World Community Grid - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

World Community Grid is an effort to create the world's largest public computing grid

Grid computing

Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...

to tackle scientific research projects that benefit humanity. Launched November 16, 2004, it is funded and operated by IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

with client software currently available for Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

and FreeBSD

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

operating systems.

Using the idle time of computers around the world, World Community Grid's research projects have analyzed aspects of the human genome

Human genome

The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs plus the small mitochondrial DNA. 22 of the 23 chromosomes are autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex-determining...

, HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

, dengue, muscular dystrophy

Muscular dystrophy

Muscular dystrophy is a group of muscle diseases that weaken the musculoskeletal system and hamper locomotion. Muscular dystrophies are characterized by progressive skeletal muscle weakness, defects in muscle proteins, and the death of muscle cells and tissue.In the 1860s, descriptions of boys who...

, cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

, influenza

Influenza

Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...

, rice crop yields

Rice

Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...

, and clean energy. The organization has so far partnered with over 400 other companies and organizations to assist in the work and has over 577,000 registered user accounts.

History

IBM

and other research participants sponsored the Smallpox Research Grid Project to accelerate the discovery of a cure for smallpox

Smallpox

Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...

. The smallpox study used a massive distributed computing grid to analyze compounds' effectiveness against smallpox. The project allowed scientists to screen 35 million potential drug molecules against several smallpox proteins to identify good candidates for developing into smallpox treatments. In the first 72 hours, 100,000 results were returned. By the end of the project, 44 strong treatment candidates had been identified. Based on the success of the Smallpox study, IBM announced on November 16, 2004 the creation of World Community Grid with the goal of creating a technical environment where other humanitarian research could be processed.

World Community Grid initially only supported Windows, using the proprietary Grid MP

Grid MP

Grid MP is a commercial distributed computing software package developed and sold by Univa , a privately held company based primarily in Austin, Texas...

software from United Devices

United Devices

United Devices, Inc. was a privately held, commercial distributed computing company that focused on the use of grid computing to manage HPC infrastructures and enterprise cluster management...

which powered the grid.org

Grid.org

grid.org was a website and online community established in 2001 that focuses on cluster computing and grid computing software for users. For the first 6 years of its history it operated several different volunteer computing projects that allowed members to donate their spare computer cycles to...

distributed computing projects. Demand for Linux support led to the addition in November 2005 of open source BOINC grid technology which powers projects such as SETI@home

SETI@home

SETI@home is an Internet-based public volunteer computing project employing the BOINC software platform, hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence...

and Climateprediction, and Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

and Linux

Linux

support was added since the introduction of BOINC. In 2007, the World Community Grid migrated from Grid MP to BOINC for all of its supported platforms.

Scale of the project

As of September 17, 2011, World Community Grid had over 568,000 registered user accounts with over 1.85 million registered devices. Over the course of the project, over 500,000 years of computing time have been donated, and over 750 million workunits have been completed.

How it works

The World Community Grid software uses the idle time of Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

-connected computers to perform research calculations. Users install WCG client software onto their computers. This software works in the background, using spare system resources to process work for WCG. When a piece of work or workunit is completed, the client software sends it back to WCG over the Internet and downloads a new workunit. To ensure accuracy, the WCG servers send out multiple copies of each workunit. Then, when the results are received, they are collected and validated against each other.

Users may choose to use graphics output by the current workunit as a screensaver

Screensaver

A screensaver is a type of computer program initially designed to prevent phosphor burn-in on CRT and plasma computer monitors by blanking the screen or filling it with moving images or patterns when the computer is not in use...

.

While many public computing grids such as SETI@home

SETI@home

and Folding@home

Folding@home

Folding@home is a distributed computing project designed to use spare processing power on personal computers to perform simulations of disease-relevant protein folding and other molecular dynamics, and to improve on the methods of doing so...

are devoted to a single project, World Community Grid offers multiple humanitarian projects under a single umbrella.
Users are included in all projects by default, but may opt out of projects as they choose.

When World Community Grid launched, they used the proprietary Grid MP

Grid MP

Grid MP is a commercial distributed computing software package developed and sold by Univa , a privately held company based primarily in Austin, Texas...

client from United Devices

United Devices

United Devices, Inc. was a privately held, commercial distributed computing company that focused on the use of grid computing to manage HPC infrastructures and enterprise cluster management...

. After adding support for the open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

BOINC client in 2005, World Community Grid eventually discontinued the Grid MP client and consolidated on the BOINC platform in 2008.

