Read all about it!

Posted Philip FowlerLeave a comment

The first scientific paper investigating how we can best use all the classifications done by our volunteers is now available for anyone to download and read here.

If you like it, please retweet one of @BashTheBug’s tweets about it.

Note that since it is only considering about 20% of the full dataset you might not find your name on the montage of volunteers in Figure S1 — don’t worry there will be other papers!

This is a “preprint” which means whilst we have written the manuscript it hasn’t yet been reviewed by several other independent scientists which will happen when we submit it to a scientific journal for consideration. It is free to download and when it is published in a scientific journal it will also be free to download, thanks to support from the Wellcome Trust.

 

 

Oxford Public Engagement with Research Conference 2020

Posted Philip FowlerLeave a comment

We gave a talk, “Setting up an online citizen science project on the Zooniverse is easy: the BashTheBug experience” to other researchers at the University of Oxford as part of this week-long online public engagement with research conference. In it, we talk our experiences with BashTheBug and setup live a demo project “Chihuahua or Muffin?”. Although aimed at other researchers, feel free to have a look! You can find the video of our talk here.

4 Million Classifications Reached

Posted koolcarlamaeLeave a comment

Hi All,

We hope you are all well and keeping safe and sane during these trying and daunting times

We wanted to say Thank You!

You have helped BashtheBug reach over 4 million classifications:

Total classifications since the project began: 4, 028, 152

You have looked at over 15,000 samples, which has helped the *CRyPTIC project prepare its first dataset for release, which will form the basis of: several big publications and a number of smaller ones including machine learning, a new catalogue and a genome-wide association study to look for genes that confer resistance no one has noticed yet.

Well done to all our volunteers for making this happening!

*The project is part of the CRyPTIC Comprehensive Resistance Prediction for Tuberculosis: an International Consortium is a world-wide collaboration between tuberculosis (TB) research institutions all over the world to achieve better, faster and more targeted treatment of multidrug-resistant TB via genetic resistance prediction.

BashTheBug part of Earth School

Posted Philip FowlerLeave a comment

In response to the COVID pandemic, UN Environment (UNEP), TED Education, and many other partners and contributors around the world launched Earth School, which aims to give kids, parents, and teachers 30 days of daily “quests,” or curated learning experiences that highlight how we are connected to nature from home. Quests began on Earth Day, April 22nd, and will continue to be released until World Environment Day, on June 5th.

The Citizen Science Quest of Earth School launched on Wednesday 27 May 2020 and BashTheBug was chosen by SciStarter as one of the Citizen Science projects.

Science Friday livestream

Posted Philip FowlerLeave a comment

Ariel Zych and Diana Montano team from Science Friday hosted a discussion with Philip Fowler (BashTheBug lead), Carla Wright (BashTheBug coordinator) and Helen Spiers (Zooniverse liaison) yesterday on Facebook.

You can watch a recording of the livestream here.

This was a first time the BashTheBug has ever done anything like this, so let us know if you’d like more, or equally if you’d like something different.

BashTheBug on ScienceFriday

Posted Philip FowlerLeave a comment

Last Friday 24 April 2020, Laura Trouille, who is Co-Principal Investigator for the Zooniverse and Vice President of Citizen Science at the Adler Planetarium, was interviewed on the popular North American radio show, ScienceFriday.

Laura talked about four Zooniverse projects, and BashTheBug was one of them!

You can listen to her interview by following this link to the Science Friday website, or the episode is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Podcasts.

Three million classifications

Posted Philip FowlerLeave a comment

You reached three million classifications on Sun 19 April 2020.

That means it took you only 38 days to add a million classifications, which is astonishing. That averages out as one every 3 seconds. The previous million took nearly a year-and-a-half!

Since we asked you all to send in your words and images last month to celebrate reaching two million, we decided to recognise reaching three million classifications by overlaying onto the BashTheBug logo all the usernames of everyone who has participated, even if you’ve just done a single classification. That is 19,639 usernames, however, so the writing is really, really tiny — you’ll need to download the high resolution image and then zoom in!

If you didn’t login to the Zooniverse, you won’t find yourself on the logo I’m afraid, and also if you deleted your account it will also be missing.