Phase VI

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DanZ
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Phase VI

Post by DanZ »

Stardust@home Phase VI Launching in June 2013

Greetings Dusters! Thank you for your incredible patience these last few months. Most of the team has been wrapping up the Interstellar Preliminary Examination (ISPE) funded phase of the Stardust@home mission. Now that things have settled a bit, we will be rolling out Stardust@home Phase VI very soon. Here’s what’s new in Phase VI:

Skill Score: In Phase VI, your Skill Score will be a more accurate representation of your current dusting skill. Instead of reflecting your abilities from when you started dusting in Phase VI, your Skill Score will always be based on the last 100 Power Movies you’ve searched over the last 60 days. If you haven’t clicked on 100 Power Movies over the last 60 days, your Skill Score will not display. Otherwise, the Skill Score formula will remain the same. Thus, your Skill Score equals your Power Score divided by your Power Score plus an adjustment for the difficulty (value) of the Power Movies you’ve missed from the last 100 Power Movies you’ve clicked on. Each time you miss a Power Movie, the adjustment is calculated as 85 minus the value of the missed Power Movie. A running total is then kept of this adjustment and used to calculate your Skill Score. The formula can also be expressed as follows: Skill Score = Power Score / {Power Score + running total of adjustments}, where each adjustment = (85 – missed Power Movie value)

New Tile Data: There will be 30,613 new Virtual Microscope (VM) movies released for Phase VI, which represents eight aerogel tiles. One of the tiles is from the Stardust spacecraft’s Cometary Collector (see below) and seven newly scanned tiles are from the Stardust Interstellar Collector (SDIC). In addition, there will be 37,691 older SDIC movies that have been searched less than 20 times.

Comet Tracks: As you may recall, the Stardust spacecraft also collected particles from comet Wild 2 (see: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/index.html). The scientists working on these much larger tracks and particles in the aerogel tiles from the other side of the Stardust collector would like our help to make sure they didn’t miss any small comet tracks. Thus, some tracks you discover in Phase VI may be from comet Wild 2. Note: VM movies that may contain cometary tracks will be labeled "Cometary Movie." All other VM movies (including Power Movies) will be labeled “Interstellar Movie.” In addition, no Power Movies will be created from scans of the Cometary Collector's tiles and the new Cometary Movies will in no way influence your Power Score or Skill Score.

Improved Memory of Dusting History: Now, no matter when or how you log-off, the VM will always return the last movie presented to you if you didn’t make a decision on it yet. In this case, decision means clicking on an observed or possible track, clicking “No Track,” or clicking “Bad Focus.”

Notes on Co-Authorship Policy: Now that the ISPE-funded phase of the project is over, any qualified scientist can request and, if approved, do analyses on samples from the Stardust Interstellar Collector (for instance, see http://www.iasf-roma.inaf.it:8080/web/s ... -available). Therefore, we can no longer guarantee first finders of particles on Stardust@home will be co-authors on all related scientific publications. However, we will connect with our various colleagues around the world whenever possible and do our best to solicit their support in continuing this tradition. In addition, co-authorship for first finders will always apply to published papers from the UC Berkeley team.

New Opportunities for Assisting with Our Research: Finally, please be on the lookout for new opportunities for you to get involved in our research over the next few years. We are currently assessing various alternative contribution methods, including automated Stardust search competitions, as well as completely new investigations. We promise to keep you posted as these initiatives unfold.

On behalf of the entire Stardust@home team, we thank you for all your incredible work over the last seven years and are very much looking forward to continued collaboration! An update on the ISPE-funded investigation will be posted shortly, along with what the team will be looking to achieve in the years ahead. For questions or comments regarding Phase VI, please reply here.

