In 2006, I volunteered for Stardust@home. I used my time in the evenings while spending time with my hubby and watching TV to look for tiny interstellar dust impacts in micro-thin slices of areogel. I did that for a couple of years along with hundreds of other volunteers around the world. It is quite an project and science has learned a lot from it. It is now about to start its 5th stage.
I have now signed up for another volunteer job online. This one is called CalBug. It seems that there are all kinds of botanical and insect collections that have been created through the years. Now scientists want to use these collections to study the affects of climate on plants and insects then use that information in studies regarding global warming. This is a little blurb about it:
"Calbug is an effort to digitize terrestrial arthropod-specimen records with a focus on California. The project represents a collaboration among eight entomological collections in California to capture data from specimen labels. The Calbug Science Team will then use the collection data to assess how arthropods have responded to climate change and habitat modification. Drawing from over a century of insect collecting in the region, our goal is to develop a database of over 1 million geographically referenced specimens."
So basically what the project calls for is to take the information off those tiny notes on when and where and who collected the specimens and enter them in a searchable database. It would be impossible to do a search through all those little tags!
I've only entered about 30 records so far and I've been working with moths and flies, for example, one was a fly from Yosemite collected in 1931! I figure all those insects collected will now have some use for being on pins and needles all those years.
If you are interested in this go to:
http://www.notesfromnature.org/#/archives/calbug
"Calbug is an effort to digitize terrestrial arthropod-specimen records with a focus on California. The project represents a collaboration among eight entomological collections in California to capture data from specimen labels. The Calbug Science Team will then use the collection data to assess how arthropods have responded to climate change and habitat modification. Drawing from over a century of insect collecting in the region, our goal is to develop a database of over 1 million geographically referenced specimens."
So basically what the project calls for is to take the information off those tiny notes on when and where and who collected the specimens and enter them in a searchable database. It would be impossible to do a search through all those little tags!
I've only entered about 30 records so far and I've been working with moths and flies, for example, one was a fly from Yosemite collected in 1931! I figure all those insects collected will now have some use for being on pins and needles all those years.
If you are interested in this go to:
http://www.notesfromnature.org/#/archives/calbug
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