It’s Almost Bike to Work Day: Are You Ready to Ride?

Posted on by ILACSD

Bike to Work Day is less than a week away! Are you ready to ride? Celebrated regionally in San Diego this year on Thursday, May 17, 2018, Bike to Work Day is a nationally recognized event that encourages everyone to GO by BIKE and supports biking as an everyday, environmentally friendly commute choice. However, if you’re not a regular rider, it’s important to think about a few things before you jump on two wheels. Here are a few things to review and prep to have a successful Bike to Work Day!

Before the Big Day

What You Need:

Well, first and foremost, you need a bike. According to iCommuteSD, “Participating in Bike to Work Day means using pedal power. Beach cruisers, mountain bikes, road bikes, elliptical bikes, electric bikes, and bikeshare bikes are all great ways to GO by BIKE.” You’ll want to make sure the type of bike you have is suitable for your ride (maybe avoid a beach cruiser if you’ll hit a lot of hills on your route). You’ll want to make sure your bike is in good condition before you go. Check the brakes, tires, and chain to make sure they are properly maintained. Make sure your bike fits you comfortably. Check your seat height and handlebars.

If it’s been a little while since you’ve been on your bike, chances are it needs a little maintenance.

If you don’t have a bike of your own, you might want to make sure you have a plan for utilizing a bikeshare bike on a day they will likely be very busy! Luckily, a few bikeshare programs will be running a Bike to Work Day special! Discover Bike, LimeBike, Mobike, and Ofo will all offer free bike rides for up to one hour on Thursday, May 17 to the first 100 people from 6 – 9 AM. Just use the following promo codes: Discover Bike (33844), LimeBike (LIME2WORK), Mobike (sandiegobtw), or Ofo (SDBTWD2018).

Break out your bike lock and helmet!

Outside of a bike, you’ll want to make sure you have a helmet! Safety is key on a bike. If you take a spill, you’ll want to make sure you have a helmet on and any other protective gear you prefer. California law requires everyone younger than 18 to wear a helmet.  On top of a helmet, you’ll want to make sure you have a way to lock your bike up (unless you use a bikeshare bike). You can protect your bike with a lock (make sure you lock up your bike properly if you have any quick release tires) or utilize one of many bike parking or bike locker options.

Does your bike have a basket or spot to store a few things? If not, make sure you have a backpack or something to carry any items you might need to take to and from the office. If you have a long ride ahead of you, consider leaving a change of clothes and shoes in your office a day before. Make it easier on yourself and carry less by having anything you need to freshen up after your ride already at the office.

Depending on when you ride, you might need to consider lights for your bike as well. Being seen is vitally important! If the sun will be down for any portion of your ride, come prepared with lights. For longer trips, you might consider a patch kit and tire pump, but luckily, there will be plenty of pit stops on Bike to Work Day. Don’t forget your manners! Know all the hand signals for riding and always keep bike etiquette in mind!

Read up on the rules of the road before you bike if you are unfamiliar!

Plan Your Route:

Know where you want to go! It’s important to be safe when you share the road with motorists. Be prepared by knowing the best route to your office for when on two wheels! The best route to work in your car may not work so well on your bike. Use the iCommuteSD interactive Bike Map to help figure out the best way to GO by BIKE.

Get Registered:

Register for Bike to Work Day to get all of the information on pit stop locations and be a part of the thousands of commuters throughout the San Diego region participating in Bike to Work Day on Thursday, May 17. When you register for Bike to Work Day, you can pick up a free t-shirt at one of 100 pit stops throughout San Diego County from 6 to 9 AM (participants must show proof of registration to claim their free t-shirt). 

While You Ride

People riding bikes have the same rights and responsibilities as people driving cars. You can use a rack or backpack to keep your hands free. Hand signals should always be used to indicate your turns. Avoid using headphones or a cell phone. Be aware of traffic laws just like you would in a car! Use bike lanes when available, but know your rights on the road when sharing with other vehicles!

Stay safe and feel free to take a break while you ride!

