From catching criminals to reducing pollution and discovering secrets buried in original manuscripts, citizens are helping Lancaster researchers change the world.

By engaging with citizens worldwide, researchers are powering new discoveries and changing the way we live by influencing climate policy and helping deliver justice in some of the most heinous criminal cases.

H-Unique

Dr Bryan Williams’ work in computer vision examines how we extract meaningful information from raw data, including using artificial intelligence to detect glaucoma earlier through retinal imaging.

But it’s thanks to a pioneering project involving over 5000 people that Dr Williams and a team of computer scientists, mathematicians and anatomy experts are developing methods to support the identification of the perpetrators of child sexual abuse and other serious crimes from limited forensic information.

H-Unique has been gathering thousands of photographs of hands to examine anatomic details such as vein patterns, pigmentation, knuckle creases, and scars, looking for differences and similarities, and investigating how unique our hands are.

Dr Williams said: “Most people are familiar with traditional forensic data and techniques such as using fingerprints and DNA to identify criminals but as technology moves on so does our ability to harness the power of potentially new biometric traits.

“For example, the epidemic scale of images of sexual abuse shared online. Perpetrators tend to film abuse which they keep for themselves or share in places like the dark web.

“Perpetrators are always careful to hide their face and anything that might identify them, but forensic anthropology has been used to support such cases since 2006. One example was when a photographic image of just a section of knuckle creases and freckles was captured and matched to a potential suspect.

“There is huge amount of visible variability in our hands. Our knuckle creases are formed as part of our foetal development and freckle patterns are influenced by genetics. By interpreting and understanding the evidence and matching key points in the images, we are building a large-scale data set and techniques to support in forensic investigations.”

The project, in collaboration with researchers from the universities of Oxford and Dundee, builds on ground-breaking techniques pioneered by H-Unique Principal Investigator Professor Lady Sue Black.

Dr Williams added: “Our citizen scientists are making an extremely valuable contribution towards helping develop deeper understanding of anatomic variability and a new tool for courts dealing with these very serious cases, helping to ensure that justice is served for some of the most vulnerable people in society.”

The heart of the issue

Anatomical data is playing a vital role in revealing our understanding of our bodies and health, thanks to Lancaster University research involving 81,000 people from across 150 countries.

Professor Adam Taylor set up an online survey, visited schools and pounded the streets, asking people to label and identify key parts of our body like our brain, heart and genitalia.

The results reveal that while we can all pinpoint our brains, one in three people doesn’t know where their hearts are located.

Professor Taylor said: “The results show that most people have limited anatomical understanding. There are trends such as men being better at identifying muscles such as biceps and women better able to label genitalia but there are huge gaps in knowledge across both sexes.

“This matters because it’s vital that people understand their bodies. For example, if they have pain around their heart, this could be a sign of cardiovascular disease or a cardiac emergency; if they don’t know where their heart is, this is a big potential problem.”

Currently being analysed, the data also shows a stronger anatomical understanding in children and those in their early 20s and 40s.

Professor Taylor said: “Health literacy is a massive challenge. Some of the data is to be expected as younger children learn about body parts at school and people in their 40s tend to start to experience ailments and issues as they approach mid-life, so they investigate and gain knowledge.

“But there are some surprises such as data from those involved in the health and medical profession not being as knowledgeable as we’d perhaps like to think.”

The huge citizen science data set will now be used to create tailored teaching resources for schools and hopefully across the NHS.

Professor Taylor added: “Thanks to the volunteers it’s clear from the evidence that there’s no one single way to approach health literacy. Different groups of people have different knowledge so it’s vital we do everything we can to improve health knowledge and ultimately reduce the burden on the NHS.

“This could be anything from changing the language doctors and nurses use when speaking to patients to public information campaigns and increasing health education in schools.”

And while people are helping shape our justice and health systems of the future, they’re also revealing the secrets of the past.

Thanks to 3,841 people worldwide recruited through the research crowdsourcing platform ‘Zooniverse’ Professor Sharon Ruston has been able to transcribe the diaries, lecture notes and poetry of British chemist and inventor Sir Humphry Davy.

Best known as the inventor of the miner’s safety lamp, better known as the Davy Lamp, the volunteers have fully transcribed all 129 of his notebooks, the vast majority of which are held at The Royal Institution.

Dating back 200 years they reveal the exact moment he inhaled nitrous oxide, realising it was a pain reliever and the point in 1807 when he isolated elements such as potassium and sodium by electrolysis.

Written in English, Latin and Greek by the Cornish born Davy, volunteers have transcribed 13,121 pages which also document his love of fishing, how he coped with a stroke and titbits of local gossip.

