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http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

If you don't know what to do with your CPU cycles : install Grid Agent from WorldCommunity.org.

It's a grid computing application like SETI@Home, and you can choose which project(s) you want to participate in:
- FightAids@Home,
- Human Proteome Folding,
- Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2.

Hopefully, more projects will start using this same "platform", so we don't have to install one application per project...

For a minute there, I thought Microsoft was going to sponsor the World Community Grid. Could you imagine if every new Windows PC shiped with a World Community Grid client? Imagine the power of the grid then...

IBM's World Community Grid: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

investigate protein-related diseases: http://predictor.scripps.edu/

Rosetta@home: http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Cell Computing http://www.cellcomputing.net/

...Research results must be made available to the global research community and will be made available on World Community Grid's web site.

The Boinc client seems to run at nice 19 (i.e. very low thread priority), and doesn't seem to be hogging memory or disk space. I haven't been running it long enough to see if either of those will build up over time. It's designed for you to run it in the background without noticing.

As to your other question, this addresses a slightly different research topic than Folding@home. See their explanation of the differences at http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/projects_showcas e/viewHpfFaq.do?shortName=hpf#folding.

2) * Focused on solving problems to benefit humanity;
* Conducted by public or nonprofit organizations;
* Contributed to the public domain; and
* Accelerated by grid computing technology.

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/projects_showcas e/viewSubmitAProposal.do

You're wrong. Boinc is not part of World Community Grid. As a matter of fact, it's 2 different projects. Boinc is indeed open source written by Berkely University but World Community Grid is not. Read more here.

There is a EULA, and it looks pretty irritating.

I will leave it to the EULA vultures to pick over this thing -- but it is a doozy.

At IBM we're encouraged to run the World Community Grid program, since it's "Powered by IBM."

Some of you might remember it's original incarnation, the United Devices client. UD is still involved, and it's still on the same projects, like the Human Proteome Folding Project.

At IBM we're encouraged to run the World Community Grid program, since it's "Powered by IBM."

Some of you might remember it's original incarnation, the United Devices client. UD is still involved, and it's still on the same projects, like the Human Proteome Folding Project.

If you're bored with searching for Aliens (who only want to rape our women and eat our children anyway), try this worthy project:

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

Hmm, where have I heard about this before again?
Exciting to read a paper on this fanastic new idea.

Have a look at IBM-supported World Community Grid, especially this topic and the links in it.

I'm always using my CPU, so I don't want it to go into low power mode. I support the Folding At Home and IBM's World Community Grid projects.

Even if I wasn't, I'm often still using my CPU for keeping Azereus running (Fedora distros).

I don't want it going offline. I want it doing my bidding full time.

Somewhat off-topic, although still on the subject of distributed computing, I beg generous Slashbots with processor cycles to spare to run the World Community Grid agent, http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInf o.do?teamId=855RSMBR9N1 ">join the Slashdot users team and aid science in fighting various diseases.

I am a World Community Grid (go Slashdot Users!) "newbie," and have a question to those among you who have more experience with this program.

My first three proteine processing tasks took 4 to 5 hours, but the last proteine processing I had took a little more than 26 hours to complete (with a minimum Rosetta of -70.34). Is this normal? Is it due to the complexity of the proteine? Or am I experiencing an uncommon performance drop?

Thanks for your assistance and sorry for being off-topic (but I didn't know where else to post).

I am a World Community Grid (go Slashdot Users!) "newbie," and have a question to those among you who have more experience with this program.

My first three proteine processing tasks took 4 to 5 hours, but the last proteine processing I had took a little more than 26 hours to complete (with a minimum Rosetta of -70.34). Is this normal? Is it due to the complexity of the proteine? Or am I experiencing an uncommon performance drop?

Thanks for your assistance and sorry for being off-topic (but I didn't know where else to post).

You have the right idea , but why limit yourself?

Interesting. I'd like to know what fellow slashdot users think of the World Community Grid on these bio patent issues.

Quite a bit, actually... its quietly folding proteins all day long.

http://worldcommunitygrid.org/

From the WCG site

...but then I was so horrified by the high ranking of a certain team that I had to join this one to keep from screaming.
Go Atheists/Agnostics!

...but then I was so horrified by the high ranking of a certain team that I had to join this one to keep from screaming.
Go Atheists/Agnostics!

Apparently, the tool referenced in this Slashdot article is not recommended for use because it can corrupt the results.

After all the horror stories of the slashdot effect ( google, wikepedia ), the slashdot has taken a turn around! I have never heard of a flash mob doing anything that is clearly good, but running some good projects like the Human Proteome Folding Project ( FAQs).

