More than 30,000 people visited the White House for the 135th annual Easter Egg Roll on Monday—and I spent several happy hours there myself doing science activities with dozens of kids and their families with the Lawrence Hall of Science. If you couldn’t make it to Washington, D.C., you can find instructions to make the [...]

Above all, science is a collaborative enterprise, where researchers working together can span the continents. Increasingly, nonspecialists—citizen scientists—are pitching in as well. Whale.FM—a collaborative effort of Scientific American, Zooniverse and the research institutions WHOI, TNO, the University of Oxford and SMRU—lets citizen scientists help marine researchers who are studying what whales are saying. (You can [...]

In November 2011, Scientific American, Zooniverse and a team of research partners launched the Web site Whale.FM, a citizen-science project devoted to cataloging the calls made by Pilot whales and Killer whales (Orcas), both of which are actually dolphin species. Different whale families have their own dialects and closely related families share calls. Underwater microphones, [...]

When I wrote my end-of-the-year update for staff, Bora Zivkovic, our chief blogs editor, reminded me that others are also interested in the goings on at Scientific American. It’s never a good idea to say no to Bora. So here’s a summary of some highlights for 2011: AWARDS We won a 2011 National Magazine Award [...]

Fed up of simply reading about space and want to do some real science? Well, here’s your chance: astronomers are asking anyone with a pair of binoculars or telescope to train them on a new object visible in the night sky. The object is an asteroid called 433 Eros. At 20 miles wide it’s one [...]

Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500. [Apple iPhone 4s - $300] Working at the microscope yesterday I suddenly remembered Thrifty Thursday. I needed a photo! So I stuck my iPhone behind the carpenter ant I was examining and took this self-portrait. The insect arrived at my desk via the citizen-science [...]

Get off of Facebook. Next time you feel the urge to procrastinate, help scientists identify animals instead.

What do the world’s biggest fish and the Big Dipper have in common? Believe it or not, the answer is math. One of the same algorithms developed to help astronomers study the stars in the sky is being used to conserve and understand whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) under the sea. It turns out that each [...]

Endangered Hawaiian monk seals (Monachus schauinslandi) have a bad reputation among some local fishermen, who accuse the 200-kilogram mammals of eating the fish that the humans catch for their livelihoods. A new project aims to find out if that notoriety is deserved and the public—in particular, teens—has a chance to participate. The National Marine Fisheries [...]

Many smartphone applications are designed more for fun than substance (Angry Birds, anyone?), but a new app from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Bat Conservation Trust offers individuals and communities a chance to get involved in citizen science in a very real way and to help conserve bat populations in the process. [...]

Around the world, frogs and other amphibians are disappearing due to habitat loss, climate change, pollution and the deadly chytrid fungus, which has already driven a few dozen species into extinction. But with critical information on many species still lacking, scientists can only go so far when trying to help save those in crisis. To [...]

Are fireflies disappearing? No one knows for sure, but based on anecdotal evidence firefly (aka lightning bug) populations appear to be fading, with fewer seen every summer. Unfortunately, the bioluminescent insects had always been so ubiquitous to backyards and campgrounds for so long that almost no one bothered to study them. Now the Museum of [...]

Millions of people around the world come home to four legs and a wagging tail, and many spend some of their time together playing. While dog-dog play has been studied extensively, dog-person play, which takes on a different form and appears to have different rules, has not attracted nearly as much scholarly attention. At the [...]

This Friday, April 1, begins a month-long participatory blogging project at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, N.C., called Experimonth: Mood. The culmination of many ideas and personal experiments by museum staff members, their families and friends, Experimonth has morphed from a personal project centered around New Year’s resolutions into an effort to [...]

Hanny Van Arkel is a 25-year-old school teacher who lives in Holland with her German Shepherd, Janey. She enjoys playing the guitar and loves Brian May. She also found the first-ever voorwerp. Hanny is a citizen scientist. Hanny’s voorwerp (meaning object in Dutch), is a weird green blob spotted by Hanny in 2008. It is [...]

