Agozer Posted May 31, 2004 Posted May 31, 2004 Maybe I'm just stupid... Mr. G, be so nice and explain what's the deal with Folding@Home?It was explained in the first few pages of this thread...but I'll explain it again. Folding@home is a distributed computing project that folds and unfolds the tertiary structure of proteins. This helps scientists find out how each protein does it because all protein diseases are botched up tertiary structures. This knowledge will help scientists find remedies to many illnesses and conditions. Thank you for the explanation...So, everyone who folds is somehow connected to a super computer somewhere that does stuff with the tertiary structures or what?
Gryph Posted May 31, 2004 Author Posted May 31, 2004 Maybe I'm just stupid... Mr. G, be so nice and explain what's the deal with Folding@Home?It was explained in the first few pages of this thread...but I'll explain it again. Folding@home is a distributed computing project that folds and unfolds the tertiary structure of proteins. This helps scientists find out how each protein does it because all protein diseases are botched up tertiary structures. This knowledge will help scientists find remedies to many illnesses and conditions. Thank you for the explanation...So, everyone who folds is somehow connected to a super computer somewhere that does stuff with the tertiary structures or what? Not exactly. Our computers do the folding and then just sends the results after each Work Unit is done. So that's the only time it communicates with the Folding@home server.
emsley Posted June 9, 2004 Posted June 9, 2004 Mathmaticly it's a little un-efficiant...Better results are from leaving a couple of kick ass PCs on and lettign them scream there hard drives off in the process...If something seems to good to be true it normaly is. Sorry just a little skepticle on this. [plus my spelling is way of]
Gryph Posted June 10, 2004 Author Posted June 10, 2004 (edited) Mathmaticly it's a little un-efficiant...Better results are from leaving a couple of kick ass PCs on and lettign them scream there hard drives off in the process...If something seems to good to be true it normaly is. Sorry just a little skepticle on this. [plus my spelling is way of]Uh...you're wrong. How will they get better results from leaving a couple of kick ass PCs on vs. over a million folding@home users? The amount of computers needed to do what this distributed project does is beyond their budget. It's a private university project running on goverment grants and that does not allow massive spending. The only groups that can afford doing that are the government run labs (NIH and its branches) and private corporations (Celera, Genentech, etc.) which was done for the Human Genome Project. And how is this too good to be true? It's not. Edited June 10, 2004 by GryphonKlaw
Gryph Posted July 21, 2004 Author Posted July 21, 2004 (edited) I haven't updated this in a while so I am now. Latest Stats:Active CPUs within 50 days - 3Team Id - 36271Grand Score - 5638.5 Work Unit Count - 79 Team Ranking - 3528 of 32041 Thanks to K'dash for folding. The rest of you should try it out too. Edited July 21, 2004 by GryphonKlaw
Wizard Posted July 21, 2004 Posted July 21, 2004 I've completely forgotten about it. But it's always folding. Look at that bugger fold!
Wizard Posted July 21, 2004 Posted July 21, 2004 It helps by coding various formulas to find cures for illnessess.
Agozer Posted July 21, 2004 Posted July 21, 2004 But why is it called folding? O_oThat's what I would like to know too.
Wizard Posted July 21, 2004 Posted July 21, 2004 I never knew why. But it's a worthy cause and it's not spyware.
Gryph Posted July 21, 2004 Author Posted July 21, 2004 (edited) It's called folding because this project is there to learn how and why proteins fold. The tertiary structure of proteins is a folded state and they are usually in a folded state before they can do anything otherwise they'd be huge and hard to manage. And when a protein doesn't fold properly, that causes diseases. Here is a really good picture to demonstrate why proteins must fold: As you can see, proteins need to be folded since they are so big. Here's a quote from the Folding@home website:Before proteins can carry out their biochemical function, they remarkably assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, remains a mystery. Moreover, perhaps not surprisingly, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious effects, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's disease. You can read about the science behind Folding@home here. Edited July 21, 2004 by GryphonKlaw
Sultan Posted July 21, 2004 Posted July 21, 2004 great explanation Gryph!I'd sign up for this if I wasn't constantly using my cpu for video encoding.
Wizard Posted July 21, 2004 Posted July 21, 2004 I just set it to lower CPU usage if i'm gonna do something like that.
Gryph Posted July 21, 2004 Author Posted July 21, 2004 Whenever I play games I turn it off even though it adjusts itself. I want all CPU power and resources to go to my games.
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now