 

Need a Break? Hit a Pit Stop

A total of 100 Bike to Work Day pit stops are planned across San Diego County, which will be open from 6 to 9 AM on Thursday, May 17 for anyone who registers. Pit stops offer fun breaks for bike riders to rest and pick up a free t-shirt, snacks, and encouragement. Some stops may even be able to assist with minor maintenance if you run into an issue. For a list of the Bike to Work 2018 pit stop locations and to see what is offered at pit stops along your route, check out the pit stop map.

Go Beyond Bike to Work Day

GO by BIKE All Year Long

The fun doesn’t stop after Bike to Work Day! San Diego has over 1,570 miles of bikeways in the San Diego region, you can get almost anywhere by riding a bike. You can participate in the City of San Diego’s Transit Tuesdays every week on your bike. iCommute is always a helpful resource to get started with riding tips, information about taking your bike on transit, bike safety tips, and more.

We’re excited about your biking adventure and would love to see how it goes! Share your Bike to Work Day story with us by tagging I Love A Clean San Diego in your Bike to Work Day photos on social! PEDAL ON!

The post It’s Almost Bike to Work Day: Are You Ready to Ride? appeared first on I Love A Clean San Diego.

The anniversary of Mark2Cure’s official launch is coming soon

Posted on by ginger

Mark2Cure's 3rd anniversary is coming up, and we are extremely grateful for the opportunity to have interacted and learned from you over the last few years! You make this project interesting. You make this project interesting and exciting. You make this project educational and humbling. You make this project useful and valuable. Although our research team has shrunk two half of what it was when we first started, we have been able to continue to move forward only because of you! We cannot thank you enough!

As a citizen science effort, Mark2Cure is primarily driven by volunteers--and volunteers like you have brought us to where we are today. As of today, we have over 1.3 million annotations!!! We are currently busy with the analysis, so please accept my apologies for being a bit more slow to respond to your inquiries. Fortunately, you and your fellow volunteers continue to help us move forward. In fact, we are excited to share a new preprint on aligning citizen science opportunities with the needs of students fulfilling community service and service learning requirements. The research on these requirements was primarily performed by a volunteer with a marketing/business background and was inspired by a few high school Mark2Curators who have been kind enough to share their experience and needs as students and volunteers.

You can find the preprint on bioarxiv here, and it has been submitted for peer review in the journal Citizen Science Theory and Practice.

A designer has also wrapped up her work on making Mark2Cure more intuitive and user-friendly. A huge thanks to those of you who took the time to provide feedback on individual parts of her designs--although your feedback may not necessarily be incorporated in them here, we will definitely take your detailed and valuable suggestions into consideration.

Since this is citizen science and your voices are important--I'd like to share the designs with all of you. You can find the wire frames here. Note that the actual wording/content is subject to change (especially since we've received detailed content recommendations from some of you), and that the focus is more about the layout of the content. Please feel free to share your opinions about it with us!

For those of you who have joined us in last year's #MedLitBlitz or this year's #CitSciMedBlitz, you may be familiar with our friends at Cochrane Crowd. Like Mark2Cure, Cochrane Crowd is a citizen science project where volunteers help inspect biomedical abstracts. Cochrane crowd was also launched in May and are celebrating their anniversary with the #showyourscreen 2 Million annotations challenge. Learn more about the challenge here.

Over 6,000 Volunteers Celebrated Earth Day by Cleaning Up San Diego from Creek to Bay

Posted on by ILACSD

This past weekend, we celebrated Earth Day by hosting our 16th Annual Creek to Bay Cleanup where we empowered an estimated 6,000 volunteers to give back at 113 cleanup sites around San Diego County! Volunteers including residents, corporate groups, and civic organizations transformed their appreciation for San Diego’s environment into action for Mother Earth by putting in the time and effort to give back in their local communities. During this three-hour cleanup, volunteers enhanced the overall health and beauty of San Diego’s natural environment by removing more than 175,000 pounds of trash and debris from San Diego County.

