I love spending my SciFund money! And today I’m purchasing this test tube rack model number 744. This will allow me to grow the arabidopsis in a stable environment! It is $34.
Tag Archives: scifund
#SciFund Rd 3 with Dr. Elisabeth Whyte http://rkthb.co/11877
#Scifund Round 3 is underway and each day I will highlight a new proposal from the Challenge to give you a more in-depth understanding of each participant and their research.
Today I present to you Dr. Elisabeth Whyte. Her project is focused on software designed to improve the social skills and face processing abilities of autistic adolescents.
Tell us about yourself, where you are from, and where you see yourself going.
My name is Dr. Elisabeth Whyte. I am a post-doctoral research assistant at Penn State. I graduated with my PhD in developmental psychology in Summer of 2012.
How did you get involved in your research project?
Dr. Suzy Scherf, the lead investigator on our autism research project, created a computer-based intervention to improve face processing abilities of adolescents with autism. However, as some of the participants have come through the lab, we have gotten feedback that the intervention isn’t very fun. We know that motivation is an important factor for learning, and so increasing motivation for the adolescents to participate in the intervention is really an important goal for the next intervention phase.
Why is your research important to you? Why should others fund it?
In addition to being a researcher, I’m also a video game enthusiast, blogger (restokin.com), podcaster (teamwafflecast.com), etc. In watching research about video games, I came to realize that people in other health and education disciplines were using the aspects of video games that made them fun and motivating in their intervention research. I want to bring a better level of motivation and fun to computer-based interventions aimed at improving autism social impairments.
Why did you decide to participate in the SciFund Challenge?
The progress of science, especially when conducting intervention research, is really quite slow. Thus, our project’s grant funding runs out in a few months, and we still have a lot of unanswered questions! Even with submitting grant applications this Winter/spring, we still don’t have enough funds to complete the first intervention and get the second intervention started. So, we decided that crowdfunding would be a great way to solve two problems 1) it gives us a really creative way to collect the funds we need in the short-term to keep our research projects running, and 2) we get a chance to to share our Autism intervention research with the rest of the world!
What was the most difficult aspect of building your SciFund Proposal? What was your favorite?
Coming up with rewards for the SciFund proposal was actually the most difficult and my favorite part of building the proposal. It was difficult to come up with rewards that I thought people would actually want, but wouldn’t eat up all of our project funds in shipping. For example, my first idea was to get our lab logo printed on squishy stress balls shaped like a brain. However, the costs of that reward (in calculating printing costs and shipping costs) made it unfeasible to actually do. The final set of rewards that we came up with are things I’m really excited and proud of, including getting our lab’s resident artist to draw a picture of the brain that can be e-mailed and then sent in a flat packaging (lower shipping costs) to people in the US.
Tell us something random. Something funny. Something borrowed. Something blue…
As part of my role in the World of Warcraft gaming community, I write on a blog called “restokin.com“. For most of the time I was blogging, I wrote under a pseudonym (Lissanna) and haven’t talked much about my personal/work life. On day 1 of the Scifund Challenge, I posted an “about me and my research” post on my blog. http://www.restokin.com/
I got a lot of great e-mails, tweets, and other feedback from members of my gaming community about how their families have been affected by autism. So, I am really enjoying the chance to teach people about my research!
And to save you time from scrolling up, you can read about her project and contribute here. Thanks Dr. Whyte for sharing your science!
#SciFund Challenge Contest
Today is the first day of Round 3 of the #Scifund Challenge! As you may or may not recall, I was a participant of the challenge and it was such a wonderful experience that I wanted to help the third round. After all, I’m SciFund for life!
To celebrate the #SciFund Challenge Round 3 I thought I’d host a contest in hopes of getting some projects funded. All you need to do is pick a project and promote it! Leave a comment below saying which project you are promoting and where you are promoting it (please stick to Facebook, Twitter, or Google+). I’m on each network so find me so I can follow your progress.
Twitter: @thescienceofant – tweet #SciFund and @mention me
Facebook: Anthony Salvagno – friend me so I can like your post
Google+: Anthony Salvagno – add me to your circle and I’ll create a circle for Scifund promotion
The winner is the person who has the most retweets, likes, shares, comments, etc. You can repromote your choice campaign as well (those won’t count as a retweet, etc, but any shares from your reshare count toward your total). The contest will end tomorrow night (11/13/2012) at 11:59pm.
