What if the power to change the world existed within your
own home? Thanks to the World Community Grid - a virtual
super network of hundreds of thousands of personal computers
- your idling PC can help unravel the mysteries of the human
body
and lead to potential cures for such widespread diseases
such as cancer, AIDS, and Alzheimer’s.
In 2004, IBM and a consortium of representatives from various
academic, research, and not-for-profit organizations introduced
what is called the World Community Grid. Dedicated to solving
global humanitarian problems and not for commercial use,
the Grid takes enormous amounts of data and delegates computational
tasks to connected computers, enabling research to be done
in a fraction of the time that it would take a single supercomputer.
"World Community Grid will enable researchers around
the globe to gather and analyze unprecedented quantities
of data to help address important global issues, including
public health issues," says board member Dr. Elaine
Gallin.
The results are encouraging. In the Grid’s first project
- an attempt to isolate drug compounds that can react with
and affect smallpox – computers processed and presented
over 100,000 results in the first 3 days. In the end, a staggering
44 different treatment options were identified, and the research
performed in 3 days produced results a single supercomputer
would have taken over 57 years to compute.
“The World Community Grid is a simple but extremely
powerful form of grid that focuses on harnessing the power
of idle desktop machines. Individually, each of these computer
is not that powerful, but in the aggregate, 100s of thousands
of desktop computers can be more powerful than the fastest
supercomputer,” explains Ian Foster, Senior Scientist
at Argonne National Laboratory, whose research and development
of grid technology has led him to be known as the “father
of the grid”.
The way the grid works is that each computer installs a
small file that allows it to perform calculations for the
project. The program runs on idle time, and stops each time
users want to access their computers again. The grid connects
a global community of computers together to solve massive
computational problems, performing hundreds of experiments
simultaneously.
The Grid is currently working on three major projects: Help
Defeat Cancer; Fight AIDS@Home; and Human Proteome Folding.
In the realm of cancer research, a relatively
new method for determining cancer types and their level
of severity
involves the analysis of microscopic tissue samples.
To manually study these slides is time consuming and the
results
are
often less than perfect. The goal of Help Defeat Cancer
is to map out biomarkers for certain cancer cells and then
compare
samples against these markers as means to help doctors
in their treatment of the disease.
Currently, over 40 million people around the world are currently
carrying the HIV virus.
Fight AIDS@Home is a project using 3D modeling techniques
to try to sort through 35 million potential drug compounds
in search of those that will “dock” with HIV
protease, a molecular component of the virus. Machines are
processing, day and night, compounds that will inhibit the
protease and further delay the onset of AIDS.
The Human Proteome Folding Project’s
aim is to sort through and try to predict the structures
of over 30,000
proteins in the human body. Scientists currently only understand
a small fraction of these proteins. To map this will mean
that researchers will be able to find drug compounds for
various diseases with a much more precise view of what they
are targeting.
“Through the ability to simulate disease environments
at the large-scale, scientists are able to investigate "what
if" scenarios which provide critical information about
behavior and assist in the design of drug therapies.” said
Dr. Fran Berman, Director of the San Diego Supercomputer
Center and an advisory board member.
The Community Grid began with IBM employees and a few others.
To date, there are now 200,000 donors around the world that
have donated the use of almost 400,000 machines. The power
of these 400,000 machines has already computed over 48,000
years worth of research.
Hope has been delivered to many through this massive project.
The power of the individual truly shines through in this
project, and donors can feel satisfaction in knowing they
are helping the evolution of scientific research to help
bring an end to the suffering of millions around the world.
To get involved, go to http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org and
click on “Download Now”.
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