Science - AllFacebook

Facebook Campaign Connects Students To Mars

Justin Lafferty — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:38:44 +0000

Although most of us probably won’t step foot on Mars, one Facebook campaign is utilizing the red planet and the social network to get kids excited about science, technology, engineering, and math. Through Raytheon Company’s Mission to Mars, students can explore the planet virtually and interact with Facebook to earn grants.

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Can Facebook Fix Bad Behaviors?

Justin Lafferty — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:14:38 +0000

Facebook has persuasive powers, but can the social network curtail bad behaviors such as smoking? That’s what researchers want to find out. A study in the most recent issue of Science magazine tries to figure out whether or not Facebook has the kind of power to help people change for the better.

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Facebook Triggers Same Hormone As Cuddling

Ruth Manuel-Logan — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:24:02 +0000

Scientists are studying how Facebook cause the human nervous system to release a “cuddly” chemical that is linked with all kinds of feel-good emotions.
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Facebook Helps Smithsonian Crowdsource Research

Jorge Cino — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:57:39 +0000

Upon returning from their expedition in the Cuyuni River in Guyana to identify the different species of fish that live there, a group of scientists from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History knew they just hadn’t had enough time to collect all the appropiate information for the cataloguing process.

But in the age of social networking, a little crowdsourcing went a long way in helping them get their work to a swift start.

Brian Sidlauskas, an ichthyologist – – a zoologist who studies fish – – from Oregon State University, explains on the Smithsonian Science blog how a group of fellow ichthyologists managed to identify over 5,000 specimens of fish from in less than 24 hours. How? With a little help of their Facebook friends.

They created a photo album of the catalog of the specimens they had collected on Facebook, and asked their fellow colleagues for help. Of course, these weren’t any kind of friends. “The majority of people commenting held a PhD in ichthyology or a related field, and hailed from a great diversity of countries including the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil,” says Sidlauskas.

By tapping into this massive social network of expertise, this group of scientists was able to preliminary identify over 90% of all fish surveyed, which in turn will allow them to sort and take these specimens to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. as quickly as possible. In addition, the faster the cataloguing process, the quicker the material is available to others for further study.

All those long days and months of going through each darn animal specimen in order to identify their taxonomy and classify them as this or that might be over – – or at least, that’s what this particular zoologist thinks.

How have you used Facebook for crowdsourcing projects?

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