The winner will receive a bad ass business card design from IheartAnthony (my graphic design company), and we’ll talk about options for that when you receive notice of your victory. But for now let’s go #SciFund!
D2O Adaptation Days 37-40
On Thursday I ordered some more D2O and DDW for use in these experiments (Scifund money!) and I’m awaiting the arrival of the DDW (the D2O arrived on Friday). I ordered 3 bottles of D2O (total $313.36) and 2 bottles of DDW (about $250 total). Since I’m out of DDW and now can’t make any more DDW YPD I’m just going to propogate the D2O yeast since I have plenty of that.
On Friday I inoculated a culture of D2O yeast in 9ml of D2O (from an inoculating loop, instead of my usual 400ul of previous culture). I let it grow over the weekend and the 72h growth is: 3.343. This morning I inoculated 400ul of that culture in 10ml of D2O YPD and measured that in the nanodrop: 1.072 (0h).
First #SciFund Expenditure!
I’ve purchased my first product with the #SciFund money: 4 bottles of D2O for a total of $375. I can see this money going really fast since I can go through D2O and DDW like water… oh wait, it is! LOL 🙂
Writing the #SciFund Preproposal
I wrote my #SciFund Challenge preproposal back in March and I thought I’d share my proposal (again) with everyone and explained the thought process behind the writing.
Why am I doing this?
Well for one I’ve signed up to read some Round 3 preprosals, so if you want in you may have to go through me to get it done and I’d like to ensure that you can have a fun crowdfunding and #SciFund experience. The other reason is because I believe sharing is caring and the next round of #SciFund can be better if you build on the successes and learn from the failures of the second round. Yea for open science!
Below is the preproposal for your reading pleasure:
The first major challenge when writing the preproposal was deciding if I even wanted to participate. I didn’t know it at the time, but the #SciFund campaign is pretty time consuming. You have to advertise yourself every day and you can’t ever quit. But with that said it requires maybe an hour or two of dedication every day, unless you are requesting a high amount of funds (>$10,000) which would require you to have an even more robust marketing strategy. I was up to the challenge so I went ahead and signed up.
When you sign up, there are some real basic requirements that you should include in your proposal to show the readers that you are serious and capable regarding the project you wish to be crowdfunded:
- You must be addressing a scientific question or questions that can be answered with scientific methods. So, for example, you can’t propose research to prove or disprove the presence of divine beings.
- Your research must fit within the bounds of reality set by your scientific discipline (so no perpetual motion machines, for example).
- Your research must not be fraudulent.
- You must briefly show that you have the capacity and experience to carry out your research. We are just looking for very basic evidence here. For example, if you are planning an organic chemistry research project, stating that you were a graduate student in an organic chemistry lab would be good enough for us.
- Your fundraising target must be reasonable for what you are attempting to fund. For example, you seek to raise two thousand dollars, because that is the cost of 1) the scientific equipment you need, 2) a flight to South Africa where your ecological field site is located, or 3) anything else that can actually be accomplished with the money. Here is an example that would not pass muster: you seek eight thousand dollars, with which you will build your very own version of the Large Hadron Collider.
And the trick is that you have to do all that in 150 words! But fret not, it isn’t that difficult. Remember we are looking to convince the readers you aren’t a crazy and coherent English goes a long way in proving that! Once you demonstrate you can write coherent and logical sentences you just simply need to show that you are honest and have plans that are just as logical as your sentences. Let’s look at what I did (SciFund requirements in italics, my writing in bold:
- You must be addressing a scientific question or questions that can be answered with scientific methods.
- I plan to study the effects of DDW on E. coli and S. cerevisiae…
- I plan to study the effects of DDW on E. coli and S. cerevisiae…
- Your research must fit within the bounds of reality set by your scientific discipline.
- …by analyzing phenotype differences when exposed to varying amounts of deuterium.
- Your research must not be fraudulent.
- …all experimental data will be available online through my open notebook.
- You must briefly show that you have the capacity and experience to carry out your research.
- I am a PhD student in a biophysics lab at UNM…
- Your fundraising target must be reasonable for what you are attempting to fund.
- Funding will primarily go towards the purchase of D2O and DDW as well as other basic lab supplies that will be used in the project.
