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June 11, 2006

Help Find a Cure for Cancer

It's hard these days to find someone whose life has not been touched by cancer. Now there's a way for non-scientists to help in the search for a cure: by lending cancer researchers our idle computer time. It's the brainchild of Biochemist David Baker and his team at the University of Washington. As reported on CNN.com, Dr. Baker's computer-based biochemical research requires computational power that exceeds the computer resources available to him at UW. So he makes use of software that enables PC and/or MAC users to make their unused capacity available to the UW team. The Rosetta@home Project uses internet-connected computers located in private homes and businesses all over the world to predict and design protein structures and interactions that may hold the clue to cures for human diseases such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, and Alzheimer's. In order to join the project, you need to download and install the Rosetta@home software. The Rosetta software is intense, requiring a lot of computational power, so be sure to check the system requirements before you proceed. According to the report, the software will only run when you're not using your computer, so your own daily activities will not be interrupted.

Posted by JudyS at June 11, 2006 09:46 AM