Welcome back!

This year is looking to be another great year for Science NHS at Youngker High School.  I’m excited to see old members returning and excited to meet new members.

This year we will continue posting students’ summaries of their citizen science projects and their community outreach projects.  Students will also write a short summary of a scientific paper that we read as a group, so look out of those posts.

Ms. Doskocil

Gaming the Brain

Marlene Sanchez

It is a game like simulator where the user maps neurons in the retina. This served as a way for people to better understand their brain and what goes on in it. So all the user had to do was look at a brain scan and try to determine what was a neuron based on the scan. Once we did that we had to physically locate the neuron in the brain on the scanner. I chose this project because anything that involves the brain or mental issues interest me so much. I feel as though I know so much more about the human brain than I ever learned in anatomy and I feel as though I made a difference in some way. http://eyewire.org/explore

Galaxies Everywhere

Mackenzie Roland
October 31, 2016
Citizen Science Project
Science National Honors Society
Classifying Galaxies
The project that I chose was Classify Galaxies, through Galaxy Zoo. The project was to look at images of galaxies that are either newly discovered or scarcely researched and answer a series of questions to help classify them. I helped by classifying galaxies and providing information to a team of scientists so they could properly analyze the galaxy. Among the many citizen science projects presented, this one stood out because it gave an opportunity to look at and help classify images of galaxies that few get to see. Although I am not a huge space enthusiast, it presented an offer to explore space in a way the many don’t get to, and help along the way. At first, I was not very enthralled, since space sciences are widely explored, but as a begun to classify and discuss the galaxies with others, I found that it has a bigger impact than I expected. By the end of my time classifying galaxies, I felt that I had helped in the analysis and recording of galaxies that few get to see and was a contributing factor to the continuing expansion of space exploration.
https://www.galaxyzoo.org/#/

Picking up Trash

Kiara Rivas

Science Project

The project I participated in was volunteering to pick up debris in the Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Center with other members of Science National Honors Society. I helped the community by picking up many pieces of trash and cleaning up big portions of wreckage that was washed onto the dried up river. I chose to do this because I enjoy making a small difference in the world and helping to make it a better place. After completing my part, I felt very accomplished because I helped make a change that was significant to the community and worked together with a team to accomplish this task. I would definitely participate in a project like this one again.

 

 

Project website: https://www.phoenix.gov/parks/trails/locations/rio-salado-habitat-restoration-area

Associating Words

Ana Munoz

Citizen Science Project:

The project was a study on word associations. Scientists are studying the language and memory organization. This is a large-scale scientific study that aims to build a map of the human lexicon in the major languages of the world. I contributed by allowing researchers to have insight into what words and what part of their meaning are central in the human mind. These results will enable psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and others to test new theories about how the human brain represents and processes language. I chose this project because I thought it was interesting to learn more how the brain handles a lot of our memory and recognition of words. I feel like I gave these researchers’ the results they need to further continue their studies.

https://smallworldofwords.org/en/project/home

iNaturalist

Erick Langunas

Community Science Project

I joined the iNaturalist project which empowers citizens to record biodiversity. The goal of the project is to go out in the wild and take pictures of the nature around you and send your findings to their website. I joined this project because I enjoy hiking and taking these photos was very entertaining. I helped the community by providing images of the current Arizonian environment which land managers and scientist can use to monitor changes in the environment. Science is important because with it we can use it to understand changes in the environment and why they happen. After doing this, I felt very content with myself because I had helped the community once more.

Ocean Fish

Anthony Khalifeh

Citizen

http://www.oceannetworks.ca/learning/get-involved/citizen-science/digital-fishers

For this citizen science project I did on where you identified different species of fish in the ocean and you label them and for some say what they are doing. This is important because there is a lot of ocean and scientists cannot work to label all of it and need help due to the size of the operation. I learned about all the different types of fish and other species that live in parts of the ocean that I didn’t believe were that biologically diverse. This impacts the science community by easing the load on scientists and allowing them to do other tasks so they can do important that might be more important at that time.