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BashTheBug on the Zooniverse News

BashTheBug and COVID-19

Like many of you, the researchers behind BashTheBug have been at home for a while now due to restrictions put in place to slow the progress of this COVID-19 epidemic.

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BashTheBug on the Zooniverse News

Two Million Classifications

You reached two million classifications on Thu 12 March 2020.

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BashTheBug on the Zooniverse News

Shout Out….to our top 20 Volunteers

We would like to give a special Shout Out.. and Thank You to our Top 20 volunteers:

User Name

Classification

Rank

Pego.cs 63053 1
Elisabeth B 35058 2
skl6284 28995 3
Carol49 27740 4
Michael.c.cozens 23478 5
rodlawes 22246 6
Huskynator 21018 7
ianmetcalf 18651 8
Victorr8 17190 9
r.sasaki 16802 10
marius_aga 16641 11
kristaFB 15136 12
deleted-1678833 14431 13
Mary_Nichols 12772 14
mkavooss 12398 15
ghewson 12178 16
x303 11613 17
ElizabethLarson 11177 18
Rattus 10843 19
hermesp 10020 20

 

They have collectively classified over 81,000 images which is just over 19% of the overall classifications.

 

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BashTheBug on the Zooniverse News

Visit to The Batt School, Witney, Oxfordshire

On Friday 13 March I visited The Batt School in Witney, Oxfordshire as part of their activities for STEM week. This is a primary school (5-11 year olds) and has 2 classes of 30 per year group. I introduced around 60 Year 6 students to the idea of citizen science on the Zooniverse, focussing on BashTheBug. Both classes were very keen to do classifications on the big screen and I had some excellent questions, not all of them “on topic”!

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BashTheBug on the Zooniverse News

We need YOUR help celebrating reaching two million classifications

As of midnight Tue 10 March 2020 you had all done 1,959,626 classifications and so we will reach two million classifications later this week.

To celebrate we are creating a wordle out of words you send us and a montage of images you upload. To contribute click this link.

The deadline is midnight on Mon 6 April 2020.

Click here if you want to see the montage of images we made when we reached one million classifications,

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BashTheBug on the Zooniverse News

Second largest number of classifications in a day recorded

Yesterday evening (UK time) the Zooniverse sent an email to all their Citizen Scientists encouraging them to give BashTheBug a try.

By midnight you’d all done 26,208 classifications bringing us to 1,959,626 classifications. Thank you.

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BashTheBug on the Zooniverse News

Almost there…two million classifications is in sight!

Wow. We emailed you all a few weeks back about how we needed your help catching up with some data and you have responded!

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BashTheBug on the Zooniverse News

This is how your work on classifications has helped us fight antibiotic resistance and Tuberculosis!

Over the last five years since 2015, we have collected more than 100,000 samples from patients with Tuberculosis, from all over the world.

We have tested which antibiotics work on every single sample we collected, and determined the genome of the *M. Tuberculosis* bacteria in each sample.

So far with the Bash the Bug Volunteers help with classifications:

  • We have conducted the largest and most comprehensive study to date investigating whether Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) can be used to predict whether the four most common drugs used to treat tuberculosis can cure a specific infection i.e. the infection is susceptible to the drugs.
  • We performed WGS across 9 genes associated with drug susceptibility and resistance on 10,290 tuberculosis samples from people in 16 different countries across six continents.
  • We used the WGS to predict whether each of the four drugs could be used to cure the infection and then compared our results with the known drug-susceptibility profiles.
  • We found WGS could be used to predict drug-susceptibility and demonstrated how it might direct which drug to use in treatment. This has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
  • By using WGS our understanding of the genetic code of tuberculosis is now so detailed that we can predict which commonly used drugs are best used to successfully treat a patient’s infection and which are not.

Without the help of our Bash the Bug Volunteers all of the above would not have happened!

Well done and Thank You.

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BashTheBug on the Zooniverse News

Citizen Science Coordinator appointed

We have appointed Carla Wright as the new Citizen Science Coordinator.

Carla will be working on the  project along side Phil to help support our amazing volunteers.

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BashTheBug on the Zooniverse News

Post advertised: Project Coordinator

We are advertising for a Part-time Citizen Science Project Co-ordinator to come and work with us in Oxford improving BashTheBug, in particular how the project engages, informs and educates its existing base of volunteers, as well as reaching out to new audiences.

The closing date is Monday 25 November 2019.

For more information please see the Job Advert.