Do it for Dad, Do it for Mom, and Do it for your Grandparents… Most Importantly, Do it for yourself!
What am I talking about?
I am talking about a little known program called .Folding@Home which studies how proteins fold, and is used to study and cure diseases like Alzheimers and certain cancers
Folding at home is well known to the computer enthusiast community because it taxes the system and it will give a fast computer bragging rights, but it is mostly unheard of in the regular “Joe Sixpack” community.
Programs like Folding at home and Seti use what is called the “distributed computing model” – they take a given unit of study, split it up and spread it out to different computers on the network where each computer on the network uses the “unused” CPU cycles to analyze the “work unit”. Once the work unit is finished, the computer then uploads the data to the folding at home server and requests a new work unit. This program runs mostly in the background but you can have almost complete control of how and when it works, or connects to the net.
Its purpose is to use computer modeling to observe the way proteins fold. In the case of Alzheimers, proteins fold in the wrong way (researchers think) and the folding program helps to study the effects of mis-folded proteins. This modeling could one day find a cure for these terrible maladies.
Anyone who knows or has known an Alzheimer’s patient knows full well what an insidious malady it is and how disheartening it is to see someone waste away when their body is healthy.
If you have a computer doing nothing more than email or surfing the internet, then you are just the type we need to help. You just download the program, get the work units and let the program run. It will not interfere with your browsing or email (except in the instance where the program uploads or downloads the work units, but for the most part it is transparent and not noticeable).
If you are interested in Folding, please follow the above link to download it…The life you save might be your own.
Thank You for your time and CPU cycles.
Rod Chamblin
DocClock aka MadClocker
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