For WCG from isgtw: “Desktop power helps map protein dance”

World Community Grid

isgtw

“Proteins are part of a complex social network, and rarely act alone. Protein-protein interactions is the term used to describe when two or more proteins ‘partner-up‘ and bind together to carry out a different biological function. While experimental techniques are used to identify the relationships between one protein and another in its cellular neighborhood, computational simulations are still needed to uncover the more complex web of connections for multiple protein partners.

Neuromuscular disease is a generic term for a group of disorders (more than 200 in all) that impair muscle functioning either directly through muscle damage (muscular dystrophy) or
indirectly damaging nerves. It affects one in 2,000 people. These chronic diseases lead to a decrease in muscle strength, causing serious disabilities in motor functions (moving, breathing etc.). The most well-known is muscular dystrophy. In cases of muscular dystrophy contraction of the muscle leads to disruption of the outer membrane of the muscle cells and eventual weakening and wasting of the muscle. Dystrophin is part of a protein complex that connects the cytoskeleton of a muscle fiber to the tissue framework surrounding each cell through the cell membrane. This complex does not form correctly in muscular dystrophy. (Image courtesy Alessandra Carbone).

Distributed computing power from the World Community Grid (WCG) has recently aided the Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy (HMCD) project in capturing all the possible molecular and atomic connections between 2,280 human proteins. The analyzed proteins include those that are known to mutate and induce different forms of neuromuscular disorders, including Muscular Dystrophy.

HCMD is part of a larger-scale venture, the Decrypthon Molecular Docking Project. This is an alliance between AFM (French Muscular Dystrophy Association), CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) and IBM, who are using the World Community Grid resources to help them decipher and map all the functions of interacting proteins found in humans to a worldwide repository of information such as the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) protein databank.

The first phase of the HMCD project, completed in June 2007, scrutinized relationships among 168 proteins using molecular docking simulations. The researchers predicted that it would have taken over 14,000 years of computational time on a 2 GHz PC to reveal and rule out all possible docking confirmations for all 168 proteins. However a ‘distributed calculation’ allowed them to considerably reduce the processing time. Over 6,000-8,000 donor machines meant the task took under 26 weeks. However, to test 2,280 proteins on a one-to-one basis for phase II of the project, researchers needed a method to significantly reduce the number of configurations they would have to check. Molecular docking data from analysis of the 168 proteins (known to form 84 complexes) helped them develop a fast docking algorithm to predict potential partners for this large pool of proteins.

See the full article here.

The World Community Grid is comparable to one of the world’s top 15 supercomputers [ curently at 590.673 TeraFLOPS]. Its software has been downloaded onto over two million computers, which together have completed almost 700,000 years of scientific computation.”

World Community Grid (WCG) runs on BOINC software from Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing from the Space Science Lab at UC Berkeley.

isgtw is an international weekly online publication that covers distributed computing and the research it enables.

“World Community Grid (WCG) brings people together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power. We believe that innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can help make the planet smarter. Our success depends on like-minded individuals – like you.”

WCG projects run on BOINC software from UC Berkeley.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

CAN ONE PERSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE? YOU BETCHA!!

“Download and install secure, free software that captures your computer’s spare power when it is on, but idle. You will then be a World Community Grid volunteer. It’s that simple!” You can download the software at either WCG or BOINC.

Please visit the project pages-

Say No to Schistosoma

GO Fight Against Malaria

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

Computing for Clean Water

The Clean Energy Project

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Help Conquer Cancer

Human Proteome Folding

FightAIDS@Home

Computing for Sustainable Water

World Community Grid is a social initiative of IBM Corporation
IBM Corporation

IBM – Smarter Planet

ScienceSprings is powered by MAINGEAR computers

My BOINC

From isgtw: “Desktop power helps map protein dance”

“Proteins are part of a complex social network, and rarely act alone. Protein-protein interactions is the term used to describe when two or more proteins ‘partner-up‘ and bind together to carry out a different biological function. While experimental techniques are used to identify the relationships between one protein and another in its cellular neighborhood, computational simulations are still needed to uncover the more complex web of connections for multiple protein partners.

