Hi There All...

[Howie]

I have been away from the site for a while and just recently started back into it again.
One question I have is it seems the participants have slowed down and seems the project has slowed down? Right or wrong?
Also I notice the events I had way back for phase 2 have no updates of any sort as to anyone is looking at them, and some have quite a few hits?

Without me spending days catching up if someone could just answer the above...

Sincerely,
Howie

[Howie]

I have been in this since the beginning and noticed something in the old events and even the new events...

There are many clicks where only one person or a couple clicked the movie and wondering...some of these clicks may be by some very good participants...

Do they ever spot check some of these and will they wait till the very end to check these?

Sincerely,
Howie

[Nikita]

Welcome back Howie!

The best thing I can suggest is htat you just read the most recent posts to get up to date. There aren't a whole lot, you should be able to get up to speed quickly. There isn't anything new that changes the project or what you do.

Participation has dropped, but we've still had progress. The program is still continuing. Some canidates have been examined, it won't be at the end, but it will take some time, they don't want to damage the samples as they extract them. Just stick around, there's plenty for everyone!

[elainekeefe]

I have been in this since the beginning and noticed something in the old events and even the new events...

There are many clicks where only one person or a couple clicked the movie and wondering...some of these clicks may be by some very good participants...

Do they ever spot check some of these and will they wait till the very end to check these?

Sincerely,
Howie

Hi Howie, welcome back!

Re the above, I couldn't agree with you more. As an example:

I have, so far, been the only person to click on this HAT out of 22.

http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... =9276534V1

Yet, it is on the Alpha List under a different number (see below) with a rating of 5.1739, which is pretty high up on the list.

http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... =2205922V1

We obviously all have different ideas as to what constitutes a track.

Happy dusting to you,

Elaine

[jsmaje]

I have, so far, been the only person to click on this HAT out of 22.
http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... =9276534V1
Yet, it is on the Alpha List under a different number (see below) with a rating of 5.1739, which is pretty high up on the list.
http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... =2205922V1
We obviously all have different ideas as to what constitutes a track.
Elaine

Elaine, I'm astonished and worried that you're the only one so far in phase 2 out of 22 to re-report that phase 1 HAT (or h.a.t., as the team insist upon). How can so many people continue to be missing something so obvious, and what does it say about the team's trust in our observations?

Meanwhile, Howie, welcome back. I do hope you've got your computer issues sorted now
John

[Howie]

We seem to have lost many from phase 1 and so have lost some real good dusters that really learned the nack to find them...
Not so many new ones, but the new ones are going to a learning curve...
I would have clicked on Elaines if I saw it?
I find I must be more carefull in phase 2...

There are some in my phase 2 events like 10 of 14 views and 19 of 24 and wondering why they have no comment yet? These have to be a hit?

Sincerely,
Howie

[fjgiie]

The rated movies are on the Alpha list. It's under "News" at the VM home page. You must be logged in at the Virtual Microscope.

Use "Control Find" (Ctrl f) to find any rated movie.

fjgiie

ps: The Blog has something about the Alpha list and the Red Team.

[Howie]

Boy, I have some catching up to do...

I just got back to dusting...

Thanks,
Howie

[Howie]

I missed alot!

Also a note here...Watch out if you update your IE 7 to IE 8 Beta...

Howie

[bmendez]

Hi Howie,

Welcome back.

Things are quiet around here for sure. But there isn't any new data to review so most of the work to be done right now is refining what has been done so far.

The team here is working hard on extracting and analyzing candidates from the alpha list.

We have also scanned new tiles, but don't have enough new data to launch Phase 3 just yet.

The scanning at JSC is going slower than we had hoped, and the constant threat of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico this season doesn't help. There should be a blog up sometime today from Dave at JSC describing their efforts to secure the stardust samples there. JSC is currently under threat of flooding and other damage from hurricane Ike.

About the track of Elaine's not receiving a lot of hits. It did make it onto the Alpha list anyway. That could be for one of a few reasons. One is that since Elaine is a power duster her clicks are weighted higher in the score of the movie than someone with less experience. The other thing that we have done is is to look through the forum for movies that people have brought to attention that way. When we see something promising we promote it to the alpha list. We've also done a friends of friends type search, where we look at the list of people who have clicked on high ranking alpha list candidates and then look at the other movies they have identified.

We are relatively confident that features of interest are not being missed due to low clicks for the most part.

Cheers,
-Bryan