de Mallorca, began helping SSA earlier this year
  • The Faulkes project has two telescopes where you can sign up for observing online: Haleakala, Hawaii
  • and Siding Spring, Australia
  • For European students, collaborating on exciting ESA activities and possibly detecting new NEOs is very appealing, as its engagement with one of the world’s great space agencies doing critical scientific work.”
  • While the Faulkes project focuses on schools
  • amateurs will be able to freely access the data archives
  • archives are also open to all, and they work
  • Since starting their SSA-sponsored survey work in January 2010, the TOTAS amateur astronomers have identified hundreds of asteroid candidates, over 20 of which have been confirmed and named.
Mars Base

Kicksat: Crowd-funded, DIY spacecraft to float into low-Earth orbit - 0 views

  • It'll look like hundreds of postage stamps fluttering toward Earth—each an independent satellite transmitting a signal unique to the person who helped send it to space
  • Sprites are the size of a cracker but are outfitted with solar cells, a radio transceiver and a microcontroller (
  • launching unit, is a CubeSat
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  • Using Kickstarter
  • raised nearly $75,000 as more than 300 people sponsored a sprite that will transmit an identifying signal, such as the initials of the donor
  • In 2013, about 250 sprites will be sent into space
  • One person, who donated $10,000, Manchester added, will get to "push the big red button" on the day of the launch.
  • NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNA) program, which provides a free launch (normally $300,000) for university space research
  • KickSat will hitch a ride in September 2013 (subject to change) from Cape Canaveral on CRS-3, the third SpaceX Falcon 9 flight destined for the International Space Station
  • A large part of the project is helping people track their own satellites with a simple software radio interface
  • From a research standpoint, Manchester is interested in the dynamics and behavior of the satellites, and plans to test how to track their positions and determine their orbits
  • KickSat is set to launch more than 200 of these tiny satellites, nicknamed "sprites," into low-Earth orbit
Mars Base

Space Telescope Crowdfunding Project Raises $167,000 | Space.com - 0 views

  • A commercial asteroid-mining company aiming to launch a crowdfunded space telescope raised more than $200,000 on the first day of its campaign
  • Planetary Resources, a private venture aiming to mine near-Earth space rocks
  • announced
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  • May 29) that it would build and launch a space telescope for public use if it could raise at least $1 million in 33 days.
  • The telescope will be a twin copy of the Arkyd spacecraft the company is developing to detect, track and study asteroids in preparation for its mining mission
  • A test version of the spacecraft is set for its maiden trial flight in April 2014, while the crowdfunded model would launch in early 2015
  • public backers would use it to study celestial objects of their choice
  • also have the option of sponsoring research projects at schools, universities or museums that could use the instrument.
  • The telescope will also take
  • self portraits that show the telescope in orbit, with a user-submitted photo displayed on the instrument's screen
  • A camera mounted on the hull of the spacecraft will snap the photo.
  • Already more than 200 backers have ordered selfies for $25 and above.
  • But if the crowdfunding campaign fails to reach its $1 million goal by June 30, the company will receive none of the money it has raised
Mars Base

'Space Selfie' Telescope Could Hunt Alien Planets … If It Raises A Cool $2M - 0 views

  • A crowdfunded telescope
  • is now considering a search for alien planets.
  • Planetary Resources Inc. (the proposed asteroid miners) announced a new “stretch goal” for its asteroid-hunting Arkyd-100 telescope.
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  • If the company can raise $2 million — double its original goal — it promises to equip the Arkyd telescope to look at star systems for exoplanets
  • partnering with exoplanet researchers at MIT [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Arkyd would use two methods to hunt down planets
  • Transiting, or seeing the dip in a star’s brightness when a planet passes in front of it;
  • Gravitational microlensing, or finding planets by measuring how the gravity of the star (and its planets) distorts light from stars and galaxies behind
  • If it can raise $1.3 million, Planetary Resources proposes to build a ground station at an undisclosed “educational partner” that would double the download speed of data from the orbiting observatory
  • Two more stretch goals will be revealed if Arkyd receives 11,000 backers and 15,000 backers
Mars Base

Asteroid Miners' Crowdfunded Space Telescope May Hunt Exoplanets | Space.com - 0 views

  • the company announced today (June 11) that it would upgrade the Arkyd to hunt for alien planets if the campaign nets $2 million by the deadline
  • Giving the Arkyd this ability would require improving its stability systems and devoting time to study candidate stars
Mars Base

Soviet Lander Spotted by Mars Orbiter - 0 views

  • On May 28, 1971, the Soviet Union launched the Mars 3 mission which
  • consisted of an orbiter and lander destined for the Red Planet. Just over six months later on December 2, 1971, Mars 3 arrived at Mars
  • The Mars 3 descent module separated from the orbiter and several hours later entered the Martian atmosphere, descending to the surface via a series of parachutes and retrorockets
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  • Once safely on the surface, the Mars 3 lander opened its four petal-shaped covers to release the 4.5-kg PROP-M rover contained inside… and after 20 seconds of transmission, fell silent
  • Due to unknown causes, the Mars 3 lander was never heard from or seen again
  • The set of images
  • shows what might be hardware from the 1971 Soviet Mars 3 lander, seen in a pair of images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
  • Russian citizen enthusiasts found four features in a five-year-old image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that resemble four pieces of hardware from the Mars 3 mission: the parachute, heat shield, terminal retrorocket and lander. A follow-up image by the orbiter from last month shows the same features
  • the largest Russian Internet community about Curiosity.
  • subscribers did the preliminary search for Mars 3 via crowdsourcing
  • modeled what Mars 3 hardware pieces should look like in a HiRISE image, and the group carefully searched the many small features in this large image, finding what appear to be viable candidates
  • Each candidate has a size and shape consistent with the expected hardware, and they are arranged on the surface as expected from the entry, descent and landing sequence
  • The predicted Mars 3 landing site was at latitude 45 degrees south, longitude 202 degrees east, in Ptolemaeus Crater
  • HiRISE acquired a large image at this location in November 2007, and promising candidates for the hardware from Mars 3 were found on Dec. 31, 2012
  • The candidate parachute is the most distinctive feature
  • an especially bright spot for this region, about 8.2 yards (7.5 meters) in diameter
  • The parachute would have a diameter of 12 yards (11 meters) if fully spread out over the surface
  • this set of features and their layout on the ground provide a remarkable match to what is expected from the Mars 3 landing, but alternative explanations for the features cannot be ruled out
Mars Base

