So you want to be a citizen scientist? The National Science Foundation (NSF) has got you covered. NSF supports citizen science across all areas of science, whether your passion is to scan the night sky, or explore your own backyard.

Join a flock of birders

    eBird is an online platform that allows bird-watchers to go online and record their sightings to a database. With more than 100,000 active users, eBird's system is a treasure of information on bird population, distribution and habitat, which users can explore in real time.

Count every drop

    The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) is the largest provider of daily precipitation observations in the United States. Volunteers set up rain gauges and record data every time a rain, snow or hail storm passes over. Data is organized and shared on the CoCoRaHS website, and used by scientists, farmers and more.

Search for stars with your computer

    Einstein@Home uses your computer's idle time to search for space signals. The project has already had major successes: Volunteers discovered about 50 stars, using data from Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory and Australia's Parkes Observatory. Einstein@Home also searches for gravitational-wave signals using data from NSF's Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory.

Be part of a supercomputer

    To link all those home computers, Einstien@Home uses software called the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, better known as BOINC. The software choreographs(安排，筹划) the technical aspect of volunteer computing and helps you use radio telescope signals to search for alien life.

Join the plankton party

    Without plankton, life in the ocean would not exist. These tiny organisms form the base of the food chain, and play an important role in the global carbon cycle. Plankton Portal enlists citizen scientists to identify images of plankton, snapped by the In Situ Icthyoplankton Imaging System (ISIIS), an underwater robot engineered at the University of Miami. ISIIS has taken millions of images in oceans around the world and upload them into a database; classifying the images helps researchers understand plankton diversity, habitat and behavior.

    How is it that siblings (兄弟姐妹) can turn out so differently? One answer is that in fact each sibling grows up in a different family. The firstborn is, for a while, an only child, and therefore has a completely different experience of the parents than those born later. The next child is, for a while, the youngest, until the situation is changed by a new arrival. The mother and father themselves are changing and growing up too. One sibling might live in a stable and close family in the first few years; another might be raised in a family crisis, with a disappointed mother or an angry father.

    Sibling competition was identified as an important shaping force as early as in 1918. But more recently, researchers have found many ways in which brothers and sisters are a lasting force in each others' lives. Dr. Annette Henderson says firstborn children pick up vocabulary more quickly than their siblings. The reason for this might be that the later children aren't getting the same one-on-one time with parents. But that doesn't mean that the younger children have problems with language development. Later-borns don't enjoy that much talking time with parents, but instead they harvest lessons from bigger brothers and sisters, learning entire phrases and getting an understanding of social concepts such as the difference between “I” and “me”.

    A Cambridge University study of 140 children found that siblings created a rich world of play that helped them grow socially. Love-hate relationships were common among the children. Even those siblings who fought the most had just as much positive communication as the other sibling pairs.

    One way children seek more attention from parents is by making themselves different from their siblings, particularly if they are close in age. Researchers have found that the first two children in a family are typically more different from each other than the second and third. Girls with brothers show their differences to a maximum degree by being more feminine than girls with sisters. A 2003 research paper studied adolescents from 185 families over two years, finding that those who changed to make themselves different from their siblings were successful in increasing the amount of warmth they gained from their parents.

    Two men were sitting together in a plane. They were on a long journey. One of the men was a businessman. The other was a farmer. They sat without talking for a while, then the farmer said, “Let's do something to pass the time.”

     “What do you want to do?” the businessman asked. “We can ask each other riddles.” The farmer said, “You start.” “Let's make the rules first,” the businessman said. “That's not fair. You are a businessman with much knowledge. You know more things than I do. I am just a farmer.”

    “That's true.” The businessman said. “What do you want we should do?” “If you don't know the answer to a riddle, you pay me $100. And if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $50.” The farmer said. The businessman thought about this, then he said, “OK. That's fair. Who will go first?”

    “I will,” The farmer said. “Here is my riddle. What has three legs when it walks, but only two legs when it flies?” The business man repeated the riddle, “What has three legs when it walks, but only two legs when it flies? Mm, that's a good one. I'm afraid I don't know the answer.” He gave the farmer $100, then said, “Tell me the answer. What has three legs when it walks, but only two legs when it flies?” “I don't know.” The farmer said and gave him $50.

