Gamers are called to fight Alzheimer's disease
New available online, the game invites you to look into the virtual microscope and directly contribute to the ongoing at Cornell University study on the search for a cure for Alzheimer's disease.
In October the Institute of human computing (Human Computation Institute) has launched a game Stall Catchers, the mission of which is to view a short black-and-white commercials in search of a blocked blood vessels within designated areas. The more found vessels, the more the user is assigned points.
Used in the game videos shot by members of the laboratory of Chris Shaffer (Chris Schaffer) and Nozomi Nishimura (Nishimura Nozomi) from Cornell University. These researchers have already obtained interesting new data showing that the weakening of the blood flow in the brain contributes to the development of Alzheimer's disease in a mouse model of the disease, and continue working in this direction.
According to Shaffer, the first time they were able to identify the mechanism responsible for the significant weakening of the blood flow in Alzheimer's disease and reverse some typical diseases of cognitive symptoms with reducing the blood flow of the drug. To date, however, a bottleneck of the research is the process of finding a blocked blood vessels, which still is in the form of manual image analysis and not amenable to automation.
He also adds that two hours in the laboratory, the researcher can get a visual of the data to decrypt them manually you will need about weeks. In other words, while during the week it is to obtain enough data to test new ideas or potential drug analysis of these data takes about a year. The authors hope that public involvement will significantly speed up this process.
Stall Catchers is one of two games developed in the framework of EyesOnALZ project citizen science, which aims to attract people who do not have academic qualifications, to the analysis of scientific data. Platform Stall Catchers are based on the highly successful citizen science project Stardust@home, the head of which is Professor Andrew Westfall (Andrew Westfall) from the University of California at Berkeley, identified particles of star dust, is included in the startup space glass gel. The project also involved the Princeton University and projects SciStarter.com and WiredDifferently.org
To play in Stall Catchers, you must register on the project website.
Eugene Ryabtsev
The portal of "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru according to the materials of Cornell University: In the fight against Alzheimer's, online gamers can now get in on the action.
17.10.2016