Neuromuscular disease is a generic term for a group of disorders (more than 200 in all) that impair muscle functioning either directly through muscle damage (muscular dystrophy) or
indirectly damaging nerves. It affects one in 2,000 people. These chronic diseases lead to a decrease in muscle strength, causing serious disabilities in motor functions (moving, breathing etc.). The most well-known is muscular dystrophy. In cases of muscular dystrophy contraction of the muscle leads to disruption of the outer membrane of the muscle cells and eventual weakening and wasting of the muscle. Dystrophin is part of a protein complex that connects the cytoskeleton of a muscle fiber to the tissue framework surrounding each cell through the cell membrane. This complex does not form correctly in muscular dystrophy. (Image courtesy Alessandra Carbone).

Distributed computing power from the World Community Grid (WCG) has recently aided the Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy (HMCD) project in capturing all the possible molecular and atomic connections between 2,280 human proteins. The analyzed proteins include those that are known to mutate and induce different forms of neuromuscular disorders, including Muscular Dystrophy.

HCMD is part of a larger-scale venture, the Decrypthon Molecular Docking Project. This is an alliance between AFM (French Muscular Dystrophy Association), CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) and IBM, who are using the World Community Grid resources to help them decipher and map all the functions of interacting proteins found in humans to a worldwide repository of information such as the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) protein databank.

The first phase of the HMCD project, completed in June 2007, scrutinized relationships among 168 proteins using molecular docking simulations. The researchers predicted that it would have taken over 14,000 years of computational time on a 2 GHz PC to reveal and rule out all possible docking confirmations for all 168 proteins. However a ‘distributed calculation’ allowed them to considerably reduce the processing time. Over 6,000-8,000 donor machines meant the task took under 26 weeks. However, to test 2,280 proteins on a one-to-one basis for phase II of the project, researchers needed a method to significantly reduce the number of configurations they would have to check. Molecular docking data from analysis of the 168 proteins (known to form 84 complexes) helped them develop a fast docking algorithm to predict potential partners for this large pool of proteins.”

See the full article here.

The World Community Grid is comparable to one of the world’s top 15 supercomputers [ curently at 590.673 TeraFLOPS]. Its software has been downloaded onto over two million computers, which together have completed almost 700,000 years of scientific computation.”

World Community Grid (WCG) runs on BOINC software from Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing from the Space Science Lab at UC Berkeley.

iSGTW is an international weekly online publication that covers distributed computing and the research it enables.

“We report on all aspects of distributed computing technology, such as grids and clouds. We also regularly feature articles on distributed computing-enabled research in a large variety of disciplines, including physics, biology, sociology, earth sciences, archaeology, medicine, disaster management, crime, and art. (Note that we do not cover stories that are purely about commercial technology.)

In its current incarnation, iSGTW is also an online destination where you can host a profile and blog, and find and disseminate announcements and information about events, deadlines, and jobs. In the near future it will also be a place where you can network with colleagues.

You can read iSGTW via our homepage, RSS, or email. For the complete iSGTW experience, sign up for an account or log in with OpenID and manage your email subscription from your account preferences. If you do not wish to access the website’s features, you can just subscribe to the weekly email.”

ScienceSprings is powered by MAINGEAR computers

From Gizmodo: “This Wind Tunnel-Cooled Computer Is Helping Conquer Cancer”

World Community Grid

I got my first glimpse of the subject here at a WCG forum post. I followed the links and was blown away.
I was given permission to use this copyright protected material and I will do my best to honor that permission.

Jan 4, 2013
Andrew Tarantola

Distributed, crowd-sourced computing platforms—doesn’t matter if it’s Indigogo or SETI@home—are only as useful as the individual systems connected to them. And for IBM’s World Community Grid, a single system can do a lot, especially when it’s a purpose-built 4.5GHz calculation-crushing super computer.