They’ve also helped write around 4,500 explanatory notes on the people, places, chemical elements and processes, geological terms, and many other things that Davy wrote about.

Professor Ruston, Principal Investigator for the Davy Notebooks Project funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, said: “We could not have made the important advances in Davy scholarship since 2019 without every one of our volunteers, who gave freely and generously of their time. I’m in awe of these people many of whom have become friends over the years.

“Now everyone can read what Davy wrote and, I hope, will make full use of this new digital resource which includes previously unseen poetry by the chemist.”

Engaging daily with the transcriber community on the project’s ‘talk boards’ volunteers were able to collaborate on tricky passages and share insight and context.

Having previously explored Davy’s influence on Mary Shelley’s character Frankenstein and spent many hours transcribing material Professor Ruston added: “The speed of this project has been phenomenal saving many months if not years of work.

“And by multiple people transcribing the same pages we’ve been able to draw conclusions into the early spellings of some named elements and other language changes.”

Shaping the future

Back to current day and Lancaster University researchers are engaging with citizens to influence how we might live in the future.

Senior Research Associate Dr Andy Yuille, is leading a project for the Climate Citizens Research Group, working with volunteers to build evidence on everything from future energy use and food to housing and transport.

A representative group of 40 volunteers will meet in themed blocks over the next two years where they’ll hear from experts and combined with their lived experience will think about how we might live more sustainably.

Modelling created by the Energy Demand Research Centre (EDRC) suggests that the UK could halve energy use by 2050, while also improving people’s quality of life. The volunteers are exploring how we could do this in different sectors, to gauge reactions into what might be their preferred options and the most likely to be accepted and adopted.

Dr Yuille said, “This project is all about getting the public more involved in decision-making so they can influence and shape decisions that affect them and the world around them.

“Citizens don’t usually get to see, discuss, and understand the information we’re presenting. Technical modelling is done by experts and supplied to the government, proposing different scenarios which may work to reduce emissions. For example, if society radically cut meat from diets and switched to all-electric vehicles.

“But these models aren’t tested with the public. They’re hypothetical. This group, representing people of all ages and backgrounds from across the country, are presented with the best available evidence so they can reach conclusions about what would be socially acceptable and technically possible.”

Some of the key conclusions so far include the group recognising the impact of meat consumption on emissions and suggesting education, public engagement, and promoting meat-free products not as a substitute to meat but as alternative food in their own right as options rather than a regulatory top-down approach.

Dr Yuille added, “This is citizen power in real time. Interventions proposed by the group are then taken away and ‘plugged into’ models, and presented back to the group so they can see the effects their recommendations would have. We can keep on refining the models based on their feedback.

“It’s an invaluable process for policymakers because they get technical modelling combined with social intelligence. And it’s hopefully a valuable experience for our citizens as they explore and influence decisions that our government will need to take over the coming months and years.”

The Big Windermere Survey

Meanwhile, Lancaster researchers are leading innovative participatory research that generates unique insights into the water quality of England’s most iconic lake, Windermere, located at the heart of the Lake District UNESCO World Heritage site.

In the context of high-profile political and public debates around water pollution in the UK, Dr Ben Surridge designed the Big Windermere Survey in the summer of 2022. This pioneering project works with a network of more than 300 community scientists to undertake unique, large-scale water quality assessments at Windermere.

Dr Surridge said, “The project is built on the interest and commitment of volunteer community scientists. Every three months since June 2022, our volunteers have collected water samples from over 100 locations around Windermere and the streams and lakes within the wider catchment and then begun analysis of these samples. This offers the potential to gain unprecedented insights into water quality within the catchment and the potential sources of water pollution affecting Windermere.”

A critical strength of the project is the collaboration between volunteer community scientists and researchers at Lancaster University. Samples collected during the Big Windermere Survey are subsequently analysed in Lancaster research laboratories and external accredited laboratories for a wide range of nutrient and bacterial water quality parameters to generate robust, independent data.

Dr Surridge added: “The Big Windermere Survey produces unique spatial snapshots of water quality across the catchment. By generating these snapshots every three months, we can also explore how water quality changes through time and in response to factors such as rainfall and temperature. The project has already identified a number of key locations in the catchment where water quality can fall below the levels required to protect both Windermere’s ecosystem and the users of this iconic lake.

“Together with our partners at the Freshwater Biological Association, we are using data from the project as part of work with stakeholders in the catchment, including the Environment Agency and Lake District National Park Authority, to identify opportunities to improve water quality in Windermere. This provides the opportunity to generate real impact from our participatory research approach and the hard work of our community scientists.”