Our citizen science lecture series speaker on Tuesday 11/6 at the La Jolla Riford Library is Barbara Lloyd, who is the co-founder of Ocean Sanctuaries. OS is a non-profit organization “devoted almost exclusively to ocean-related citizen science projects and sharing the data obtained from them with both the professional and citizen science community… to foster greater understanding, wise ecology, species protection and good stewardship of the ocean and related habitats”.
Title: Using Citizen Science to Track Sevengill Sharks
Speaker: Barbara Lloyd, Founder, Ocean Sanctuaries, (a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization)
Abstract: Certain species, such as the sevengill shark or the whale shark, have unique patterns which can be utilized to identify individuals and to track resightings of the same shark. Ocean Sanctuaries is using online tools along with photos and videos to develop a collaborative data management system to estimate sevengill shark populations in Southern California and South Africa.
For more information, visit The San Diego Wet Lab group’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/The-Wet-Lab-130034794515909/
If you love science and enjoy learning, you're in for a treat! Andrew (the brains behind Mark2Cure) will be holding a webinar using two case studies (the Gene Wiki Project and Mark2Cure) to illustrate the use of crowdsourcing as it applies to knowledge management for translational research. Registration is free and open to anyone (we checked first). There may be some required questions on the registration form which may not necessarily be applicable to you, but they're only meant to inform, not exclude. So, if you're interested in the webinar but don't have an affiliation with an institute or department, feel free to select 'other' and type in 'Mark2Cure'.
Speaker: Andrew Su, PhD, Professor, Department of Integrative, Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute
Overview: Crowdsourcing involves the engagement of large communities of individuals to collaboratively accomplish tasks at massive scale. These tasks could be online or offline, paid or for free. But how can crowdsourcing science help your research? This webinar will describe two crowdsourcing projects for translational research, both of which aim to better organize biomedical information so that it can be more easily accessed, integrated, and queried:
First, the goal of the Gene Wiki project is to create a community-maintained knowledge base of all relationships between biological entities, including genes, diseases, drugs, pathways, and variants. This project draws on the collective efforts of informatics researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including bioinformatics, cheminformatics, and medical informatics.
Second, the Mark2Cure project partners with the citizen scientist community to extract structured content from biomedical abstracts with an emphasis on rare disease. Although citizen scientists do not have any specialized expertise, after receiving proper training, Mark2Cure has shown that in aggregate they perform bio-curation at an accuracy comparable to professional scientists.
The Digital Scholar Webinar Series introduces health researchers at USC, CHLA and beyond to digital approaches and tools relevant to their research. The series showcases the potential and limitations of digital approaches health researchers need to be aware of. All webinars will be accessible afterward on the Digital Scholar Program page.
Our November meeting will include board elections followed by a presentation by Michelle Jachimowicz and Michelle Innis. They will be sharing insights about the mushrooms found in the forays and the workshops and findings from incredible speakers at the recent NAMA event in Salem, Oregon.
We will take the Michelles to dinner before the meeting around 5:00 at the Blue Water Seafood Grill 3667 India Street Come along to meet both Michelles over dinner.
Board Elections
We are a volunteer organization and need individuals to donate their time to keep the club operational and planning all the great talks, content, and forays that you have come to enjoy. Please consider running for one of the offices as we could really use your support.
Board Officer Positions and Responsibilities
The board is responsible for scheduling speakers and coordinating the Fungus fair.
**President: responsible for presiding over the monthly meetings, heading the monthly board meetings, submitting the room reservations, usually attends the SDBGF meetings to represent the club.
**Vice President: assists President and performs presidential obligations when president is indisposed.
**Secretary: take notes at board meetings and distributes information to the group.
**Treasurer: handles membership dues, handles accounting (speaker payments, dinner payments, expense reimbursements, etc.), pays club taxes from fair sales.
**Board Member at Large: non-officer who has responsibility of voting at board meetings and assisting with scheduling of speakers.
Non Board Positions
**SDBGF Representative: attends the SDBGF meetings and represents the club at the meeting. Participant is usually the president or a board member, but can be anyone affiliated with the club.
**Website Manager: posts club announcements on website.
**News Editor: sends emails about club events and meetings as well as other fun fungus facts and information
**Social Media Manager: posts club announcements on social media outlets.
**Audio/Visual Manager: sets up projector and audio equipment for club meetings and the fungus fair
**Public Relations Manager: manages advertising of the fungus fair (most advertising occurs in November for the February event).