Volunteers joined site captain, Brittany Novick (Miss Scuba International), to help celebrate her birthday and Earth Day by protecting the environment at the Mission Beach Belmont Park cleanup site!
Among the debris, there were several notable odd items collected during the cleanup including: 19 shoes at one site, a giant teddy bear, and a bathrobe.

Volunteers also restored the local environment through beautification projects such as painting park structures, planting native plants and trees, mulching, and weeding. Thanks to thousands of volunteers, 113 parks, beaches and community spaces received special care to keep the area healthy and beautiful for the community.

Painting was just one of many beautification projects that volunteers could take part in on top of litter removal at Creek to Bay!

Creek to Bay was an opportunity for the community to go green in more ways than one. With a push toward zero waste practices, we encouraged all youth and adult volunteers to be more sustainable by choosing to bring at least one reusable item for the cleanup like a water bottle, work bucket, or gloves. Many stepped up to the challenge! Volunteers could showcase their zero waste commitments in the Sony Photo Contest with the 2018 theme of “Rocking Reusables” or by entering the Bling Your Bucket Contest. Both contests offer prizes to the winners to celebrate their sustainability and creativity.

Gabriel used recycled items to decorate his bucket for the Bling Your Bucket Contest helping cut back on the waste created at the cleanup!

Creek to Bay also received attention from several of San Diego’s elected officials who visited cleanup sites in their respective districts including:

  • San Diego City Councilmembers Barbara Bry, Myrtle Cole, Mark Kersey, David Alvarez, and Georgette Gomez
  • Assemblymembers Todd Gloria and Shirley Weber
Councilmember Bry helps kick off the Creek to Bay at the Scripps Pier site!

The entire I Love A Clean San Diego team could not be more thrilled and inspired by the results from the Creek to Bay Cleanup. Joining the team this year as Community Events Coordinator, Nik Kennedy reflected on his first Creek to Bay Cleanup experience:

This was my first year planning Creek to Bay, and after months of preparing it was amazing to be a part of the event! From recruiting volunteers to organizing activities, I was excited to see so many neighborhood volunteers come out and beautify Azalea Park and all of San Diego County! This was such an undertaking, and it was incredible to watch all of our work pay off for a cleaner environment.

Major thanks go out to all of our sponsors for the Creek to Bay Cleanup!

Creek to Bay would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors and partners! Thank you all for your commitment to a clean, green, and beautiful San Diego!

Thank you to all of our Creek to Bay sponsors for investing in a cleaner San Diego!

City of San Diego, Think Blue
Wells Fargo
CBS 8/CW San Diego
Republic Services
EDCO
Walmart
Cox Communications
County of San Diego
County of San Diego Watershed Protection Program
Project Clean Water
Anheuser Busch
City of San Marcos
General Dynamics/ NASSCO
Dart Container
Sony
Bank of America
Dudek
Teledyne Instruments, Inc
San Diego Regional Airport Authority
City of La Mesa
Port of San Diego
City of Imperial Beach
City of Chula Vista
Michael Baker International
U.S. Bank
BAE Shipyard
Brown and Caldwell
Mitchell Financial
City of Escondido (Utilities Department)
City of Escondido (Recycling Division)
Dog Beach Dog Wash
Power Crunch

From the entire ILACSD team, THANK YOU to every volunteer, partner, sponsor, and community member who made Creek to Bay such an incredible success! We couldn’t do it without you!

Over 6,000 Volunteers Celebrated Earth Day by Cleaning Up San Diego from Creek to Bay

Posted on by ILACSD

This past weekend, we celebrated Earth Day by hosting our 16th Annual Creek to Bay Cleanup where we empowered an estimated 6,000 volunteers to give back at 113 cleanup sites around San Diego County! Volunteers including residents, corporate groups, and civic organizations transformed their appreciation for San Diego’s environment into action for Mother Earth by putting in the time and effort to give back in their local communities. During this three-hour cleanup, volunteers enhanced the overall health and beauty of San Diego’s natural environment by removing more than 175,000 pounds of trash and debris from San Diego County.

