[Natoma]

I know everyone here is on the B3D Folding team, but I was wondering if there's any interest in this new grid computing initiative.

http://fightaidsathome.scripps.edu/index.html

I read about it at Businessweek Online.

When tech mavens first set out to harness the power of thousands of linked computers for a grassroots community project, their target was a strange one: ET. That 1999 effort, the Search for Extra-Terrestrials@Home, roped together a so-called grid of home computers scattered around the world to analyze radio signals from outer space, looking for evidence of life. Now comes a new grid project with a much more down-to-earth goal: fighting AIDS.


FightAIDS@Home taps an already-existing organization, the World Community Grid, to help scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., discover new treatments for AIDS. The project, announced Nov. 21, puts more than 100,000 computers at Scripps' command. Community grids take massive number-crunching jobs that would normally be done on a frightfully expensive supercomputer and parcel them out to volunteers so the work can practically be done for free.

EVERYBODY'S "A PHILANTHROPIST." This is the first use of community grid computing to fight AIDS. "It means there's a better chance of getting more effective or more tailored drugs, and there's also a potential for making drugs less expensively," says Scripps Research Director Arthur J. Olson.

Anyone who wants to participate can find out how by logging on to the World Community Grid. "The more people who come on the grid, the more important research can be done," says Stan Litow, vice-president of corporate community relations at IBM (IBM), which is a lead organizer of both the community grid and the FightAIDS@Home project. "Everybody can be a philanthropist."

The AIDS grid announcement comes at a time of increased interest in philanthropy within the tech world. Google (GOOG) recently pledged what could amount to nearly $1 billion over the next 20 years to social causes (see BW Online, 10/20/05, "Googling for Charity"), and the MIT Media Lab is developing a $100 laptop computer it hopes to distribute for free to millions of poor students in less-developed countries (see BW Online, 10/04/05, "Help for Info Age Have-Nots"). Tech companies were also generous in their contributions to Hurricane Katrina relief.

[Slyne]

I'm not Dave, but I think the resources in Folding for B3D are scarce enough that we can't really afford to split the team.

As for myself, I feel more attracted to unraveling the mysteries of proteins than to devising a new treatment against a known virus. Plus we may all die of bird flu much sooner than aids, so they may want to try figuring a treatment against that instead.

Thanks for the info though,

- N -

[Titanio]

Cheers. I haven't used one of these since Seti, but I'll be glad to download this. Timely with World Aids Day next week too!

[Deepak]

Personally I would choose FAH (I have only 1 PC) , FAH may ultimately benefit AIDS research, right?

[wireframe]

Originally Posted by Deepak

FAH may ultimately benefit AIDS research, right?

I don't know the answer to this question, but I think it brings up an interesting point. Some of these distributed research projects are very bad at telling the workers (those installing the client ot process data) what exactly it is they will be doing. Some may think SETI@home is/was silly, but at least it was very precise in what it was doing (officially, but let's not consider the possibility that you did other work without knowing it). I think these projects would benefit greatly if they didn't treat the "hoard" as a bunch of idiots with too much processing power under their control. Make the information available. Perhaps there is room for two, three, or a hundred distributed AIDS research projects that all have a different philosophy and angle of looking at the problem. Let people be informed without spending a month hunting down information. Let them make an informed decision on what projects to support.

BTW, I think it will be very interesting to compare numbers between this AIDS research and other, more esoteric ones like SETI. SETI had a certain romantic charm to it. Just the word AIDS can scare people away and people may be very biased in what they think is achievable, going against the odds thinking finding a cure for AIDS is less likely than SETI because one, AIDS research, is much more down to earth and close to home.

PS. I am not a member of any distributed computing project. I used to run SETI@home, but "grew out of it" you could say. I haven't even tried F@H or any others, and I will probably not try this one either. Not because I don't want a cure to this terrible disease, but because I don't get the sensation that installing the client will help and I will just wonder what the heck I am really running on my computer.

[pascal]

My guess Folding@home will have more impact in our lives.

[Slyne]

Originally Posted by wireframe

I don't get the sensation that installing the client will help and I will just wonder what the heck I am really running on my computer.

Well, F@H does give you some sense of what you're doing, if you care to look.

Go to the stats page and find the list of all projects you've worked on (http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/...username=Slyne for me), then the list of all projects is available here: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/allprojects, and you can see a description of all the foldings you've contributed to. You can also click on one of your listed projects and it'll bring you to the description (but not always), so at least some info is available, and I suppose useful if you're acquainted with the scientifical domain.

Now we'd really appreciate a new contributor

[suryad]

I personally think the AIDS project holds more importance because one they are fighting AIDS and two, they have a sister project as well that is dealing with protein folding. The client automatically switches between the two. I dunno if the protein folding project there is related to the FAH in any way. Kind of confusing really.