Mike Schropp, the Total Geek behind the Total Geekdom website, built the Wind Tunnel Computer after grid computing piqued his interest in 2011. As Schropp describes:

‘The idea that I could build a computer, or use existing computer resources and donate their power so scientists and researchers could process medical and humanitarian research was extremely interesting. By donating computer processing time, you actively contribute towards a great cause. World Community Grid has numerous projects available; finding cures and treatments for cancer, AIDS, malaria, muscular dystrophy, etc.

In particular, Schropp was struck by IBM’s World Community Grid which combines the extra cycles of member machines into a virtual super computer. The organization has also recently begun implementing GPU- rather than CPU-based processes (such as the Help Conquer Cancer project) which is significantly faster when used in massive parallel applications—reducing computational times from hours to minutes.

The rig he built is composed of an Ivy Bridge 3770K CPU running at 4.5GHz, a pair of Radeon HD 7970 graphics cards, 8GB of 2133Mhz of RAM, and a Gigabyte Sniper M3 motherboard. With all these overclocked components running 24/7, heat generation is a major factor—but that’s where the wind tunnel comes in….”

And that is where you should go to the full Gizmodo article which is very instructive.

All we can say is Wow!

For a step-by-step photo review, visit Total Geeekdom’s article.

Thanks to Jesse for the permission to use this material.

“World Community Grid (WCG) brings people together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power. We believe that innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can help make the planet smarter. Our success depends on like-minded individuals – like you.”

WCG projects run on BOINC software from UC Berkeley.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

CAN ONE PERSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE? YOU BETCHA!!

“Download and install secure, free software that captures your computer’s spare power when it is on, but idle. You will then be a World Community Grid volunteer. It’s that simple!” You can download the software at either WCG or BOINC.

Please visit the project pages-

Say No to Schistosoma

GO Fight Against Malaria

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

Computing for Clean Water

The Clean Energy Project

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Help Conquer Cancer

Human Proteome Folding

FightAIDS@Home

Computing for Sustainable Water

World Community Grid is a social initiative of IBM Corporation
IBM Corporation

IBM – Smarter Planet

ScienceSprings is powered by MAINGEAR computers

My BOINC

From World Community Grid: ” ‘Say No to Schistosomiasis’ project update Oct 22, 2012″

“We’re helping find ways
to fight schistosomiasis.
Can one person make a difference?
Yes you can! By donating your unused computer cycles to World Community Grid and the Say No to Schistosoma project, you will help advance critical research on a neglected tropical disease that kills 200,000 people each year and affects over 207 million people worldwide.

Mission
The mission of the Say No To Schistosoma project is to identify potential drug candidates that could possibly be developed into treatments for schistosomiasis. The extensive computing power of World Community Grid will be used to perform computer simulations of the interactions between millions of chemical compounds and certain target proteins. This will help find the most promising compounds that may lead to effective treatments for the disease.

Significance
Schistosomiasis is a tropical disease caused by parasitic worms that are transmitted by freshwater snails. The disease kills 200,000 people each year and affects over 207 million people. Schistosomiasis is second only to malaria in its socioeconomic devastation. Researchers at the Infórium University in Belo Horizonte and FIOCRUZ-Minas, Brazil, are using World Community Grid to search for chemical compounds which may lead to new drugs for treating the disease.

Approach
A software program called VINA from The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, will be used to perform the virtual chemistry experiments. These virtual experiments will search to find which of millions of drug compounds might be able to disable particular proteins essential for the parasite’s survival. Screening for the best potential drug compounds is an early step in the process of developing effective treatments for the disease. With enough computing power, this screening can be done much more quickly than using conventional laboratory experiments. Existing computers available to the researchers would require approximately 30 years to perform the screening. However, it is estimated that the power of World Community Grid can reduce the time required to one year or less. Information about the best candidate compounds will be published by the scientists, and this information will be available in the public domain for other scientists to build upon with their research. Further laboratory work using the best candidates identified by this project could lead to the development of better drugs to fight schistosomiasis.

The news:

‘We have some updates about our Say No to Schistosomiasis project on World Community Grid.