Even though WCG makes use of open source client software, the actual applications that perform the scientific calculations may not be. However, several of the science applications are available under a free license, although the source is not available directly from WCG.

Potential problems

Because the World Community Grid software increases CPU usage by consuming unused processing time, it is possible for the software to cause abnormal behavior on volunteered computers. Despite the unobtrusive nature of the software, decreases in system performance could still occur. High CPU usage could also cause a computer to overheat.

The BOINC client avoids this using a variety of limits that suspend computation when there are insufficient free resources. Unlike other BOINC projects, World Community Grid set the BOINC defaults conservatively, making the chances of computer damage extremely small. The default CPU throttle is 60%. The throttle is coarse-grained; for example, if usage is set to 60% it will work at 100% for 3 seconds, then at 0% for 2 seconds, resulting in an average decrease of processor use.

There is an add-on program TThrottle that solves the problem of overheating in a different way. TThrottle limits the BOINC project use by measuring the CPU and/or the GPU temperature and adjusts the run time accordingly. It also uses a shorter switching time, of less than one second, resulting in less temperature change during switching.

Statistics and competition

The contributions of each user are recorded and user contribution statistics are publicly available. Due to the fact that the processing time of each workunit varies from computer to computer depending on the difficulty of the workunit, the speed of the computer and the amount of idle resources available, contributions are usually measured in terms of points. Points are awarded for each workunit depending on the effort required to process that workunit.

Upon completing a workunit, the BOINC client will request the number of points it thinks it deserves based on software benchmark

Benchmark (computing)

In computing, a benchmark is the act of running a computer program, a set of programs, or other operations, in order to assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it...

s (see BOINC Credit System#Cobblestones). Since multiple computers process the same workunit to ensure accuracy, the World Community Grid servers can look at the points claimed by each of those computers. The WCG servers disregard statistical outliers, average the remaining values and award the resulting number of points to each computer.

Within the grid, users may join teams that have been created by organizations, groups, or individuals. Teams allow for a heightened sense of community identity and can also inspire competition. As teams compete against each other, more work is done for the grid overall.

Outreach

World Community Grid recognizes companies and organizations as partners if they promote WCG within their company or organization. As of June 4, 2011, WCG had 441 partners.

Also, as part of its commitment to improving human health and welfare, the results of all computations completed on World Community Grid are released into the public domain and made available to the scientific community.

In the fall of 2006, IBM sponsored an online and print advertisement campaign for WCG. Print advertisements appeared in Exceptional Parent, Ability Magazine
Ability Magazine
Ability is the publication targeting people who have difficulties using information technology. Originally it was a publication of the Disability Group of the British Computer Society, now by John Lamb Media Ltd, Norfolk, EnglandTheir stated goals are:...

, Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

magazine, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....

, The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

, and Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...

magazine.

FightAIDS@Home

FightAIDS@Home was World Community Grid's second project and its first to target a single disease. Each individual computer processes one potential drug molecule and tests how well it would dock with HIV

HIV

protease

Protease

A protease is any enzyme that conducts proteolysis, that is, begins protein catabolism by hydrolysis of the peptide bonds that link amino acids together in the polypeptide chain forming the protein....

, acting as a protease inhibitor

Protease inhibitor (pharmacology)

Protease inhibitors are a class of drugs used to treat or prevent infection by viruses, including HIV and Hepatitis C. PIs prevent viral replication by inhibiting the activity of proteases, e.g.HIV-1 protease, enzymes used by the viruses to cleave nascent proteins for final assembly of new...

. Scripps Research Institute published its first peer-reviewed scientific paper about the results of FightAIDS@Home on April 21, 2007. This paper explains that the results up to that point will primarily be used to improve the efficiency of future FightAIDS@Home calculations.

Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2

Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2 (HPF2) was the third project to run on World Community Grid. This project, following on from HPF1, focuses on human-secreted proteins, with special focus on biomarkers

Biomarker (medicine)

In medicine, a biomarker is a term often used to refer to a protein measured in blood whose concentration reflects the severity or presence of some disease state...

and the proteins on the surface of cells as well as Plasmodium

Plasmodium

Plasmodium is a genus of parasitic protists. Infection by these organisms is known as malaria. The genus Plasmodium was described in 1885 by Ettore Marchiafava and Angelo Celli. Currently over 200 species of this genus are recognized and new species continue to be described.Of the over 200 known...

