Smallpox Researchers Seek Help From Millions of Computer Users

NY Times ^ | Febuary 5, 2003 | By STEVE LOHR

[68skylark]

Responding to worries that smallpox could become a weapon of bioterrorism, a group of research universities and corporations and the Defense Department are announcing today a networked computer project intended to accelerate the search for a cure for smallpox.

The project is to use computing power contributed by a few million personal computer owners linked to the Internet worldwide to try to winnow the number of chemical compounds that might show promise in combating smallpox.

The goal is to use the results to develop drugs to thwart the smallpox virus after infection.

The only defense against smallpox today is preventive vaccination. The Bush administration has proposed vaccinating hundreds of thousands of American health workers, followed by millions of firefighters, police officers and ambulance workers.

The administration's plan has run into resistance from some health experts who are concerned about the side effects and efficacy of a widespread vaccination program.

The new smallpox research program is a collaborative effort of chemical and biological experts from institutions like Oxford University and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; companies with expertise in creating and using computer grids, including I.B.M., United Devices and Accelrys; and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

To succeed, the project will need help from a few million people willing to contribute the unused computing power of their home or office personal computers. Their spare computer cycles will be the source of the computing firepower — more, collectively, than the world's largest supercomputer — to search for smallpox-fighting compounds.

Steady advances in processing power, network capacity and software have made it possible to assemble distributed computing networks that can be directed at a problem like smallpox. A comparatively simple but well-known distributed computing application is the SETI@home program, begun in 1999, which harnesses the spare power of millions of personal computers to seek signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

The smallpox computing project will work similarly. A person clicks to register and download a screen saver program from a Web site, www.grid.org. When the machine is turned on but not in use, the program uses it as part of the computing grid.

The project will use molecular modeling and screening techniques to test how strongly a wide range of druglike compounds interact with an important enzyme used by the smallpox virus. The goal is to find molecular compounds that block the enzyme, called topoisomerase, preventing the virus from replicating.

[68skylark]

Sounds like a good cause.

There are stories about this topic from the AP, Reuters, and C-Net news. Maybe someone could post a link to those stories.

[SpaceBar]

germs@home

[null and void]

Bad link.

[sigSEGV]

Bad sense of humor :)

[null and void]

I DO NOT HAVE A BAD SENSE OF HUMOR!!!!

;^P

Seriously, I'd like to sign up my excess 1's and 0's for this effort, and would like a working link...

[jpl]

I agree, this does sound like a good cause; an easy and relatively cheap way to assist in important scientific research. When I get home I'll download this, and use my home computer to aid in this experiment during the hours I'm at work.

[68skylark]

The story itself gives the link: http://www.grid.org

Their servers seem to be a little busy today, but I was able to get through.

[null and void]

Thank you. I refuse to sign up on the NY Slimes site...

[null and void]

Damm!

[lodwick]

Is there any potential downside to signing up for this Nully?

It sounds like a worthy project...

[Slainte]

I've been crunching UD (now Grid.Org) work units on all of my systems for two years come April. Started with Cancer, did the anthrax project, currently doing cancer on a few machines, smallpox on the others.

The client application runs at idle priority, so any other application at higher priority on your system trumps it. This results in no noticeable effect on your computing. I even leave it running when I play games.

When idle CPU cycles are available, it will grab them. Your CPU will be run at 100% for long periods of time. If you have a light use system that's spends most of it's time idling and is marginal on it's cooling, you could have some issues with heat. Best to make sure that you case fans are running, and that you haven't stacked anything in the way of the case vents. But even with that said, I've got a dozen system crunching 24/7 in addition to their normal workloads, everything from an old P200 through a Athlon XP 2400, and I'm not having heat issues.

If you decide to crunch, be sure to join Scotland Against Cancer (and Anthrax. And Smallpox). We'd be happy to have you. :)

http://members.ud.com/services/teams/team.htm?id=9F4814F1-ACD6-4CFB-A9D7-3B683891CED9

[null and void]

What he said...

[JudyB1938]

How do we make sure the case fans are running? I've had a problem for some time with my unit's heating up, but I'm afraid to try to fix it without knowing how. Thank you.

[Slainte]

Easiest thing to do is just look at it. If it's coated with a couple of years accumulated dust and gunk and no longer spinning, that's a bad sign.

If you put your hand at the vent where the fan is located, can you feel air circulating? Just about every PC has a fan in the power supply, many have another 80mm fan located under the power supply, and higher end cases will have additional fans under the fron bezel.

Something to be aware of, if you have a mass-merchant machine like an inexpensive HP or e-Machines, you may have trouble feeling the circulation as a number of their models push air into the case and down onto the CPU through the power supply, rahter than exhausting the air out the back through the power supply as the higher end systems will typically do.

[lodwick]

Thanks guys - I'm on board.

[Redcloak]

Bump for a good cause.

Should we start a FR team?

[68skylark]

Should we start a FR team?

What do you have in mind?

[Redcloak]

I noticed that there are teams in the project. Mostly for bragging rights, I suppose. I thought that it would be cool if a FreeRepublic team were the ones to come up with a useful Smallpox treatment.

[Slainte]

I've been crunching for Team Scotland for a couple of years, but I could be persuaded to swing my systems over to a Team Free Republic.