Citizen scientists are contributing more and more these days to exciting scientific projects, giving those who don’t practice it for a living but love it anyway a chance to satisfy their geeky cravings.  If this describes you, and if you like astronomy, head on over to The Galaxy Zoo and get started. The project needs volunteers to help them classify about a quarter of a million galaxies they have imaged during the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The galaxies are beautiful, your brain is the best instrument they can use, and you will be making a great contribution to science. What are you waiting for?

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Why do the leaves of some trees turn yellow, while others turn red?  What’s more, why do European trees lack the vibrant red color in their autumn leaves, while North American and Asian trees do not?  If you’ve ever wondered about this, good for you and your active brain.  I present to you a link with some facts and some interesting theories on why this happens, brought to you by Science Daily.

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CNN has a nice little article on backyard scientists, their growing ranks and their ability to contribute to science through the use of simple, modern devices such as a mobile phone with a camera and access to the internet.  Of particular note, is the mention of two projects which utilize willing citizen scientists, the Encyclopedia of Life (one of Zeitgeistland’s beloved projects) and Project Budburst. The first has the ‘humble’ goal of cataloging all life on Earth and giving each species its own webpage. It’s amazing, that’s all I can say, and not to be missed. They even have a flickr group page through which you may submit your own scientifically interesting photos, Encyclopedia of Life Flickr Group. The second is called Project BudBurst, and is a site devoted to encouraging citizen scientists to report their observations of a list of plant species across the continental United States.

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Take a gander at the amazing Atlas Moth, and one of the longest Flickr descriptions I’ve ever
seen.

Atlas Moth

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A great article addressing some common myths about recycling.

Recycling Myths

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The ‘Great Worldwide Star Count‘, occuring between October 20th and November 3rd, is “organized by the Windows to the Universe project at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Colo., in conjunction with planetariums and scientific societies across the country and abroad” (according to Jason McManus, Daily Galaxy ), with funding provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The event, in which anyone can participate, gets people out of their houses and into their backyards to see if they can see any stars, and if so, how many in the vicinity of a chosen constellation. Your data gets entered into a database in a citizen study of light pollution across the world.

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Just in time for that special date next month, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has released an in depth report on our representatives and their voting record on environmental concerns. Read all about it at their website:

The League of Conservation Voters

Below is a quick summary of John McCain’s record. It can be summed up quickly enough as a 0% rating for 2008, while Obama gets an 18% rating, both low ratings  mostly due to not being present to vote on the major environmental issues.  Lifetime ratings are, 24% for McCain and 72% for Obama.

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Well, you would think the Bush administration would have enough to deal with at this point in time, what with the economic meltdown and all, but alas, no. They are at it again. Sure, land and resource use is complicated and not all applications of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have led to productive outcomes, but, come on! If this administration has been about anything, it’s been about wholesale deregulation in many areas, continuing the work started in the Regan administration. Gee, see how well that works? Human nature is what defines history, both the good and the bad, and that really hasn’t changed. The market did not regulate itself, and neither will people and industry necessarily be ‘voluntary’ good stewards of the environment. It just doesn’t work like that when money and assets are involved, because everyone wants their piece. So, in the era of limited pieces, when will we have to be serious about how those resources are best used? Our current state of capitalism is based (and crashing on) a highly leveraged, paper monetary system that is greatly divorced from our existing, natural world. Some thought the party would last forever, but it didn’t. How long will it take people to realize that our natural resources aren’t limited either? Below I include an article from the Center for Biological Diversity on the Bush administration’s attempt to essentially dismantle the Endangered Species Act, and after that is a link to a petition directed to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, urging him to abandon the awful changes to the ESA.

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It appears that CERN has organized a project so that the amateur scientist can participate in analyzing data from one of the biggest scientific endeavors so far attempted by humanity, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It’s the same principle as seti@home, currently the largest distributed computing project in operation, which will happily use your idle cpu time in order to analyze radio telescope data in the search for extra terrestrial intelligence (SETI).

LHC At Home

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A certain type of ladybug is disappearing from the eastern United States, and entymologists would like to know why. The nine-spotted ladybug, a beetle, used to be very common, but seems to have slipped into a disappearing act, one that might leave them extinct. Scientists think several factors have led to their demise, and to find out what those are, you should read the article. They are also asking school children for their help in tracking where the few remaining members of this species might be hanging out.

Vanishing Ladybugs

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