How thousands of Eve Online players help decipher the human body
From translator
I present to you the translation of the article by April 28, 2016 by Matt Kamen.
The article tells about the possibilities that multiplayer games can provide and provide in solving important problems for all mankind related to the need to attract a large amount of human resources.
Credit CCP Games
EVE Online is not just a game on the Internet about spaceships and fiction politics. Since March (2016 - a comment of the translator ), the developers of CCP Games have launched Project Discovery ( Project Discovery ) - an initiative aimed at improving the scientific understanding of the human body at the smallest levels.
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Launched in conjunction with the Human Protein Atlas project and the Massively Multiplayer Online Science platform, the project connects to EVE Online's largest resource — its player base — to help classify millions of proteins. “We show them an image, and they can change its color by applying green or red paint on it to help them analyze it a little better,” said Linzi Campbell, developer of the Discovery project. “Then we also show them examples - the cytoplasm is their favorite! We show them what the images of each of them should be like, and just suggest that they choose several options that they identify inside the image. The identifications are shuffled every time, so it’s not possible to follow the rule: “well, I’ll always always choose the one on the right”. They need to really think about it. ”
Credit CCP Games
The analysis project works in EVE Online as a mini-game and works in the context of mastering the game. “We have such an NPC organization (NPC, Non-Player Character — a character controlled by a computer, not a player — note of a translator ) called Drifters — they resemble the mysterious essence in New Eden (New Eden is an interplanetary institution EVE), ”explains Campbell. “The players know almost nothing about Drifter at the moment, so we masked it in the universe as Drifter DNA, which they can analyze. In my opinion, this is just perfect. We called it [a study conducted by] Sisters of Eve , and so they are analyzing this Drifter DNA. "
The result was amazing. “We had an amazing number of classifications, and we overcame our wildest expectations,” says Emma Lundberg, associate professor at Human Protein Atlas. “Now, after six weeks, we already have almost eight million classifications, and the players spent 16.2 million minutes playing a mini-game. When we calculated it, it turned out - by Swedish standards - up to 163 working years. This is madness". “Internally, we had modest assumptions. We said that if we get 40,000+ classifications per day, we will be happy. If we get 100,000 per day, we will be delighted, ”adds Lundberg. “But when it reached the peak for the first time, we had 900,000 classifications per day. Now it has stabilized, but we still get about 200,000 per day, so everyone was stunned. We did not expect this. ”
Currently, EVE players are viewing images from the Lundberg website, which is the director of the subcellular atlas section of Cell atlas . It took the players only three weeks to complete the entire workload, and now they perform a second run for authenticity, without any signs of declining interest. “One of the problems associated with gamification of science is that interest is rapidly falling, and we hoped that we could prevent this by using the existing game, adding rewards,” says Lundberg. "I think the biggest difference is that it is integrated into the game."
The Atlas of Human Proteins itself expands to the mapping of the human genome , but at a much lower level. “We have about 20,000 genes, and now we have not yet proved the existence of even more than 70 percent of them. So there is a big gap between protein research and DNA research, and there are several reasons for this, ”says Lundberg. “DNA can be propagated so that it can be easily studied, but you cannot propagate proteins. Also, since all cells have the same DNA, you can [just] take a blood sample [to see it]. But proteins expressed in genes are distributed throughout the body. You have to cover the whole body, and therefore, from a technological point of view, it is much more difficult to study proteins, ”she continues. “From my point of view, this is the interesting part: proteins are molecules that perform a function, and drugs act by targeting proteins. Therefore, if you want to develop better medicines, understand how people are organized, or understand [their] biology, you should know what proteins do. ”
Credit CCP Games
Soon the players' efforts will be felt in a wider scientific field. After checking their categorizations and analyzes — a process associated with reference images that are known to researchers as being obviously correct and used to measure the performance of the collective mind of EVE — their results were included in the HPA (atlas) database. All data is publicly available, and the atlas has about 100,000 users per month. On average, two peer-reviewed research papers are already published every day, and when the next version of the atlas is published in December, future documents will include data from EVE players. “It remains to prove that players can provide high-quality research data, so the scientific community is now closely watching us,” says Lundberg. However, there is already reason to be sure - the players get results. “One example is that there is a very unknown biological structure that has only three known protein components,” explains Lundberg. “Players identified another 100 candidates. This is a great starting point for discovering new biology - that's amazing. ”
The first round of the Project Discovery was so successful that Campbell sees the possibility of extension by moving research to a new area after the completion of the Atlas of Human Proteins project. “The reason we chose the Sisters of Eve is because it’s reasonable that they would analyze a lot of different things,” says Campbell. “The fact that we can simply change the images and put something else gives us the bonus of creating a working framework for these purposes. Something similar we could do with cancer cells, or with astro planets (perhaps talking about exoplanets - approx. Translator ). If we chose the planets option, we would probably just let the players locate the unknown planet in New Eden over time and name it. I think it can be almost anything if it is something related to biology or the cosmos. ”
Original article: How thousands of gamers are helping to decode the human body.
I present to you the translation of the article by April 28, 2016 by Matt Kamen.
The article tells about the possibilities that multiplayer games can provide and provide in solving important problems for all mankind related to the need to attract a large amount of human resources.