Volunteers joined site captain, Brittany Novick (Miss Scuba International), to help celebrate her birthday and Earth Day by protecting the environment at the Mission Beach Belmont Park cleanup site!
Among the debris, there were several notable odd items collected during the cleanup including: 19 shoes at one site, a giant teddy bear, and a bathrobe.

Volunteers also restored the local environment through beautification projects such as painting park structures, planting native plants and trees, mulching, and weeding. Thanks to thousands of volunteers, 113 parks, beaches and community spaces received special care to keep the area healthy and beautiful for the community.

Painting was just one of many beautification projects that volunteers could take part in on top of litter removal at Creek to Bay!

Creek to Bay was an opportunity for the community to go green in more ways than one. With a push toward zero waste practices, we encouraged all youth and adult volunteers to be more sustainable by choosing to bring at least one reusable item for the cleanup like a water bottle, work bucket, or gloves. Many stepped up to the challenge! Volunteers could showcase their zero waste commitments in the Sony Photo Contest with the 2018 theme of “Rocking Reusables” or by entering the Bling Your Bucket Contest. Both contests offer prizes to the winners to celebrate their sustainability and creativity.

Gabriel used recycled items to decorate his bucket for the Bling Your Bucket Contest helping cut back on the waste created at the cleanup!

Creek to Bay also received attention from several of San Diego’s elected officials who visited cleanup sites in their respective districts including:

  • San Diego City Councilmembers Barbara Bry, Myrtle Cole, Mark Kersey, David Alvarez, and Georgette Gomez
  • Assemblymembers Todd Gloria and Shirley Weber
Councilmember Bry helps kick off the Creek to Bay at the Scripps Pier site!

The entire I Love A Clean San Diego team could not be more thrilled and inspired by the results from the Creek to Bay Cleanup. Joining the team this year as Community Events Coordinator, Nik Kennedy reflected on his first Creek to Bay Cleanup experience:

This was my first year planning Creek to Bay, and after months of preparing it was amazing to be a part of the event! From recruiting volunteers to organizing activities, I was excited to see so many neighborhood volunteers come out and beautify Azalea Park and all of San Diego County! This was such an undertaking, and it was incredible to watch all of our work pay off for a cleaner environment.

Major thanks go out to all of our sponsors for the Creek to Bay Cleanup!

Creek to Bay would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors and partners! Thank you all for your commitment to a clean, green, and beautiful San Diego!

Thank you to all of our Creek to Bay sponsors for investing in a cleaner San Diego!

City of San Diego, Think Blue
Wells Fargo
CBS 8/CW San Diego
Republic Services
EDCO
Walmart
Cox Communications
County of San Diego
County of San Diego Watershed Protection Program
Project Clean Water
Anheuser Busch
City of San Marcos
General Dynamics/ NASSCO
Dart Container
Sony
Bank of America
Dudek
Teledyne Instruments, Inc
San Diego Regional Airport Authority
City of La Mesa
Port of San Diego
City of Imperial Beach
City of Chula Vista
Michael Baker International
U.S. Bank
BAE Shipyard
Brown and Caldwell
Mitchell Financial
City of Escondido (Utilities Department)
City of Escondido (Recycling Division)
Dog Beach Dog Wash
Power Crunch

From the entire ILACSD team, THANK YOU to every volunteer, partner, sponsor, and community member who made Creek to Bay such an incredible success! We couldn’t do it without you!

Over 6,000 Volunteers Celebrated Earth Day by Cleaning Up San Diego from Creek to Bay

Posted on by ILACSD

This past weekend, we celebrated Earth Day by hosting our 16th Annual Creek to Bay Cleanup where we empowered an estimated 6,000 volunteers to give back at 113 cleanup sites around San Diego County! Volunteers including residents, corporate groups, and civic organizations transformed their appreciation for San Diego’s environment into action for Mother Earth by putting in the time and effort to give back in their local communities. During this three-hour cleanup, volunteers enhanced the overall health and beauty of San Diego’s natural environment by removing more than 175,000 pounds of trash and debris from San Diego County.

