Citizen science: TV series

[John F]

Last October I posted here about a project based at Cornell University aimed at Alzheimer's Disease. The thread is here:

http://www.classicalmusicguide.com/view ... er#p474360

Now there's a four-program series about citizen's science, "The Crowd and the Cloud," which will air weekly on PBS's World channel beginning on April 6. The Alzheimer's research project is one of those featured in episode 1, as summarized:

At Cornell, biomedical researchers are working to understand why brain blood flow is reduced in Alzheimer’s patients. Using advanced optical instruments, they’re scanning the living brains of Alzheimer’s-afflicted mice. Their challenge: timely analyses of the tremendous amounts of data their lab is producing. The solution: EyesOnALZ, a citizen science project that enlists the crowd to help speed up the data analysis, cutting what would otherwise take a year to just 1-2 weeks. Based on two highly successful crowdsourcing projects, Stall Catchers is an online game where players help all those fighting to find cures for this dreadful disease.

Several other such programs are described in this and the following episodes. If you have the time and interest, I'd like to encourage you to participate. The home page for the Alzheimer's Disease project is here:

http://stallcatchers.com/