Well it has been a little while since I tried to promote our Kitguru Folding@Home team, but I thought id give our readers a quick update on what we have achieved so far.
Kitguru is currently ranked just outside the top 200 teams which is already a hell of an achievement for such a small, yet focused group of people. The magic happens in this forum.
We need your help, to help other people!
Giving away prizes is a good way to get people to commit, and to join in the team atmosphere. Right now ive several goodies lined up for some of our folders for Christmas. They include an excellent 6 series video card and some memory.
Some of the community I already know will be doing this for no reward, but I want to let you all know that I appreciate your time and the fact that you all are trying hard to help such a good cause. If we can keep climbing the ranks and helping this fantastic research then we will all feel really positive about life … after all what better use is there for modern day hardware?
Some users won’t have the powerful high end hardware to compete for top position, however I still want to reward those of our community who put hard work and their valued time into this. Therefore just before Christmas, after I discuss with our folding moderator AgencyMan (aka Bruce) freebies will be given to the community.
Join Team 196420!
What is Folding@Home?
You can help scientists studying these diseases by simply running a piece of software.
Folding@home is a distributed computing project — people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.
Protein folding is linked to disease, such as Alzheimer’s, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers
Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. “misfold”), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
What is protein folding?
Proteins are biology’s workhorses — its “nanomachines.” Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or “fold.” The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
If you want to take part in this then head over to our forums here and sign up. Remember, above all else, this is for a good cause and worth your time.
If you don't know what to do, don't be shy, the forum is full of friendly people who will help you to help others!