And to prove that I wasn’t just some kook who wanted to drown things in water, I wrote a brief introduction that explained the history of my project:
Immediately after heavy water (D2O) was purified in the early 1930’s, it was discovered that most organisms cannot survive in pure heavy water. Deuterium (D) is the isotope of hydrogen containing 1 neutron and it exists in natural water at about a 15mM concentration. Because of this, some organisms may have evolved essential uses for deuterium and these processes may be studied by using deuterium-depleted water (DDW).
So now that you’ve seen my preproposal broken down, how can you ensure you are admitted to the #SciFund Challenge Rd 3?Time for another list!!!
- Don’t over think it. Don’t spend hours slaving over this preproposal, but please spend more than 5 minutes.
- Explain your project as simply as possible. I’m only an expert in Open Notebook Science and heavy water interactions with yeast and tobacco seeds. That means if you are studying the Galapogos turtle migration patterns I won’t understand a word you say! I want to work with you to get your project funded so don’t give me or any of the other readers any reason to not admit you.
- Don’t ask for $1,000,000 and then say you want to buy popsicles, or conversely ask for $500 and say you can build a full sized replica of the moon. Common sense is all we’re looking for.
- Don’t worry too much about how much money you’re asking for. I don’t remember how much I initially asked for, and I most definitely changed that number when it came time to launch my campaign. A ball park figure is all you’ll need, but remember don’t over do it.
- Have fun with it! #SciFunders love what they do and want to interact with the world. Show us your love and your education!
When I first signed up for #Scifund, I was under the impression that the preproposal would be highly scrutinized and highly competitive. In the end I learned that the #SciFund community is super inclusive and they want people to fund raise because the spirit of the program is to educate scientists to interact with the public regarding science. Crowdfunding is just the mechanism to achieve this!
The SciFund Experiment: Yeast Adaptation to D2O
It has taken me quite a while, but I’m finally at the point where I can begin the experiments that my SciFund quest funded. To refresh your memory, here is my project proposal:
Water is arguably the most important molecule in the universe. It’s a simple molecule that is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen. But did you know there are different types of water molecules? Every element has alternate forms known as isotopes, and hydrogen is no different. A common isotope of hydrogen, known as deuterium (D) which is twice the mass of hydrogren, can bond with oxygen to make heavy water (D2O).
Immediately after heavy water was first purified from naturally occurring water in the early 1930s, it was discovered that most organisms cannot survive in pure heavy water. It was also shown that increased (but not toxic) levels of heavy water significantly affect many systems in these same organisms, like fertility, metabolism, temperature regulation, and many more, all of which are essential for healthy organism function. Interestingly, on a cellular level the increased mass of heavy water may affect chemical processes. Not many studies have been performed in this area, unfortunately, because many experimenters ignore the effects of water even though it is by far the most abundant molecule in these experiments.
Because of the presence of deuterium in naturally occurring water, life may have evolved essential uses for deuterium. I plan to study the effects of heavy water on E. coli and S. cerevisiae (baker’s yeast). I will be growing cultures of these microbes in water with varying amounts of heavy water (from 0% to 99.9%) and comparing characteristics between the cultures, looking for effects in growth, development, appearance, and other physical differences.
But that isn’t specific enough to describe what I actually intend to do with the money. The full explanation of the experiment is way cooler!
Initially I’m going to continue the experiments from April and May that compared the growth of yeast grown in DI water, DDW, and D2O. Each time I did a time trial experiment I would start from scratch to show that yeast grows much slower in D2O. This time I’m going to carry over the yeast each day. Over time I hope to show that the yeast is adapting to growing in D2O and begins to develop at a similar rate to how it develops in DI water and DDW.
Once that happens I’ll be doing two experiments.
First I’ll be looking for phenotype differences between yeast grown in H2O vs yeast grown in D2O. I’ll be looking for shape, size, motility, etc of the yeast using the lab’s light microscopes.
In the second experiment, I’ll flip the script on the yeast. Once I get the yeast to adapt to D2O, I would like to determine if H2O is as harmful to D2O adapted yeast as D2O is to H2O yeast (aka natural yeast). I’ll do this by growing the D2O adapted yeast in DDW/DI water and recording the growth. No matter what happens with this experiment, the results will be interesting.
#SciFund Round 3 is near!
I had such a wonderful experience with #SciFund Round 2 that I consider myself a #SciFunder for life. While I won’t be participating in the third round for funding, I will be providing my experience with funding success to those who are seeking funds in the third round. I will also be providing some bits of service to anyone who wants it so, if you have questions please ask. If you need some scientific design, step right up! And if you want to spread the word, than look no further!