So far, we have 10 new compounds being tested in vitro. Test results will be made available as soon as the tests are completed. We have another 16 potential compounds being evaluated for testing. Of the candidates being tested, the most promising is based on Digoxin.

At Inforium University we created a new master program on using these drug screening methods. The program is called “Professional Masters on Information Technology applied to Computational Biology” and is being coordinated by myself (Rosangela Silqueira Hickson Rios). The target audience is professionals from upper level courses in the fields of exact sciences, health sciences or biological sciences, interested in the study of biological problems at different scales and levels of complexity in the scope of computational biology and systems biology.

We participated for 13th International Symposium on Schistosomiasis.’”

“World Community Grid (WCG) brings people together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power. We believe that innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can help make the planet smarter. Our success depends on like-minded individuals – like you.”

WCG projects run on BOINC software from UC Berkeley.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

CAN ONE PERSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE? YOU BETCHA!!

“Download and install secure, free software that captures your computer’s spare power when it is on, but idle. You will then be a World Community Grid volunteer. It’s that simple!” You can download the software at either WCG or BOINC.

Please visit the project pages-

Say No to Schistosoma

GO Fight Against Malaria

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

Computing for Clean Water

The Clean Energy Project

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Help Conquer Cancer

Human Proteome Folding

FightAIDS@Home

Computing for Sustainable Water

World Community Grid is a social initiative of IBM Corporation
IBM Corporation

IBM – Smarter Planet

ScienceSprings is powered by MAINGEAR computers

From Computing For Clean Water at WCG Status Update

“World Community Grid (WCG) brings people together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power. We believe that innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can help make the planet smarter. Our success depends on like-minded individuals – like you.”

“The Computing for Clean Water (C4CW) project has returned over 90 million results!”

“Mission
The mission of Computing for Clean Water is to provide deeper insight on the molecular scale into the origins of the efficient flow of water through a novel class of filter materials. This insight will in turn guide future development of low-cost and more efficient water filters.

Significance
Lack of access to clean water is one of the major humanitarian challenges for many regions in the developing world. It is estimated that 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.6 billion have little or no sanitation. Millions of people die annually – estimates are 3,900 children a day – from the results of diseases transmitted through unsafe water, in particular diarrhea.

Technologies for filtering dirty water exist, but are generally quite expensive. Desalination of sea water, a potentially abundant source of drinking water, is similarly limited by filtering costs. Therefore, new approaches to efficient water filtering are a subject of intense research. Carbon nanotubes, stacked in arrays so that water must pass through the length of the tubes, represent a new approach to filtering water.

Approach
Normally, the extremely small pore size of nanotubes, typically only a few water molecules in diameter, would require very large pressures and hence expensive equipment in order to filter useful amounts of water. However, in 2005 experiments showed that such arrays of nanotubes allow water to flow at much higher rates than expected. This surprising result has spurred many scientists to invest considerable effort in studying the underlying processes that facilitate water flow in nanotubes.

This project uses large-scale molecular dynamics calculations – where the motions of individual water molecules through the nanotubes are simulated – in order to get a deeper understanding of the mechanism of water flow in the nanotubes. For example, there has been speculation about whether the water molecules in direct contact with the nanotube might behave more like ice. This in turn might reduce the friction felt by the rest of the water, hence increasing the rate of flow. Realistic computer simulations are one way to test such hypotheses.

Ultimately, the scientists hope to use the insights they glean from the simulations in order to optimize the underlying process that is enabling water to flow much more rapidly through nanotubes and other nanoporous materials. This optimization process will allow water to flow even more easily, while retaining sources of contamination. The simulations may also reveal under what conditions such filters can best assist in a desalination process.”

C4CF had its origin in the Center for Nano and Micro Mechanics at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

From CNMM

“The Computing for Clean Water (C4CW) project is a joint project between CNMM and several international research institutions [The University of Sydney, Monash University, The National Centre of Nanoscience and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of High Energy Physics, The Citizen Cyberscience Centre, with the support of IBM’s World Community Grid, and thousands of volunteers.