, the organism that causes malaria. HPF2 generates higher-resolution protein models than HPF1. Though these higher-resolution models are more useful, they also require more processing power to generate.

Help Conquer Cancer

The Help Conquer Cancer project is sponsored by the Ontario Cancer Institute

Ontario Cancer Institute

The Ontario Cancer Institute is the research division of Princess Margaret Hospital, part of the University Health Network of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. As Canada's first dedicated cancer hospital, it opened officially and began to receive patients in 1958, although its...

(OCI), Princess Margaret Hospital and University Health Network of Toronto, Canada. The project involves X-ray crystallography

X-ray crystallography

X-ray crystallography is a method of determining the arrangement of atoms within a crystal, in which a beam of X-rays strikes a crystal and causes the beam of light to spread into many specific directions. From the angles and intensities of these diffracted beams, a crystallographer can produce a...

. The mission of Help Conquer Cancer is to improve the results of protein X-ray crystallography, which helps researchers not only annotate unknown parts of the human proteome, but importantly improves their understanding of cancer initiation, progression and treatment.

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Help Fight Childhood Cancer project is sponsored by the scientists at Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute and Chiba University

Chiba University

is a national university in the city of Chiba, Japan. It offers Doctoral degrees in education as part of a coalition with Tokyo Gakugei University, Saitama University, and Yokohama National University.-Faculties:*Letters*Education*Law and Economics*Science...

. The mission of the Help Fight Childhood Cancer project is to find drugs that can disable three particular proteins associated with neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma is the most common extracranial solid cancer in childhood and the most common cancer in infancy, with an annual incidence of about 650 cases per year in the US , and 100 cases per year in the UK . Close to 50 percent of neuroblastoma cases occur in children younger than two years old...

, one of the most frequently occurring solid tumors in children. Identifying these drugs could potentially make the disease much more curable when combined with chemotherapy treatment.

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase 2

World Community Grid and researchers supported by Decrypthon, a partnership between AFM (French Muscular Dystrophy Association), CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, and IBM are investigating protein-protein interactions for more than 2,200 proteins whose structures are known, with particular focus on those proteins that play a role in neuromuscular diseases. The database of information produced will help researchers design molecules to inhibit or enhance binding of particular macromolecules, hopefully leading to better treatments for muscular dystrophy

Muscular dystrophy

and other neuromuscular diseases.

Phase 2 of the Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy project will start once the results from the first phase are analysed. Phase 2 will run on the BOINC platform.

Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together - Phase 2

Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together - Phase 2 is sponsored by The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, USA and the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

in Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, USA. The mission is to identify promising drug candidates to combat the Dengue

Dengue fever

Dengue fever , also known as breakbone fever, is an infectious tropical disease caused by the dengue virus. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin rash that is similar to measles...

, Hepatitis C

Hepatitis C

Hepatitis C is an infectious disease primarily affecting the liver, caused by the hepatitis C virus . The infection is often asymptomatic, but chronic infection can lead to scarring of the liver and ultimately to cirrhosis, which is generally apparent after many years...

, West Nile

West Nile virus

West Nile virus is a virus of the family Flaviviridae. Part of the Japanese encephalitis antigenic complex of viruses, it is found in both tropical and temperate regions. It mainly infects birds, but is known to infect humans, horses, dogs, cats, bats, chipmunks, skunks, squirrels, domestic...

, Yellow Fever

Yellow fever

Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....

, and other related viruses. The extensive computing power of World Community Grid will be used to complete the structure-based drug discovery calculations required to identify these drug candidates.

The Clean Energy Project - phase 2

The Clean Energy project is sponsored by the scientists of Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. The mission of the Clean Energy Project is to find new materials for the next generation of solar cell

Solar cell

A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....

s and later, energy storage

Energy storage

Energy storage is accomplished by devices or physical media that store some form of energy to perform some useful operation at a later time. A device that stores energy is sometimes called an accumulator....

devices. Researchers are employing molecular mechanics

Molecular mechanics

Molecular mechanics uses Newtonian mechanics to model molecular systems. The potential energy of all systems in molecular mechanics is calculated using force fields...

and electronic structure calculations to predict the optical and transport properties of molecules that could become the next generation of solar cell materials. By harnessing the computing power of the World Community Grid, researchers can calculate the electronic properties of tens of thousands of organic materials – many more than could ever be tested in a lab – and determine which candidates are most promising for developing affordable solar energy technology.

