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Yes 5 55.56%
 
no 4 44.44%
 
Total:9
Zuhyc on 14 June 2012

I've been running Folding@Home for 2,5 years now, and I've done my share of running Rosetta@Home on BOINC as well.

What do you say, let's revive the F@H VGChartz team and create a BOINC team as well (if there isn't one already). WHO'S WITH ME?

Soleron said:

I don't run these things because I see little evidence they actually work. With Folding@Home, they have 96 papers published due to the data, and most of them have low citation counts. This is from the work of tens of thousands of computers for several years. To the participants it's more of a game for points than any real scientific advancement. The overhead of packaging, distributing and accounting for units of work is much more than when using supercomputer time.

Basically my computer's contribution does less than donating the electricity cost to a research charity.

Where can you see the citation count? It would be interesting to see.

And Folding@Home DOES generate useful results. They are actually developing a new drug to treat Alzheimer's, this wouldn't have been possible without their simulations.

In a paper just published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, we report on tests of predictions from earlier Folding@home simulations, and how these predictions have led to a new strategy to fight Alzheimer's Disease.  While this is not a cure, it is a major step towards our final goal, some light at the end of the tunnel.

The next steps, now underway in our lab, are to take this lead compound and help push it towards a viable drug.  It's too early to report on our preliminary results there (I like to only talk publicly about work after it's passed through peer review), I'm very excited that the directions set out in this paper do appear to be bearing fruit in terms of a viable drug (not just a drug candidate).  I hope I'll have more to say in the coming months!

 

http://folding.typepad.com/news/2012/03/fah-simulations-lead-to-a-new-therapeutic-candidate-for-alzheimers-disease.html



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Soleron on 14 June 2012
Zuhyc said:

Where can you see the citation count? It would be interesting to see.

Through my university's subscriptions to academic publications.



Zuhyc on 14 June 2012

Crap :D So how 'low' is the count exactly? How does it compare to other publications (sorry for the questions, but these things really interest me).



mysticwolf on 14 June 2012

so, umm... I still don't really know what it does



 Been away for a bit, but sneaking back in.

Gaming on: PS4, PC, 3DS. Got a Switch! Mainly to play Smash

spaceguy on 14 June 2012
mysticwolf said:
so, umm... I still don't really know what it does


Basically your computer acts as a problem solver through math equations or formula's. So It can come up with new drugs to cure disease or solve complicated space or physics Problems. The problem gets split up in many different pieces like a pie. So your computer solves a little portion of a big problem, as other computers solve other pieces of the pie, essentially making a super computer. You can download the program and choose what you would like to help or support. There are plenty of programs to choose between.



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spaceguy on 14 June 2012
Zuhyc said:

I've been running Folding@Home for 2,5 years now, and I've done my share of running Rosetta@Home on BOINC as well.

What do you say, let's revive the F@H VGChartz team and create a BOINC team as well (if there isn't one already). WHO'S WITH ME?

Soleron said:

I don't run these things because I see little evidence they actually work. With Folding@Home, they have 96 papers published due to the data, and most of them have low citation counts. This is from the work of tens of thousands of computers for several years. To the participants it's more of a game for points than any real scientific advancement. The overhead of packaging, distributing and accounting for units of work is much more than when using supercomputer time.

Basically my computer's contribution does less than donating the electricity cost to a research charity.

 

 



I'm down.



Zuhyc on 17 June 2012

We seem to be the only 2 interested, not really worth it...



crissindahouse on 17 June 2012

had it running one year with einstein@home. i was in the team "pokerstrategen" which is a team of a german poker forum. but then i stopped with most others when we reached our aim to plant trees (some pokerplayers gave some hundred dollars to plant trees when reaching place 50 or so in i believe one year in the overall team leaderboards). we were top 20 in daily points at our best times my internet is very slow and even small downloads aren't so nice with my connection so yeah, i won't restart it anytime soon, sry

we are still place 68 with almost no points anymore for some time now. http://boincstats.com/en/stats/5/team/list/



spaceguy on 23 June 2012

Well seems most people do not want to use this program. My facebook had the same issue. Man people are really crazy over there computers. Well I have 3, so no reason to not do it.



Zuhyc on 24 June 2012

Yeah it sucks to see how few people are interested in this! Especially young people. The things distributed computing can do will probably show real effects in 10-20 years. It's all very new.

Older people tend to be more willing (probably because they have moe healt issues), while it's less likely they will benefit from the cures/new technologies coming from distributed computing.