Search Results for: help
What are the goals of the Help Stop TB project?
The tuberculosis (TB) bacterium has an outer coat that protects it from treatments and a patient’s immune system. The Help Stop TB project is aimed at helping scientists to better understand that coat and its role in protecting the bacteria. This understanding can help us and other scientists to design better drugs against TB in the future.
How can I find the latest status on the Help Defeat Cancer Project?
The latest status on the Help Defeat Cancer Project may be found here.
How can I help stop TB?
You can help stop TB by joining World Community Grid and donating your computerâs spare computing time to this project.
What is the status of the Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy project?
The first phase of Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy was completed in June, 2007. The scientists are currently analyzing the phase 1 results in preparation for phase 2. We expect phase 2 to start in early 2009. You may read about the Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy project and the preparation for Phase 2 here.
How can I help stop Zika?
You can help stop this virus by joining World Community Grid and contributing to the OpenZika project. When you join, you donate your computer or Android device’s unused computing power to run virtual experiments to help researchers identify promising candidates for anti-viral drugs to combat Zika.
What are the expected benefits of this project?
There are two main areas where this research is expected to have a beneficial effect: current scientific research, and future technologies.
On the research side, the results should help improve scientific knowledge about gene and protein functions and biochemical processes in general, as well as helping scientists understand how microbial communities are changing in response to changing conditions in the natural world.
There are also several exciting ways in which this knowledge may help solve pressing world problems. For example, new knowledge about organisms should help identify, design and produce new antibiotics and drugs against diseases, as well as new enzymes for industrial applications, such as food processing, chemical synthesis, or the production of biodegradable plastics or biofuels. In the long-term this knowledge should help us manage the diverse organisms’ important functions in the world's ecosystem, in all environments, in industrial settings, and in human, animal and plant interactions.
How will the results of this project help other watersheds and catchments?
The Chesapeake Bay Watershed is but one of over 400 major watershed/catchment systems globally. It is not unique in facing the challenges of population growth, increasing urbanization, and the challenges of changing environmental conditions. The results to be reported from this project can inform policy-makers worldwide as to best practices to employ to restore and sustain the globe’s precious water resources. More importantly, perhaps, information from this simulation can help citizens make better choices and help the private sector identify opportunities for new products, services, and processes that reduce nutrient flow.
How are the goals of the project being met?
The Microbiome Immunity Project will meet its goals by using a computational research technique called protein structure prediction. This is a process through which computers simulate how a protein 1-dimensional sequence folds into its final 3-dimensional structure. (For more information about computational protein folding, see the Human Proteome Folding project.)
Knowing the structures of proteins of the microbiome can help researchers predict the functions of these proteins. An understanding of the role of these proteins will then help scientists develop drugs to control them or inhibit harmful interactions and therefore help treat diseases that originate in or are influenced by the human microbiome.
Which World Community Grid projects can be run on Android devices?
Please see this FAQ for World Community Grid projects currently running on Android devices.
Can you explain the screen savers?
You may find an explanation of the various project screen savers under the specific research project name found in the “Overview” section of our Help facility
How does Phase 2 relate to Phase 1?
Phase 2 further refines the results from Phase 1 and helps us identify "false positives," thus saving time and money in future drug development processes.
Is the Mapping Cancer Markers project similar to the Help Conquer Cancer project?
Although both projects relate to cancer research, the Help Conquer Cancer project (run on World Community Grid from 2007-2013) focused on basic science - discovering principles of protein crystallization and helping to determine 3D structure of over 15,000 proteins. Knowing the protein structure helps scientists to understand their function and design drugs that may provide novel treatment options for multiple complex diseases, such as cancer.
The Mapping Cancer Markers project focuses on clinical application - discovering specific groups of markers that can be used to improve detection, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of cancer. As a second goal, the comprehensive analysis of existing molecular profiles of cancer samples will lead to unraveling characteristics of such groups of markers - and in turn improving our understanding how to find them more efficiently.
What does The University of Nottingham logo in the screen saver represent?
The University of Nottingham, in the United Kingdom, was rated No. 8 for research power in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework and is the home of the research team behind the Help Stop TB project.
What does the screen saver look like when Help Stop TB is running?
Here is a video of the Help Stop TB screensaver:
What are the system requirements for devices to participate in OpenPandemics – COVID-19?