Computing for Clean Water

Computing for Clean Water is sponsored by Center for Nano and Micro Mechanics of Tsinghua University

Tsinghua University

Tsinghua University , colloquially known in Chinese as Qinghua, is a university in Beijing, China. The school is one of the nine universities of the C9 League. It was established in 1911 under the name "Tsinghua Xuetang" or "Tsinghua College" and was renamed the "Tsinghua School" one year later...

in Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

. The mission is to provide deeper insight on the molecular scale into the origins of the efficient flow of water through a novel class of filter materials. This insight will in turn guide future development of low-cost and more efficient water filters.　It is estimated that 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.6 billion have little or no sanitation. Millions of people die annually - estimates are 3,900 children a day.

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis is provided by the University of Antioquia

University of Antioquia

The University of Antioquia , also called UdeA, is a public, departmental, coeducational, research university based primarily in the city of Medellín, Antioquía, Colombia. It is the largest higher education institution by student population in the northwest of the country, and the second in...

in Medellín

Medellín

Medellín , officially the Municipio de Medellín or Municipality of Medellín, is the second largest city in Colombia. It is in the Aburrá Valley, one of the more northerly of the Andes in South America. It has a population of 2.3 million...

, Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, with assistance from researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. The mission is to identify potential molecule candidates that could possibly be developed into treatments for Leishmaniasis

Leishmaniasis

Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by protozoan parasites that belong to the genus Leishmania and is transmitted by the bite of certain species of sand fly...

. The extensive computing power of World Community Grid will be used to perform computer simulations of the interactions between millions of chemical compounds and certain target proteins. This will help find the most promising compounds that may lead to effective treatments for the disease.

Human Proteome Folding - Phase 1

The first project launched on World Community Grid was the Human Proteome Folding Project, or HPF1, which aims to predict the structure of human proteins. This project was unique in that computation was done in tandem with the grid.org

Grid.org

distributed computing project. Devised by Richard Bonneau at the Institute for Systems Biology

Institute for Systems Biology

The Institute for Systems Biology is a non-profit research institution, located in Seattle, Washington, United States. Leroy Hood co-founded the Institute with Alan Aderem and Ruedi Aebersold in 2000....

, the project used grid computing to produce the likely structures for each of the proteins using a Rosetta Score. From these predictions, researchers hope to predict the function of the myriad proteins. This increased understanding of the human proteins could prove vital in the search for cures to human diseases. Computing for this project was officially completed on July 18, 2006. Research results for the yeast portion of HPF1 have been published.

Help Defeat Cancer

The Help Defeat Cancer project seeks to improve the ability of medical professionals to determine the best treatment options for patients with breast, head, or neck cancer. The project worked by identifying visual patterns in large numbers of tissue microarray

Tissue microarray

Tissue microarrays consist of paraffin blocks in which up to 1000 separate tissue cores are assembled in array fashion to allow multiplex histological analysis.-History:...

s taken from archived tissue samples. By correlating the pattern data with information about treatment and patient outcome, the results of this project could help provide better targeted treatment options.

Genome Comparison

The Genome Comparison project is sponsored by the Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian research institution Fiocruz

Instituto Oswaldo Cruz

The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation is a scientific institution for research and development in biomedical sciences located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it is considered one of the world's main public health research institutions. It was founded by Dr...

. The project seeks to compare gene sequences of different organisms against each other in order to find similarities between them. Scientists hope to discover what purpose a particular gene sequence serves in a particular function of one organism, via comparing it to a similar gene sequence of known function in another organism.

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase 1

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy is run by Décrypthon, a collaboration between French Muscular Dystrophy Association, French National Center for Scientific Research and IBM

IBM

, and Phase 1 investigated protein-protein interactions for 40,000 proteins whose structures are known, with particular focus on those proteins that play a role in neuromuscular diseases. The database of information produced will help researchers design molecules to inhibit or enhance binding of particular macromolecules, hopefully leading to better treatments for muscular dystrophy

Muscular dystrophy

and other neuromuscular diseases. This project was available only to agents running the Grid MP

Grid MP

Grid MP is a commercial distributed computing software package developed and sold by Univa , a privately held company based primarily in Austin, Texas...

client, making it unavailable to users running BOINC.

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together is sponsored by scientists at the University of Texas and the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

and will run in two phases. Phase 1, launched August 21, 2007, use AutoDock 2007 (the same software used for FightAIDS@Home

FightAIDS@Home

FightAIDS@Home is a distributed computing project for internet-connected home computers, operated by the Olson Laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute...