**Foray Manager: organizes club forays (including obtaining foray waivers).
The meeting will start at 6:30 PM in Room 101, Casa Del Prado in Balboa Park.
On Thursday, Oct. 11, I Love A Clean San Diego’s supporters, community members, and local leaders gathered at the beautiful Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa for ILACSD’s annual Fall Social, the Catamaran Wine Mixer, an evening celebrating environmental action in our community.
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This year’s event, which took place as the sun set behind Mission Bay, included delicious food provided by the Catamaran and beer and wine provided by beverage sponsors Baja Brewing Company, Karl Strauss Brewing Company, and Summer Haines; an exciting auction and opportunity drawing; the chance to score premium vintages at the event’s wine pull; a wine tasting sampling a selection of fine wine; live music by Peter Hall; and more!
The festivities were also an opportunity to introduce I Love A Clean San Diego’s new Executive Director, Len Hering. Len began at ILACSD just last week, and we look forward to his leadership as we look toward ILACSD’s future.
The program culminated with an award ceremony recognizing local volunteers, businesses, and community leaders whose environmental commitment make ILACSD’s mission possible. We were pleased to present awards (made from recycled glass!) to this year’s honorees:
Proceeds from the Catamaran Wine Mixer will help I Love A Clean San Diego share more environmental educational resources, further build community volunteer opportunities, and offer even more zero waste resources benefitting all of San Diego County. Thank you to everyone who celebrated with us at this year’s Fall Social for helping us to create a cleaner, healthier, more beautiful San Diego! Check out more photos from the Catamaran Wine Mixer!.
ILACSD would like to thank the following sponsors for their generous support of the Fall Social:
We have been turning the pages in our rare books as frequently as every three months to protect the beautiful hand-colored images, and even then, we need to allow the books themselves to “rest.” This means removing them from public display and bringing out different objects, giving visitors the opportunity to see something new next time they visit.
Our October speaker will be our own Dennis Sharmahd, speaking on “The Mushrooms of Mexico“.We will take Dennis to dinner before the meeting around 5:00pm at Saffron Thai 3731B India St. Come along to meet Dennis over dinner.
The meeting will start at 6:30 PM in Room 101, Casa Del Prado in Balboa Park.
San Diego Gas & Electric has been delivering San Diegans their power for almost 150 years. On top of their work providing around 45% clean energy to homes and businesses in this region – compared to an average of 8% nationwide – SDG&E supports many local nonprofits organizations that are working to improve the environment. This year, SDG&E and the San Diego Padres are Going to Bat for San Diego, and teaming up to support I Love A Clean San Diego and celebrate Coastal Cleanup Day.
ILACSD is proud to be part of the 2018 Going to Bat for San Diego Starting Lineup!
As a special thank you to volunteers that Go to Bat for San Diego, SDG&E and the Padres are recognizing Coastal Cleanup Day participants with a Volunteer Appreciation Night at the Padres game on Monday, September 17. Coastal Cleanup Day volunteers receive a promo code to purchase discounted tickets and be recognized for their accomplishments in keeping San Diego clean.
The 34th annual Coastal Cleanup Day will bring thousands of volunteers together on September 15th to beautify more than 100 beaches, parks, and other outdoor spaces throughout the region. Over the past 17 years, SDG&E has helped support I Love A Clean San Diego’s Coastal Cleanup Day efforts with the participation of thousands of employee volunteers! We are pleased to highlight two SDG&E heavy hitters who have stepped up to the plate to serve as site captains for Coastal Cleanup Day throughout the years.
Crystal Yousef
Crystal and her sidekick, Tipsie, at Coastal Cleanup Day 2013.
Crystal has been an SDG&E employee for 15 years and a Coastal Cleanup Day site captain for close to 10 years. She can always be counted on to go wherever there is a need, and Coastal Cleanup Day has led her on expeditions to Encanto, Poway, Golden Hill, and Rancho Bernardo, among other places.
In her day job, Crystal works at SDG&E’s Environmental Lab, which does environmental sampling and test analyses. The Lab is certified to test for more than 500 chemical compounds, ensuring that SDG&E facilities are operating safely.
