Citizen | Common News Update

Sep212020 by adminNo Comments

Citizen scientists help improve space weather forecasts

Science

Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Data collected by citizen scientists have helped space weather forecasters more accurately predict when Earth will get hit by solar storms, according to a study published Friday in the journal AGU Advances. When researchers supplement computer models with citizen scientist-collected data on the size and shape of coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, forecasts were 20 more accurate. Advertisement The supplemental data, collected by volunteers through the Solar Stormwatch citizen science project, also reduced forecasting uncertainty by 15 percent. "CMEs are sausage-shaped blobs made up of billions of tonnes of magnetized plasma that erupt from the sun's atmosphere at a million miles an hour," lead researcher Luke Barnard said in a news release. "They are capable of damaging sa...

Mar142020 by adminNo Comments

Citizen scientists enlisted to chart galaxies

Science

March 13 (UPI) -- A study of spiral structure, reduced in complexity so citizen scientists can participate, could offer insight into how galaxies evolve, researchers say. Researchers at the North Carolina Museum on Natural Sciences in Raleigh used software and tracings of known spiral galaxies on paper, and found that no artificial intelligence program, algorithm or other approach was as accurate in depicting the winding-arm design of galaxies. The work, called Spiral Graph, has been described in a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and is available to citizen scientists at Zooniverse.org for no charge. "These human-generated tracings give our software a boost so it can accurately measure how tightly wrapped the structure [of the galaxy] is," Patrick Tr...

Jan92019 by adminNo Comments

Citizen scientists, radar systems count 2B birds migrating across the Gulf of Mexico

Science

Jan. 9 (UPI) -- According to a new study that combined the observations of citizen scientists and weather radar stations, some 2 billion birds cross the Gulf of Mexico during the spring migration season. "We looked at data from thousands of eBird observers and 11 weather radar stations along the Gulf Coast from 1995 to 2015," Kyle Horton, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said in a news release. "We calculated that an average of 2.1 billion birds crosses the entire length the Gulf Coast each spring as they head north to their breeding grounds. Until now, we could only guess at the overall numbers from surveys done along small portions of the shoreline." Observations of birds by citizen scientists, documented on the Cornell Lab-managed app eBird, helped scientists ca...

Dec222018 by adminNo Comments

Senior citizen wins case against Jet Airways

Finance

The plight of air travellers in India seems to be never -ending, but the consumer court came to the rescue of a 72-year-old cardiologist and ex-defence officer who had filed a complaint against Jet Airways Ltd. for rescheduling his flight without informing him. The consumer court has ordered the airline to pay Rs 25,000 as compensation and return the booking amount with 9 per cent interest from the date of payment. The complainant, Dr Nautej Singh, originally from Jammu and Kashmir, visits Srinagar frequently. Owing to his old age, it is not possible for him to undertake long distance travel; therefore, he used air travel considering the convenience. On February 27, 2016, the complainant had booked a 7.35 am flight from Pune to Delhi leaving on June 15, 2016. He had a connecting flight to ...

Mar142018 by adminNo Comments

Citizen scientists help solve mystery of the purple sky

Science

March 14 (UPI) -- The aurora borealis has a cousin, a related geomagnetic phenomenon, and citizen scientists helped discover it.In 2015 and 2016, citizen scientists reported seeing a mysterious purple light dance across the sky some 30 times. The reports were filed by participants of Aurorasaurus, an online project funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation.Aurorasaurus links backyard skywatchers with trained astronomers as part of an effort to track auroras, the colorful light shows produced when high-energy particles from sun penetrate Earth's magnetosphere and collide with gas molecules in the upper atmosphere.But as NASA scientists realized, Aurorasaurus participants were witnessing a phenomenon unique from the typical aurora.The average aurora takes on an oval shape and featur...