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Scientists Turning to Folks With iPhones to Get Research

by Terrence O'Brien on May 6, 2009 at 04:22 PM

Scientists May Turn To People With iPhones for Research

Citizen scientists are nothing new. In fact, they've been helping the Audubon Society to catalog birds since 1900, and have even been enlisted by NASA to study stardust collected in probes. But new technology like 3G data networks and advanced cell phone operating systems like the iPhone's OS X have scientists scrambling to put powerful, connected, mobile tools in the palms of amateur scientists everywhere.

According to CNN, scientists at several universities are working on developing an iPhone application that will be able to identify and track plant species with little more than a photo and GPS coordinates. Enthusiasts will be able to snap photos of leaves that will then be sent to a database where the images will be analyzed and the leaves automatically identified. The phone will also send back GPS data so that researchers can see where plants are flourishing or dying out, and so that they can better track the damages done by global warming.

Citizen scientists equipped with new tools to make their data more reliable can only expand the boundaries of scientific observation. And since science is based upon observable data, the more information that is gathered, the better and more reliable researchers' inferences will be. [From: CNN, Via: Fark]

Tags: botany, citizen science, CitizenScience, gps, iphone, iphone apps, IphoneApps, research, science, top

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