Distributed Computing

The @Home program is designed to distribute computing in order to complete computations that would otherwise take an extremely long time, even on a supercomputer.

Known @Home projects include:

• Folding@Home (Protein Folding)
• Genome@home
• SETI@Home (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)

I am considering starting Academy teams on these sites, just for kicks, to see how much processing the Academy can dole out for the sake of science. If there is enough interest (i.e. 4 other people), I will sign them up and put the Team numbers here.

(Also, I think there are more, so if you've got your own preferred project, add it to the list.)

Folding@Home

Folding@Home is a Stanford run project that computes protein folding. While you may know that proteins have specific amino acid sequences, part of their functionality comes from the shape that results when the protein folds on itself, and Folding@Home is working to understand how proteins take these shapes.

The client can be found here. For Linux users, simply chmod +x the program and run it, and it'll get going on its own. I would suggest giving it its own folder, so you don't accidentally delete something important.

Genome@home

Genome@home is also run by Stanford, in an attempt to understand more about how genes work. This, combined with the research gained from the folding project, should increase our overall understanding of the gene->protein process and eventually allow us to be able to synthesize genes and make new proteins that would behave predictably.

This project uses the Folding@Home client, so you'll have to check the Genome@home page for how to configure it to run Genome instead of Folding.

SETI@Home

Download the client here, and make sure to read the instructions (for I have not).