More than numbers

IBM world community grid squeezes decades of cancer research into 2 years

Canadian researchers expect to accelerate the war on cancer by tapping into a global network of hundreds of thousands of people who volunteer their idle computer time to tackle some of the world’s most complex problems.

The research team, led by Dr. Igor Jurisica at the Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI), and scientists at Princess Margaret Hospital and University Health Network, are the first from Canada to use the World Community Grid, a network of PCs and laptops with the power equivalent to one of the globe’s top five fastest supercomputers.

The team will use World Community Grid to analyze the results of experiments on proteins using data collected by scientists at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute in Buffalo, New York. This analysis would take conventional computer systems 162 years to complete. However, using World Community Grid, Dr. Jurisica anticipates the analysis could be finished in one to two years, and will provide researchers with a better way to study how proteins function, insight that could lead to the development of more effective cancer-fighting drugs.

“We know that most cancers are caused by defective proteins in our bodies, but we need to better understand the specific function of those proteins and how they interact in the body,” said Dr. Jurisica. “We also have to find proteins that will enable us to diagnose cancer earlier, before symptoms appear, to have the best chance of treating the disease -- or potentially stopping it completely.”

The research team now has more than 86 million images of 9,400 unique proteins that could be linked to cancer, captured in the course of more than 14.5 million experiments by colleagues at Hauptman-Woodward.

This comprises the most comprehensive database on the chemistry of a large number of proteins, a resource that will help researchers around the world unlock the mystery of how many cancers, such as breast, prostate or childhood leukemia, grow.

Approximately 150,000 Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer and more than 70,000 will die of the disease in 2007 alone.

Individuals can donate their computers for this project by registering on http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org , and installing a free, secure, small software program on their computers. The computer requests data from World Community Grid’s server when it is idle, for example a user is at lunch, and performs the cancer-related protein computations. A screen saver will tell individuals when their computers are being used.

World Community Grid, the largest public humanitarian grid with more than 333,000-plus members and links to more than 780,000 computers. However, it’s estimated that there are one billion computers worldwide, underscoring the potential for the grid and its computational power to significantly expand. Eight projects have been run on World Community Grid to date, including protein folding and FightAIDS@Home, which completed five years of HIV/AIDS research in just six months. Additional projects are in the pipeline.

News article from Physorg.com

If you have a computer and an internet connection then you have an opportunity to be a part of a global community that is working together to do what they can to help solve various health and environmental concerns. There is no reason not to join and every reason to join. To join takes just five minutes, and it is the only active action that will ever be required. Once one has completed the joining process which involves downloading a very small, wholly safe piece of software, no other action is required. Except that is to join us at Team Bravo, where we would be very happy to welcome you. To join us takes just one click of the mouse. Please join us today and help us to help us.
Step one: Join the WCG
Step two: Join Team Bravo
Although a mere 10 days have passed since the last Bravo post, Team Bravo has returned another 612 results. Personal milestones were plenty as always, some that ended on a zero included;

• Bobby aka ThunderBob returning over 2000 results!
  
• Kiley aka ariadneK reaching a staggering half a million points!
• Jules aka ebzepsentme eclipsing 50,000 points!
  
• Not far off 1000 results, justin-thyme surpassing 350,000 points!
• Courtney now has 100 days of runtime!
  
• Nate and TotalChaos are just hours short of respectively 200 days and 100 days!
• Simon aka ebezp accumulating 50 days of runtime!
  

We also had the very great pleasure of filling spot #40

CJG aka Christopher joined us on Christmas day and has already returned 6 results!
It is a great pleasure to have you with us, Christopher, thank you for joining.

Team Bravo Stats

Member Name	Points Generated	Results Returned
tgeorge1	1,063,009	4,229
ThunderBob	578,409	2,041
ariadneK	507,468	1,170
justin-thyme	379,969	985
karen6977	231,942	690
digitaldoom	220,658	943
AutumnStorm	219,865	753
SaintlyNate	175,418	722
Sherry G	108,777	261
TotalChaos	98,525	438
Karen Mason	92,457	345
courtney42	79,201	247
ebzepsentme	55,469	181
JamieB	45,068	176
Sweet Jaine/ SweetJane	}40,665	}125
Consise10/ concise10	}40,617	}103
ebezp	30,818	73
tilde1d	18,146	43
womble 1	8,814	21
LovingAnnie	8,620	16
JOSIEW	8,551	58
djwilko1	4,504	13
CJG	1,871	6
redaster, Bavani Naidu, cheekyfaces & justawriter	}2,956	}12

Which if one adds them all together means not only that Team Bravo has returned 13,605 results, but that we have two major reasons to celebrate, namely.....

Congratulations and Thank you team mates!

Looking forward to continuing the partnership through 2008
who knows what good those results will bring
Happy New Year, xo

All welcome to join!