Web Concepts

Posts Tagged ‘crowdsourcing’

Aspuru-Guzik and the rest of the Clean Energy Project are using distributed computing to search for an organic molecule that will make a more efficient solar cell. More efficient than silicon solar cells, anyway, which are ten times more expensive than other energy sources. Distributed computing uses multiple PCs around the web and harnesses them to get the equivalent processing power of a supercomputer. Many other projects are using this method to work on cures for Alzheimer's, cancer and other diseases, to detect earthquakes early, and to search for extraterrestrial life.

The Clean Energy Project has been searching for more than two years, inspecting more than two million molecules to find the one that will put solar power on level ground with other energy sources. Recently, they found a molecule that is one of the best organic semiconductors discovered to date. Synthetic chemist Zhenan Bao made and tested the chemical, finding it to work between three and four times better than the team predicted.

By 2012, the project is expected to have examined 3.5 million molecules. If you want to contribute to the effort, download the Clean Energy Project's screensaver, which will allow the project to borrow your computer power whenever you're idle.

[Wired]

It turns out the Web really is democratic

There is still the small collection of leaders in a room drafting the actual document--25 of them to be exact. But they are reaching out to Iceland’s 320,000 people--one of the world’s more computer-literate populations--through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (but mostly Facebook, let’s be honest).

A thorough review and rewriting of the constitution (which is more or less Denmark’s constitution with a few minor tweaks) has been on the legislative agenda since Iceland gained independence in 1944. The new crowdsourced document could be put before the entire voting population in a referendum before parliament decides on the final draft. We’re not sure why. It seems like parliament should have a pretty good notion of how the public feels about the final draft based on how many “likes” it gets.

[PhysOrg]

It’s safe to say MMOWGLI won’t look like a massive multiplayer round of Black Ops or Counter Strike. ONR isn’t looking for players that are particularly adept at collecting frags with a virtual rifle, but rather for minds from academia, the defense industry, government organizations and other defense- and naval-related fields that might produce solutions to a set of difficult problems. Like how to defend a growing swath of a major shipping lane from determined bandits in small, fast boats.

But it's also looking for suggestions from the larger crowd, as the game is open to anyone who wishes to sign up. Gameplay is more like tweeting. Log in and two text boxes appear. One asks what new resources could turn the tide in the fight against Somali piracy. The second asks what new risks could arise that would transform the piracy situation. You get 140 characters to answer each.

Players then vote on each other's suggestions and, if they wish to, make suggestions to improve them. The more "yea" votes a player gets, the more points he or she stacks up. There are three rounds, one week per round. By the end of the game the ONR hopes to know two things: how it might solve the Somali piracy problem, and whether or not MMOWGLI actually works. If it yields successful solutions to the piracy scenario, it could be applied to a variety of difficult global problems in the future.

Experiment shows potential value of citizen medicine

The effort started after a tiny 2008 clinical study involving 16 patients suggested the chemical lithium carbonate could slow the progression of ALS. The disease gradually robs patients of muscle function, ending in death. One drug, riluzole, has been shown to slow the disease’s progression, but the prospect of a new drug excited many ALS patients, most of whom only live about three to five years after diagnosis.

Lithium is already approved to treat a wide range of other disorders, including mental illness, so a group of ALS patients convinced their doctors to provide them with the drug. It wasn’t a randomized trial, but for the patients involved, that wasn’t the point.

“While not a replacement for the gold standard double blind clinical trial, our platform can provide supplementary data to support effective decision-making in medicine and discovery,” said Jamie Heywood, co-founder of the network PatientsLikeMe.

Heywood, whose brother succumbed to ALS in 2006, he has been an advocate for biotechnology to treat ALS and other disorders.

After the 2008 study was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PatientsLikeMe created a data-acquisition form that allowed patients to track their disease status over time, as Ars Technica explains. More than 3,500 patients started tracking their progress, with 150 beginning lithium therapy.

To come up with a control sample, PatientsLikeMe used an algorithm to compare patients who took lithium with other patients who had similar disease progression. Ultimately, the social network found lithium therapy was not having any observable effect on the patients who used it — not even a placebo effect. The evidence was reported earlier this month in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

A recent clinical study with similar findings lends even more weight to the patient-generated study, Ars Technica reports.

