There's a few posts at AudioSex concerning Covid-19, and it's totally understandable that we all think a lot about this right now. There has also been a few posts full of conspiracy theories, which have rightfully been taken down. Making up fake theories will not solve the crisis, but rather make it worse. I hope this post will be ok, since it's actually a way for us to contribute from home.

Because there IS something WE can do to contribute in this crisis without acting like virus experts ourselfs!

I figure most of us have pretty good computers. And that's all we need (well, internet also) to be able to help with finding solutions to these hard times.

So, did you ever wonder how you could help with simulating the dynamics of COVID-19 proteins to hunt for new therapeutic opportunities?

Do you have a computer running Windows, macOS or Linux? Then you can!

Go to foldingathome.org and download the software for your operating system, and let your computer work with simulations in the background. You will be able to use your computer even when working on it, or you can set the software to only simulate during times when your computer is idle. The better the processor, and especially graphic card you have, the more power you will contribute with.

In the software, set category to “ANY”. COVID-19 is prioritized. You can also follow Folding@home on Twitter or Facebook.

This works similar to the way SETI@Home has been working, or as mining crypto currency works.

INFO FROM FOLDING@HOME:

Folding@home (FAH or F@h) is a distributed computing project for simulating protein dynamics, including the process of protein folding and the movements of proteins implicated in a variety of diseases. It brings together citizen scientists who volunteer to run simulations of protein dynamics on their personal computers. Insights from this data are helping scientists to better understand biology, and providing new opportunities for developing therapeutics.

Folding@home is based at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, under the directorship of Dr. Greg Bowman. Drs. John Chodera (MSKCC) and Vince Voelz (Temple University) are also active in helping manage the project. Together, their three labs are the primary drivers of Folding@home.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Stay safe, wash your hands, and keep your distance!

Remember that even laughing or breathing will spread the virus. You want to be on the other side of that “cloud” !

 

Possibility of Bioaerosol Spread of SARS-CoV-2

 

This is interesting, but this thread is clearly about computer power to fasten research for Covid 19 solution.

So let's keep it in topic.


That said, I would like to be absolutely sure that opening my computer to an external system is safe.

 

These kind of things has been here for a long time. Folding@home has been running simulations long before Covid-19 but now focus their efforts there.

Many times the WU's (work units) are all cleared when running the software, and set at "any" disease it then focuses on something else. Because of a lot of people willing to borrow their computer power for a good thing, they are trying keep up with new simulations. Not everything is about certain theories. Some people actually want to make good.

Seti@home has been doing this for ages. It's a pretty cool thing when done in a way like this. Or also as with blochain and crypto mining, which is a much less altruistic thing though.

Of course a super computer like this can be wrongly used, but this ain't it.

 

Last edited: Apr 20, 2020

Fun fact: Folding@Home network was the first thing in the world to break the exaFLOPS mark. Making it the most powerful computer/network (well, they all are networks basically these days) on Earth.

An exaFLOPs (floating point operations per second) is 1000000000000000000 64-bit floating point calculations per second.

Thanks for all other contributors for this!

 

They just wrapped it up I'm afraid, though it was a proper needle in the haystack search, that.

 

Ok, guys, as you are unable to stay in topic, this thread is now closed.

I hope it will be informative, for those able to analyse what it really speaks about.