The team at CNMM is investigating how water flows in nanotubes, using a computer-based simulation technique known as molecular dynamics. The ultimate goal of this research is deeper insight into how nanotubes and other porous nanomaterials can be used to build a new generation of cheap water filters, to alleviate the pressing demand for clean water in large parts of China and many other parts of the developing world.

To do these simulations with the sort of accuracy we need takes a lot of computing power, far more than is accessible to us currently. Volunteers provide this computing power by allowing some simulations to run using the idle time of the processor chips in their laptops and PCs, for example while they are writing emails or surfing the web. Indeed, when doing these common tasks, the processor is idle often more than 90% of the time, and using some of that idle time turns out to be energetically very efficient, since it only adds a few percent extra power to what the computer would otherwise consume.

The results from each simulation, when combined together statistically for millions of runs, help us create a pool of necessary data that can be analyzed to understand why recent experiments show that water flows much more easily in nanotubes than standard hydrodynamical considerations would normally lead us to believe. Understanding this process is a first step to optimizing it for practical purposes, in particular to make cheaper filters that do not require so much pressue to filter water through them.
This is an exciting project, but it is also complicated and will run over some time. World Community Grid enables scientists and volunteers to co-operate in a very simple and powerful way. We are grateful for the continuing support of every one of our volunteers and will post our progress here to keep you updated.”

WCG projects run on BOINC software from UC Berkeley.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

CAN ONE PERSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE? YOU BETCHA!!

“Download and install secure, free software that captures your computer’s spare power when it is on, but idle. You will then be a World Community Grid volunteer. It’s that simple!” You can download the software at either WCG or BOINC.

Please visit the project pages-

Say No to Schistosoma

GO Fight Against Malaria

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

Computing for Clean Water

The Clean Energy Project

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Help Conquer Cancer

Human Proteome Folding

FightAIDS@Home

Computing for Sustainable Water

World Community Grid is a social initiative of IBM Corporation
IBM Corporation

IBM – Smarter Planet

ScienceSprings is powered by MAINGEAR computers

From World Community Grid: 95,000 Years of Computer Run Time For Help Conquer Cancer Project!!

Here are the statistics for World Community Grid’s 95,000 years for HCC. Congrats (kudos? props? snap?) to the 100,000 current and over 2,000,000 all time crunchers.

Totals:
Run Time (y:d:h:m:s) 95791:068:08:05:48
Points Generated 84,291,774,465
Results Returned 288,364,358

Averages:
Run Time Per Calendar Day (y:d:h:m:s) 55:077:00:52:34
Run Time Per Result (y:d:h:m:s) 0:000:02:54:36
Points Per Hour of Run Time 100.45
Points Per Calendar Day 48,583,155.31
Points Per Result 292.31
Results Per Calendar Day 166,204.24

Yesterday:
Run Time (y:d:h:m:s) – Day 41:312:11:42:02
Points Generated – Day 54,675,021
Results Returned – Day 239,078

[Status] By Projects
Computing for Sustainable Water Active
Say No to Schistosoma Active
GO Fight Against Malaria Active
Drug Search for Leishmaniasis Active
Computing for Clean Water Active
The Clean Energy Project – Phase 2 Active
Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 2 Active
Help Fight Childhood Cancer Active
Help Conquer Cancer Active
Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2 Active
FightAIDS@Home Active
Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together – Phase 2 Intermittent
Influenza Antiviral Drug Search Intermittent
The Clean Energy Project Intermittent
Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together Intermittent
Beta Testing Intermittent
Nutritious Rice for the World Completed
AfricanClimate@Home Completed
Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy Completed
Genome Comparison Completed
Help Defeat Cancer Completed
Human Proteome Folding Completed

“World Community Grid (WCG) brings people together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power. We believe that innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can help make the planet smarter. Our success depends on like-minded individuals – like you.”

WCG projects run on BOINC software from UC Berkeley.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Public Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

CAN ONE PERSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE? YOU BETCHA!!

“Download and install secure, free software that captures your computer’s spare power when it is on, but idle. You will then be a World Community Grid volunteer. It’s that simple!” You can download the software at either WCG or BOINC.