Volunteers joined site captain, Brittany Novick (Miss Scuba International), to help celebrate her birthday and Earth Day by protecting the environment at the Mission Beach Belmont Park cleanup site!
Among the debris, there were several notable odd items collected during the cleanup including: 19 shoes at one site, a giant teddy bear, and a bathrobe.

Volunteers also restored the local environment through beautification projects such as painting park structures, planting native plants and trees, mulching, and weeding. Thanks to thousands of volunteers, 113 parks, beaches and community spaces received special care to keep the area healthy and beautiful for the community.

Painting was just one of many beautification projects that volunteers could take part in on top of litter removal at Creek to Bay!

Creek to Bay was an opportunity for the community to go green in more ways than one. With a push toward zero waste practices, we encouraged all youth and adult volunteers to be more sustainable by choosing to bring at least one reusable item for the cleanup like a water bottle, work bucket, or gloves. Many stepped up to the challenge! Volunteers could showcase their zero waste commitments in the Sony Photo Contest with the 2018 theme of “Rocking Reusables” or by entering the Bling Your Bucket Contest. Both contests offer prizes to the winners to celebrate their sustainability and creativity.

Gabriel used recycled items to decorate his bucket for the Bling Your Bucket Contest helping cut back on the waste created at the cleanup!

Creek to Bay also received attention from several of San Diego’s elected officials who visited cleanup sites in their respective districts including:

  • San Diego City Councilmembers Barbara Bry, Myrtle Cole, Mark Kersey, David Alvarez, and Georgette Gomez
  • Assemblymembers Todd Gloria and Shirley Weber
Councilmember Bry helps kick off the Creek to Bay at the Scripps Pier site!

The entire I Love A Clean San Diego team could not be more thrilled and inspired by the results from the Creek to Bay Cleanup. Joining the team this year as Community Events Coordinator, Nik Kennedy reflected on his first Creek to Bay Cleanup experience:

This was my first year planning Creek to Bay, and after months of preparing it was amazing to be a part of the event! From recruiting volunteers to organizing activities, I was excited to see so many neighborhood volunteers come out and beautify Azalea Park and all of San Diego County! This was such an undertaking, and it was incredible to watch all of our work pay off for a cleaner environment.

Major thanks go out to all of our sponsors for the Creek to Bay Cleanup!

Creek to Bay would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors and partners! Thank you all for your commitment to a clean, green, and beautiful San Diego!

Thank you to all of our Creek to Bay sponsors for investing in a cleaner San Diego!

City of San Diego, Think Blue
Wells Fargo
CBS 8/CW San Diego
Republic Services
EDCO
Walmart
Cox Communications
County of San Diego
County of San Diego Watershed Protection Program
Project Clean Water
Anheuser Busch
City of San Marcos
General Dynamics/ NASSCO
Dart Container
Sony
Bank of America
Dudek
Teledyne Instruments, Inc
San Diego Regional Airport Authority
City of La Mesa
Port of San Diego
City of Imperial Beach
City of Chula Vista
Michael Baker International
U.S. Bank
BAE Shipyard
Brown and Caldwell
Mitchell Financial
City of Escondido (Utilities Department)
City of Escondido (Recycling Division)
Dog Beach Dog Wash
Power Crunch

From the entire ILACSD team, THANK YOU to every volunteer, partner, sponsor, and community member who made Creek to Bay such an incredible success! We couldn’t do it without you!

The post Over 6,000 Volunteers Celebrated Earth Day by Cleaning Up San Diego from Creek to Bay appeared first on I Love A Clean San Diego.

Happy Citizen Science Day Hero Badge Hunting!

Posted on by ginger

Citizen Science Day was April 14th this year, and Mark2Cure partnered with the San Diego Public Library to host a local Citizen Science Expo. Of course, many of our wonderful contributors are not in San Diego and could not attend the event. For those of you who wish to get in on the Citizen Science Day excitement, we've joined the EyesOnAlz Citizen Science Day Hero challenge.

