The Daily Kos Folding@home Team needs your help. What’s "Folding@home" you say? It’s a distributed computing project run by Pande lab, which is part of the Departments of Chemistry and of Structural Biology, Stanford University and Stanford University Medical Center. Its goal is "to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases" and help advance medical research in Alzheimer's disease, cancer, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, influenza, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, and ALS. If we could find a way to treat or prevent Alzheimer's, it would have a huge impact. In the U.S. alone, more than 5 million people have Alzheimer's and that number is projected to increase as the baby boom population ages. Currently in the U.S., the estimated direct and indirect annual costs of caring for people with dementia is at least $100 billion. Globally, there are an estimated 30 million people with dementia and by 2050 the number is projected to rise to over 100 million.
So, has Folding@home (FAH) made any progress?
New FAH results on possible new Alzheimer's drug presented
This is very preliminary news, but something I'm very, very excited about, so I'll give some advance news. On Tuesday, we presented our results regarding new possible drugs (small molecule leads) to fight Alzheimer's Disease at a recent meeting at Stanford. This meeting was part of the NIH Roadmap Nanomedicine center (http://proteinfoldingcenter.org/) retreat and was supported by NIH grants to Folding@home.
It's very early (so we are not publicly talking about the details until this has passed peer review), but we are very excited that it looks like we may have multiple small molecules which appear to inhibit toxicity of Abeta, the protein which is the toxic element in Alzheimer's Disease....
For more news, check out the FAH achievements page
Want to help out? Here's how:
- Download the Folding@home client software from http://folding.stanford.edu/.... The client software runs on Windows, Mac, Linux (and BSD), and Playstation 3 and there are different clients available for each. The FAH client runs in the background using spare computing power and shouldn't interfere with your work. If you have a Multi-Core computer and/or a powerful graphics card, you may want to consider running a high performance client. See the Folding@home high performance client FAQ for more information.
- Choose a username (scroll down on the Download page and you'll see "How do I choose a username?")
- Install the Client. If you need help, there are links to the installation instructions on the Download page. During client setup, you'll be asked if you want to join a team. Join our team (please) by entering our team number (48083). You'll show up on our team list when you complete your first work unit.
Need Help?
Folding@home Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Index
Questions? Comments? Problems? The Folding Forum handles it all.
Check Folding@Home server status if there's trouble sending results or receiving new work units.
What is my FAH client working on?
Check your client to see which project number it is working on and then go to Currently Running Projects to look it up. For example, "p2669_IBX in water" is
Project 2669
These projects study how influenza virus recognizes and infects cells. We are developing new simulation methods to better understand these processes.
How is our team doing?
Our official FAH Daily Kos team page
ExtremeOverclocking.com Folding has detailed, easy to read stats. We're currently on page 5 and working our way up to page 4. Our nemesis, the Freepers, ahem, "The Free Republic Folders - A Tribute to Ronald Reagan" are on page 1 and we'd like to pay them a visit on our way past them. We're hoping that with your help, we will.
Extreme Overclocking Folding Our EOC Daily Kos team page.
Kakao Stats Daily Kos team page.
Here's what the Freepers say about the Daily Kos team and Democratic Underground's Team ("Dummies"):
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Competition (Not!!) Dummies ..Daily Kos
Dummie Folding Threads #7 #8 #9#10#11 #12
Hey DUmmies, can't ya'll post a new thread at least once a year?
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So please, sign up for the Daily Kos Folding@home team, help with some very promising medical research - and annoy the heck out of the Freepers =8-)