Any laptop or desktop can be used. OpenPandemics – COVID-19 runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Learn more about the system requirements at https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/help/viewTopic.do?shortName=minimumreq
How can I help with this project?
You can help by joining World Community Grid and providing your computer's spare processing time. In addition, you can help support the researchers at their crowd sourced funding site at: www.crowdrise.com/CUREEBOLA
The researchers have turned to public support because the normal research grant process can take up to a year before any funds become available. Furthermore, because of public funding cuts and the sequester, fewer grants are available than in the past. The researchers are most grateful for any support you can give.
Can work on related diseases help fight Zika?
Closely related viruses may give clues that could help researchers fight Zika. This is one of the reasons why OpenZika includes “template” crystal structures of targets from related viruses in our virtual screening experiments against the Zika models. However, although Zika may look like dengue, subtle changes on the virus surface and in the viral enzymes could impact how antivirals or even vaccines may work. The mechanism for these viruses getting into cells and their effects can vary dramatically. The top computational results from OpenZika will thus be tested in “wet lab” experiments with the actual Zika virus, to verify which compounds can help fight Zika.
Which World Community Grid research projects can run on GPUs?
For the latest on which World Community Grid research projects run on GPU, please refer to our system requirements.
What computers can run the "Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together" Project?
This project is distributed using the BOINC client, which is available for download on this site for computers with Windows, Macintosh, or Linux operating systems. For system requirements, click here.
Where are the Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase 2 FAQs?
FAQs about the project are in the Resesarch section under Project FAQs.
Will this project help stop the current H1N1 flu outbreak?
No. A search for potential drugs to combat influenza is a lengthy process and is unlikely to be helpful in the current outbreak. Once the computational portion of the project identifies the chemical compounds that are the best candidates, a considerable amount of laboratory testing and drug development is required before a drug is ready for safe and effective public use. The current H1N1 influenza outbreak is a reminder of how quickly influenza mutates and how easily new strains of the virus emerge. Seasonal outbreaks of influenza cause hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world each year. We want to leverage this understanding to encourage more people to volunteer their idle computer time and help us to accelerate this important research. However, with the large computational power of World Community Grid and your individual contributions of spare time from your computers, we can greatly accelerate the process, examine a much larger pool of chemicals and focus laboratory research on the best candidates for new treatments. Researchers will be well positioned to help respond to outbreaks of potentially more severe (or drug-resistant) influenza viruses in the future.
What computers can run the "Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together" Project?
This project is distributed using the BOINC client, which is available for download on this site for computers with Windows, Macintosh, or Linux operating systems. For system requirements, click here.
Where are the Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy FAQs?
FAQs about the project are in the Resesarch section under Project FAQs.
Is there a podcast for the Help Defeat Cancer Project?
Yes, you may find a podcast by Dr. David Foran on the News & Media page.
What does the progress bar in the screen saver represent?
The progress bar, towards the bottom of the screen saver, represents approximately how much of the current task your device has processed. When it reaches 100%, the computation is complete and the results will then be sent back to World Community Grid, where they will be packaged and delivered to the Help Stop TB researchers.
What computers can run the "AfricanClimate@Home" Project?
AfricanClimate@Home can run on computers that use a high speed internet connection and that run the Windows and Linux operating systems. AfricanClimate@Home will be available using the BOINC agent. You can check to see if you are using the BOINC agent by following the information available here. For system requirements, click here.
What are the goals of the Microbiome Immunity Project?
The Microbiome Immunity Project aims to help scientists understand how trillions of bacteria in our bodies impact diseases such as Type 1 diabetes and Crohn's disease.
The primary goal of the project is therefore to generate a set of predicted protein structures of the entire human microbiome, containing around 3 million unique genes. This will help scientists determine the role played by these bacteria. Another goal is to share the results of the project with scientists around the world to further facilitate research on diseases implicated with the microbiome.
How is World Community Grid helping with this effort?
While effective, protein folding simulations are resource-intensive and often require more computational power than scientists typically have access to. The Microbiome Immunity Project research team is therefore enlisting the help of World Community Grid volunteers, each of whom runs these simulations on their computers. Each of these simulations is a virtual experiment to predict the structure of a protein.
