SCARBOROUGH – When is it the best when you can complete an entire year’s worth of research?
When you can do it in one hour.
On Saturday, April 13 – the last day of National Library Week – about 10 attendees sat at computers for a live-streamed broadcast in the meeting room of the Scarborough Public Library for the Citizen Science Day Megathon, an annual global initiative where average citizens participate in a science-oriented activity for a cause.
This year, the cause was for Alzheimer’s, with multiple entities participating in the initiative including Cornell University, the University of Arizona and Eyes on ALZ, a citizen science project run by the Human Computation Institute whose goal is to
“With thousands of eyes looking for a potential treatment, we could get the orders of magnitude faster,” the Eyes on ALZ “About” page on Facebook reads.
“Once the game is completed, the data are sent to Cornell University where they are analyzed,” the library’s program and development manager Celeste Shinay said.
She added that Systems Librarian Tom Corbett spearheaded the event and said the videos attendees work within the game are real videos of mice brains, not a simulation.
Michelle DuEst of Scarborough participated in the event as a StallCatchers player with some enthusiasm.
“It’s important to be a part of such exciting research and help expedite such important research in an hour,” DuEst said.
The event is part of Alzheimer’s disease research that is being done at Cornell University.
“By means of a simple game – StallCatchers.com – we are inviting everyone to look at the brains of mice and analyze real data,” Corbett said.
In the game, participants look for “stalls” in videos of mice brains, or clogged blood vessels where blood is no longer flowing.
Stalls are a common hallmark of Alzheimer’s, and are linked to a severe reduction in blood flow in the brain. However, if stalls are removed in mice, they regain some of the cognitive function, and other Alzheimer’s symptoms seem to decrease, according to Eyes on ALZ.
The event was projected to be one of the biggest live-streamed medical events in history.
Systems Librarian Tom Corbett oversees the StallCatchers operation on Michelle DuEst’s computer during Saturday’s Citizen Science Day Megathon at Scarborough Public Library. (Garrick Hoffman photo)
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