As concerns of a global hunger crises mount, IBM and researchers at the University of Washington today launched a new program to develop stronger strains of rice that could produce crops with larger and more nutritious yields.

Anyone with a computer and the Internet can help by joining World Community Grid.





World Community Grid—the power of sharing

Big Blue's World Community Grid and a University of Washington team are using PCs globally to develop better strains of rice.


By tapping a cluster of nearly 1 million PCs scattered around the world, the researchers hope to develop more nutritious, robust strains of rice sooner by completing complex genetic calculations in just one or two years.

Those calculations might have taken 200 years if left to the school's computers.

"We can make things happen much faster. We should be able to get new strains to farmers within five years," says Ram Samudrala, associate professor of computational biology at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Samudrala received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study and "annotate" the results. He and his 30 researchers essentially create maps of how rice cells work. He bought 400 PCs and linked them in a cluster, but quickly ran into limitations in the computing power of those machines.

Samudrala learned of the World Community Grid because one of his research colleagues was working with IBM on another Grid project. At first, Samudrala was skeptical that a widely scattered collection of PCs could do the job for him, but he came around.

Stan Litow, IBM's vice-president for corporate citizenship, praises people who volunteer their computers for the Grid, and urges others to get involved. "Some people write checks for social causes. Others contribute time. Here's something that doesn't cost you anything," he says.


IBM's Answer to the Food Crisis

Does anybody know if you can set your Resource Share to this Project to what you want it to be ... ??? I've hunted & hunted in their screwed up Grid Type Personal Pages & don't see that option anywhere ...

Go to My Grid, -> Device Manager -> Device Profiles -> One of the profiles

on the bottom of the profiles is box called "Project Weight", that's it.

Here's a link to the "Default" settings. (Works only if you're loged in and have cookies enabled for WCG)

Okay thanks Saenger, I got it after some fumbling around the pages, why a project wants to hide things so well is beyond me, it just makes it a frustrating experience and why people don't run some of these Projects ... Thanks again, PB

Nutritious Rice for the World


In this video, Dr Ram Samudrala, Associate Professor of Computational Biology and Principal Investigator at the University of Washington, shares about his research that analyses complex protein strains to unlock the secret to more nutritious rice that can help alleviate world hunger problems.

Check out the video and learn about the modern advances in science that benefit mankind and share this story with your friends to encourage them to be part of World Community Grid!

Dr Ram Samudrala, Associate Professor of Computational Biology and Principal Investigator at the University of Washington, shares about his research that analyzes complex protein strains to unlock the secret to more nutritious rice that can help alleviate hunger.

Help Conquer Cancer Is Only 16% Complete.


Since the launch of Help Conquer Cancer project in November 2007, WCG members contributed almost 19,627 years of run time, averaging about 50 years a day.

To date 24,502,692 results were returned, completing about 16% of the work (Statistics Last Updated: 11/20/08 12:06:03).



More . . .

World Community Grid Member Created 'I Dedicate' Montage

I wouldn't mind increasing the percentage of work to World Community Grid but for some reason all I ever get is no responce from project in BAM (both on selecting a team and trying to change percentage).

WCG doesn't work correctly with BAM. You need to go to the main site and create your acount/join team/set resource share/etc. You can, however, have BAM "find your account" and then attach to your various hosts.

that is also my bigest issue with WCG and BAM they dont work together

besides that its a great project

New Project at World Community Grid: The Clean Energy project


Dear World Community Grid users: We want to thank you all for contributing your computer's idle power to the Clean Energy Project!

Our team here in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University is very excited about having the opportunity to closely work with you in finding new materials for alternative energy applications. We are jointly searching thousands of possible compounds as candidates for producing solar cells made of organic materials.

One of our goals is to collaborate with experimental research groups that will synthesize the most promising chemical compounds; compounds that would be identified by using your donated computer time.

In this respect, your contribution is very important because you are helping us to dramatically accelerate the process of understanding the fundamental science behind these novel solar cells made of organic materials.

Remember: the deployment of this technology has the potential to systematically lead the development of the next generation of solar cells.


More . . .

IBM, Harvard want your PC for solar power study


Scientists at Harvard University and IBM are hoping to harness the power of a million idle computers to develop a new, cheaper form of solar power that could revolutionize the green energy world.

Researchers have launched the project using IBM's World Community Grid, which taps into volunteers' computers across the globe to run calculations on a myriad of compounds -- potentially shortening a project that could take 22 years to just two years.

Harvard scientists are hoping the project will allow it to discover a combination of organic materials that can be used to manufacture plastic solar cells that are cheaper and more flexible than the silicon-based ones typically used to turn sunlight into electricity.



More . . .

