REINFORCE International Training Course 2022
Citizen Science creates numerous opportunities for all citizens – independent of their location, gender, or education – to be involved in ground-breaking fundamental research. Through citizen science activities, everyone can contribute to the development of new knowledge. Increasingly, scientists from Large Research Infrastructures and Frontier Physics experiments are starting to share their data and ask for citizens to support the optimization of their detectors to enhance discoveries potential. Have you ever wondered how you can contribute to cutting edge scientific research or how can frontier science contribute to society? Can you imagine yoruselves participating in a community with other citizens, teachers and researchers, analyzing real data, participating in exciting discoveries, and helping optimize Large Research Infrastructures in the fields of Gravitational Wave Astronomy, High Energy Physics, Neutrino Astronomy and Cosmic Rays? The REINFORCE International Training Course 2022 answers the questions above with a loud “Yes” and invites you to join a vibrant community of citizens, researchers and educators from all over the world aiming to bridge the gap between frontier research in Physics and Society through citizen science!
REINFORCE International Youth Art & Science Contest
The REINFORCE International Youth Art & Science Contest focuses on the concepts of fundamental physics, such as space, time and the nature and structure of the Universe. We are seeking artwork from kids aged 4-18 and all contestants have until 15 September, 2022 to submit their work. The winning entries will be presented during the 2022 European Researchers'Nights events at the European Gravitational Observatory and the finalists will be given the opportunity to participate in a virtual tour of the Observatory and the VIRGO detector (https://www.ego-gw.it). Those able to visit the site for the occasion will have the chance to undertake the tour in person! All participants will receive a REINFORCE Youth Artist Certificate and the artwork from the winners and finalists (a minimum of 3) will be published on the Platform for Artistic Intervention created on the Project website! Contest rules and further info available here: https://www.reinforceeu.eu/platform-for-artistic-intervention
How to use cosmic rays in the study of geosciences and archaeology
The technology developed to study fundamental physics can be applied to the development of frameworks that may have a significant impact on society. The Atmospheric Muons have unique potential to probe structures and provide insight in a series of issues, ranging from volcano live monitoring to applications in archaeology or use for non- invasive and non-destructive control processes in the industry. Muography is an innovative technique using secondary cosmic rays produced in the atmosphere, the most energetic of which have the property to cross ordinary matter over relevant distances (from meters to kilometers). The detection of those particles after any type of target allows therefore the characterization of the distribution and the density of the matter inside the target, as it is done for instance in medical imaging with X-rays. There is a strong societal impact of this technique, which is mostly passive and therefore adapted to any field of investigation: controls, risks assessment, hazards management. In the framework of REINFORCE, citizens will be provided with open data detected with distributed networks of cosmic ray detectors and will contribute in performing inquiries at the interplay between cosmic ray research and its applications. The webinar aims to give an overview of the Cosmic Muons Images Large Scale Citizen Science demonstrator and how it will be implemented in order to engage citizens in the scientific research, showcasing the tasks that citizens will be asked to perform and how their input will be fundamental to study geological phenomena and archaeology research by using Cosmic Rays. REGISTER HERE: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wGB-afBLR5O9qkIYDhn72Q
Discovering the unexplored deep marine environment
Deep underwater neutrino telescopes as KM3NeT measure neutrino and environmental events that constitute “noise” for the neutrino searches. These environmental events range from biological bioluminescence to acoustic signals from sea mammals. Citizens can support KM3NeTs scientists to increase the efficiency in the neutrino detection algorithms, providing input that will be crucial for two scientific tasks: the classification of noise types, and the identification of the frequency range and typical length of noise signals. The output of the citizen science activity will serve as a basis for training machine learning algorithms, which will automatically identify and classify the noise sources, thus monitoring the noise with an unprecedented detail. At the same time, citizens will have the opportunity to gain a greater insight of the unexplored deep marine environment. In the framework of REINFORCE, time sequences of the optical counting rates on the KM3NeT “eyes” will be made available to the general public in order to monitor ambient bioluminescence, and citizens will be invited to classify in a systematic way the various types of waveforms observed. Furthermore, in order to involve in this activity also visually-impaired citizen scientists, the “ears” of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope will also be exploited by utilising the time sequences of the acoustical signals detected. Both sound and visual data for the bioluminescence and the acoustic signals will be produced. The webinar aims to give an overview of the Deep Sea Hunters Large Scale Citizen Science demonstrator and how it will be implemented in order to engage citizens in the scientific research, showcasing the tasks that citizens will be asked to perform and how their input will be fundamental to explore the environment of the deep sea below 1000m depth in which humanity has little experience so far. Who should attend? Potential citizen scientists Neutrino researchers and academics Members of the physics and marine community You will learn: How citizens can play an active role in the advance of ground-breaking research How a deep underwater neutrino telescope works How REINFORCE demonstrator about Deep Sea Hunters will be developed How the project will work to include diverse and underrepresented groups in science Agenda 15:00 - 15:10: Welcome and introduction - Paschal Coyle, CPPM, Marseille 15:10 - 15:20: Neutrinos and KM3NeT - Gwenhael de Wasseige, APC, Paris 15:20 - 15:30: Deep Sea Hunters on Zooniverse - Remy Le Breton, APC, Paris 15:30 - 15:40: Bioluminescence - Severine Martini, Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, Marseille 15:40 - 15:50: Submarine Intelligent Listening into KM3EnT & Abyss - Herve Glotin, Computer Science & Systems Lab., CNRS, Toulon 15:50 - 16:00: Q&A and wrap-up