Please visit the project pages-

Say No to Schistosoma

GO Fight Against Malaria

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

Computing for Clean Water

The Clean Energy Project

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Help Conquer Cancer

Human Proteome Folding

FightAIDS@Home

Computing for Sustainable Water

World Community Grid is a social initiative of IBM Corporation
IBM Corporation

IBM – Smarter Planet

My BOINC

From the WCG Clean Energy Project at Harvard: The IBM Contribution

The Clean Energy Project (CEP2) at Harvard University gives us the look into IBM’s contribution to the betterment of Society via World community Grid (WCG).

Watch this short video.

You can visit the WCG web site (link is above), download the BOINC software agent, and attach to the Clean Energy Project. We would love to have you.

From the project:

Mission
The mission of The Clean Energy Project is to find new materials for the next generation of solar cells and later, energy storage devices. By harnessing the immense power of World Community Grid, researchers can calculate the electronic properties of hundreds of thousands of organic materials – thousands of times more than could ever be tested in a lab – and determine which candidates are most promising for developing affordable solar energy technology.

From The Human Proteome Folding Project at WCG

The Human Proteome Folding (HPF2) project at World Community Grid (WCG) has announced the publication of a paper:

21 Jun 2012
Paper published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution using Human Proteome Folding project results

Category: Human Proteome Folding
Tags: Project Update , Research Papers

Summary
Researchers have published a paper in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, which documents their findings studying a number of plant genomes, their proteomes, evolution and protein structure.

Paper Title:
“The Plant Proteome Folding Project: Structure and Positive Selection in Plant Protein Families”

Lay Person Abstract:

Melissa Pentony et al. have presented work considering components of proteins exhibiting faster-than-average evolution in the proteomes of five major plant species, including rice (Oryza sativa) and Arabidopsis thaliana (an important model organism for plant study). They describe new information on the relationship between evolution and protein structure in plants.

The World Community Grid has contributed to this study by providing a much more structurally complete view of unknown and understudied proteins from five plant families than was previously available. The results from the Human Proteome Folding project produced 29,202 protein structures contributing to this project, of which 4,764 were very high-confidence. This should eventually assist agricultural scientists to better understand important plant and food crops, how to breed them for disease resistance, better nutrition and to better handle environmental stress.

At the News web page, there is a technical abstract for anyone interested, and a link to the paper.

“World Community Grid (WCG) brings people together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power. We believe that innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can help make the planet smarter. Our success depends on like-minded individuals – like you.”

WCG projects run on BOINC software from UC Berkeley.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

CAN ONE PERSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE? YOU BETCHA!!

“Download and install secure, free software that captures your computer’s spare power when it is on, but idle. You will then be a World Community Grid volunteer. It’s that simple!” You can download the software at either WCG or BOINC.

Please visit the project pages-

Say No to Schistosoma

GO Fight Against Malaria

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

Computing for Clean Water

The Clean Energy Project

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Help Conquer Cancer

Human Proteome Folding

FightAIDS@Home

Computing for Sustainable Water

World Community Grid is a social initiative of IBM Corporation
IBM Corporation

IBM – Smarter Planet

My BOINC

From WCG’s Say No to Schistosoma Project, Rosangela Hickson Writes About the Disease and the Project

Schistosomiasis – a tropical disease caused by the parasitic worms transmitted by freshwater snails – affects more than 200 million people each year, killing 200,000 of them. Schistosomiasis is second only to malaria in its devastating effects on the world’s population.

To find a treatment for this deadly disease, researchers at Inforium University in Belo Horizonte and Fiocruz Minas, Brazil are using World Community Grid to run computer simulations that map the interactions of millions of chemical compounds with selected target proteins. Powered by the unused computing capacity of more than two million World Community Grid member computers, Brazil’s Say No to Schistosoma project is leading the charge to wipe out this deadly disease.

June, 14th 2012
Dr. Rosangela Hickson

[Rosangela Hickson, Ph.D., is the principal investigator of Brazil’s “Say No to Schistosoma” Project, powered by World Community Grid.]