Though the results were disappointing for ALS sufferers, the study suggests crowdsourced data can be useful for accelerating clinical discovery. PatientsLikeMe has about 100,000 patient members who suffer from more than 500 conditions, so there are likely many potential study candidates and plenty of information waiting to be tapped.

[via Ars Technica]

In October 2007, Comet 17P/Holmes briefly became the brightest object in the solar system, sparking interest from astrophotographers worldwide. Dustin Lang from Princeton University and David Hogg at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie in Heidelberg, Germany, found 2,476 unique images of Holmes on the Internet, using a simple Yahoo! search.

They fed the images into Astrometry.net, which can recognize images of the sky and measures star patterns, and found 1,299 were night-sky photos. There were some outliers, too, evidenced by the curious kitty in the montage below. But the researchers were able to superimpose many of the comet images, carefully aligning the stars, Tech Review’s arXiv blog reports.

Many of the images were time-stamped, and when they were superimposed on each other, the comet’s path across the sky was visible. Finally, Lang and Hogg compared their orbital data with observed information from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and found a close match.

The astronomers are already trying it again, using a collection of images of Comet Hyakatuke. They note that Flickr alone has 3,500 images of the Orion Nebula.

“You can do high-quality quantitative astrophysics with images of unknown provenance on the web,” the authors write. “Is it possible to build from these images a true sky survey? We expect the answer is ‘yes.’”

[via Technology Review]

In October 2007, Comet 17P/Holmes briefly became the brightest object in the solar system, sparking interest from astrophotographers worldwide. Dustin Lang from Princeton University and David Hogg at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie in Heidelberg, Germany, found 2,476 unique images of Holmes on the Internet, using a simple Yahoo! search.

They fed the images into Astrometry.net, which can recognize images of the sky and measures star patterns, and found 1,299 were night-sky photos. There were some outliers, too, evidenced by the curious kitty in the montage below. But the researchers were able to superimpose many of the comet images, carefully aligning the stars, Tech Review’s arXiv blog reports.

Many of the images were time-stamped, and when they were superimposed on each other, the comet’s path across the sky was visible. Finally, Lang and Hogg compared their orbital data with observed information from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and found a close match.

The astronomers are already trying it again, using a collection of images of Comet Hyakatuke. They note that Flickr alone has 3,500 images of the Orion Nebula.

“You can do high-quality quantitative astrophysics with images of unknown provenance on the web,” the authors write. “Is it possible to build from these images a true sky survey? We expect the answer is ‘yes.’”

[via Technology Review]

What started out as a joke on the social media site has mushroomed into a nationwide effort to build a statue of RoboCop in the beleaguered city of Detroit. Earlier this week, someone in Massachusetts sent a tweet to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, suggesting RoboCop would be a great mascot for the city. Philadelphia has a Rocky statue, and RoboCop would "kick Rocky's butt," he pointed out.

Bing actually wrote back, responding, “There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion.”

The Internet was listening. Not long after Bing’s tweet, a group of Detroit residents started a Facebook event page, which quickly grew to 4,600 supporters and counting. As of Friday morning, supporters have already raised $8,300 toward their $50,000 goal, using the fundraising platform Kickstarter.

Imagination Station, a nonprofit center aimed at cleaning up blighted neighborhoods, is offering space on its campus for the RoboCop statue. The Kickstarter campaign explains how metal artists might build the statue: “We can take a relatively small figure of RoboCop (conceivably even an action figure), have it 3D scanned by lasers (cool!) and scale its form to create a light-weight model of any size we'd like, which can then be used to pour and cast liquid metal.”

While Bing rejected the idea of a city-funded effort, his office seemed willing to accept RoboCop, in case his likeness is bestowed upon them.

“Should the opportunity present itself to receive a donation of this, or any other works of public art, we will consider acceptance and appropriate placement,” said Karen Dumas, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office.

The Detroit Free Press points out that not everyone loves the idea: “Sorry, I think this idea is horrid,” Carl Henry of Plymouth posted on the Facebook page. “If you wanna build a statue, build one to represent an unemployed autoworker, homeless person or something deserving of recognition.”

Others have argued statues of Motown legends like Diana Ross or Michael Jackson should take precedent over a nerd-tastic sci-fi icon.

The fundraising campaign has until March 26 to reach its goal.

[via Reuters]