Everything you need to know can be found via the SciFund website and hopefully I’ll drop some helpful bits of knowledge every now and then. The schedule of events is as follows:
- Registration is due by Oct 7. Here you will submit a short description of the project you wish to fund. This is a no stress scenario basically to prove you aren’t looking to make alien telepathy blocking helmets.
- Proposal writing takes place for the next month. This phase is extremely crucial and I will urge all participants to move as quickly as possible. There will be lots of reedits and you will need time to get this all done. You will also need to create a video explaining your project and this is even more time consuming.
- Finally on November 8, your proposals go live and the crowdfunding begins!
As I said earlier, I’ll be writing posts that will guide SciFund Rd 3 participants through the SciFund process and I’ll also be posting my exploits as a third party involved in the Challenge. Hopefully Round 3 is bigger and brighter than Round 2. The SciFund Challenge isn’t just about raising money for science, it’s about training scientists to engage their community and teach science. And I hope Round 3 can bring together a new group of scientists to spread the knowledge of science even further!
Comments about the #SciFund Challenge prior to publication
This is a much delayed post and I’m sorry for that, but better late than never. Now that I’m completely done with the #SciFund challenge, my money has arrived, and UNM has deposited the money in a spending account for myself I thought I’d share my thoughts about the entire experience. Today I’m going to talk about the #SciFund experience from application until publication, that is the moment my project went live.
Looking back, the application process was fairly simple and straightforward. I put a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself when writing my abstract (or pre-proposal as I called it then). I had assumed that the #SciFund selectors were going to be very critical of the type of research selected, and that there would be a lot of people applying for this unique opportunity. In retrospect I don’t think either of my assumptions were correct, but I do think having the attitude I had made my proposal an easy selection. Basically I put myself in a pressure situation that would cultivate success and that helped me get in.
Once I received my acceptance email, the work began. The proposal development for the SciFund challenge was extremely time consuming. Discussing with Koch we determined that it is really no more time consuming than writing a grant for a much larger award. Most of the time was spent writing and rewriting for a general audience, and there were iterations of critiquing involved as well.
The critiquing was crucial to the successful development of the proposal. The #SciFund Challenge had established a wiki that we could post our proposal to and the other #SciFunders would read and offer comments on how to improve the proposal. Everyone was required to read a couple other proposals and offer feedback, but a lot of us went the extra mile and read a lot more proposals and offered feedback. I think I personally offered constructive criticism on about 8 proposals.
Emphasis on constructive.
In my experience the community of #SciFund was the most rewarding aspect of the challenge. I don’t think crowdsourcing for science would have been successful if it wasn’t for the team effort. And the best part is, there was no trolling or negativity. We all understood from the start that we are all in this together. We aren’t technically competing with each other because all of our research reaches a different audience. There was a google group setup that allowed us to organize initiatives and spread information to each other, and this communication was extremely useful and positive.
The organization of the leaders of the Challenge was also impressive. I was involved in only the second #SciFund Challenge which was much larger in scope than the first challenge. The first email welcomed me to the program and provided a neat timeline of how the development of the proposal should flow. Then we would receive updates every few days that would help us stay on task and discuss extraneous details about the program that would be crucial to our success. Ultimately it was this organization that helped me maintain momentum throughout the proposal development process and ensure I uploaded to Rockethub on schedule.
Currently there are a few crowdfunding for science initiatives that have been released (Petridish.org and Microryza.com to name a couple). I haven’t experienced them, but I imagine those are a self-serve type site. If that is the case then I have no idea how crowdfunding research is successful on those sites unless you have a vast and wealthy network. I don’t think my crowdfunding campaign would have been as successful as it was without the support of the community and the organization of the leaders.
Final #Scifund money update
I literally just received an email from Judith Davenport of the UNM foundation regarding my scifund money. My banner spending account has been created, I’ve received the index code, and the money is ready to be spent! All the fruits of my labor and your generous contributions can now yield some tangible results and I can wait to get the experiments going!
First order of business will be to finish the preliminary experiments I worked on with yeast, and expand on them. The money that you contributed will be used mostly on water (both d2o and deuterium depleted water), but I’ll also need to buy some stationary and pay for printing for the thank you cards for all your generous donations.
This all commences next week!! I hope you are as excited as I am!