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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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn