background preloader

Crowdsourcing

Facebook Twitter

Magic? How INRIX Traffic Crowd-Sourcing Really Works » INRIX Traffic Blog. How crowdsourcing will give Hilton Head better mobile coverage — Mobile Technology News. You Can Crowdfund a Politician but you Can’t Crowdfund an Entrepreneur? Hatari: Battling Corruption in Kenya. Victory for crowdsourced biomolecule design. An enzyme designed by players of the protein-folding game Foldit was better than anything scientists could come up with.

Victory for crowdsourced biomolecule design

Obsessive gamers’ hours at the computer have now topped scientists’ efforts to improve a model enzyme, in what researchers say is the first crowdsourced redesign of a protein. The online game Foldit, developed by teams led by Zoran Popovic, director of the Center for Game Science, and biochemist David Baker, both at the University of Washington in Seattle, allows players to fiddle at folding proteins on their home computers in search of the best-scoring (lowest-energy) configurations. The researchers have previously reported successes by Foldit players in folding proteins1, but the latest work moves into the realm of protein design, a more open-ended problem. By posing a series of puzzles to Foldit players and then testing variations on the players’ best designs in the lab, researchers have created an enzyme with more than 18-fold higher activity than the original. The Science Behind Foldit.

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research.

The Science Behind Foldit

This page describes the science behind Foldit and how your playing can help. What is a protein? Proteins are the workhorses in every cell of every living thing. Your body is made up of trillions of cells, of all different kinds: muscle cells, brain cells, blood cells, and more. Inside those cells, proteins are allowing your body to do what it does: break down food to power your muscles, send signals through your brain that control the body, and transport nutrients through your blood. What are amino acids? What shape will a protein fold into? Why is shape important? What do proteins do? Proteins are present in all living things, even plants, bacteria, and viruses. Photosystem I is a collection of proteins in plants that captures sunlight for photosynthesis.Luciferase catalyzes the chemical reaction that makes fireflies glow.Hemagglutinin helps the influenza virus invade our cells.

Open Source Cities. Open Source Cities is co-hosting a panel discussion and meetup on urban mobility, cities and the built environment in New York City on May 2nd from 4-6pm at the offices of BMW i Ventures.

Open Source Cities

The event co-hosts are Green Parking Council, AECOM, BüroNY, and TimHaahs. Presentations by: John Schmid, Chairman, Green Parking CouncilJoachim Hauser, BMW Mobility Services Panel Discussion: Susan Szenasy, Editor in Chief, Metropolis Magazine (Moderator)Gisela Baurman, Büro NYDave Kooris, AICP, Vice President, Regional Plan AssociationGary Lawrence, Chief Sustainability Officer, AECOMJohn Parkinson, Director, Urban Land InstituteJim Zullo, AICP, PE, Vice President, TimHaahs Associates Limited space available, please RSVP to: salon@greenparkingcouncil.org. #1 Site for Crowdsourcing, Crowdfunding, & Open Innovation News. Bey2ollak: An Egyptian start-up success story to aspire to. Bey2ollak is one of two Egyptian start-ups which are US bound, following their participation in the NexGen IT Entrepreneurs Boot Camp last month. Hearing the news that American and Danish entrepreneurs were flying in to Cairo, to host a seminar especially for Egypt’s up-and-coming start-ups, one of Bey2ollak’s five co-founders, Mohamed Rafea snagged a spot at the table.

Bey2ollak is the brainchild of five cousins. Aly Rafea, Mohamed Rafea and Gamal Sadek, all computer science graduates, were responsible for development. Mostafa Beltagy, a business administration graduate, took on marketing, while Yehia Ismail, an architect by profession, was responsible for the design and UI. Bey2ollak is a cross-platform mobile app allowing users to share real-time information about Cairo and Alexandria traffic.

Sadek came up with the name, Bey2ollak, an Egyptian expression used when telling someone about something you’ve heard. Bey2ollak started out as a concept to share information among friends. Bey2ollak.com. Michael Nielsen: Open science now! Top 11 Citizen Science Projects of 2011. Developing Citizen Science Programs. How do crowdsourcing, the Internet of things and big data converge on geospatial technology?