Strange carbon-based life forms may revolutionize the way we gather and sort information. Their colour-sensitive, stereoscopic vision coupled with opposable thumbs and good manual dexterity make them excellent at sorting images, a task that computers still find difficult. These curious creatures of the primate order learn quickly, needing only a few minutes of instruction before completing complicated sorting and identification tasks. More importantly, they are numerous and always eager to volunteer.
The movement is called distributed science, and it’s quickly becoming an invaluable resource for scientific research. The animals taking part are none other than Homo sapiens sapiens, a species with which you are no doubt familiar. With a multitude of tools and programs available, anyone with an Internet connection can take part in groundbreaking scientific research.
The simplest and least demanding way to help out the scientific community is to donate your unused processor cycles to a global computing grid. By downloading and installing programs such as BOINC or Rosetta@home, volunteers can add power to the online computing network.
Essentially, the programs create a globe-spanning supercomputer made up of interconnected PCs. The projects that use the system range from mathematics research done by universities to private companies doing humanitarian research. The system gives projects the power of a supercomputer without the investment, allowing smaller organizations to get world-class results.
If a passive role in research isn’t enough, there are projects that turn groundbreaking research into browser-based games. Scientists have developed simple GUIs (graphic user interfaces) and turned what would be tedious and complicated research into amusing pastimes. Online communities are then created for support and communication, creating two-fold benefits: volunteers feel as though they are contributing to science, while scientists gain incredible amounts of information.
The first such game to be developed was Foldit, a protein folding program. Most of the intense computation remained behind the scenes, and users were presented with a three-dimensional protein structure that they could manipulate. The goal was to find the way proteins are folded into their complex shapes, which hinges on finding the shape that requires the least amount of energy to maintain. Though it sounds simple, the possibilities are vast and the process normally requires a large amount of computing power.
However, when given a nearly complete protein, humans can tweak the shape in ways a computer simply can’t handle. To encourage participation scientists created leaderboards, which allowed users to form teams and provided a forum for discussion. Through the Foldit program, scientists were able to further their understanding of protein formation as well as getting people interested in science.
After the project’s incredible success, a similar effort was undertaken in astronomy. With the abundance of telescopes and digital photographs of the cosmos, scientists were trying to find a way to classify and document the countless galaxies and other objects they had photographed.
Galaxy Zoo’s premise was simpler than Foldit’s: users were given a picture and could choose one of three buttons to classify the object as “smooth,” “features or disc” and “star or artifact.” Through the project, not only were 900,000 galaxies catalogued, but several never before seen objects were found!
If you’ve donated processing power, played the games and still feel the need to do more, there’s always the Citizen Science project. Aimed at those who are not content with sitting at a computer, citizen science lets amateur scientists add real world data to scientific databases.
Volunteers can note when plants flower, at what time ice forms, monitor amphibians or even take samples of earthworms. Through these observations researchers can get information from a wide range of places and climates without having to travel, allowing for a more accurate model of the environment.
Being a scientist has never been so easy — you don’t even need a degree to do research! So the next time you’re feeling guilty about not being productive turn on the computer, hook up to a distributed science network and go for a walk. While you’re outside you can takes notes on the local flora and fauna.
Not only have you become productive, you’re doing science!
