Good germs. Bad germs. An interesting new citizen microbiology project.

This is definitely worth checking out – a Citizen Microbiology project on the Built Environment From the Good Germs project. More on the project: There is a growing popular and policy interest in the microbiome, and the possibilities of more nuanced or ‘probiotic’ ways of living with germs. To date however there has been limited …

Interesting short new paper in arXiv: Integrating citizen science with online learning to ask better questions

Interesting short new paper in arXiv: [1609.05763] Integrating citizen science with online learning to ask better questions Vineet Pandey, Scott Klemmer, Amnon Amir, Justine Debelius, Embriette R. Hyde, Tomasz Kosciolek, Rob Knight Abstract: Online learners spend millions of hours per year testing their new skills on assignments with known answers. This paper explores whether framing research questions …

The Wild Life of Showerheads: Another great #CitizenMicrobiology project from ‏@RobRDunn - 

Rob Dunn is one of the true pioneers of Citizen Science and in Citizen Science projects involving microbes.  And here is another fascinating project from Dunn and colleagues. The Wild Life of Showerheads Photo by Lea Shell- Rob Dunn Lab When Anton Von Leeuwenhoek, the first microbiologist, began to study microscopic life, he did so …

Reflections on BioBE’s first Microbiome Science Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon

The Biology & Built Environment Center hosted a Microbiome Science Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon on May 27th, 2016 at the University of Oregon. You can view the MeetUp page for this event here. The objective of this event was to facilitate the contribution of microbiome science edits & topics to a globally-used, public knowledge resource (Wikipedia). We …

#TakeASample for National Citizen Science Day

I always looks forward to spending a chunk of my Friday listening to Science Friday. This segment is too good not to share… Science Club is back! Ariel Zych and Charles Bergquist, the awesome Science Club hosts, are celebrating National Citizen Science Day (April 16) with a new Science Club they are calling #TakeASample. This is awesome challenge …

Journal Club: Crowdfunding Science

What is better than Open Access?! Citizen Science AND Open Access! The March issue of JMBE was all that. You have probably already heard of Kittybiome and/or The Koala Project, 2 ongoing projects in the Eisen Lab. Both projects were featured in the paper, “Crowdfunding Campaigns Help Researchers Launch Projects and Generate Outreach”, published in …

Kudos to Marc Edwards, selected as one of Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders

This really made my day / week / month.  Marc Edwards has been selected as one of Fortune Magazine’s “World’s Greatest Leaders”. Source: Marc Edwards Here’s what they wrote about him Edwards, a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, is one of the nation’s top experts on water contamination–and nowhere has his impact been bigger than in …