The challenge will run until 9am ET, April 21st and anyone interested in the challenge will have the opportunity to earn digital badges for just trying out (ie- registering or logging into) different citizen science projects. As Mark2Curators, you only need to log into your Mark2Cure account to earn a badge.

Learn more about this fun challenge at https://blog.eyesonalz.com/citsciday-hero/.

Citizen Science Day 2018 is just around the corner!

Posted on by ginger

San Diego Citizen Science Day Expo

Citizen Science Day is on April 14th, this year and many citizen science organizations (including yours truly) are hosting citizen science events. Here in San Diego, we've teamed up with the San Diego Public Library and the Wet Lab group to put on the 3rd annual San Diego Citizen Science Day Expo. There are a lot of exciting new entrants into the San Diego citizen science scene, and we hope you will join us in learning about them at the expo. If you're in San Diego, please join us! The details are as follows:

Who: Anyone who wants to do science
What: San Diego Citizen Science Day Expo
When: Saturday, April 14, 2018. 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Where: North University Community Library (8820 Judicial Dr, San Diego, CA 92122)

Please note that the location has changed from the previous ones due to the limited availability of parking spots at the La Jolla Library. The North University Community Library has plentiful free parking, so please visit come if you're in the area! For the most up-to-date information about this event, visit SDCitSci.net.

If you're not in San Diego, there is probably an exciting Citizen Science Day event happening near you! To find a Citizen Science Day Event near you, visit Scistarter.com.

San Diego March for Science

The March for Science is also happening on April 14th in San Diego. It starts at the Waterfront park at 10:00am and ends at 1:00pm (right before our event!). If you want to show your love for science consider joining the march! If you want to DO science, be sure to join a Citizen Science Day event near you (or contribute to Mark2Cure, of course!).

Current Status of Mark2Cure

Development status and workarounds

Unfortunately, Mark2Cure no longer has a full time developer working on the project, so a lot of the issues and bugs that have been reported probably will not be fixed for a long, long time. We are very sorry for the frustration our system has caused our users and extremely grateful for the patience, graciousness, and encouragement our users have returned to us. Mark2Cure is really made up of a wonderful bunch of individuals, and we are thankful that this project has introduced us to you. Fortunately, many of you really put the science in the term citizen science and have systematically found ways to contribute productively in spite of all the issues in our system. You are all too amazing!

NER module issues: The most frustrating one has been the inability to highlight certain words, and the random highlighting/un-highlighting of words when users try to mark something. This has been reported by many users (many, many thanks to those of you who took the time to report this issue). Fortunately, one of your fellow volunpeers has found a workaround that appears to be quite robust. To get around a lot of these highlighting issues, AJ_Eckhart highlights the entire paragraph to remove the preannotations. These preannotations seem to be an important factor in this problem, and he has tested this workaround for the 'cannot-highlight-a-specific-term' bug, the 'highlighting-a-term-un-highlights-something-else', and the 'highlighting-a-term-highlights' something else' bugs.

RE module issues: A number of you have kindly taken the time to report issues with the RE module--the most common issue is the seemingly random inability to throw out an annotation. For this issue, two workarounds have been reported by our users. LadySteph has found that returning to the dashboard and then returning to the task will enable you to submit the response you wish (eg- throw out an annotation) and TAdams has reported that many of you have gravitated towards submitting 'Cannot be determined' in lieu of throwing out an annotation. We will take both workarounds into consideration when we analyze the data, so thank you all very much for contributing in spite of all these issues!

Data analysis and research status

Speaking of analyzing the data--we might not yet have enough abstracts annotated in order to generate ground-breaking, new hypotheses on NGLY1 deficiency, but we have enough for some initial analyses on the application of citizen science towards information extraction. We are working towards more scientific publications and look forward to sharing the results of your work and crediting you for your help. Note that many journal submission systems are not made to account for group names or a huge volume of names in the authorship; hence, we will continue to have our Mark2Cure contributors listed on a dedicated page which will be linked in the paper. As with our first paper, this will be an opt-in process because we respect your right to privacy. More details on opting-in will be sent via our mailing list.

