DU'ers! Help fight CANCER with your computer. (Seriously!)

[leftyandproud]

This one cuts across party lines folks.
Please download the screensaver and put your idle computer time to good use.

This is a distributed computing project, similar to SETI, only your computer power here is used to fight lots of terrible brain conditions and in looking for solutions to (currently) uncurable diseases...

http://folding.stanford.edu

Folding@Home

Our goal: to understand protein folding, protein aggregation, and related diseases

What are proteins and why do they "fold"? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." In order to carry out their function (eg as enzymes or antibodies), they must take on a particular shape, also known as a "fold." Thus, proteins are truly amazing machines: before they do their work, they assemble themselves! This self-assembly is called "folding."

The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, remains a mystery. Moreover, perhaps not surprisingly, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious effects, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, and Parkinson's disease.

One of our project goals is to simulate protein folding in order to understand how proteins fold so quickly and reliably, and to learn how to make synthetic polymers with these properties.

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. We use novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. This has allowed us to simulate folding for the first time, and to now direct our approach to examine folding related disease.

How can you help? You can help our project by downloading and running our client software. Our algorithms are designed such that for every computer that joins the project, we get a commensurate increase in simulation speed.

You can also donate to the project here.

Once you have the program, read the Press Coverage about the project and you will feel absolutely great about helping out.

Here are some shots of the screen saver in action...Not only is it useful, but it looks cool as well!:)

[St. Jarvitude]

1. Coincidentally, I just came across this project recently.

Unfortunately, I've already joined the GLUE (Gentoo Linux Users Everywhere) group, but...

Someone else could start a DU group so that we could track how much DUers are helping. I'm not sure of specifics, but I know that it's a fairly trivial task.

:hi:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. I was just going to suggest...

We form a team.

[leftyandproud]

3. awesome idea...Think about it..

60,000 DU'ers.

Heck, just 30 new Pentium 4 computers are processing a TERAFLOP of information every second...A stand alone computer doing this would cost many million $$$

Imagine what 300, 3000, or 6000 computers could do. (less than 10% of DU)

We could cure cander by the end of the month if everyone started using this. ;)

[leftyandproud]

4. bump

come on yall...this costs nothing at all, and can do lots of good.

[Liberal Veteran]

5. There is also a project for fighting AIDS like this as well.

It's not as pretty as the cancer one, but it's the same basic thing.

http://fightaidsathome.scripps.edu/

[leftyandproud]

6. bumping again

for a good cause...I hope DU'ers will use these.

[qnr]

7. Great project, but I decided against this one, since I won't contribute

my cycles to something that will allow the pharmaceutical companies to get richer, while denying relief to poorer individuals. Note that I'm not discouraging anyone else, it's just a personal decision of mine.

Edit: Decided against it a few years ago. Had a huge thread about it at the Mandrake Users Group when I was a moderator there. I know the pros, but I'm sticking with seti, which will influence every single person on earth.