Compute For Our Children’s Future

As some of you you know, I’ve been fighting Hodgkin’s disease for 4 years now.  It hasn’t gone away but the more time I’ve spent with it, the more interested I am in finding cures for this type of cancer as well as other types.

In addition to that, I’m interested in generally promoting stuff to further biotechnology which has the promise of wiping a lot of the disease we know off the planet.  Bold claim I know but it’s possible given enough research, time, money and computing power…

Wait - did I just say computing power?  Yep.

Let me explain a bit further…

Several years ago, there was a global wide effort to sequence the human genome.  They managed to successfully do it somewhere around the year 2000.

Now, since that time, they’ve sequenced the genome of over 400 other creatures (and counting).  And that number is rapidly accelerating.

One of the things that you might not be aware of is that with the genome of various organisms, it is possible to compare them and find things that are similar.  By doing this, they are able to identify proteins, and other sequences within those genomes that help them target diseases.  In some cases it helps them to understand what causes the disease which can lead to finding cures for the disease.

Now, it may not seem like a big thing but comparing the the genomes of 400 creatures against each other is a HUGE task taking years of computer processing power.

Enter Distributed Computing…

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org

More to the point, what I want to do is get common folks like you me, your dad, your mother, etc.  Anyone who has a computer to enlist their computer’s spare processing power to help with this research.

The programs are written but the companies typically don’t have the marketing power to get the word out.
I’m in the process of creating a website to help with this marketing but in the meantime, if you could go to the site above, sign up and download the software and then join the Compute For Our Children’s Future Team I would greatly appreciate it - as would others who will benefit from this research!

I truly believe that this is something that could MAKE A DIFFERENCE not only in our lives but also in the lives of our children in the coming years.  But for that to happen it’s got to start with the idea, then the website and grow from there…
G-Man

P.S.  See, I’m not totally evil!