Volunteering for Folding@Home

Folding@Home is a free program run by Stanford University that lets anyone willing to donate their computer's free time to find a cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, and other diseases and, to do so.

Proteins are long "chains" that play a vital role in the cell and in cell processes. Proteins often fold in themselves and sometimes "misfold," causing diseases.

"One reason that protein folding is so difficult to simulate is that it occurs amazingly fast," said assistant professor of chemistry Pande, according to sciencedaily.com. "Small proteins fold in a timescale of [a millionths-of-a- second], but it takes the average computer one day just to [a billionth-of-a-second] folding simulation." In a process called distributed computing, research groups divide big problems into small parts and send the parts to many computers, dividing up the work. Then each computer words on their part and sends back the answer.

Folding@Home downloads problems and uses your computer's processor, the CPU, to do the calculations. The solution is uploaded and a new problem is downloaded. You are basically volunteering your CPU's time to research and helping people.

Most computer users don't use the full potential of their CPU, meaning, computing time is wasted. Folding@Home only uses this wasted potential. Folding@Home has a default of low priority, thus if other programs are opened, they will get the CPU's attention and Folding@Home will get the left-over.

"Whether you're playing games, encoding media files, surfing the web, or mumbling to your computer, running the Folding@Home client won't slow you down," said Geoff Gasior from techreport.com. Because Folding@Home only uses you computer's idle time, you will not notice a decrease of computing quality; you will not notice that it is running.

Running you CPU had for many hours doesn't have any negative effects; in fact, a CPU lasts longer if it is used closer to its potential.

"As long as [the CPU] is clean and kept cool, you are fine," said PVHS G-Tek Club advisor Ann Carey, "cleaning is critical for the CPU." Dust inside the computer case can cause the temperature to rise to levels that can damage the hardware. But users can set a limit on how hard Folding@Home can run the CPU.

The neat thing about Folding@Home is that you can get friends and their computers together and create a team. The work done as a team is scored and the team is ranked for most outstanding volunteer.

"The competition makes it better," says Miss. Carey. The team makes you more involved in the research, it gets you excited.

Folding@Home is dial-up friendly and doesn't require a continuous connection to the internet. You can download it for free on a Mac, Linux, or Windows 95 and up at folding.stanford.edu and start making a difference this summer.