Team NewRomancers
Join JL's Folding@home team
Enter 235218 as your Team ID to contribute your points to Team NewRomancers.
Wait, what is Folding@home?
Folding@home is a global project focused on researching diseases and their cures. Trouble is this research requires so many computer calculations and the original research team only has so many computers.
The Folding@home software lets you contribute some of your computational power towards the research efforts. While you go about your business, any "thinking parts" of your computer that aren't getting used will be borrowed for simulating protein folding, computational drug design, and other types of molecular dynamics. The F@h project kicked off in 2000 and as of today, thousands of people around the world are contributing to scientific research.
What does the "folding" part mean?
Proteins are the basis of how our biology gets things done. In order to be useful, they first fold themselves into particular shapes that allow them to do stuff (like how you need to fold your fingers into a fist before you can punch someone).
When proteins fold themselves correctly, our bodies function as expected. But when they misfold, it can have serious impacts on human health. Diseases like Alzheimer's, Huntington's, cystic fibrosis, BSE (Mad Cow disease), hereditary emphysema, and even some cancers are believed to arise when proteins don't fold themselves correctly. (source)
With the help of computing power donated by individuals like you and me, the F@h project simulates the many different ways that proteins could fold themselves and what happens as a result.
Is this a crypto mining malware scam?
No, but you'd be forgiven for thinking so. The concept is similar—borrowing bits of many people's computing power to do some calculations—but unlike malware scams, F@h asks very explicitly for your consent first. And we all know consent is key!
More importantly, F@h research has produced heaps of legit science papers that make my head proper hurt so I'm not even going to attempt to read them. But one of the F@h team shared a high-level summary of key papers in their FAQ.
OK, sounds rad. How can I help science too?
Install the software then visit the F@h Web Control to give yourself a name and (optionally) pick a team you want to contribute your points to. Team NewRomancers is 235218.
You can also decide how much computing power to donate and when it's OK for the software to perform research calculations. Every little bit helps, even if it's only now and then.
And that's it!