Computers of the world unite to cure disease
Stanford University's bold research project called Folding At Home is your chance to sit back, do nothing, and help them discover the keys to disease, and someday maybe even their cures.
*Alzheimer's Disease
*Parkinson's Disease
*Cancer
*Cystic Fibrosis
*Huntington's Disease
*Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome (Mad Cow)
This is only a partial list of the conditions that are in line to benefit from this intriguing project, and Stanford NEEDS OUR HELP!
So, what is Folding At Home? Folding At Home is a project designed and run by Stanford to help them discover how proteins mis-fold and cause disease (more on that below). To do this complex process would take many super-computers many, many years to accomplish. People are dieing.... this is too slow. So, the project was devised to invite the general public (that's you and me) to hook up with Stanford and let them use our idle computers and Play Stations (in the middle of the night, while you're at work or eating dinner) to make this process happen years faster.
What then, is Protein Folding? The human body makes about 50,000 proteins. When these proteins are being made, they are supposed to assume a particular shape. This Apple Computer article relates it to Origami paper folding. Sometimes something goes wrong in the process of folding the flat piece of paper into a beautiful swan. The protein that is supposed to look like an origami swan instead mis-folds and the end product is completely different - maybe an origami star, or worse yet.... nothing. When this happens, our bodies can't function properly. We become sick. Sometimes, we die. We need to know how each of these proteins fold properly before we can try to prevent the mis-fold, or fix it. The computer calculations for these complex chemical reactions are massive. In 2007 it was estimated that the amount of power this system uses would be roughly equal to every human on planet earth doing 75,000 math equations in their head at once! If we are to discover the mis-folds in our lifetime, it is going to take an army of volunteers to be a part of the project. This is where YOU come in!
How do I sign up? I have posted a few Folding At Home videos here at WEGO Health. You might want to start there, or you can go directly to the University's website for the project
which can be found HERE.
- By going to the website and following the directions, you can begin. This project was named by Guinness Book of World Records as the most powerful distributed computing network in existence. When you're not using your computer, simply set it to work, and that's it. You can even watch the folding as it happens if you like - incredible!!!
You can be a part of the Research,
You can be a part of the Healing,
You can be a part of history...
Never underestimate the power of ONE!
*Alzheimer's Disease
*Parkinson's Disease
*Cancer
*Cystic Fibrosis
*Huntington's Disease
*Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome (Mad Cow)
This is only a partial list of the conditions that are in line to benefit from this intriguing project, and Stanford NEEDS OUR HELP!
So, what is Folding At Home? Folding At Home is a project designed and run by Stanford to help them discover how proteins mis-fold and cause disease (more on that below). To do this complex process would take many super-computers many, many years to accomplish. People are dieing.... this is too slow. So, the project was devised to invite the general public (that's you and me) to hook up with Stanford and let them use our idle computers and Play Stations (in the middle of the night, while you're at work or eating dinner) to make this process happen years faster.
What then, is Protein Folding? The human body makes about 50,000 proteins. When these proteins are being made, they are supposed to assume a particular shape. This Apple Computer article relates it to Origami paper folding. Sometimes something goes wrong in the process of folding the flat piece of paper into a beautiful swan. The protein that is supposed to look like an origami swan instead mis-folds and the end product is completely different - maybe an origami star, or worse yet.... nothing. When this happens, our bodies can't function properly. We become sick. Sometimes, we die. We need to know how each of these proteins fold properly before we can try to prevent the mis-fold, or fix it. The computer calculations for these complex chemical reactions are massive. In 2007 it was estimated that the amount of power this system uses would be roughly equal to every human on planet earth doing 75,000 math equations in their head at once! If we are to discover the mis-folds in our lifetime, it is going to take an army of volunteers to be a part of the project. This is where YOU come in!
How do I sign up? I have posted a few Folding At Home videos here at WEGO Health. You might want to start there, or you can go directly to the University's website for the project
which can be found HERE.
- By going to the website and following the directions, you can begin. This project was named by Guinness Book of World Records as the most powerful distributed computing network in existence. When you're not using your computer, simply set it to work, and that's it. You can even watch the folding as it happens if you like - incredible!!!
You can be a part of the Research,
You can be a part of the Healing,
You can be a part of history...
Never underestimate the power of ONE!
Tags: alzheimer's, cancer, computer, folding at home, neurological, parkinson's, stanford, video
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