Reverse the Odds: Fighting Cancer with Apps

T-cells attacking a cancer cell. Attribution.

The fact this blog tries to point out is that you, as a person in the twenty-first century, have a lot of free time on your hands, time you can easily use to change the world. Though you are probably busy with work or school, you likely indulge yourself in the few moments each week when you have nothing to do. Perhaps you read, watch TV, play a sport, or volunteer, but you also likely spend several hours each week playing video games. Whether a console or mobile game, we all do it, myself included.

However, I am not here to lecture about society or be a technology pundit, instead I am here to tell you about how you can change the world in simple ways. With that in mind, let me introduce the concept of gamification.

For most people outside of the academic world, major science is still being done by geniuses in lab coats at work benches. Though that is still true in some respect, science is quickly leaving the lab, and an important catalyst of this change is the skyrocketing size of researcher’s data sets. With more and more data being collected by scientists and a huge amount of untapped potential to be had, the lab coaters are gamifying their data analysis tools into digital games and leaving the analysis to the public.

© 2014 Cancer Research UK. Taken from here.

This is being done with impressive results too. The first citizen science project I contributed to, arguably the jumpstarter of this blog, is a project called Cell Slider. The project, which launched in October 2012, hopes to discover personalized treatment for those diagnosed with cancer.

Though I will not go into the science behind the research (if you want, you can read about it here) the task at hand is incredibly simple. In short, cancer trials in the UK have produced millions of images of cancer cells, some of which are stained neon blue, due to the present of estrogen receptors. All you need to do is estimate the number of cancer cells and the percent of them that are stained. With that simple task, your contributions, when combined behind-the-scenes information, are able to discover potential personalized treatments for cancer patients. The project’s first data set required over 2.5 million of these classifications and the second data set still needs your help! Go to www.cellslider.net to help out now.

Though if you are looking for something a little bit more engaging and portable, there is room for your help too. Last year the researchers at Cancer Research UK realized that the easiest way to get their cause to the people is that same way that brought you Angry Birds and 2048. Yes, that’s right: an app.

© 2014 Cancer Research UK.

Reverse the Odds is a free level-based puzzle game, not unlike Candy Crush, where to play levels, instead of paying ridiculous fees, you classify a cell slide. Since last fall, nearly 3.5 million slides have been analyzed this way. Who would have thought that mobile games would be the next big step in the fight against cancer? Certainly not me, but le us face it: apps are addicting. So go use that craving to tap your device screen and gain some imaginary points to fight cancer and change the world, rather than to shoot birds at things!

The app for Apple devices can be downloaded here, for Android here, and for Amazon devices here. Plus, if Reverse the Odds is leaving you with a hunger for being more awesome, Cancer Research UK’s another cancer fighting game, Play to Cure: Genes in Space, can be downloaded for Apple here and for Android here.

Though if fighting cancer from your couch is not your thing, follow us below to hear about other amazing, simple ways you can change the world.

Distributed Proofreaders: From Worn Pages to Shining Ebooks

An early twentieth century library in Wales. Attribution.

At the end of this month thousands of people across the world will be cheering as a milestone is reached. No, the Beatles are not coming back in concert, and no, we are probably not finally going to figure out what happened to Amelia Earhart. And even though June 30 is also Independence Day in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this particular event is nevertheless spectacular.

Around June 30, 2015, Distributed Proofreaders, an online volunteering platform, will post its thirty thousandth ebook to Project Gutenberg. This may not sound impressive until you realize what is so special about these two organizations.

A copy of the Declaration of Independence, the text used in the very first ebook. The original text, along with the second ebook, the Bill of Rights, can be found here.

Project Gutenberg was created at the very beginning of the Digital Age, in 1971, as a place to store the knowledge found in books online for free. With the launch of this project, thirty-eight years before the invention of the NOOK, the very first ebook was created. However, with these ebooks being manually copied into digital form, it took Project Gutenberg until the following decade to boast even ten titles to its name. As the popularity of the Internet grew, the site reached 1,000 ebooks in 1997 and 10,000 ebooks in 2003. As of June 2015, the website hosts over 49,000 ebooks, all free for reading pleasure and download. Though, even with some authors freely releasing their ebooks to Project Gutenberg, achieving the feat of nearly fifty thousand free ebooks has not been without help.

Around 60% of the texts on Project Gutenberg were added by the volunteers on another, equally amazing website: Distributed Proofreaders.

One solution to the problem of preserving humanity’s knowledge online is simply scanning book pages and putting them online. Yet, this approach, regardless of how well intentioned it may be, does not go over well with authors and their copyright lawyers. Plus, even when there is the copyright holder’s permission, as with Google Books, poring over sometimes grainy images is not the way most people prefer to read, as well as a major impediment to the visually impaired.

A screenshot of the Distributed Proofreaders website. The image is above with its ebook text below.