PS - We will be resetting the "May we send you an occasional email?" and "Would you like to be listed on the top scoring pages?" options to Yes. You'll need to visit the My Account page to change these setting.
SmithES
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Re: Phase VI

Post by SmithES »

Goodmorning, DanZ, I have enjoyed all the new movies in Phase VI. Then I get counted wrong on this one! I've seen that track before, and have always clicked on the top dot above the track---and got it right. In this one, the correct place to click is shown at the bottom. Is that really the right place when it shows up again? Again, I wish the system could recognize that I at least found the track---just clicked outside the accepted boundary. Thanks for clarification.
Evelyn, ERSTRS,SmithES.
clicked on wrong end!.png
clicked on wrong end!.png (104.36 KiB) Viewed 25887 times
DanZ
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Re: Phase VI

Post by DanZ »

Hi Evelyn,

Glad you're back for Phase VI!

This may be one of those tracks where the "deeper" end looks like the opposite of the terminal end. We've seen a few of those. I can't do anything though until I get the VM number. Do you have it?

Once I get the VM number, we can put it up for a vote here - either to remove it from the system (and all it's duplicates), or keep it since everyone will know where to click now. I'm more keen on the latter, but will go with the majority. Keeping it but changing the "where to click" coordinates might be possible, but I'm not sure and would rather not go there if we don't have to. Even if it is possible, it would be a headache for the techs.

Looking forward to your thoughts and thanks much!

Dan
DanZ
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Re: Phase VI

Post by DanZ »

Some current (as of this date) Phase VI statistics:

31 users have dusted during the last 30 days.

51 users have dusted during the current phase.
SmithES
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Re: Phase VI

Post by SmithES »

Hello, Dan, I'm back, but don't know how long it will be before I attain 100 PMs! They show up too seldom---one out of about 20 movies. Anyway, the answer to your question is that I don't have the VM number. Once the movie was marked wrong, I tried to back up my browser to get the VM number. The new system doesn't seem to back up like the old system did. I miss that feature because every time I miss one, I like to back up and take another look at it. The shot I sent you is from the email you sent back to me showing where to click. It didn't come with the VM number, either. Shucks! Evelyn (ERSTRS, SmithES, August 2006)
DanZ
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Re: Phase VI

Post by DanZ »

Hi Evelyn,

As soon as you miss a movie, just click on the link in the VM that says "Power Movies Missed" and you should find all the information you need. You'll find that link as part of your stats under the image of the next movie that comes up. But just in case, the actual link is http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... movies.php.

The VM number of the movie missed might be part of the URL when viewing the missed movie in your browser (I forget), but I know it's there somewhere. However, let me know if you're still having trouble finding it.

Otherwise, hang in there - I know you'll crack those 100 movies eventually!

Dan
jsmaje
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Re: Phase VI

Post by jsmaje »

I like Phase 6 so far, despite nearly deciding to give up a few days ago because my skill score dropped precipitously from 0.9006 to 0.7915, having missed several PMs over the whole value range from 75 down to 30, 25, 15 and even an obvious 10.
I’ve recovered a bit since then and have (re-)learnt a few things:

(a) use high magnification, scan thoroughly, and don’t rush (a tendency of mine).
While Evelyn thinks the frequency of PMs has fallen, I reckon it has remained at around 1 in 5 or so, and that we are now in fact being presented with more of those tiny tricky ones, though there may indeed have been a slight dilution by inclusion of a few movies from the cometary side of the collector.
Regarding that, I was surprised that the general appearance of cometary movies is indistinguishable from the IS side, having thought that each group had done their own ‘photo-shoots’ which could well have looked quite different, and re-assured that both sides contain the same degree of aerogel artefacts and surface debris.

(b) the inability to ‘skip’ an as-yet-undecided movie has quite rightly introduced more imperative toward a rigorous approach.

(c) the skill scoring based on my formula seems to work well, but has had a couple of effects in its implementation that I hadn’t predicted:

(i) its precise value can ‘jitter’ slightly up or down, regardless of whether you get the latest PM right or wrong. For example, one’s score can actually fall a bit even when having got the latest PM correct, simply because a more difficult PM that one missed beforehand has now dropped out of the moving 100-movie-window. However, the opposite happens when a missed easy one drops out, so I guess it all comes out in the wash!

