We are big fans of citizen science! Of course, science is always cool, and STEM/STEAM projects are an increasing part of everyone’s work and school experiences. So understanding how science works is not just fun, but a good way to understand what is going on in the world around us all.

So we are sharing some neat science you can do, contributing toward large projects, and learning new things. Maybe you can use this today; maybe you will save it for later. As long as you enjoy some exploration and learning new things – citizen science is for you! And it is definitely something you can use to bring some good programming to your library.

This week we are looking at strategies you can use for your computer. “The Citizen Science Grid uses the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) for volunteer computing. You can download and install BOINC, attach to our project, and volunteer your computer to aid us in using computer vision algorithms to find out what is happening in the video gathered by our field biologists. Eventually, we will use these volunteered computers to filter this video, so that the video we show to our users contains mostly interesting events.”

Some of the programs include:

• Wildlife@Home Wildlife@Home is citizen science project aimed at analyzing video gathered from various cameras recording wildlife. Currently the project is looking at video of sharp-tailed grouse, Tympanuchus phasianellus, and two federally protected species, interior least terns, Sternula antillarum, and piping plovers, Charadruis melodus to examine their nesting habits and ecology.
• SubsetSum@Home The Subset Sum problem is described as follows: given a set of positive integers S and a target sum t, is there a subset of S whose sum is t? It is one of the well-know, so-called “hard” problems in computing. It’s actually a very simple problem computationally, and the computer program to solve it is not extremely complicated. What’s hard about it is the running time – all known exact algorithms have running time that is proportional to an exponential function of the number of elements in the set (for worst-case instances of the problem).
• DNA@Home The goal of DNA@Home is to discover what regulates the genes in DNA. Ever notice that skin cells are different from a muscle cells, which are different from a bone cells, even though all these cells have every gene in your genome? That’s because not all genes are “on” all the time. Depending on the cell type and what the cell is trying to do at any given moment, only a subset of the genes are used, and the remainder are shut off. DNA@home uses statistical algorithms to unlock the key to this differential regulation, using your volunteered computers.

How can you help to bring in some of this program into your library? We have some ideas:

• Set up a display on computers and using computers to solving problems
• Set up a display of materials on wildlife and animals in your area
• Set up a display of materials on math
• Set up a display of materials on DNA and other biology topics
• Talk about project management, and how working as a team – remotely or in person – can get a lot of things done on a bigger scale
• Work on some basic programming skills. Can you set up a website? Can you make adjustments?