The massive amount of aggregated computation power World Community Grid brings to this project will greatly advance and accelerate this new area of health research.
How can I help?
Anyone with a computer can help scientists understand how the human microbiome impacts disease, simply by joining World Community Grid.
It's easy: you create a World Community Grid account, select to support the Microbiome Immunity Project and then install our free and safe software on your computer. Then, whenever your computer has any unused computing power, it runs a simulation on behalf of the Microbiome Immunity Project team. The more people that participate, the quicker the researchers can get their work done!
How can I help?
Anyone with a computer can help the search for potential COVID-19 treatments by joining World Community Grid.
It's easy: you create a World Community Grid account, select to support OpenPandemics - COVID-19, and then install our free and safe software on your computer. Then, whenever your computer has any unused computing power, it runs a simulation on behalf of the OpenPandemics research team to evaluate the effectiveness of chemical compounds as potential COVID-19 treatment options.
The more people that participate, the quicker the researchers can get their work done!
How is this different from the team's previous project, Help Fight Childhood Cancer? Why is neuroblastoma being targeted again?
Help Fight Childhood Cancer, which ran on World Community Grid from 2009 to 2013, found several potential new drugs candidates for neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer with poor prognosis when not diagnosed in the earliest stages. Further testing of these drug candidates continues.
The Smash Childhood Cancer project expands the scope to address not only neuroblastoma, but also additional pediatric solid tumors with poor outcomes.
The drug discovery targeting the TrkB protein, which was a neuroblastoma target during Help Fight Childhood Cancer, will be continued in this study. The research team will also study additional proteins which may be important in the development of cancer cells.
Do you have a startup script for the BOINC client on Linux?
There are two common ways to have BOINC automatically start on a Linux system. The first will start BOINC when you log in to your Linux system. This involves placing code into your shell resource file (such as .bashrc). The second will start BOINC when the system is started. You can read more about this at the following sites: http://www.spy-hill.net/~myers/help/boinc/unix.html#start and http://boinc.berkeley.edu/autostart_dennett.txt
What will this project do?
The project will compare about 200 million proteins encoded by the genes from a wide variety of known and unknown organisms. These genes came from organisms in samples taken from a range of environments, including water and soil, as well as on and in plants and animals. DNA from all the organisms in those samples (the metagenome) was extracted and analyzed to identify genes that encode proteins, most of which are enzymes. Uncovering Genome Mysteries will compare the proteins encoded by those genes to one another, both individually and in groups, to find genetic similarities. Such similarities can reveal the functions these organisms perform in various natural processes. Scientists can then use that knowledge to design solutions to solve important environmental, medical and industrial problems.
How are the goals of the project being met?
The research team is leveraging computational research techniques (where scientists run many computer-based, simulated experiments) to help accelerate the search for treatments for COVID-19 and other pandemics. These powerful techniques are effective because computational research can correlate different sources of information as soon as they are available (such as virus mutations and other types of data). This helps scientists build models that constantly evolve to provide insight on how to fight the infection being studied.
World Community Grid's massive computing power allows scientists to leverage such research techniques at scale. For this project, this computing power is enabling the research team to rapidly study millions of chemical compounds that could be potential treatments for COVID-19, identify the most promising compounds, and flag them for testing in real-life laboratories.
I registered my agent successfully but it is not running any task.
One possibility is that your device does not meet the minimum resources required for any of our projects. You may check our system requirements here.
If your device does meet our minimum system requirements, please review the Network Connections and Settings FAQs. If this doesn’t apply, please post in our BOINC Support Forum, as a member may be able to quickly assist you with your problem.
How much hard drive space does the software take on my computer?
The software itself will take less than 50 MB of hard drive space or your computer. The different projects that run on the World Community Grid, however, have different system requirements for running on your computer. To find out if your computer meets those requirements, go here.
Are there any specific system requirements for running World Community Grid on Android?
Overall, World Community Grid only requires that the phone be running Android 4.1 or higher, but each research project has its own requirements for storage and memory usage. More details are available here.
Why are some areas of the site only available in English?
There are some areas of the site that are dynamic and change frequently. There is no effective way to have these areas constantly updated in more than one language. The dynamic portions of the site include: What's New (on the home page), Help, and the forums. While the forums are not translated, posting in languages other than English is allowed.
