I think we need to do much more of that. I totally agree with you. I actually think that we – and that's self-critical to me as well – I think we need to be more brave also going public with that engagement.

The scientists behind the new study are planning an eradication campaign in Sicily. With help from authorities, they say they will destroy the known nests, continue to search local areas for more nests, and monitor for several years to make sure no ants escape. They hope to recruit residents across Europe to keep an eye out for more fire ants.

This is the practice of citizen science.

However, there is still a gap in research efforts moving from laboratory studies to real-world settings. A small number of research has verified when a physiological response is a reaction to an extrinsic stimulus of the participant’s environment in real-world settings.

Had it not been for the attentiveness of one person who went beyond the task of classifying galaxies into predetermined categories and was able to communicate this to the researchers via the online forum, what turned out to be important new phenomena might have gone undiscovered.

However, very little has been published in the academic literature about the factors that influence people to take part in citizen science projects and why participants continue their involvement, or not.

A training session was not carried out by the authors for the Asian Longhorned Beetle Swimming Pool Survey, a project specific to New York State.

"We are at a time where some people doubt the validity of science," he says. "And if people feel that they are part of this great adventure that is science, I think they're more inclined to trust it. And that's really great."

Four databases of citizen science and crowdsourcing projects —  SciStarter, the Citizen Science Association (CSA), CitSci.org, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (the Wilson Center Commons Lab) — are working on a common project metadata schema to support data sharing with the goal of maintaining accurate and up to date information about citizen science projects.  The federal government is joining this conversation with a cross-agency effort to promote citizen science and crowdsourcing as a tool to advance agency missions. Specifically, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), in collaboration with the U.S. Federal Community of Practice for Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing (FCPCCS),is compiling an Open Innovation Toolkit containing resources for federal employees hoping to implement citizen science and crowdsourcing projects. Navigation through this toolkit will be facilitated in part through a system of metadata tags. In addition, the Open Innovation Toolkit will link to the Wilson Center’s database of federal citizen science and crowdsourcing projects.These groups became aware of their complementary efforts and the shared challenge of developing project metadata tags, which gave rise to the need of a workshop.  

Negative values included when assessing air quality In computing average pollutant concentrations, EPA includes recorded values that are below zero. EPA advised that this is consistent with NEPM AAQ procedures. Logically, however, the lowest possible value for air pollutant concentrations is zero. Either it is present, even if in very small amounts, or it is not. Negative values are an artefact of the measurement and recording process. Leaving negative values in the data introduces a negative bias, which potentially under represents actual concentrations of pollutants. We noted a considerable number of negative values recorded. For example, in 2016, negative values comprised 5.3 per cent of recorded hourly PM2.5 values, and 1.3 per cent of hourly PM10 values. When we excluded negative values from the calculation of one‐day averages, there were five more exceedance days for PM2.5 and one more for PM10 during 2016.

Through Open Humans, you can gather valuable data about yourself and find cool projects to share it with.

But Dunkin emphasized having data isn’t enough: EPA’s working to make it more accessible. To help crowdsource data from citizen scientists and regulators at the state, local and tribal level, it’s critical to create data standards, she said.