Citizen science - distributed computing

Interested in searching out aliens? Want to help find a cure for cancer or muscular dystrophy? Discover more effective AIDS drugs? Breed more nutritious rice? Then try distributed computing. Distributed computing is the use of many separate but networked computers, each running the same program, to solve complex problems. When volunteers download the software for a particular project, their computers quietly set to work using idle processing power to sift through enormous data sets or crunch through intricate calculations. The combined efforts of many thousands of computers can make otherwise unworkable research possible.

Distributed computing is perhaps the most indifferent type of citizen science. You can participate without knowledge, effort, or observation. Nonetheless, these projects are valuable teaching tools. The home pages of most distributed computing projects include detailed information on the science involved, written specifically to capture the attention of non-scientists. Many include blogs, activities, and links designed to keep participants informed and engaged. Others have forums with often lively debate over the merits and problems of various projects. The range of projects is broad enough to include work that applies to any biology curriculum and that should appeal to most students. Besides the basic science of these projects, distributed computing also can be used to explore other topics, such as the ethical and practical implications of intellectual property rights and patents related to organisms, drugs, genes, and other biologic material, and the competition between diseases for funding and public attention.

Here are a few good places to get started. Googling distributed computing and volunteer computing will bring up many other resources.

SETI@home is the largest and best known distributed computing project. Users scan through radio signals from space searching for patterns that could indicate extra-terrestrial life.

Folding@home examines the links between the structure of proteins and diseases such as mad cow, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s.

BOINC is a software system that many distributed computing programs run on. The home site acts as a clearinghouse for projects, and includes tips on how to evaluate and choose programs. BOINC allows volunteers to divide up their computer time among multiple projects. Projects include work on malaria control, climate modeling, the evolution of DNA sequences, and the genetic links to disease.

The World Community Grid is dedicated to “projects that benefit humanity.” Current projects includes research on drugs targeting dengue fever, AIDS, muscular dystrophy, and cancer, on new strains of rice to combat famine, and on finding more efficient materials for use in solar cells.

Image - Lion, drawn by Morito Iokawa, age 5. Died of acute lymphocytic leukemia at age 6. The Help Fight Childhood Cancer Project is a distributed computing project run through the World Community Grid. Image credit - Children's Cancer Association of Japan.

Swine flu (what else?)

The H1N1 virus
I’m confident there isn’t a biology class anywhere that hasn’t already talked about the swine flu. Or any biology blog either. But the flu and its fallout are going to be with us for a while, so I thought I’d post some links that might be helpful. Please comment with other good resources that you’ve found worthwhile.

Swine flu

• The CDC’s H1N1 Flu page has the latest information on the current outbreak. Press releases, maps, prevention and treatment information, twitter updates, and photos.


• Wired Science covers speculation on possible links between the virus and factory farms and the search for the ‘smoking pig.’


• Reuters Swine Flu section is an archive of news articles, videos, and photographs of the current flu outbreak. It’s a good source for examining media coverage and public sentiment about the flu situation

Influenza

• The U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health have a very thorough review of influenza in general. It includes fact sheets, Q&A’s, tutorials, images, and links to almost everything you’d ever need to say about flu.


• The pages on Flu Wiki aren’t consistent in quality but it does have a lot of information and is quite accessible to non-biologists.

Pandemics

• PandemicFlu.gov describes how government agencies plan for influenza outbreaks and monitor national and international flu trends.


• This World Health Organization chart describes the Pandemic Alert Levels being used internationally to characterize the stages of this and other pandemics.


• The Great Pandemic is a Dept. of Health and Human Services site with terrific information on the social and medical context of the 1918-1919 influenza outbreak. Many of today’s swine flu worries draw on this event.

Pseudoscience
Every health scare is accompanied by a rash of unscientific, often flat-out crackpot, ideas as to its cause and cure. Bloggers are often the first line of defense against pseudoscience – independent scientists and health professionals, and even well-informed laymen can respond with a speed and vigor that government employees can rarely match.

• Beyond the Short Coat takes on the notion that enemas can prevent swine flu.


• Repectful Insolence addresses the enema claim too, and includes a particularly nice video on pseudoscience in general.


• Scienceblogs.com is a good place to search for analyses of swine flu claims and coverage, but I’d be careful about directing students there because the commentary can get a bit rough.

Photo credit CDC/ C. S. Goldsmith and A. Balish

Cry wolf

A slow, sad drama is unfolding on a remote island, in the process providing a tailor-made teaching window into population genetics and bioethics.

Isle Royale, a large, forested island on the northwest end of Lake Superior, is separated from the closest mainland by 15 miles of cold, deep water. This isolation has produced a unique and relatively simple wilderness ecosystem, which includes a pair of species – wolves and moose – tied together by a two-link food chain.

