Folding @ Home

[Firewolf]

I first became aware of the program when I read that it was being installed on Playstation 3's. Below is the link. Essentially your computer runs a client that helps expand the computing capacity of protein research.

http://folding.stanford.edu/


"Our goal: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases

What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease?
Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

You can help by simply running a piece of software.
Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved. "

I've been running the program for 2 days. It just sits in the background, doesn't slow your processing speed, and is thus far free from any malicious programming.

Why not pitch in? I couldn't find F@H on search, and wasn't sure if it belonged here or in the med shed.

Thanks.

[CSB]

There are a number of programs out there that take advantage of distributed computing ... using a huge number of computers trying all possible combinations of problems ... in hope that one will get a "hit" and -- for example -- find a cure for cancer.

Here's a link to a web site that will let you download the base computer program, then let you pick the project you want your computer to work on when it is otherwise idle.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Probably the best documented and easiest to understand is the SETI program, the Search for Extra-Terestial Intelligence. It sends your computer a snippet of radio telescope data that your computer "slices and dices" looking for indications that among the static is a message from ET. Your computer can do the work at night, when you are asleep, or literally in between keystrokes of other programs.