23:19 Dec 16 2009
Times Read: 697
Ok here's the details. Please Read
Folding@Home is a project ran by Stanford Univ. it began in 2000.
It's goal is to understand how proteins fold and misfold. The reason why it's so important is because diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS, certain cancers and others are caused by misfolded proteins which lead to damaged DNA, cells and so on.
By understanding how they work we can find the root cause of these diseases and thus a cure. The natural process of protein folding is extremely complex. A single protein fold takes around 10 microsecond in the human body but it takes a single computer a day to simulate a single nanosecond worth of folding (1/10,000th of a full fold) and it would take a single computer 30 years to fully simulate a single protein's folding pattern! That's a long time to wait for a single result.
And since the goal is to figure out what causes misfolding and their results you have to fold a single protein many, many times to develop an error.
Now, to understand how the body's protein folding works (the human body has around 100,000 different proteins) you end up having to process literally hundreds of trillions of folds. This lets us see normal folding and then the errors.
Normally projects that require so much computing power and create so much data (this particular project creates 50,000GB of data each year) you would need to use a massive supercomputer. The way that process happens is: Folding@Home would apply to use a supercomputer, after weeks to get approved to "rent" time on the computer it could take years for their scheduled rent time to come up. And once they have that supercomputer they might only be able to use it for a few weeks to a year or so. Plus it costs tons.
So instead of doing that they use "distributive computing". See, all a supercomputer is, is a collection of thousands of normal, off the shelf, computer processors working together. With distributive computing they can use my computer, yours and over 200,000 others and have them each work on a single fold. This way they've actually built the largest supercomputer in history and can use it 24/7 without all the hassle. (and the work that would normally take a decade can be done in just a few years)
Their computer programme connects all these personal at home computers and uses their computing power while you're away at work or school or asleep. It can even run while your using your computer without interfering with what you're doing.
You go to http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download
and click whichever icon your operating system is (Windows, Linux etc)
It will then download the programme (which takes just a few moments). Then you'll go to your "Start Menu" click the "Folding@Home" icon once and that turns it on.
For a Windows user (like me) you'll see the little icon on your bottom taskbar, right side. Then, right-click it and then click "configure".
A window will pop-up and you'll see a place for "User Name" and "Team Number". You can type in whatever user name you want and then enter 176471 in the team number area.
Team # 176471 is my team, team DrJayBogle
(you don't have to worry about the "passkey" part)
The goal of a team is to get other people involved and work together. As your computer works (behind the scenes, it'll never bother you) the programme keeps track of how many folds your computer has done and will give you a score. The higher your score the higher you (and the teams) rank.
That's it. Plan and simple. You download it, turn it on, configure it , (everything takes all of 5-10 minutes) and then forget it. As long as your computer is left on and the programme turned on it'll do it's thing. You can turn it on/off at will.
This way your computer is now a part of a global effort to understand and then cure diseases and even simulate new antibiotics to see if they'll work.
Normally this computing takes decades and millions of dollars but with this system you cut the time and, for you at least, it costs nothing.
What's better than knowing you're actually taking an active role in very important research that could save hundreds of thousands of lives and all you have to do is download a simple programme?
Please do this and don't forget to join team 176471
Thanks,
Xzavier aka DrJay :)
COMMENTS
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atyourwindow
23:30 Dec 16 2009
ive studied marketing and would say that by charging people a fee to be a part of this might be a better way to get em involved, people like to spend money on things and be a part of something, the other bonus is profit lol....win win.
Xzavier
23:41 Dec 16 2009
Well this isn't my project, take it up with Stanford lol
Besides they don't need the amount of money as they would need otherwise.
Oh and as for computer systems pretty much anything better than Windows 98 works.
DireConsequences
00:07 Dec 17 2009
I just joined. My best friend has stage four cancer of unknown origin. My grandmother and uncle have died from cancer in the past two years. I'm more then willing to help in any way possible.
DireConsequences
03:05 Dec 17 2009
I'm getting it on my desktop too. It's now hooked up to the internet.
:-)
It's usually on... and at least someone would get some use out of it when I'm not doing anything.
ToiletDuc
05:32 Dec 17 2009
Not the largest supercomputer in history though.... Berkley started SETI@home in 1999 and has had over 5 million users, and about 2 million years of computing time.