In October 2000, a novel solution to these three problems (preserving knowledge, copyright law, and accessibility) was publicly launched at pgdp.net. The idea was that scanned images of books in the public domain could be read by OCR software and turned into text files. The result is a sort of basic, error-filled ebook. The text of individual pages is then put side-by-side with the original images so that a proofreader can correct the page’s text. Then another proofreader can check the previous corrections, and after some formatting and the text files all being strung together, an ebook is created. This basic system has continued for the last fifteen years. Since then, the over one hundred and twenty thousand registered users at Distributed Proofreaders have preserved nearly thirty thousand books that otherwise would have likely been lost to history.

Though the lofty goal of preserving the knowledge of our forefathers is a noble cause, one that I am certainly proud to contribute to, if it does not energize you, there are other reasons too. Besides the facts that helping with this cause looks great on a resume and just doing a few pages each week is a good use of freetime, the project is an excellent source of interesting reading material. From travel books about the tribes of the Amazon to thrilling stories from pulp fiction magazines to textbooks from a bygone era, there are books that will fascinate anyone.

So whether you want to contribute to this great cause or just find your next read, check out Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg now. You can also find out the latest about these projects by going to the DP and PG blogs.

Though if preserving history from your couch is not your thing, follow us below to hear about other amazing, simple ways you can change the world.

Planet Hunters: Discover New Planets

An artist’s depiction of an exoplanet, European Southern Observatory

Imagine traveling among the stars. Just you, your vessel, and great expanses of unexplored universe set out before you. You search near and far for that latest discovery to score you the cover of National Geographic and Popular Science. You yearn for the fame and glory of being called “This Generation’s Columbus” and having monuments made in your image. Now you can achieve all that and even more! You can even do it from your couch.

Okay… Now I have to come clean. The being hailed as a hero with statues in bronze and You Day Parades may be a stretch, but still, this first project is pretty awesome.

After years of planning, in March 2009, the Kepler spacecraft launched in orbit so to observe the stars. Originally sent for a three and a half-year mission, its goal was to detect the dimming of distant stars’ brightnesses due to planets travelling in front of our view of them. As you may remember, a similar event happened when Venus travelled in front of the Sun in 2012, a twice in a century event.

Data from the Kepler Mission displaying a transiting planet. Notice the periodic dimming of the star’s brightness. © 2015 Planet Hunters.

Luckily the Kepler mission provided far more data that. During its over four years in functional orbit, it monitored the brightness of thousands of stars every half hour. So far, the project has confirmed the existence of 1028 extra-solar planets, or exoplanets, and still has observed 4664 other potential exoplanets.

Now you may be wondering, Well, what can I do about all of this? Surely these discoveries are being made by the bigwigs at NASA? Actually, after the first results from Kepler began to pour in, the scientists at NASA realized that not only could they not handle the data flow on their own, but their computers did not do a very good job at analyzing the data either. So, in December 2010, with the help of the citizen science platform Zooniverse, a novel solution to the problem was launched online. Its name is Planet Hunters.

The Planet Hunters homepage. © 2014 Planet Hunters.

After a quick tutorial, you can now join the three hundred thousand other volunteers who are helping Kepler scientists discover exoplanets every day. You have a chance to look at never before seen data of ice giants and Super-Earths that are hundreds of light-years away from you. Plus, did I mention the recognition perks? Dozens of volunteers have already been mentioned by name in the nine journal articles written about the Planet Hunters project. Also, in the future, volunteers will be able to suggest names for the discovered planets to the International Astronomical Union.

So perhaps travelling throughout the galaxies searching for a planet to claim for your own via the light speed of your computer may be a bit of a stretched analogy… But nevertheless Planet Hunters and the Kepler mission are an amazing example of how crowdsourced science, also known as citizen science, can change the world. So head over to www.planethunters.org now and go discover some new planets! You can also find out the latest about Planet Hunters on their blog or Twitter.

Though if space exploration from your couch is not your thing, follow us below to hear about other amazing, simple ways you can change the world.

Welcome to Clicks for Change!

The Clicks for Change logo. Attribution.

In a 2010 TED talk, social theorist Clay Shirky talked about how the modern world has truly remarkable amounts of free time at its disposal. He estimated that our population has one trillion hours each year to contribute to projects that make the world a better place. Yet, if one looks around, perhaps away from their tablet or device for a few minutes, would they really see people investing that much time in a better world? Certainly not. In fact, would they even know how to make such a change?

That is the question that Clicks for Change hopes to answer, as never before in history have people been able to effect positive change in the world so easily.

One may be tempted to blame technology for a lot of the problems and inefficiencies of today, but technology provides new frontiers in every field. If you are interested in science, you can help researchers analyze their latest data and maybe even be credited for a discovery. If books are your thing, you can help preserve rare texts and maybe even discover your latest read. If you are a history buff, you can help save historical documents for future generations. And most importantly, you can do all of these things from a computer, in the comfort of your own home, and for no cost besides a spare moment of your time.

None of the hassle, commitments, or formality of volunteering, but with all of the impact. Welcome to the exciting new world of citizen science, crowdsourced volunteering, and the Internet of Things! With this blog as your gateway, seize this brave new world by the horns and help concerned citizens like you to change it for the better.

Stay tuned for posts about projects you can get involved in!