In Crystal’s decade of service at Coastal Cleanup Day, she says her favorite part of the annual volunteer event is seeing kids’ enthusiasm when they find a strange piece of trash. Whether it’s a shoe, a stuffed animal, or even a bathroom scale, kids often burst with excitement recounting where and how they found it, and in some instances, even make up stories for what they think the item is. It’s like trash show-and-tell.
Crystal also notes that she feels a sense of pride each year when she arrives at Coastal Cleanup Day to a sea of Team SDG&E volunteers outfitted in team t-shirts, which for many years were the two-toned tie-dye in the photo to the left. SDG&E and I Love A Clean San Diego are lucky to have folks like Crystal committed to ensuring a safe and successful cleanup for volunteers of all ages! This year, you can find Crystal helping out at the South Shores cleanup site in Mission Bay with Team SDG&E.
Hilary Haskell
Hilary participating in the 2016 City Heights Facelift with Team SDG&E.
Hilary has been an environmental enthusiast from a young age. In fact, in high school she conducted regular beach cleanups, and in college she interned with another environmental nonprofit, Orange County Coastkeeper. Fun fact: during Hilary’s internship, she helped to plan Kids’ Ocean Day in Orange County, aerial art and all! That’s the sister event to ILACSD’s San Diego Kids’ Ocean Day that occurs every spring.
Hilary joined SDG&E a little over two years ago and jumped right in with Coastal Cleanup Day. Last year, she led the San Dieguito Lagoon site for SDG&E, and this year you’ll find her at the Paradise Creek site in National City. Aside from having a good attitude and strong leadership qualities, Hilary brings another attribute to her role as site captain…she knows a lot about the environment! At SDG&E, she makes sure projects like the placing of a new power pole, or even the removal of one, don’t result in a detrimental environmental impact. She’s also one of the company’s leading sustainability advisors, helping to track SDG&E’s environmental performance in key areas.
While Hilary hasn’t been a part of Team SDG&E for very long, we anticipate that her involvement in Coastal Cleanup Day will continue for many years to come!
ILACSD is grateful for SDG&E’s longtime partnership and the hands-on role team members take on to make sure we knock Coastal Cleanup Day out of the park!
Preliminary analysis or your work on the Relationship Extraction task
We have been working on a preliminary analysis of the relationship extraction data generated by our fantastic Mark2Curators. This analysis is in the process of being written up into an academic paper and if your data was used for this paper, you will be given option of being credited on a page on our site dedicated to the contributors for this paper. We expect to have an email notifying contributors to the data set out by early next week, so keep an eye out for it.
San Diego Hackathon / Curation Jamboree
If you are in San Diego the week of October 14th, and have a background in software development, engineering, computational biology, bioinformatics, pathology, oncology, genomics, or biocuration--there is a hackathon/curation jamboree happening on October 15th-October 16th. The event is a joint event between the Griffith Labs, Su and Wu Labs and will cost $25 to register. Mark2Cure is a project of the Su Lab focusing on biomedical literature curation; while, the hackathon is focused on the CIViC resource from the Griffith labs. CIViC is an open access, open source, community-driven web resource for Clinical Interpretation of Variants in Cancer which aims to enable precision medicine by providing an educational forum for dissemination of knowledge and active discussion of the clinical significance of cancer genome alterations. You can learn more about this event at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cancer-variant-interpretation-hackathon-and-curation-jamboree-tickets-48287431006?aff=General
World Alzheimer Day
In case you missed it, September 21st is World Alzheimer’s day, and our friends at EyesOnAlz will be holding a world-wide Catchathon. Our very own TAdams organized a local team to participate in a previous Catchathon. If members of the Mark2Cure community are interested in teaming up and contributing with other Mark2Curators for this Catchathon, we would be happy to organize a Mark2Cure team for the event. Otherwise, if you are interested in contributing to Alzheimer’s research from the comfort of your own computer on an individual basis, we 100% encourage you to do so!
Science by the people and for the people—introducing a new Citizen Science project from the Knight Lab at UCSD
If you’ve ever wished that there was a citizen science project for answering questions about how nutrition and other habits affect health and other outcomes—there’s now a new platform to address your questions. This platform, Galileo, comes from the Knight Lab at the University of California, San Diego—the same lab that is responsible for the American Gut project!
Here’s how it works:
Learn more at gutinstinct.ucsd.edu/info
Learn more at gutinstinct.ucsd.edu/info