) to test potential antiviral drugs (through NS3 protease

Protease

inhibition) against viruses from the family flaviviridae

Flaviviridae

The Flaviviridae are a family of viruses that are primarily spread through arthropod vectors . The family gets its name from Yellow Fever virus, a type virus of Flaviviridae; flavus means yellow in Latin...

, completed on August 11, 2009. Phase 2 "will use a more computationally intensive program to screen the candidates that make it through Phase 1." The drug candidates that make it through Phase 2 will then be lab-tested.

The Clean Energy Project - phase 1

The Clean Energy project is sponsored by the scientists of Harvard University

Harvard University

's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. The mission of the Clean Energy Project is to find new materials for the next generation of solar cell

Solar cell

A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....

s and later, energy storage

Energy storage

devices. Researchers are employing molecular mechanics

Molecular mechanics

Molecular mechanics uses Newtonian mechanics to model molecular systems. The potential energy of all systems in molecular mechanics is calculated using force fields...

Influenza Antiviral Drug Search

Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project is sponsored by Dr. Stan Watowich and his research team at The University of Texas Medical Branch (Galveston, Texas

Texas

, USA). The mission of the Influenza Antiviral Drug

Antiviral drug

Antiviral drugs are a class of medication used specifically for treating viral infections. Like antibiotics for bacteria, specific antivirals are used for specific viruses...

Search project is to find new drugs that can stop the spread of an influenza

Influenza

Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...

infection in the body. The research will specifically address the influenza strains that have become drug resistant as well as new strains that are appearing. Identifying the chemical compounds that are the best candidates will accelerate the efforts to develop treatments that would be useful in managing seasonal influenza outbreaks, and future influenza epidemics and even pandemics. Phase 1 of The Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project has already finished on October 22, 2009. Now the researchers are performing post-processing on the results from Phase 1 and are preparing for Phase 2.

Nutritious Rice for the World

The Nutritious Rice for the World project is carried out by Ram Samudrala

Ram Samudrala

Ram Samudrala is a professor of computational biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. He researches protein and proteome folding, structure, function, interaction, design, and evolution spanning atomic to organismal levels of description...

's Computational Biology Research Group at the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

. The purpose of this project is to predict the structure of protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

s of major strain

Strain (biology)

In biology, a strain is a low-level taxonomic rank used in three related ways.-Microbiology and virology:A strain is a genetic variant or subtype of a micro-organism . For example, a "flu strain" is a certain biological form of the influenza or "flu" virus...

s of rice

Rice

, in order to help farmer

Farmer

A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...

s breed

Plant breeding

Plant breeding is the art and science of changing the genetics of plants in order to produce desired characteristics. Plant breeding can be accomplished through many different techniques ranging from simply selecting plants with desirable characteristics for propagation, to more complex molecular...

better rice strains with higher crop yield

Crop yield

In agriculture, crop yield is not only a measure of the yield of cereal per unit area of land under cultivation, yield is also the seed generation of the plant itself...

s, promote greater disease and pest resistance, and utilize a full range of bioavailable

Bioavailability

In pharmacology, bioavailability is a subcategory of absorption and is used to describe the fraction of an administered dose of unchanged drug that reaches the systemic circulation, one of the principal pharmacokinetic properties of drugs. By definition, when a medication is administered...

nutrient

Nutrient

A nutrient is a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow or a substance used in an organism's metabolism which must be taken in from its environment. They are used to build and repair tissues, regulate body processes and are converted to and used as energy...

s that can benefit people around the world, especially in regions where malnutrition

Malnutrition

Malnutrition is the condition that results from taking an unbalanced diet in which certain nutrients are lacking, in excess , or in the wrong proportions....

is a critical concern. The project has been covered by more than 200 media outlets since its inception. On April 13, 2010, World Community Grid official announced that the Nutritious Rice for the World project finished on April 6, 2010.

AfricanClimate@Home

The mission of AfricanClimate@Home is to develop more accurate climate models of specific regions in Africa. This will serve as a basis for understanding how the climate will change in the future so that measures designed to alleviate the adverse effects of climate change can be implemented. World Community Grid's tremendous computing power will be used to understand and reduce the uncertainty with which climate processes are simulated over Africa. Phase 1 of African Climate@Home has ended (July, 2008). The scientists for this project are analyzing the results to prepare for Phase 2 of the project.

External links

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