There's a program that's been going on ever since October 1, 2000 called Folding@Home (F@H). Basically, it's about the way proteins fold and misfold. Proteins that misfold can lead to health problems and diseases like Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many cancers. F@H is here to research the way they misfold, to help develop medicines to prevent misfolding!
How F@H works is:
You download their working client, and get assigned a Work Unit (WU). A WU is just a little bit of the simulation for 1 protein's folding (called projects). Each project is split up into these WUs and once all the WUs for the project is complete, the scientists get the simulation for the folding. The client's core starts simulating the folding in the background of your computer by crunching numbers and all sorts of scientific stuff, and it'll take a few days depending on the size of the WU, or, how many steps it has to simulate. Once all the info is complete for the WU, the client will automatically upload the information that you helped make from your computer to their servers, and the scientists will look at it from there. Afterward, the servers will automatically assign the client another WU. Running F@H takes barely any resources at all, it's mainly using your CPU based on how much of it you want it to use (the more the faster it gets done). You can also use a PS3 to run F@H, and I heard it's EXTREMELY fast at processing WUs, but I don't know since I don't have one.
WUs have a deadline that they must be completed in, otherwise the client will drop the WU and their servers will assign it to someone else to complete while you can try again with a different WU.
I started folding a unit yesterday and then stopped it while I sleep, since I don't like my computer running all night long (except on special occasions where I need to download something big). I've had it running all morning today and it's already at 12% at the time I'm posting this.
Soooo really all this program is, is a "While you're on Youtube or typing a paper up or playing a game, you can be helping the world at the same time!" kind of thing, so why not have it running just because?
If you want to download it, you can visit their site here:
http://folding.stanford.edu/
You may have to allow the program though your firewall, and run it as administrator for it to work and upload properly!
Happy Folding.
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