Credit CCP Games
EVE Online is not just a game on the Internet about spaceships and fiction politics. Since March (2016 - a comment of the translator ), the developers of CCP Games have launched Project Discovery ( Project Discovery ) - an initiative aimed at improving the scientific understanding of the human body at the smallest levels.
')
Launched in conjunction with the Human Protein Atlas project and the Massively Multiplayer Online Science platform, the project connects to EVE Online's largest resource — its player base — to help classify millions of proteins. “We show them an image, and they can change its color by applying green or red paint on it to help them analyze it a little better,” said Linzi Campbell, developer of the Discovery project. “Then we also show them examples - the cytoplasm is their favorite! We show them what the images of each of them should be like, and just suggest that they choose several options that they identify inside the image. The identifications are shuffled every time, so it’s not possible to follow the rule: “well, I’ll always always choose the one on the right”. They need to really think about it. ”
Credit CCP Games
The analysis project works in EVE Online as a mini-game and works in the context of mastering the game. “We have such an NPC organization (NPC, Non-Player Character — a character controlled by a computer, not a player — note of a translator ) called Drifters — they resemble the mysterious essence in New Eden (New Eden is an interplanetary institution EVE), ”explains Campbell. “The players know almost nothing about Drifter at the moment, so we masked it in the universe as Drifter DNA, which they can analyze. In my opinion, this is just perfect. We called it [a study conducted by] Sisters of Eve , and so they are analyzing this Drifter DNA. "
The result was amazing. “We had an amazing number of classifications, and we overcame our wildest expectations,” says Emma Lundberg, associate professor at Human Protein Atlas. “Now, after six weeks, we already have almost eight million classifications, and the players spent 16.2 million minutes playing a mini-game. When we calculated it, it turned out - by Swedish standards - up to 163 working years. This is madness". “Internally, we had modest assumptions. We said that if we get 40,000+ classifications per day, we will be happy. If we get 100,000 per day, we will be delighted, ”adds Lundberg. “But when it reached the peak for the first time, we had 900,000 classifications per day. Now it has stabilized, but we still get about 200,000 per day, so everyone was stunned. We did not expect this. ”
Currently, EVE players are viewing images from the Lundberg website, which is the director of the subcellular atlas section of Cell atlas . It took the players only three weeks to complete the entire workload, and now they perform a second run for authenticity, without any signs of declining interest. “One of the problems associated with gamification of science is that interest is rapidly falling, and we hoped that we could prevent this by using the existing game, adding rewards,” says Lundberg. "I think the biggest difference is that it is integrated into the game."
The Atlas of Human Proteins itself expands to the mapping of the human genome , but at a much lower level. “We have about 20,000 genes, and now we have not yet proved the existence of even more than 70 percent of them. So there is a big gap between protein research and DNA research, and there are several reasons for this, ”says Lundberg. “DNA can be propagated so that it can be easily studied, but you cannot propagate proteins. Also, since all cells have the same DNA, you can [just] take a blood sample [to see it]. But proteins expressed in genes are distributed throughout the body. You have to cover the whole body, and therefore, from a technological point of view, it is much more difficult to study proteins, ”she continues. “From my point of view, this is the interesting part: proteins are molecules that perform a function, and drugs act by targeting proteins. Therefore, if you want to develop better medicines, understand how people are organized, or understand [their] biology, you should know what proteins do. ”
Credit CCP Games
“But we don’t even know much about it, so what we are doing is making a map of where the squirrels are. If we know that protein is in the liver, in the mitochondria, then good - it can be modeled in these processes, which will give hints to researchers. Researchers may say: “Well, I study the liver - what are all the proteins found in the liver? .. I am interested in energy metabolism. What are the mitochondrial proteins in the liver? ”- something like this can be used by other researchers.”
Soon the players' efforts will be felt in a wider scientific field. After checking their categorizations and analyzes — a process associated with reference images that are known to researchers as being obviously correct and used to measure the performance of the collective mind of EVE — their results were included in the HPA (atlas) database. All data is publicly available, and the atlas has about 100,000 users per month. On average, two peer-reviewed research papers are already published every day, and when the next version of the atlas is published in December, future documents will include data from EVE players. “It remains to prove that players can provide high-quality research data, so the scientific community is now closely watching us,” says Lundberg. However, there is already reason to be sure - the players get results. “One example is that there is a very unknown biological structure that has only three known protein components,” explains Lundberg. “Players identified another 100 candidates. This is a great starting point for discovering new biology - that's amazing. ”
The first round of the Project Discovery was so successful that Campbell sees the possibility of extension by moving research to a new area after the completion of the Atlas of Human Proteins project. “The reason we chose the Sisters of Eve is because it’s reasonable that they would analyze a lot of different things,” says Campbell. “The fact that we can simply change the images and put something else gives us the bonus of creating a working framework for these purposes. Something similar we could do with cancer cells, or with astro planets (perhaps talking about exoplanets - approx. Translator ). If we chose the planets option, we would probably just let the players locate the unknown planet in New Eden over time and name it. I think it can be almost anything if it is something related to biology or the cosmos. ”
Original article: How thousands of gamers are helping to decode the human body.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/333528/
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