seplute
commented
8 years ago @arlissc, could the description be edited as below? Thanks !!
EyesOnALZ is the first ever initiative that applies citizen science to the analysis of Alzheimer's research data. The project is developing two online games that will crowdsource the data acquired at Cornell University, where promising leads in slowing down and preventing Alzheimer's have recently been found. Since the data analysis is extremely time-consuming, it could take decades before the researchers arrive at actual treatment targets - but with volunteers' help we could speed up this process by orders of magnitude. Stall Catchers is the first of two EyesOnALZ games, and is already available online. In Stall Catchers participants view movies of live mouse brains and try to "catch" stalls - clogged blood vessels. By playing the game, participants will help to answer research questions leading up to potential Alzheimer's treatments, thus directly fighting a disease that in one way or another affects everyone. The goal of this session is to demonstrate the game & start building the first ever community of #citsci4alz.
[ ID ] 3bae3bb8-29ab-4404-9482-2055a276a0a4
[ Submitter's Name ] Egle Marija Ramanauskaite [ Submitter's Affiliated Organisation ] Human Computation Institute [ Submitter's Twitter ] seplute
[ Space ] science
[ Format ] demo, game, Intro talk & demo of the project (15 min) with a game/tournament (15 min)
Description
WeCureALZ* is a game that will, for the first time ever, allow anyone to fight Alzheimer's directly - through citizen science. Researchers at Cornell University have found promising leads in slowing down or preventing Alzheimer's, but due to the data analysis step, it could take decades before we arrive at an actual treatment target. To overcome this, we have created a game that will allow everyone to become "Stall Catchers" and hunt for clogged blood vessels in realtime brain blood flow movies. With the help of citizen scientists, we could arrive at promising treatment targets in just a few years, all the while learning about and fighting a disease that in one way or another affects everyone. The goal of this session is to demonstrate the game & start building the first ever community of #citsci4alz.
Agenda
Participants will play the brand new Stall Catcher game, and get a peek at the underlying science (including an opportunity to ask a few questions). After a brief tutorial (1 min), we will then run a BLITZ stall catching tournament, and reward the participant(s) with the highest scores. All participants will also get a digital MozFest “Stall Catcher" badge.
Participants
Our general approach will work equally well with any number of participants, but with fewer participants (e.g. 3) we can spend more time on the underlying science, and run it in a more competitive tournament style with more participants. In all cases we will run a short round of stall catching, and spend more or less time (depending on the size of the group) analyzing each other’s answers. We might have to limit the time for questions if the group is very large (e.g. 25), but will be able to engage deeper with interested participants after the session.
Outcome
The session goal is to enlist the MozFest community of open science enthusiasts as inner-circle project participants who will continue to actively shape the project and advance its humanitarian goals. Key next steps include making the game more engaging and accessible and creating high exposure spin-offs, such as lesson plans targeted to large special populations, such as middle school children and aging populations. All participants will be able to join our growing online community and shape further development of the project!