(ii) unless some folk have superman-vision, super-monitors, their own or access to the official coordinate database or whatever, I can’t understand how quite so many are quickly managing to get and maintain a perfect 1.000 skill level.
After all, the team have previously said they deliberately made PMs at the top end (75ish -85) nearly, or indeed actually, invisible.
I certainly haven’t been able to see anything at all even at the highest magnification and several minutes-worth expenditure of my remaining lifetime within the missed-movie red bars in any of them.

Some other issues arising from recent team announcements:

(1) I hope the end of ISPE-funding (from NASA?) isn’t likely to put continuation of the project as a whole in any jeopardy. So where is the funding now coming from?
Yes, I’ve read the ‘open-to-other scientists’ post and Europlanet Dust Node bulletin. What response may be expected from that? And are other voluntary sources such as the ‘The Planetary Society’, of which I’m a member, still on board?

(2) I understand the team’s reluctance to push their current extraction/analysis technology too far, so what possibilities are they considering and might be available beyond these (don’t spare the technical details, since the devil is always within them)?

(3) What, if any, consequences of the above might there be regarding the team’s continued need, enthusiasm & funding for this Stardust@Home project itself? In other words, how long can I expect to retain my dusting job?

John
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Re: Phase VI

Post by caprarom »

Great to hear from you, John. Just an additional data point, my average so far is very close to one PM per seven movies, cometary movies included. I agree it seems there might be an increased frequency of 80-point value PMs, they seemed rarer in Phase V. We did encounter the skill score "jitters" in the Phase VI beta-testing. It was more pronounced there because the moving window was only 20 PMs. Like you, I thought those fluctuations would be tolerable when the calculation was based on latest 100.

Hope to see you atop the skill ranking soon. I'd be there myself right now, but I have to amend for missing two of those 80-pointers first. ;-)

Mike
caprarom
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Re: Phase VI

Post by caprarom »

Arghhh! Make that having to amend for "three" 80-pointers in a row - but the last one was an 'easy' one - no excuse. OK, and I just blew a 60-pointer. Time to quit for the day. Hang in there, John. (Sigh!)
DanZ
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Re: Phase VI

Post by DanZ »

jsmaje wrote: ....

Some other issues arising from recent team announcements:

(1) I hope the end of ISPE-funding (from NASA?) isn’t likely to put continuation of the project as a whole in any jeopardy. So where is the funding now coming from?
We received a second grant from NASA to continue Stardust@home for another 3 years. JSC has also provided funds to continue to scan tiles.
jsmaje wrote:Yes, I’ve read the ‘open-to-other scientists’ post and Europlanet Dust Node bulletin. What response may be expected from that?
To be honest, we can't say for sure. Others may indeed take up the call. What they find as result is anyone's guess.
jsmaje wrote:And are other voluntary sources such as the ‘The Planetary Society’, of which I’m a member, still on board?
Yes, but they mainly just help us publicize any important news.
jsmaje wrote:(2) I understand the team’s reluctance to push their current extraction/analysis technology too far, so what possibilities are they considering and might be available beyond these (don’t spare the technical details, since the devil is always within them)?
We have a proposal (waiting for review) to fund development of new techniques to analyze particle candidates (it would be isotopic analysis). Let me see if I can get more info for you.
jsmaje wrote:(3) What, if any, consequences of the above might there be regarding the team’s continued need, enthusiasm & funding for this Stardust@Home project itself? In other words, how long can I expect to retain my dusting job?
Definitely 3 more years!
DanZ
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Re: Phase VI

Post by DanZ »

I should add that 70 new tracks have been selected by our team for full laboratory analysis, though most are off normal. But the samples belong to NASA and the plan for what do with them is still somewhat outstanding. Most likely some promising subset will actually be investigated (IF APPROVED by CAPTEM - the group that now controls what happens with these samples), and the rest will be set aside to be looked at in posterity (at least 15 years, when techniques improve and don't damage the samples as much). But we definitely want to identify ALL impacts on the collector and get a complete inventory of the entire collection - and that can only be done via Stardust@home!
jsmaje
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Re: Phase VI

Post by jsmaje »

Thanks Dan for your (eventual!) detailed response to my queries, which I found informative and reassuring.
John
DanZ
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Re: Phase VI

Post by DanZ »

Glad we can keep you on the team John!

Dan
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