How you can help cure diseases
14 February 2007
How would you like to effortlessly help scientists cure diseases like Alzheimer's, Cancer, Huntington's Disease, Parkinson's and others? There is an easy way - by donating your computer's unused data processing power.
Most people use only a small percentage of the processing power their computer is capable of. The typical computer use like writing documents, browsing the internet, or watching videos, only uses a small part of your computer's capabilities. Even if you work in front of the computer for a whole day, your computer's data processing ability is used at a low level most of the time. It's like having a ferrari that drives at walking speed and only occasionally drives faster for short stretches of time.
All this unused computer processing power can be put to good use if you donate it to a science project that needs it. That's where distributed computing comes in. It enables people from around the world to donate the unused processing power of their own computers.
For the past five years I have been donating my computer's data processing time to Folding@Home. A Stanford University project "...dedicated to understanding protein folding, the diseases which result from protein misfolding and aggregation, and novel computational ways to develop new drugs in general.".
Donating your computer's data processing power is easy. All you have to do is download a program and install it. The program runs in the background and its use of your computer's processing power can be adjusted according to your preferences. The cool thing is that you don't have to join anything or setup any accounts, and you can participate anonymously. And who knows, by helping out, it just may be that you will be saving your own life! Here is how to start.
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