Help science to build a better world with your computing power.

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Alez
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#1 Help science to build a better world with your computing power.

Post by Alez »

Research doesn't just cost a lot of time and money, quite often it will also require a significant amount of computing power. In many cases, it is not viable to simply have the required amount of computing power sitting waiting for use and it's often too expensive to hire the required time from commercial providers.

BOINC

This is where BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) steps in. The BOINC client connects the personal computers of volunteers to a computational network that divides the work between every client. This way, a big task is split into many small ones that can be done while the owner of the pc is not using it. Using this method of distributed network computing, the BOINC network can contribute a colossal amount of computing power available to scientists and researchers who otherwise would have no access. Users who install the BOINC client can choose to participate in various research projects, such as Rosetta@Home and Einstein@Home to name just two. Many other projects are available representing mathematics, climate science, network analysis and various other disciplines.

Currently, many projects are concentrating on COVID 19 research and desperately need more computing power. These projects include World Community Grid, TNGrid@Home, Rosetta@Home and SiDock@Home. Help us help them towards their research.

Rosetta@Home

Baker Laboratory at the University of Washington is running Rosetta@Home, a BOINC programme that analyses the three-dimensional structure of proteins. Finding out the distinctive folding of every protein can be a tremendous help in discovering cures for many well-known diseases, such as Malaria, Alzheimer's, HIV and all kinds of Cancer.

Einstein@Home

For those that are more interested in aiding Physics research, more specifically Astronomy, there is Einstein@Home: a project that uses your computation power to search gravitational waves from "spinning isolated compact objects", such as pulsars. The data for this project is supplied by the LIGO gravitational wave detector, and the project is run by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.


Most people feel that their contribution will be too small to make any difference. This is simply not true. Why not install BOINC and give it a try ? You're reading this thread after all. It's an easy way for anyone to contribute to academic research.
The BOINC client is available for a range of operating systems including Windows, Mac OS , Linux and Android.

This thread is open to all and we welcome your posts. Guest should feel free to ask questions of the team and we will help you install and run BOINC regardless of whether you join the team and forum.
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