    Birthdays often involve surprises.But this year's surprise on the birthday of the great British playwright William Shakespeare is surely one of the most dramatic.

    On April 22,one day before his 441st birthday anniversary,experts discovered that one of the most recognizable portraits（画像）of William Shakespeare is a fake.This means that we no longer have a good idea of what Shakespeare looked like."It's very possible that many pictures of Shakespeare might be unreliable because many of them are copies of this one,"said an expert from Britain's National Portrait Gallery.

    The discovery comes after four months of testing using modern chemistry technology.The experts from the gallery say the image—commonly known as the "Flower portrait"—was actually painted in the 1800s,about two centuries after Shakespeare's death.The art experts who work at the gallery say they also used modern chemistry technology to check the paint on the picture.These checks found traces of paint dating from about 1814.Shakespeare died in 1616,and the date that appears on the portrait is 1609.

    “We now think the portrait dates back to around 1818 to 1840.This was when there was a renewed interest in Shakespeare's plays,”Tarnya Cooper,the gallery's curator（馆长）,told the Associated President.

    The fake picture has often been used as a cover for collections of his plays.It is called the Flower portrait because one of its owners,Desmond Flower,gave it to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

    “There have always been questions about the painting,”said David Howells,curator for the Royal Shakespeare Company.“Now we know the truth,we can put the image in its proper place in the history of Shakespearean portraiture.”

    Two other images of Shakespeare,are also being studied as part of the investigation and the results will come out later this month.

    Shyness May Be Partly Inherited(遗传)

    About 92 million Americans are shy, and according to recent research about half of them inherited the trait.

    The studies were discussed at the American Psychological Convention.

    One study, by Harvard University, was of babies 21- 48 months old. It concluded that these babies had a high heart rate when shown unfamiliar people or different toys.

    Although shyness is not new, it has only recently become of interest to researchers. The first study on the genetic connection was in 1979.

    According to Warren Jones of the University of Tulsa, social relations these days are more complex. "With less ritual(仪式) and more complex situations," he said, "shyness is a national concern."

    Not all shy people are anxious and fearful, according to another study. Evidence shows that only half of shy people are tense, worried, and fearful in social situations.

    Many men use shyness as an excuse for failing in social situations, according to C.R. Snyder of the University of Kansas. "This is not true of females. Perhaps,

    American men are pressured to be assertive(自信的) and successful. So they would rather say they're shy than admit they're incompetent."

    Shy people may do very well socially after the first meeting with someone. In fact, shy people tend to be more stable.

    The psychologists said shyness seems to be cultural. Japan has the highest rating. China and Israel have the lowest rating. The United States rated in the middle.

    Few of us make money by losing sleep. But three graduate students at Brown University in Providence built a company around sleep deprivation(睡眠不足).

    Jason Donahue, Ben Rubin and Eric Shashoua were working late nights in Brown's business and engineering schools. They began thinking about ways to sleep better. They discovered they weren't alone in burning the midnight oil. Around 20% of Americans get less than six hours of rest a night.

    The friends imagined a smart alarm clock that could track how much time people spend in the most restorative(有恢复作用的) stages of the sleep cycle: REM (rapid eye movement) and deep sleep. What would it cost to design such a thing? Five years of research, 20 employees, $14 million and a whole lot of doubting from investors and scientists.

    Their company, Zeo, based in Newton, Mass, launched its product in June, 2009. The Zeo device uses a headband with tiny sensors(传感器) that scan your brain for signs of four sleep states-REM, light, deep and waking sleep. The smart alarm clock displays a graph of your sleep pattern and wakes you as you're not in REM sleep. In the morning you can upload the data to the company's Web site, and so track your sleep over time. Most of the feedback(反馈) comes in the form of Zeo's ZQ score showing how well you've slept.

    “Zeo allows people to unlock this black box of sleep,” says Dave Dickinson, a health-care CEO.

    Whether any of this actually improves sleep is up to the consumer, who will also need to make lifestyle changes like cutting out alcohol before bedtime or caffeine after 3 P.M.

    For now the company is selling Zeo online only. Dickinson also plans to spread it to countries such as Australia, where sleep deprivation approaches US levels.