Share Your Extra Computing Power
‘Tis the season to #giveback, so why not consider volunteering your unused computing power? Let us count the many ways our computers, smartphones, and tablets can contribute—from detecting life in other galaxies to predicting earthquakes to finding better ways to treat cancer.
Many volunteer computing projects use BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) open source software that enables researchers, universities, and public and private organizations to tap into the idle processing power of millions of personal computers and devices. Download the BOINC software, and choose from a few of the worthwhile projects below or others on the BOINC website.
In Mapping Cancer Markers, researchers at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center in Toronto, Canada, partnered with the World Community Grid to identify molecular markers associated with various types of cancer by analyzing millions of data points collected from thousands of healthy and cancerous patient tissue samples. The data may help researchers detect cancer earlier and design customized treatment.
Uncovering Genome Mysteries is a joint effort between the World Community Grid and researchers from Fiocruz, Brazil and the University of South New Wales, Australia. The project will compare about 200 million proteins encoded by the genes from organisms taken from water, soil, plants, and animals. Scientists hope to use similarities uncovered to develop new applications, from medicines to renewable energy sources and methods of cleaning the environment.
Rosetta@home, administered by the Baker laboratory at the University of Washington, helps to determine the three-dimensional shapes of proteins as well as methods to design new proteins to help fight diseases such as malaria, anthrax, HIV, cancer, and Alzheimer's.
Quake Catcher Network sensor monitoring developed by Stanford University uses laptop computers to help capture key seismic data to monitor and predict earthquakes.
MilkyWay@Home, a joint effort between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's departments of Computer Science and Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, aims to generate an accurate three-dimensional dynamic model of the Milky Way galaxy.
One of the first volunteer computing projects is still in progress. Launched in 1999, SETI@home (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) uses radio telescopes to listen for narrow-bandwidth radio signals to detect intelligent life outside Earth.
Trust me—it’s the easiest volunteer hours you’ll ever log!
