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folding acomplishments

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Crash893

Crash893

"The man in black fled across the desert,
​
Joined
Mar 13, 2001
Hi,

a Co worker was asking me if there was a site that had any accomplishments listed the were made as a direct result of the folding effort.


I'm not to familiar with the process myself but who better to ask than the folding team.
 
Would you say the folding is goal based or is it the type of project where they flip the switch and take anything interesting that comes out?
 
Crash893 said:
Would you say the folding is goal based or is it the type of project where they flip the switch and take anything interesting that comes out?
Click to expand...

I expect that it is more goal based like other scientific research ... create an hypothesis and run simulations to try to prove or disprove it.

There are far too many variables involved to just fold with a random set of assumptions and see what comes out ... i think the odds would be a lot worse than 'a million monkeys typing randomly producing hamlet' vs discovering anything useful that way.
 
On the other hand with a lot of the great discoveries in science they were looking for or expecting something. What they found was suprising, unexpected, but equally important.
 
dfonda said:
On the other hand with a lot of the great discoveries in science they were looking for or expecting something. What they found was suprising, unexpected, but equally important.
Click to expand...


definitely ... you can't plan plan for unexpected discoveries ... and some of them are the real breakthroughs or trigger a new line of thinking that leads to them :)
 
Crash893 said:
Would you say the folding is goal based or is it the type of project where they flip the switch and take anything interesting that comes out?
Click to expand...

It's a combination of pure research - "we're just getting structural biology data here", and goal based - "we're looking into how the p53 protein folds, since it accounts for about half of all cancers"

I would expect many improvements and cures to eventually be found from FAH's data. It covers a broad spectrum of not only diseases, but improved ways to design drugs, better ways to help researchers study diseases, etc.

The way I think about it is "We know how much we'll learn from NOT studying our own biology - nothing. We have *no* way of knowing how much we'll learn, or how valuable that information will be to us, once *have* studied our biology, and have the molecular data all calculated out."

So on the one hand we could have zero improvement, on the other, we have an unknown amount of improvement.

I'll take that unknown amount of improvement, any day. Especially now, when we have a lot of researchers, with a lot of computers and software. One breakthrough can quickly snowball into 10 more.
 
Exactly Adak. Its unfortunate that some folks, because they don't see a headline "Parkinsons cured"
incorrectly think that nothings been accomplished.

If they developed a drug tomorrow, as a result of something found through folding, to "cure" something it would still take years of testing and FDA approval's.

This is a long term endeavor. Mapping the human genome , folding, genetic research etc, its all going to pay off in the long run.



http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-diseases.html#AD
 
Last edited:
Floding makes more sense to me than looking for ET(sorry, seti people), my belief is that I can help more by folding...Et's will come here for their own reasons not to help us(this is my belief - its not debatable)...

M
 
I just pray that the knowledge is only used for good.
Click to expand...
It will be. From FAQ on stanford'ss site. Or do you mean will someone make a frankenstein monster?:D

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Who "owns" the results? What will happen to them? Unlike other distributed computing projects, Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University's Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money off of it. [/FONT] [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site.[/FONT]
Click to expand...
 
Mark620 said:
Floding makes more sense to me than looking for ET(sorry, seti people), my belief is that I can help more by folding...Et's will come here for their own reasons not to help us(this is my belief - its not debatable)...

M
Click to expand...


I just hope that they don't find out that we taste like chicken...:eek:
 
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