By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Fort Hays State University celebrated its 100th Science Cafe on Monday night by encouraging audience members to become citizen scientists.
Dr. Paul Adams, director of the FHSU Science and Mathematics Education Institute, presented the lecture at the Robbins Center Monday looking back on the last 99 lectures, looking forward to future lectures and offering suggestions on how every day people can become involved in science.
“What I am asking you to do and to take the challenge with me is to get more engaged in the scientific enterprise — be part of the science ecosystem in our area,” he said. “That means to become a citizen scientist.”
Adams said science educators when working with children will ask them to draw a picture of a scientist.
They often draw a picture of a white person, wearing glasses, in a lab with test tubes or an older man with a beard looking at the stars. Adams said as a science educator, he is trying to change that perception.
“It is not them,” he said. “The idea is that science is done by other people for others. It is not doing science for ourselves. This is a challenge for you. How can you be part of this? How can you be a scientist?”
Citizen science involves non-scientists, includes scientific processes and research standards, and has a goal of advancing scientific knowledge.
Citizen science is not new. The Chinese have records for 3,500 years of locust outbreaks. The royal courts in Japan have 1,200 years of records when the cherry blossoms bloomed. The French have 640 years of records of grape harvest data. The United States has a long record of citizens who keep track of weather data and harvests.
These records weren’t kept by scientists or the government. They were kept my citizens, Adams said.
In recent years, citizen science has improved with the aid of technology.
There are more than 1,000 choices available through clearinghouses online you can choose from to be a citizen scientist. Adams highlighted a selection of these during his talk on Monday. Most of these projects can be accessed online or through apps.
An early online citizen scientist project was Galaxy Zoo.
“This is taking images from deep space. Nobody has seen them. You can be the first person to tell if it is a bar or spiral,” he said. “Computers can’t read these. Computers can’t interpret it.”
What are now called green pea galaxies where discovered using crowd sourcing such as this.
“They found these galaxies no one had classified before, and we learned our models weren’t right because of the science citizen scientists did,” Adams said.
Globe at Night asks citizens to make a monthly reports on what stars and constellations are visible from their locations. This global initiative is gathering data on light pollution. You don’t have to have a telescope. You make your observations with the naked eye. The app has a constellation ID tool. Training takes only a few minutes. Adams said this is a great app to use with students.
Adams said he tells his students,”Don’t worry about getting it right, because we don’t know what right is.”
Some of these programs use large number of observers to report data, and then they pinpoint what statistically most of the observers report. If the observers can’t agree, then scientists may need to look more closely at what is being observed to determine if there is an anomaly present. This is how the green pea galaxies were discovered.
Journey North asks citizens to help track migration patterns for birds, monarch butterflies and other creatures.
NASA’s All Sky Fireball Network asks you to observe fireballs or meteors in the night sky.
Budburst ask users to track when flowers start to bloom, which is also an indicator of climate change.
Global Explorer asks users to look at satellite imagery to determine if archeological sites have been looted.
Stall Catchers is a game that is used as tool in Alzheimer’s research.
eBirds looks at bird populations; iNaturalist asks you to take pictures of different species of animals in your area.
Dust Storms asks you to take picture of dust storms and report their location. This data is also being used to monitor climate change, which scientist believe is going to spark more dust storms.
NASA alone has a substantial list of citizen science projects, which can be accessed at science.nasa.gov/citizenscientists or at www.nasa.gov/solve.
If you are interested in social sciences, there are projects that ask people to transcribe works from contemporaries of William Shakespeare or notes from U.S. Supreme Court justices. Look for more projects on Zooniverse.
Computers can’t interpret some data, such as handwriting. That is why scientists use crowd sourcing.
“Satellites work, but they aren’t perfect. They need people to validate, interpret and understand,” Adams said. “On Globe Observer, you can do clouds. You can do trees. You can do mosquitoes. You can do dust storms. The reason you do this, and this a direct quote from a scientist, ‘Satellites don’t see mosquitoes.’ Even though the technology is good. Even though they can read license plates in Russia, we are told, they can’t see mosquitoes.”
Knowing more information on mosquitoes helps to track the spread of diseases such as West Nile and Zika.
“A satellite can tell us where it is wet, but it can’t tell if the mosquitoes are going crazy,” Adams said.
He said he would like to see the residents of the Hays come together to do a citizen science project as a community, and he said he is entertaining ideas of what that project could be.
Science Cafe is supported through private donations. The lectures are free and open to the public.
The next Science Cafe will be at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 14, at The Venue at Thirsty’s in Hays. You can order food or beverages at your own cost from Thirsty’s.
Keri Maricle, biology instructor at the North Central Kansas Technical College, will present “Importance of Scientific Education in Western Kansas.”
Holly Dickman, water conservation specialist for the city of Hays, will be back this year to talk about water conservation. Another speaker will discuss virtual and augmented reality. Adams said someone had suggested bringing in a speaker to talk about cultured meat (lab grown not from animals), and he has also considered giving a lecture on fire walking, which he used to participate in.
Videos of some of the previous Science Cafes are available online. If you wish to learn more about the lecture series or suggest a topic for an upcoming lecture, contact Cari Rohleder at [email protected] or 785-628-4743.