CitSciMedBlitz Recap and Results

Posted on by ginger

Hopefully, you'll all forgive us for the delay in announcing the results of #CitSciMedBlitz. Our partners at EyesOnAlz, Cochrane crowd, and ourselves were a little tired after the blitz and we gave ourselves a short break. Since the blitz, the EyesOnAlz team has generated the #CitSciMedBlitz digital badge for participants of all three challenges and has been working on creating the trophies; meanwhile, the Cochrane crowd team has contacted the overall #CitSciMedBlitz event winners.

look alive now! We're all up and active now and looking forward to sharing a recap and the results of #CitSciMedBlitz with you.

First, a Recap

On February 21st, CitSciMedBlitz was kicked off with a webinar to introduce the three platforms that would be participating in CitSciMedBlitz
You can watch the webinar here

The first challenge, the StallCatchers challenge, was launched on February 26th at 7am PST. Within minutes of the launch, StallCatchers were hammering away at StallCatchers, including Cochrane Crowd's Anna.
first 10 min

Anna managed to get on the leaderboard but wasn't able to stay on there for very long because the competition was just too tough. At least she placed, though-- I never even made it!

By the end of the challenge, StallCatchers analyzed a whopping 18,348 real videos--the equivalent of two weeks worth of laboratory analysis!
first 10 min

While the EyesOnAlz team was still cooling off from their intense challenge, we were gearing up for the Mark2Cure arm--and NOT without a huge set of worries.
i am worried

You can read more about the hiccups and snafu's that happened during the Mark2Cure 24hr challenge here. By the end of the challenge, CitSciMedBlitzers managed to submit ~300 doc annotations, and ~3000 relationship annotations--an impressive feat considering the increase in task difficulty, and the bugs and other technical issues that made the challenge--well, even more challenging!

While we were busy analyzing the results of our challenge, Cochrane crowd was preparing the last challenge of CitSciMedBlitz. This challenge started off right with 50 assessments within the first 2 minutes, and over 5000 in just the first 4 hours! This arm of the challenge would determine which of the top contenders from the previous challenges would win the trophy so the competition was intense! By the end of this challenge, over 46,000 classifications would be made--allowing our teams to determine the overall winner of #CitSciMedBlitz.

And now...the results of CitSciMedBlitz...

Of course, the biggest winner of the challenge goes to...

...biomedical and health evidence research! Everyone who has contributed (in the past) and continues to contributes to these efforts deserve a round of applause for being generous enough to donate their time towards helping with disease and health research.

Thank you for being amazing

The winner of the CitSciMedBlitz trophy is Michael Landau! Note, it was previously stated that Michael was also the top contributor to the EyesOnAlz challenge of CitSciMedBlitz. This is wrong.

Mike Capraro was the top contributor across all three measures of the EyesOnAlz challenge and the overall top contributor of that challenge for CitSciMedBlitz.

Editor's note #2: If you'd like to read more about CitSciMedBlitz from the EyesOnAlz team, check out their latest recap post here!

The top contributor to the Mark2Cure arm of CitSciMedBlitz was Kien Pong Yap, while the top contributor to the Cochrane Crowd arm of CitSciMedBlitz was Nikolaos. The top contributors to each platform will be receiving a platform-specific trophy.

Each platform will be awarding additional prizes to some of their top contributors and the notifications should be arriving via email (if they haven't already).

