Many moons ago, I used to run a program called Folding@Home.
Folding@home
What this program does is use your processor to help scientists figure out how proteins fold/misfold, causign DNA defects that cause Huntington's Disease and cancers. All of this is done in the background of your PC without you even knowing. So, go download it and do your part.
For those competitive folks among us, we have a BCB Team set up. Team ID is 213044, stats page: Team 213044's contributions to Folding@home
Mac, Linux and PC are all supported.
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Help Cure Cancer while you're not at your PC
- esalaka
- Banned
Another thing you could do is play FoldIt, a game that helped advance HIV research.
Unlike Folding@HOME which uses brute force to fold proteins, this one is a game where you are doing it. The beginning levels are there to introduce you to the game and after you finish them, you'll get to mess with actual proteins. It's more active than Folding@HOME - I mean, it is a game - but at least for small structures human abilities are much more effective than brute processing power, making this thing just as useful as the project in the OP.
Unlike Folding@HOME which uses brute force to fold proteins, this one is a game where you are doing it. The beginning levels are there to introduce you to the game and after you finish them, you'll get to mess with actual proteins. It's more active than Folding@HOME - I mean, it is a game - but at least for small structures human abilities are much more effective than brute processing power, making this thing just as useful as the project in the OP.
This post has been edited by esalaka: 04 February 2012 - 07:57 PM
- #2
- 04 February 2012 - 07:57 PM
SETI@Home
Pretty sure you all know what this is, but I'll post a link anyway.
For those who are unaware, the SETI@Home project uses your PC to analyse radio waves picked up by the Very Large Array in New Mexico and the Arecibo radio dish in South America for signals which could be linked to extraterrestrial life. It's quite RAM-intensive, though, so if you're on an older machine it will slow you down a fair amount.
Pretty sure you all know what this is, but I'll post a link anyway.
For those who are unaware, the SETI@Home project uses your PC to analyse radio waves picked up by the Very Large Array in New Mexico and the Arecibo radio dish in South America for signals which could be linked to extraterrestrial life. It's quite RAM-intensive, though, so if you're on an older machine it will slow you down a fair amount.
- #4
- 04 February 2012 - 11:17 PM
Jerk, on 05 February 2012 - 05:19 AM, said:
But if we cure cancer how will white people ever die?
I think we're being a little hasty here.
I think we're being a little hasty here.
- #9
- 05 February 2012 - 11:27 AM
- Ubertoast
- I owned a web forum paedophiles used to prey on young girls
Member 
DLancer, on 05 February 2012 - 06:06 AM, said:
Didn't they try to do this with the Sony PS3's of home users?
They did, it's one of the best performing clients for the project due to the CELL processor.
- #10
- 05 February 2012 - 01:00 PM
- Carcharocles
- BCI Member
Those with CUDA support (namely, desktops with mid-range to high end Nvidia GPU's) will have a major advantage with Folding@Home as well. Many people who prefer Nvidia cards prefer them solely because of how they perform with this program.
- #11
- 05 February 2012 - 01:54 PM
- Carcharocles
- BCI Member
Possibly. I don't know for sure, but I do know that Nvidia generally does better at folding than AMD.
This may be more due to Nvidia's marketing than AMD's performance though, similar to how TWIMTBP games have been known to work harder to optimize for Nvidia than AMD. Also, AMD generally has a far higher core count than Nvidia, which generally translantes to better brute-force parallel processing, and with the new architecture of the 79xx cards, AMD should theoretically have an advantage in highly-multithreaded apps. Regardless, this is good news for Nvidia users all around.
This may be more due to Nvidia's marketing than AMD's performance though, similar to how TWIMTBP games have been known to work harder to optimize for Nvidia than AMD. Also, AMD generally has a far higher core count than Nvidia, which generally translantes to better brute-force parallel processing, and with the new architecture of the 79xx cards, AMD should theoretically have an advantage in highly-multithreaded apps. Regardless, this is good news for Nvidia users all around.
- #13
- 05 February 2012 - 02:26 PM
- Carcharocles
- BCI Member
It basically uses brute-force processing power to simulate protein folding and look for abnormalities. In other words, it uses your computer processor (or as mentioned before, your more powerful Video Card) to run thousands of simulated proteins over and over in hopes of finding how these disorders work.
It's neat.
It's neat.
- #17
- 09 February 2012 - 12:57 AM
- falconboy99
- BCI Member
I downloaded the folding@home program. the progress bar is still at 0%.
- #18
- 09 February 2012 - 05:32 AM
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