Moose arrived on Isle Royale sometime around 1900, after a long and dangerous swim from Canada or perhaps Minnesota. Wolves followed 40-50 years later, walking across on the ice of a particularly cold winter. Since then, the wolves have been the moose’s only predator, and the moose the wolves’ primary source of food. During the last 50 years, this relationship has been observed and recorded continuously by biologists with the National Park Service and Michigan Technological University. It is the longest running study of large mammal predator-prey relationships ever made, and it has provided many insights into how ecosystems develop and operate, and how they respond to environmental change. Recent work has revealed that this small but important community may be doomed.

Genetic testing has shown that the wolf packs on the island are all descended from a single female. After generations of inbreeding, the genetic diversity of the population has fallen by half, and most of the wolves are suffering from a congenital, inherited bone defect. This condition is marked by malformations and growths of the vertebrae, which interfere with spinal nerves and cause pain, muscle weakness, and paralysis. Many wolves also have extra vertebrae and early onset arthritis, which may be genetic as well. This discovery may explain recent declines in the island’s wolf population and suggests its future is likely to be both short and bleak.


Biologists and policy makers are now grappling with the difficult question of how to respond to the wolves’ predicament. Do they let nature take its course, and use the opportunity to learn more about the progress and consequences of local extinction events? Or do they attempt a “genetic intervention” and bring in one or more healthy, unrelated wolves to deepen the gene pool, which might both save the Isle Royale population and also provide valuable experience and knowledge on restoring the health of threatened species?

The story of wolves and moose on Isle Royale provides a wealth of opportunities for biology teachers. The ethical questions surrounding the wolves’ future are ripe for classroom discussions on conservation, wilderness, and the interplay between science and public policy. The data provided by 50 years of moose and wolf studies can easily be used to illustrate population dynamics, the founder effect, genetic drift, and interspecific competition. Students can be asked to use their knowledge of ecological processes to predict the environmental impact of wolf extinction on the island’s ecosystem as a whole, or to describe how even such a remote setting is influenced by regional and historical trends such as climate change and agricultural and wildlife management practices.

Photos courtesy of www.isleroyalewolf.org.

Bacteria can run but they can't hide

I just stumbled across a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_xh-bkiv_c&feature=kp) of a neutrophil chasing down and engulfing a bacterium. Although it’s one of those old, slightly grainy science films from the 1950s, there is something really compelling about the frantic vibrations of the bacterium, the remorseless pursuit by the neutrophil, and their eerily silent battle among the red blood cells. It’s a little Hitchcockian, don't you think? I leaned forward while I watched it, and now I can’t help anthropomorphizing the heck out of it while I discuss it. Although that isn’t completely out of line, since this very scene is being repeated a million times over right now inside me and you and every human. At any rate, it was interesting enough to get me to Google around a bit to refresh my memory on just what a neutrophil is and does. So you go, 1950s filmstrip.

As is so often the case in biology, what looks like a simple process – see bacteria, catch bacteria, kill bacteria – is actually quite complex. Neutrophils are one variety of a kind of white blood cells called granular leucocytes, which form a major part of the immune system. The cell membrane of each neutrophil is studded with chemical receptors. These receptors are specialized to detect the proteins that immune cells release when they encounter an infection or inflammation. When neutrophils receive such calls for help, they follow their chemical gradient back to the source with great speed. Upon arrival, foreign bacteria are destroyed through phagocytosis – the neutrophils engulf and then digest the invaders. The bacteria do get revenge of a sort. Eventually the neutrophils die, and are themselves phagocytosed and subsequently turned into pus, which isn’t a particularly glorious end for such staunch defenders.

Neutrophil (yellow) engulfing anthrax bacteria (orange). Scale bar is 5um. From PLoS Pathogens Vol. 1(3) November 2005.

Those who can, doodle

JFK's White House Doodles
I’ve been seeing lots of news stories lately about a research study that suggests that doodling improves memory. A group of test subjects who were directed to doodle while listening to a series of long, dull conversations remembered the details much better than the group who simply sat and listened. It seems that the brain is adapted to be active, and if the world doesn’t supply enough stimulation to keep it going, it’ll make it’s own through daydreaming. Doodling keeps the brain just busy enough that it continues to pay attention to the outside world. Daydreaming takes more mental effort, and distracts the mind from its surroundings.

There are obvious implications for teaching in this. As a biology student, I doodled a lot – the citric acid cycle, that would do it. The electron transport chain, every time. But I mainly did it when I thought I could do it on the down low, sitting in the back of the room or in a large lecture hall. In a smaller class, I became the master of the glassy stare and the falsely inquisitive head tilt instead.

As a teacher, I’m sure I’ve given more than one doodler the skunk eye. Now I wonder if I should encourage it. Every lecture has its boring bits – anything that keeps a student learning through the dull spots is worth using. Maybe I need to add doodles to the hands-on demo, the small-group discussion pause, the five-minute stretch and soda break, and all the other straighten up and pay attention tricks. At the least, I'll try and see doodling as a genuine attempt to learn rather than as a surefire sign of slacking.