Harvard Recruiting PC Power to Find Better Solar-Panel Materials: Project Can Cut Research Time from 22 to 2 Years


Using volunteers' computers in the grid to run these numerous calculations can shorten a project that would normally take about 20 to 22 years to just two years, Aspuru-Guzik said.

The IBM World Community Grid currently has about 1 million computers linked to it. IBM created the network a couple of years ago; it might eventually be considered to be among the top 10 most powerful supercomputers in the world, thanks to its sheer size and scope.

IBM, naturally, includes security software to protect the participants' computers.

"It's a way for people that have computers to do some good for the world," IBM engineer Joe Jasinski said.

Aspuru-Guzik said that about seven volunteers signed up on the first day. "We hadn't even announced it yet," he said.

The Clean Energy Project is the 11th project to run on the World Community Grid and is one of six active projects currently running.

"We are not asking people to change their habits when using their computer," IBM Vice President of Global Community Initiatives Robin Willner told me. "We've packaged up these services into a mashup of sorts, and it's very safe and secure. And the benefits to the user are wonderful."



More . . .

our computer needs some specs to crunch unit of this project ? and how WCG decide which of 4 or 5 sub-projects our computer will crunch ?

From the World Community Grid web site, these are the minimum specs you should have.

| For The Clean Energy Project, the minimum requirements are:
|
| * At least 512 MB RAM (with virtual memory enabled)
| * 200 MB Hard Disk Drive with at least 50 MB available for use
| * The ability to display 8-bit graphics at 800x600 resolution
| * An Internet connection with minimum 40kpbs speed
| * Operating System: Windows ME, 2000, XP, or Vista

I have a work unit crunching now on my Vista 64 PC. It is running in a AMD Phenome 8450 (a lower-end Phenome, but still a good processor). The estimated time was about 30 hours, but now it looks like it will be about 35 hours. It seems the Clean Energy work units take longer to run than other projects. (On that PC, most World Community Grid work units take between 8 and 16 hours to run.)

A message on the forum says a Linux client is in Beta testing now. A Mac client will come in the future.

How do they decide? Two ways:

[1] You can choose which one project or few projects you run. You can also choose if
- The project(s) you choose do not have any work at that time, send work from any project with work.
or
- The project(s) you choose do not have any work at that time, do not send work. (Crunch other BOINC projects.)

[2] You can choose to get work from all projects. This is random. I think World Community Grid sends work in the order they get it. I have noticed over the past few years, when my different computers get work at the same time, they get work from the same project. If a computer downloads two work units at the same time, both will be the same project.

You make these choices in your World Community Grid profile. You also choose if you want to run beta work units or not.

The science that Fight AIDS@Home is exploring: Project Status, as of Dec. 3, 2008

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.


More . . .

FightAIDS@Home with World Community Grid


Voices across the globe talk about AIDS today. See how you can make a real difference in the lives of people living with HIV through World Community Grid.

Administrator of WCG announced that probably on 08.jan.2009 WCG will move to a new CC at Toronto.
Project will not be online expected until 12.jan.2009.
As well deadine for WUs will be decreased to one week.

Found in german on http://www.rechenkraft.net/wiki/index.php?title=Aktuelle_Ereignisse

Voraussichtlich am 8.01.2009 wird laut einer Ankündigung eines Administrators das World Community Grid in ein neues, moderneres Rechenzentrum bei Toronto umziehen. (...) Im Rahmen des Serverumzugs wird das Projekt voraussichtlich bis zum 12.1.2008 nicht erreichbar sein. Außerdem wird die Deadline für WUs auf eine Woche herabgesetzt.

That's not exactly what I have read. There is no removal of servers. The old ones will stay where they are and the new ones are in Toronto.
They hope the servers will unreachable for the clients for only 1 day. Probably the 8. of January.
On that day the new servers will be filled with the databases (synchronizing) from the old ones. The reason for shortening the deadlines is to minimize the amount of DB-data to synchonize.

official thread from wcg-forum found here...
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=22984

with malariacontrol out of work for a while, I need a safe reliable project with small work units to run on a lappy which I manage from a
distance that's not switched on every day - even rosetta, the other obvious choice, was down last weekend.

can anyone remind me how long the various WCG project wus take, I'm not up with the latest couple of sub-projects? (use malaria wus as a unit of size to allow for PC power - they take an hour or two on the lappy in question.) WCG probably the best option as this is not a case for messing about with alpha projects.

WCG isn't compliant with BAM! so what's the full proceedure for signing up when you are already doing lots of boinc projects on several
hosts - I assume you don't download their version of boinc again?? So far I've got to page one of their 4 stage registration page and
stopped before screwing it up.........!