“The story of a disease that infects nearly 200 million people today begins in the ancient remains of mummies from the Upper Nile River Delta. Analyses of mummies from Nubia – the former Nile River kingdom located in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan – reveal that ancient populations suffered and died from infections that caused anemia and chronic illnesses which impaired their growth and cognitive development, damaged their organs, and weakened their immune systems.

Schistosoma mansoni

A child gathers contaminated water.

The Say No to Schistosoma project is using bioinformatics tools to engineer new drug therapies to fight schistomiasis.

Progression of the disease

We plan to make public the results of our research so other scientists may build upon it. The Fiocruz Minas team is planning on conducting additional laboratory work to develop better drugs to fight schistosomiasis – using the best candidate compounds identified by the computer simulations. We thank the many people who have volunteered their computers to make this research possible.”

See the full blog post here.

“World Community Grid (WCG) brings people together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power. We believe that innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can help make the planet smarter. Our success depends on like-minded individuals – like you.”

WCG projects run on BOINC software from UC Berkeley.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Public Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

CAN ONE PERSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE? YOU BETCHA!!

“Download and install secure, free software that captures your computer’s spare power when it is on, but idle. You will then be a World Community Grid volunteer. It’s that simple!” You can download the software at either WCG or BOINC.

Please visit the project pages-

Say No to Schistosoma

GO Fight Against Malaria

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

Computing for Clean Water

The Clean Energy Project

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Help Conquer Cancer

Human Proteome Folding

FightAIDS@Home

Computing for Sustainable Water

World Community Grid is a social initiative of IBM Corporation
IBM Corporation

IBM – Smarter Planet

My BOINC

From Berkeley Lab: “Berkeley Lab Scientists Help Define the Healthy Human Microbiome”

Berkeley Lab

Computing, bioinformatics, and microbial ecology resources play key role in mapping our microbial make-up

June 13, 2012
Dan Krotz

“You’re outnumbered. There are ten times as many microbial cells in you as there are your own cells.

The human microbiome—as scientists call the communities of microorganisms that inhabit your skin, mouth, gut, and other parts of your body by the trillions—plays a fundamental role in keeping you healthy. These communities are also thought to cause disease when they’re perturbed. But our microbiome’s exact function, good and bad, is poorly understood. That could change.

The bacterium, Enterococcus faecalis, which lives in the human gut, is just one type of microbe studied in NIH’s Human Microbiome Project. (Courtesy: United States Department of Agriculture)

A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-organized consortium that includes scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has for the first time mapped the normal microbial make-up of healthy humans. [Human Microbiome Project (HMP) is a United States National Institutes of Health initiative with the goal of identifying and characterizing the microorganisms which are found in association with both healthy and diseased humans (i.e. their microbial flora). Launched in 2008, it is a five-year project, best characterized as a feasibility study, and has a total budget of $115 million. The ultimate goal of this and similar NIH-sponsored microbiome projects is to test if changes in the human microbiome are associated with human health or disease. This topic is currently not well-understood.]

The research will help scientists understand how our microbiome carries out vital tasks such as supporting our immune system and helping us digest food. It’ll also shed light on our microbiome’s role in diseases such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and psoriasis, to name a few.”

See the full article here.

For those interested – and you should be interested – the Human Protein Folding Project (HPF2) at the Bonneau Lab, New York University, is a participant in the HMP project. HPF2 is a project in Public Distributed Computing under the aegis of the World Community Grid (WCG), running on software from the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) and using the project products of the rosetta@home project from the Baker Lab, University of Washington.

That is a pretty long sentence. What it means is, if you visit WCG, or BOINC, and download the BOINC agent software for Windows, Linux, or Mac, you can attach to the HPF2 project and process data for HMP. While you are at it, look around at WCG website, there are about a dozen very worthwhile projects all aimed at curing illnesses and solving fundamental problems for mankind. Also, at the BOINC website the are a vast variety of projects in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy.

Here are some pretty pictures.

So, you know, when you see graphics, these are serious guys. Give them (us) a look.

My BOINC stats.