Editor's note #3, the recap from the Cochrane Crowd side of things is now available

Now that all the excitement of CitSciMedBlitz is over, I'd like to thank ALL the citizen scientists who contribute to projects like ours and make these platforms great. In citizen science, the people make the platform. And, as you can see--the people contributing to these platforms, do so with:

a collaborative spirit,
sharing is caring

humor,
guilt to the rescue

humility,
struggled and won

good spirit,
positive attitude for the win

and grace,
positive attitude for the win

Thank you all! Much respect for the work that you've done and the character you've shown!

mad respects

Note this post was updated on 2018.03.12 to correct an error and on 2018.03.19 to add a link

CitSciMedBlitz Update

Posted on by ginger

The results for Mark2Cure's arm of the CitSciBlitz are now available! Kien Pong Yap took the top spot in this challenge (see ranking at bottom of post).

What's exciting is that several of these names were also in the top 10 for the StallCatchers challenge so it'll be a tough competition in the Cochrane challenge to see who actually wins the CitSciMedBlitz triple challenge trophy.

Here are some random tidbits about the Mark2Cure arm of the CitSciMedBlitz triple challenge:

  • The NER module was broken for the first few hours of the challenge, and we received emails and phone calls about it within the first hour of the challenge. THANK YOU for bringing it to our attention and providing so detailed information about the bugs. Max was able to solve it while on the airplane ride to San Diego for the Future of Genomic Medicine Conference.

  • In spite of the NER module issues (a HUGE thanks to TAdams, JudyE, AJEckhart, and Itwontalwaysbelikethis for helping us troubleshoot), users doing this task still managed to climb the ranks even with the delayed start.

  • A Mark2Curator created an introductory video about the relationship extraction task for the event while we were running around trying to ensure that everything was in place for the M2C challenge. THANK YOU for doing that, TAdams!

  • One of the Mark2Curators joined the challenge as a personal challenge to raise awareness for dystonia on Rare Disease Day. Dystonia = loss of muscle control. There are many types, but you can imagine just how much more challenging that makes things! Read about her efforts here. And if you're curious how well she did--she made it to the top 5!

  • I was worried about following StallCatchers because their task is so visually appealing while ours is text based and quite difficult. Indeed we got questions and suggestions-a-plenty about Mark2Cure on the StallCatchers forum, but there are plenty of very tenacious citizen scientists in stall catchers and they managed to climb pretty high in the ranks.

  • The team behind StallCatchers is AMAZING!!!! Very generous with both support and humor! No wonder the StallCatchers are so ardent!

If you think it's all over--think again! The Cochrane crowd of the challenge has just started, and CitSciMedBlitzers who participate in all THREE challenges will get a digital badge on their StallCatchers profile. It's an awesome badge!

Now go take the cochrane challenge!

citscimedblitz mark2cure rankings

CitSciMed Blitz has started!

Posted on by ginger

It's on! The CitSciMedblitz week of challenges have started!

If you missed the webinar detailing the three biomedical/health citizen science research projects, it is available for viewing on youtube.
CitSciMedblitz webinar

You are welcome to participate in as many or as few of the challenges as you'd like, but a trophy will be awarded to the highest ranking participant across all THREE challenges. Read more about CitSciMedblitz from this post at citscibio.org

With regards to the challenges, up first (and going on now!) is the EyesOnAlz 24hr Catchathon. EyesOnAlz is an Alzheimer disease-focused citizen science project investigating stalled blood in brain images. It has a lot of cool images/videos in need of review by citizen scientists and a lot of fun features. The challenge has only just started and will run to 7am PST (3pm GMT) tomorrow (Feb. 28th) so get in on it ASAP!

The Mark2Cure challenge will start at 7am PST (3pm GMT) on Wednesday, February 28th. It is a doubly-special day because the 28th is Rare Disease Day and we have had an incredibly inspirational weekend at the Sanford Burnham Presby Rare Disease Day Symposium. We look forward to sharing rare disease stories from Mark2Curators and bringing awareness about these diseases as we tackle the literature around NGLY1 during this 24hr challenge.

Speaking of literature, our old friends at Cochrane Crowd are back with a lot of new features which you can explore during the Cochrane Screening Challenge. This challenge starts at 7am PST (3pm GMT) on Friday, March 2nd and runs for 24hrs.