Feel Good Friday - Zooniverse

Today's Feel Good Friday story is all about Zooniverse!

As summarized on their website, "Zooniverse is the world's largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. This research is made possible by volunteers - hundreds of thousands of people around the world who come together to assist professional researchers." I learned about them yesterday when I volunteered to count penguins with some coworkers.

Scientific data collection can be too much of a good thing. "With the help of Zooniverse volunteers, researchers can analyze their information more quickly and accurately than would otherwise be possible, saving time and resources, advancing the ability of computers to do the same tasks, and leading to faster progress and understanding of the world, getting to exciting results more quickly." That's right, you're advancing scientific discovery and artificial intelligence, all while clicking on adorable pictures of penguins. The results can be found in the many Zooniverse publications.

Zooniverse is a partnership between organizations in the UK, such as the University of Oxford and organizations in the US, including the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and the University of Minnesota. For the educators among you, visit ZooTeach, a website where teachers share lesson plans and resources that compliment Zooniverse's projects.

What projects, you ask? There are a wide variety focused in the areas of nature, space, literature, medicine, arts, climate and more! Some of the projects that sound interesting to me (in addition to the penguins) are counting flowers for bees, training an algorithm to recognize plastic trash on the beach, annotating and tagging diaries from WWI and characterizing bat calls.

If you'd like to get more involved you can read about all the projects here, pick your favorites and then volunteer from the comfort of home or your neighborhood cafe. To stay in the loop with new projects as they are added to the mix, like the Zooniverse Facebook page and follow them on Twitter @the_zooniverse

Feel Good Friday - Stemettes

Happy Feel Good Friday from London, home of Stemettes!

Based on their name, you won't be surprised to learn that "Stemettes is an award-winning social
enterprise working across the UK & Ireland and beyond to inspire and support young women into Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths careers (known collectively as STEM)."

Since 2013, over 14,000 girls have attended free events and workshops throughout the UK and Ireland. Events include "STEM in a Day" school trips to partner companies like Accenture and Salesforce, coding hackathons at companies like Oracle and Merrill Lynch, and panel discussions for girls to meet women and men in the industry. Check out the video from their 2016 panel event here to see what the girls had to say about it.

The mission of the Stemettes organization is "to inspire the next generation of females into STEM fields..." and the stories written by the young Stemettes on this blog prove they are well on their way.

You can financially support them with a purchase of a Stemette t-shirt or tote bag and morally support them by liking their Facebook page and following them on Twitter @Stemettes!

Feel Good Friday - Biblioteca Los Mangos

Feliz Feel Good Friday! It's Cinco de Mayo so we're going to highlight an organization in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - Biblioteca Los Mangos!

The website is written in Spanish but with the help of some online translation, here's what I can tell you. Biblioteca Los Mangos is a library and cultural center in Puerto Vallarta that has been offering free cultural courses and workshops for children, adolescents and adults since 1996

Their mission is to ensure that people in the community have access to high quality general-interest information and technologies so they may use them to learn, grow and develop. The vision is to promote the habit of reading as well as preserve cultural traditions within the community. Biblioteca Los Mangos has over 30,000 books in Spanish and English and offers 4,500 individual services per month.

Their spring cultural classes include ballet and folk dancing, singing, yoga, art history and manga drawing! They also have an ongoing program called APAPACHO. It's for parents with children 2-3 years old and focuses on nourishing their creative and mental development.

Last, there is a local market on Saturdays located in front of the library where you can buy fruits, vegetables, baked goods, clothing jewelry and crafts. All while enjoying live music and entertainment! If you're planning a trip to Puerto Vallarta you can visit in person. If not, you can visit via this video and stay in the loop by liking their Facebook page and following them on Twitter @BibliotecaPVR. Adios!