I just downloaded the Alzheimer's program.

This is good stuff...

Mario

----- Original Message -----
From: "Linda J Herman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2001 7:50 AM
Subject: Re: United We Are Many: Help find Cures with Your Computer


> John Cottingham posted the article  " Intel Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer
> Computing Program to Help Accelerate Alzheimer's Research" a few days
> ago.
> If you haven't done so already - take a look aat the suggested website
> http://www.intel.com/cure
> This is really fascinating stuff! It seems to provide an easy and
> important way we can help further the research process.
> John, are you or is anyone else participating in this project?
>
> Does anyone know if there are Parkinson's researchers involved in such
> peer-to-peer computer programs? If not, the existing programs for
> Alzheimer's leukemia and AIDS research are looking for volunteers and
> certainly seem worthwhile .
>
> Below are two additional articles about peer-to-peer computing and
> medical research. This quote from the first article particularly caught
> my eye:
>
> "Organizers believe that eventually their project could cut by more than
> half the time
> it takes to develop a drug."
>
> Could anyone give us more information about peer-to-peer computing. One
> question is if this could increase chances of picking up computer
> viruses?
> Linda
>
> ARTICLE 1:
> Peer-to-peer to serve as basis for research
> American Medical News
> May 28, 2001
> Authors:  Tyler Chin
>
> "INTEL CORP. AND PROMINENT CANcer researchers are launching an effort to
> create a "virtual supercomputer" by linking millions of computers over
> the Internet to find cures and improved treatments for cancer and other
> life-threatening conditions.
>
> Under the initiative, called the Intel Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer
> Program,
> those who own PCs would allow participating researchers to tap unused
> disk
> space and processing power in their computers to solve problems that
> require
> massive computing power. The American Cancer Society, National Foundation
> for Cancer Research, University of Oxford and United Devices Inc., a
> technology
> company in Austin, Texas, are sponsoring the project along with Intel.
>
> Intel, the leading seller of microprocessors that are the brains of a
> computer,
> plans to approach the AMA to get physicians to donate unused processing
> power to the cancer research program, a spokesman said.
>
> The AMA had no comment because it hasn't been approached yet, a
> spokeswoman
> said.
>
> The research project will use a technology known as peer-to-peer, which
> allows users to share computer resources and services by direct exchange
> between systems.
>
> It will attempt to link the hundreds of millions of computers connected
> to the Internet, thus creating a virtual supercomputer that researchers
> can use to research the cancer-fighting properties of molecules.
> Organizers
> believe that eventually their project could cut by more than half the
> time
> it takes to develop a drug.
>
> While the Intel-sponsored project initially will focus on leukemia,
> organizers
> plan to expand research to other types of cancer and serious conditions
> such as Parkinson's disease and diabetes.
>
> To participate in the project, PC owners must download a software program
> from Intel's Web site (http:ll www.intel.com/curel). The program,
> developed
> by United Devices, will run in the background when users use applications
> such as word processing or spreadsheets, or as a screen saver when PCs
> are idle. It will run only when unused processing power is available on
> your PC, and you should not see any performance problems when you use
> your
> computer, organizers said."
>
> ARTICLE 2
> Philanthropic p-to-p
> InfoWorld
> Jun 18, 2001
> Authors: Cathleen Moore
>
> "FightAIDSatHome uses volunteers' idle computing power to do drug
> research
> calculations
>
> TEN YEARS AGO, when Art Olson and a team of researchers at The Scripps
> Research Institute developed an algorithm that could be used to improve
> the design of drugs that fight AIDS, Olson felt like he was standing at
> the bottom of a towering mountain.
>
> Olson's work as director of the molecular graphics laboratory at the La
> Jolla, Calif-based institute uses a process of mathematical computations
> called "molecular docking" to test how AIDS drugs interact with virus
> proteins.
> Olson's ongoing project, sponsored by the National Institute of Health,
> holds significant promise for combatting the daunting problem of drug
> resistance
> in the treatment of AIDS and HIV, according to Olson.
>
> "Our interest has been in developing computational methods to help
> predict
> how the evolution of drug resistance occurs in the virus and how we can
> design better drugs against resistance. It is a real clinical problem,"
> Olson says. "The AIDS virus generates about a billion different mutations
> each day, and some of those mutations work better with drugs than
> others."
>
> The research project was slowly chipping away at the problem of drug
> resistance,
> but the project's scope was limited by lack of computing resources.
>
> "When we started this project, we didn't have the computing capacity to
> do detailed calculations. So we started with simple calculations to give
> us some principals and info to begin working with," Olson explains.
>
> Olson and his colleagues had dealt with only a small part of the
> calculation;
> the research requirements were potentially much larger.
>
> "It is a very large computational problem. You are talking about millions
> upon millions of different docking calculations," Olson adds.
>
> During the research, Olson's laboratory was contacted by Entropia, an
> emerging
> peer-to-peer distributed computing service based in San Diego. Entropia
> offered to lend Olson's AIDS research the power of an expansive p-to-p
> computing environment. P-to-p leverages the power of a variety of
> distributed,
> Internet-connected devices, pooling the collective power of otherwise
> unused
> resources.
>
> "Today, people have processors on their desks that are pretty much
> equivalent
> to the individual processor in a supercomputer, but they don't have the
> very fast interconnect between those processors," Olson says.
>
> Not all scientific calculations can take advantage of p-to-p computing,
> but Olson says he knew that his molecular docking project was structured
> in a way that distributed problem solving could support.
>
> In partnership with Olson and The Scripps Research Institute, Entropia
> launched its FightAIDSatHome project last September, providing the
> infrastructure
> and software needed to sustain a large distributed network of peers.
> Olson
> and his team set up programming scripts that contain all the information
> needed to run a piece of the larger calculation.
>
> The FightAIDSatHome service works by breaking the laboratory's large
> computational
> problems into small assignments, which are then distributed via the
> Internet
> to individual computers that have downloaded Entropia's free software.
> As of last month, 25,810 machines have volunteered CPU space to the
> project.
> These contributions have resulted in 767,532 tasks completed for the
> docking
> calculation, according to Entropia.
>
> When a participating computer is on and connected to the Internet, it
> connects
> to the Entropia server and downloads a docking calculation. When the
> volunteer
> computer's CPU is idle, it gives time toward the research calculation.
> The calculation grinds away continuously as a background process on
> volunteer
> machines, running from minutes to hours to complete the job. When it is
> done, it sends results back and asks for a new problem to work on.
>
> Aside from the contribution of much needed computing resources, one of
> the biggest rewards of the FightAIDSatHome project has been the growth
> of a network of budding research enthusiasts, according to Olson. The
> project's
> Web site, at www .fightaidsathome.org, provides information on how
> volunteers
> can get involved further and allows volunteers to set up teams of users
> and then track how well their teams do.
>
> "Not only can we take advantage of distributed computing for my
> calculations,
> but we also get people interested and involved in the scientific
> research,
> which is important," Olson says.
>
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