After all the horror stories of the slashdot effect ( google, wikepedia ), the slashdot has taken a turn around! I have never heard of a flash mob doing anything that is clearly good, but running some good projects like the Human Proteome Folding Project ( FAQs).

After all the horror stories of the slashdot effect ( google, wikepedia ), the slashdot has taken a turn around! I have never heard of a flash mob doing anything that is clearly good, but running some good projects like the Human Proteome Folding Project ( FAQs).

sweet deal slashdotters!

#1 in... how long... a half hour maybe?

Good work to everyone who installed, and hopefully we can actually do some good in medicine.

Who knew that reading slashdot would help save the world?

check us out here

There is a team of Slashdot users - currently ranked 13th in points with only 79 members. . . . Alas, you also have to be running Redmond's finest.

Which is why there are only 79 /.ers signed up. When they get the Linux client, they'll get 79,000 /.ers.

The world community grid project is more generalized than just the current project. The plans are to take other projects on as well. The requrirements for any project are that they must be not-for-profit.

The request for projects (pdf) says this:

Results must be made available to the global research community by the sponsoring research organization and remain in the public domain.

In short, IBM expects to take a loss on this as a philanthropic donation every year that they support it and only non-profits will be able to use it for "pressing issues facing the global community."

In the time it took me to create a Slashdot login to be able to post a message here, 4 other people have already joined the Grid 'team' for Slashdotters. Apparently they're tracking progress and awarding 'points' for tasks completed and our team is ranked 35th overall at last check.

For those interested, the team name is 'Slashdot Users' and more information can be found here

According to the detail of the project http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/projects_showcas e/human_proteome.html the project was setup by and for the Institute for Systems Biology, their webpage is located here, http://www.systemsbiology.org/. The IBM website says that "[ISB] will use the results within its larger research efforts." According to their website, ISB is a non-profit, internationally renowned organization. There is no mention of whether the information accured will be open sourced.

The information is available on their site: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/files/rfp.pdf

To quote:
World Community Grid is designed as a resource for research done with a philanthropic or humanitarian purpose and will only be available to projects conducted for public and not-for-profit purposes. It will serve as a useful tool for the completion of a certain stage of research, hastening the progress of projects into further phases of development. Results must be made available to the global research community by the sponsoring research organization and remain in the public domain. The results will also be available on World Community Grid's website for volunteers and other visitors.

grid.org and World Community Grid are the same project. See this discussion thread from grid.org.

For those of you who don't know Stanford's project, called Folding@Home, uses computer cycles to observe and find out more about how proteins fold.

Now how is this really different from IBM's project?

From IBM's World Community Grid website:

"However, scientists still do not know the functions of a large fraction of human proteins. With an understanding of how each protein affects human health, scientists can develop new cures for human disease.

Huge amounts of data exist that can identify the role of individual proteins, but it must be analyzed to be useful. This analysis could take years to complete on super computers. World Community Grid hopes to shrink this time to months. Human Proteome Proteins are long and disordered chains folded into globs. The number of shapes that proteins can fold into is enormous. Searching through all of the possible shapes to identify the correct function of an individual protein is a tremendous challenge.

The Human Proteome Folding project will provide scientists with data that predicts the shape of a very large number of human proteins. These predictions will give scientists the clues they need to identify the biological functions of individual proteins within the human body. With an understanding of how each protein affects human health, scientists can develop new cures for human diseases such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, SARS, and malaria."

From Stanford's Folding@Home website:

"What are proteins and why do they "fold"? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out their biochemical function, they remarkably assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, remains a mystery. Moreover, perhaps not surprisingly, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious effects, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, and Parkinson's disease."

"What does Folding@Home do? Folding@Home is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. We use novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. This has allowed us to simulate folding for the first time, and to now direct our approach to examine folding related disease."

They both sound like they're out to accomplish the same exact thing. I could not spot any real differences, anyone care to enlighten us?

I've been doing SETI@home for a while now, and was pleased to see the announcement of this in the press. I was less pleased when I went to the web site, and found out that (as it says above) the only client was for Windows. Since I use only Linux these days, I guess that leaves me out.

I hope that with IBM's involvement, and stated committment to Linux, this will change soon. I sent them a note, using the "Contact Us" form on the web site, and would encourage others to do the same.

(Incidentally, I've been running SETI@home initially on Windows, now on Linux, using the command-line client in both cases. I find I get ~50% more work units/time with Linux, and less impact on interactive use of the machine.)