11 days left for Foldscope – origami microscopes – on Kickstarter

When I first heard that Foldscope was launching a Kickstarter to make these amazing origami paper microscopes available to the public, I put 2 different questions up on several of my social media sites: I’m thrilled out of my mind to be writing a post about this new good quality, “disposable”, CHEAP compound (uses microscope slides) microscope. Oh yeah – it’s 140X magnification – you can see bacteria What would you look at if you had such a thing? It’s practically indestructible (can step on it, throw it off a building, run it through the washing machine), it’s about the size of a 3X5 card and fits in your pocket. Runs on watch battery or just held up to a light. If you are a “career-biologist” – How would you use this to teach people about the wonders of science and our everyday (microscopic) world? If you are not a career-biologist – Just wondering what would be interesting to YOU. Is there anything you’d use it for? The feedback was AMAZING! Check out the suggestions and excitement: From the biologists look at: Take my kids on a TARDIGRADE hunt Pond water, leaf litter, whatever is around me Blood and fecal smears with

7 ways The BioCollective Will Accelerate Microbiome Research and Change Medicine

The BioCollective – transforming and accelerating microbiome research and novel therapies – while saving our human microbiome diversity and maybe you. Your poop is more than just waste. If you think that microbiome research has changed medicine – you ain’t seen nothing yet. The BioCollective (TBC) is transforming citizen science microbiome research from sample collection to the potential for providing a return on your initial “deposit”. TBC is building a microbiome data and sample repository to help scientists accelerate their research and development of potential therapeutics. TBC’s unique approach to microbiome citizen science research is due to the perfect trinity of collaborators: Martha Carlin, Jack Gilbert, PhD, and Suzanne Vernon, PhD. TBC is the brainchild of self-trained citizen scientist Martha Carlin, a former systems analyst who “turned around” struggling companies. Martha realized that for microbiome research to aid or even cure microbiome-related diseases, a new, integrative, multi-pronged approach was needed and a wider diversity of people should be sampled. The BioCollective provides solutions to many of the current issues with human microbiome research. A clean poop sample TBC Member issue: People are often totally “icked” out and may have trouble collecting high quality sample. Researcher issue: TBC Members have difficulty

Martha Carlin: A Visionary Citizen Scientist Changing Microbiome and Medical Research

Self-trained citizen scientist, Martha Carlin, founds The BioCollective to accelerate microbiome research and therapies. “Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson His vacant stare told Martha Carlin something was wrong with her 44-year-old husband. Many doctor’s visits later, the diagnosis – Parkinson’s Disease. A systems analyst and expert in turning around companies, Martha Carlin was determined to turn around the doctor’s prognosis that Parkinson’s would kill her husband. So for the next 15 years, she began pouring her energy, time, and disposable income into becoming a self-trained scientist. Starting with one of Michael J. Fox’s book, Martha read hundreds of books about nutrition, disease, and immunology. With the help of a childhood friend who was a college librarian and Googling for unfamiliar terms, Martha read scientific journal articles. Slowly she put together a mind map of different potential genetic and environmental influences that might have led to her husband’s Parkinson’s disease. During Parkinson’s Disease, brain cells stop producing the chemical messages that allow for coordinated movement. Patients gradually lose control of their muscles. As she interviewed Parkinson’s patients, Martha noticed that many had frequently used antibiotics, had chronic strep

DoggyBiome: Healthy? Sick? Young? Old? Send Us Your Dog Poop!

DoggyBiome joins KittyBiome in identifying pet gut microbiomes and developing new therapies for our furry family members. The world’s crappiest KICKSTARTER was funded! Looking forward to sending in my pup’s poop! Today Mostly Microbes is thrilled to have a guest post featuring another fabulous citizen science microbiome project – DoggyBiome. Inspired by her senior dog’s ailing gut health, Holly Ganz, PhD started examining pet microbiomes. DoggyBiome has a database of healthy wild and domesticated dogs to compare your dog’s microbiome to. As more people sequence both healthy and sick pets of all ages, identifying problems in the gut microbiome communities can lead to treatments both now and in the future. To get your dog or cat’s microbiome sequenced, check out AnimalBiome where screening services are currently half-price. Follow DoggyBiome and KittyBiome on twitter for sales and updates. Let me know if you participated and what you thought.

Put a Microscope in the Hands of Everyone! Foldscope launches Kickstarter!

Who would you educate with a pocket-sized paper microscope that costs ~ $1? Foldscope launches a Kickstarter campaign to “put a microscope in everyone’s hands.” Want to visit another world full of bizarre and beautiful creatures like you’ve never before imagined? Such a hidden world surrounds you wherever you are – the microscopic world. What? Don’t you have a microscope? Foldscope, a new Kickstarter project, aims to change that. Foldscope is a microscope made out of folded paper, a lens the size of a pinhead, and a piece of plastic to serve as a coverslip over a paper “slide”. With these simple materials, my 8-year-old daughter entered the fascinating microscopic world. Foldscope’s goal is to distribute at least a 1 million paper microscopes around the world to share the mystery and beauty of the hidden world around us. Considering their Kickstarter campaign had 1,000 backers and $40,000 of their $50,000 goal within 2 hours of launch, they are easily positioned to do that. However, they need scientists and educators to help convey the wonder of the microscopic world to the public. As one of the inventors, Manu Prakash told me, “This isn’t just a personal tool, but is about bringing