I had the wonderful opportunity to co-moderate two sessions at this past week’s Science Online “unconference” in Raleigh, affectionately known as #scio13. Sessions are proposed and moderated by volunteers, and there is a broad range of attendees, leading to rich discussion…and lots of fun.   There were three sessions devoted to different aspects of Citizen [...]

Step out into the darkness a few hours after sunset. What do you see overhead? If you live in a relatively unpopulated part of the world, you might see the broad stripe of the Milky Way splashed against a backdrop of black sky punctuated by countless stars. If, on the other hand, you live in [...]

BOSTON—Rarer than hen’s teeth is a bill in Congress that has bipartisan support. But such legislation exists, and if passed would open up a semi-secret world. The law—the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act—would ensure that research articles based on taxpayer-supported projects are freely available online for the public to read. FASTR [...]

Meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens must move quickly to trap evidence of a fresh meteorite fall. In 2008, a small asteroid roughly three meters across struck Earth’s atmosphere over northern Sudan, producing a brilliant fireball in the sky. The asteroid’s orbit had been tracked before striking Earth, upping the chances that searchers would be able to [...]

She looked perfectly normal. But what was she doing roaming around at night on the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif? She’d been drawn out of her home, following the light, and now was taking mincing steps across a white bed sheet. Had she just taken “the flight of the living dead”? Was she actually [...]

With a little instruction and education, hundreds if not thousands of volunteers armed with smart phones, computers and Internet access can act as the eyes, ears and hands of scientists worldwide. That idea is the hallmark of the growing citizen-science movement, which is already recruiting Facebook users to virtually “infect” their friends with a simulated [...]

New York, New York. A metropolis of gleaming skyscrapers, majestic brownstones and concrete as far as the eye can see. But on the northern border of Greenwich Village, a strange, little biological experiment is taking place. An artist is bringing new life to a handful of businesses. Not a remake of the bathroom. No, actually, [...]

You don’t need an advanced degree in physics or biology to participate in scientific research, just a curiosity about the world around you and an interest in observing, measuring and reporting what you hear and see. The Internet makes it easy these days to take part as an amateur in sophisticated science projects around the [...]

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, launched in 2009, is one of the finest and most prolific machines ever built for seeking out worlds orbiting distant stars. And at an estimated cost of $600 million, it had better be. Now anyone can sift through a bit of Kepler’s voluminous data, obtained as the space telescope gazes at some [...]

Scientists collect crazy things. I’m not talking thimble-crazy or frog-themed-crazy. That kind of tchotchke barely ranks on the crazy scale. The collections I’m talking about are things like bellybutton lint, whale vomit, and human poo. You mean raw sewage?! Yes, sort of… but straight from the source. Fresh, unadulterated. Yup. And to supersize the irony, [...]

More and more I realize that having a scientifically literate public is imperative. As much as we hear news stories about new jobs and economic relief that STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) will have on our nation and our lives, the truth is, if individuals aren’t ready for these great new, high-paying opportunities then that [...]

I get this question a lot? Whenever friends some across a plant, animal, a footprint, or even a pile a poop, it’s not uncommon for me to get a text message, a phone call or even a tag on Facebook asking me to identity (or come get) this thing.  I even joked about it in [...]

The warmer weather calls us outside to run, jump and play. That goes for the kids and adults, too.  And while you’re out having fun with friends and family, be sure to keep your eyes and ears open. For what, you may ask.  For all of the nature that is beginning to emerge, sprout and bloom [...]

This entry is a guest post from Dr. Daniela Hernandez.  She is a science writer, presently at the Salinas Californian and a AAAS Mass Media Fellow. She will soon be writing for Wired, so you can follow her now on Twitter @danielaphd. Here she interviews her mentor and friend, Mr. Dennis Taylor, an editor at The Salinas Californian and Aududon Society [...]