Folding @ Home

[Jay]

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 through out the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer makes the project closer to our goals.

Folding@Home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems thousands to millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

Not sure how many of you guys like science besides Arlos but I think this project is really cool. This just came available for my PS3. From what I understand, I'm helping them by just running this and leaving my ps3 on and I'd be helping them even more if I got a team of people to join my "Folding team". If we leave our systems on, there's a simulation of a protein folding that just keeps running so that Stanford's Medical Center can analyze my data and possibly know more about some of today's diseases.

[The Kizzy]

Didn't this fad go around a couple of years ago?

[Jay]

I dunno. First time I ever heard of it. I probably would never had heard of it had it not just showed up on my ps3.

[Tossica]

Those are old colleagues of one of my best friends from high school. He works at Stony Brook now but is still doing protein research.

[Harrison]

Yeah, it's the same premise as the seti@home project.

I just think this one is more important. It uses unused cycles of your CPU.

[vonkaar]

Wtf, ya'll don't remember me trying to recruit all of NT like... years ago?

There are currently over a half-million people folding world-wide. I'm ranked #283. I've been setting up folding clients all over the DFW metroplex and recruiting friends to do this, either in my name, in their own, or anonymously... for almost 3 years. If any major breakthrough comes of it, I'll feel really good about myself for being one of the major contributors. But... even then, EVERY SINGLE BIT helps. ONE PC or PS3 helps.

And for those that wonder... you don't notice it's there. I'm playing Supreme Commander at max-res on dual monitors on my 6600 with F@H in the background and I see no difference in gameplay with F@H on or off.

[Jay]

Hmm..how do I join your folding group vonk?

[vonkaar]

Well if you want to fold under my name, just put vonkaar as your username and team 32 as your team. If you want to join as my TEAM, put 'jay' or whatever you want as your username and team 32 as your team. If you want to register a new team, like Namelesstavern or whatever... you can do that too. It's all the same to me =).

[araby]

if it doesn't harm anyone I will do it.

[Jay]

I would shit if I found out that we cured Parkinson's disease thanks to PS3.

[Ganzo]

ok just installed it

[vonkaar]

you guys are awesome, thanks for the thread jay... I gave up hope on NT a long time ago. I shoulda known.

[Jay]

Np. If I can help the world at no real inconvenience to myself, why not?

[Lueyen]

Done as long as I don't notice anything, seems more worthwhile then SETI.

[Gaazy]

I remember you trying to set that up Vonk, I even did it a couple times. Restarting it now, couldnt hurt

[Lueyen]

Removed it for a bit... shortly after install my computer suddenly powered off. I restarted, did a few things left it alone for a couple hours came back to find it off again, nothing in eventlog ect. Removed for now, might be something else but I doubt it.

[Markarado]

Downloading it..

[Jennay]

I don't get it...what will me leaving my computer on have anything to do with science? I'm too lazy and busy to read the article, cliffnotes pls?

[Arlos]

Working out simulations for how proteins fold into 3-dimensional shapes is INCREDIBLY computer intensive. What installing the program does is it runs in the background on your machine, and uses up parts of your computer that aren't being used for whatever you're doing normally to help those calculations.

So, instead of having 1 giant computer in a basement somewhere that they run all their programs on, they get millions of people to let the scientists use THEIR computers, and so combined, the computing power of those millions of people is far greater than any single computer ever could reach, and thus their problems get solved much faster.

-Arlos

[Markarado]

So now that I've downloaded it and it's running... how do I join team 32?

[Lueyen]

There will be a red gear looking icon down by your clock. Right click on it and choose options/preferences (don't remember which it is)

[Markarado]

Thanks... joined team 32

[Jennay]

Sweet, thanks Arlos~ I'll look into it for my laptop

[Jay]

On the PS3 forums this guy talks about how he left his PS3 on folding all day and his room temp went up 6 degrees (small room).

So pros and cons of Folding @ Home

Pros:
Helping researchers learn more about the diseases of today in hopes they will potentially be able to figure out a cure

Hardly uses up resources

Cons:
Causes global warming

[10sun]

BUT if he lived someplace cool and needed to heat his room, then that would save on fuel bills while saving lives no?