http://folding.stanford.edu

well after a .025% to my Folding@home response, it's time to take the world into our hands! Folding@home is a Distributed Computing project run by Stanford University. Distributed Computing is often used by projects that cannot afford to buy mass amount of computing power to aid in their research. Thus they develop small Console programs that people who are good in heart download, and give their CPU power to the study.
Folding@home's premise is all about Folding Proteins. I guess they can explain it better

quote:

Understanding how proteins self-assemble ("protein folding") is a holy grail of modern molecular biophysics. What makes it such a great challenge is its complexity, which renders simulations of folding extremely computationally demanding and difficult to understand. Our group has developed a new way to simulate protein folding ("distributed dynamics") which should remove the previous barriers to simulating protein folding. However, this method is extremely computationally demanding and we need your help (see below). We have already demonstrated that our distributed dynamics technique can fold small protein fragments and protein-like synthetic polymers. The next step is to apply these methods to larger, considerably more important and complicated proteins. Unfortunately, larger proteins fold slower and thus we need more computers to simulate their folding. While the alpha helix folds in 100 nanoseconds, proteins just a little larger fold 100x slower (10 microseconds). Thus, while 10-100 processors were enough to simulate the helix, we will need many more to simulate these larger, more interesting proteins. To achieve a significant speedup, we need lots of processors in a given run. Also, since a single run does not tell us much, we need to simulate several runs (10 runs would be a good start) per protein. Thus, we need lots of processors. By running our client that uses the Mithral CS-SDK, you can lend us your machine for as long as you like. The client allows you to run for as little or as long as you like. Even a single day's worth of running is helpful to us.

I'm guessing some of you have seen the Seti@home project. bleh. don't use it. It is a VERY interesting project, but it is way too slow for anyone with even the latest technology to use. Folding@home is the way to go.

I'd like to make a FAQ, but i'd basicly be copying this:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread...threadid=121794

after reading that, (and if u explored the rest of the forum) you'll see how exciting this can be. yes, a science project that is actually exciting, as well as competetive

Folding@home allows teams to work together to try and gain the prestige of the holy #1 spot. I'm already on a team, SAGoons, hailing from the internet godworld www.somethingawful.com. If we could rally TranceAddicts in this project, i would love to change teams to a TA team.
Our team page is currently here: http://folding.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/teampage?q=351

I don't want to start folding immediatley unless i feel we can get a good backing on this project. I If i see enough interest, i will be glad to switch teams and support my TranceAddicts. So i guess i'll just wait until, hmmmm, friday to see if there is enough support to create a tranceaddict team.

If you want to start folding rite now, just download the console from the website and: Enter in your username (most likely your TA name) and the team number is 351. well i guess that's all. hope we can make a difference in the world of proteins.

http://folding.stanford.edu

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Thank You and Goodnight