Cyclone Center - 0 views

  • The global intensity record contains uncertainties caused by differences in analysis procedures around the world and through time. Scientists are enlisting the public because patterns in storm imagery are best recognized by the human ey
Mars Base

Game on! Researchers use online crowd-sourcing to diagnose malaria - 0 views

  • Online crowd-sourcing — in which a task is presented to the public, who respond, for free, with various solutions and suggestions — has been used to evaluate potential consumer products, develop software algorithms and solve vexing research-and-development challenges. But diagnosing infectious diseases
  • crowd-sourced online gaming system in which players distinguish malaria-infected red blood cells from healthy ones by viewing digital images obtained from microscopes.
  • recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists
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  • UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
  • Working on the assumption that large groups of public non-experts can be trained to recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists
  • School of Medicine at UCLA
  • found that a small group of non-experts playing the game (mostly undergraduate student volunteers) was collectively able to diagnosis malaria-infected red blood cells with an accuracy that was within 1.25 percent of the diagnostic decisions made by a trained medical professional.
  • The game, which can be accessed on cell phones and personal computers, can be played by anyone around the world, including children
  • if you carefully combine the decisions of people — even non-experts — they become very competitive
  • if you just look at one person's response, it may be OK, but that one person will inevitably make some mistakes. But if you combine 10 to 20, maybe 50 non-expert gamers together, you improve your accuracy greatly in terms of analysis
  • could potentially help overcome limitations in the diagnosis of malaria
  • current gold standard for malaria diagnosis involves a trained pathologist using a conventional light microscope to view images of cells and count the number of malaria-causing parasites
  • process is very time-consuming, and given the large number of cases in resource-poor countries, the sheer volume presents a big challenge
  • significant portion of cases reported in sub-Sahara Africa are actually false positives, leading to unnecessary and costly treatments and hospitalizations
  • t the same platform could be applied to combine the decisions of minimally trained health care workers to significantly boost the accuracy of diagnosis, which is especially promising for telepathology, among other telemedicine field
  • By training hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of members of the public to identify malaria through UCLA's crowd-sourced game, a much greater number of diagnoses could be made more quickly — at no cost and with a high degree of collective accurac
  • research group created an automated algorithm for diagnosing the same images using computer vision, as well as a novel hybrid platform for combining human and machine resources toward efficient, accurate and remote diagnosis of malaria.
  • Before playing the game, each player is given a brief online tutorial and an explanation of what malaria-infected red blood cells typically look like using sample images
  • one of the major challenges will be the skepticism of traditional microscopists, pathologists and clinical laboratory personnel, not to mention malaria experts, who will initially view with suspicion a gaming approach in malaria diagnostics
Mars Base

Planetary Resources Raises $1.5M for Crowdfunded Space Telescope | Space Telescopes | S... - 0 views

  • Planetary Resources raised more than $1.5 million in 33 days to launch a small space telescope into low Earth orbit in 2015
  • 17,614 people donated money for the crowdsourced Arkyd-100
  • The company hit that goal June 19, then raked in another $505,366 in the final 10 days of the campaign, including $100,000 on June 30 from Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson.
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  • Planetary Resources, Bellevue, Wash., began a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign May 29 seeking to raise at least $1 million by June 30
  • 14,919 space selfies, according data from Kickstarter
  • Kicktraq.com, shows that Planetary Resources raised an average of $45,614 a day, with the 17,614 donors contributing an average of $85 each
Mars Base

Want to Phone Aliens? Help Get Your Messages On NASA's Pluto-Bound Spacecraft | Space.com - 0 views

  • New Horizons mission — launched toward Pluto in 2006
  • flies into interstellar space in about 30 years, according to SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
  • the diverse group of space fans have created a petition
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  • New Horizons Message Initiative
  • asking NASA officials to upload a yet-to-be-determined crowdsourced message from humanity onto the New Horizons craft after its encounter with the Pluto system
  • This website is an opportunity for anyone who is interested to sign a petition that asks NASA to approve the future use of the spacecraft
  • need formal permission from the agency and sub-support to make this happen
  • using some of the spacecraft's memory to store messages from earthlings beamed up to the probe
  • it might be possible to just reprogram about 100 megabytes of its memory and upload a new sights and sounds of Earth
  • When New Horizons gets past Pluto, [and] has done all its data
  • Before New Horizons launched, NASA officials discussed including an onboard message, but decided against it
  • small team on a tight budget
  • didn't want to see us being distracted from the project
  • NASA funds will not be used for the project, but initiative officials are asking for support from private individuals.
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