I'm back...and I'm on Twitter!

Greetings! Thanks for coming back for more +/- Science. (Or, if you're a first timer, welcome, welcome.)

It's good to be back myself. Naturally, I didn't think I'd be away so long...I spent most of my time this summer in Washington D.C. and away from Wisconsin. Weather-wise, not a good a trade-off. But, on the plus side, I got to work for (*warning: plug alert*) a great outlet named EARTH Magazine for several months. In case you don't believe me, this was my office space (don't mind the apple core)...

Pretty nice digs

I'm looking forward to adding posts regularly again and hopefully generating some interesting conversations.  One final note...I'm on Twitter, finally. Caught the bug over the summer tweeting for EARTH, and now I'm striking out on my own. Follow me at @Tim_Oleson. You can view recent tweets on the sidebar at right.

Thanks again for reading.

Crowdsourcing Science

In this age of the ever-expanding scope and complexity of cutting-edge science, researchers are increasingly using any and all resources at their disposal to expand their capacity for data collection and analysis.  This may mean borrowing time on massive, multi-user super-computers to run complex simulations (climate models, for example), or it may mean larger and larger interdisciplinary collaborations among scientists who each have their own equipment and expertise.

In this age of ever-expanding wired interconnectivity, there are also a growing number of opportunities for members of the everyday public to voluntarily offer up their services in the name of scientific awareness and progress.  These citizen scientists have been helping in everything from surveys of wildlife (see, for instance, my last post about the updated winter wolf count in Wisconsin, which relies in part on observations from knowledgeable amateurs) to surveys of interstellar gravitational waves.