New Call for Folding @ Home

m0rnin,

This is mainly directed at 0ur newer members. y0u may n0t be aware that Team IPX participated in the Gnome Folding @ Home project. This pr0ject is managed by Stanford University, and it is a distributed computing program.

y0u d0wnl0ad w0rk units, pr0cess them, and then upl0ad the results t0 their netw0rks. No big deal huh? It uses the spare CPU processing time that your otherwise not using, and chugs away in the background.

I’ll state this now: Many team members have in the past had issues getting folding to run consistently. Best case, you might have to just manually start the program everytime your computer starts, but worst case you wont be able to get it to run at all.
I ask the new members, and remind the older members here, to please give folding for the team a go!

Team IPX stats page: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=136356

So, what is folding exactly you might ask? Well its all about the human genome. A previous distributed computing program, Gnome @ Home was the project which mapped the human genome. What folding on the other hand is doing, is actually animating bits and pieces of the genome, in varying simulated conditions, to see what happens, and gain a better understanding of the fundamentals of how proteins and our DNA work.

There is also a version for GPU’s, however my personal experience with the GPU application was very very bad. It crashed my computer after a minute or two of running, and I gave up on the GPU component and just continued on with the CPU program.
I also run folding on my PS3, anybody with a PS3 can get folding almost right away!

Just remember to set the team number to our number. 136356

http://folding.stanford.edu/

Check 0ut the site, have a bit of a read up… But basically, this project is going to lead to greater understanding of diseases that are related to protein misfolding and consequently better treatments or even cures for diseases.

Sure, you can donate your money to a charity today, and some good will come from it, but as the old saying goes, give a man a fish, blah blah blah. You can donate your computers resources and power towards actually finding a cure for these diseases, and teach people to fish for the rest of their lives.. ok that sounds crap, but hey…

Weve been in the top 4000 teams for quiet awhile now, but we really have only 1 person who is heartily dedicated to folding for our team, and he ISN’T even a member! I would really like to see at least one or two more people making regular contributions to the team.

If you think you can spare the time and effort setting up, that would be greatly appreciated. The folding program is very very important to the future of mankind, I cant put it anymore bluntly then that. Together we can contribute to bringing about a healthier, better world for everybody! =)

There are Windows, Linux, Mac, and PS3 clients available. Find the 0ne that’s right for you, give it a try please. =)