I'd like to put something about World Community Grid on my website; is there something that I can use?
If you'd like to promote World Community Grid and/or use the World Community Grid logo image on your website, you can make use of the World Community Grid widget. Click here for an FAQ explaining more about the World Community Grid widget.
This sounds too good to be true. Am I missing something?
Everything benefits! Members who volunteer their unused processing power benefit by not only making their devices more productive, but also by helping make scientific inroads on humanitarian problems. Research organizations benefit by having access to huge amounts of computing power at no cost, enabling them to make more effective use of critical funds. The scientific community benefits because the project results are shared and made available in the public domain. The world benefits because humanitarian research is advanced.
What about connection costs?
The only costs associated with the connection depend on your service with your ISP. Uploads and downloads do not typically require lengthy connections, however busy periods or maintenance outages may impact your connection.
Additional information on connections may be found here.
May I download and process multiple work units, then return all of the results at one time?
The software used by World Community Grid does allow you to download multiple work units. It is unlikely that you will return all the work units together unless your device is disconnected from the internet while it completes the work units. For more information on cacheing workunits, please refer to this FAQ.
Why can I only get one task at a time for the Africa Rainfall Project?
We have set the default for the Africa Rainfall Project to one task at a time due to the larger than normal system requirements. If any volunteers wish to increase this value, please see the “How do I limit the number of tasks assigned ... for a specific project?” FAQ.
Why is my device uploading result data (intermediate upload files) while a research task is still in progress?
We are using a mechanism called intermediate uploads whereby at certain processing milestones, your device would send us back partial results for the research task your device is currently working on. This allows us to validate the work you have completed up to that point and helps the researchers examine and interpret the results being returned by the volunteers.
What will the results of this project be?
The researchers will publish an open-access database of the protein sequence comparisons computed on World Community Grid.
We expect that this information will help scientists discover new enzymatic functions, find how organisms interact with each other and the environment, document the current baseline microbial diversity, and better understand and model complex microbial systems.
What will the results of this project be?
The researchers will publish an open-access database of the protein sequence comparisons computed on World Community Grid.
We expect that this information will help scientists discover new enzymatic functions, find how organisms interact with each other and the environment, document the current baseline microbial diversity, and better understand and model complex microbial systems.
What is the difference between the Computing for Sustainable Water project and the Computing for Clean Water project?
The Computing for Sustainable Water project is studying how changes in human activities could help improve the quality of watersheds, critical for sustaining life and food sources. The Computing for Clean Water project is trying to develop less expensive water filters so that it would be more practical to produce clean drinking water from poor water sources.
How is malaria currently controlled?
Since the female Anopheles mosquitoes tend to feed on human blood at night, insecticide-treated bed nets are a common tool that helps prevent malaria infections. The bed net makes it harder for mosquitoes to bite people, and the specific insecticide that coats it can kill some of the mosquitoes. Insecticides are also sprayed indoors to help kill or deter the mosquitoes. These strategies are called “vector control,” since they focus on decreasing the ability of mosquitoes (the vector) to spread the infection to humans. Although these approaches can help decrease the spread of malaria, malaria infections are still very widespread. In addition, mosquitoes that are resistant to the insecticide can eventually arise, similar to the way in which malaria parasites that are resistant to the drugs eventually evolve.
After a person has become infected with malaria, "chemotherapeutic approaches" are employed (that is, a drug or a combination of different drugs is used to cure the malaria infection). There are many different drugs that can be used to cure malaria infections; however, the parasites that cause malaria eventually evolve “drug resistance” against the specific chemicals that are used to eliminate the parasites (see the FAQ below on “multi-drug-resistant mutant superbugs”). For example, in the past the drug chloroquine was very useful for curing malaria infections, but the Plasmodium parasites eventually evolved drug resistance against chloroquine. Later, the dual drug combination of sulfadoxine plus pyrimethamine was developed. For several years it was very useful for curing malaria infections, and it helped save millions of lives. But then the Plasmodium parasites evolved resistance to this dual drug combination, too. Since resistance to sulfadoxine plus pyrimethamine started becoming very prevalent, the World Health Organization now recommends that artemisinin-based combination therapies (“ACTs”) be used to treat malaria infections. Unfortunately, Plasmodium falciparum parasites that are able to resist treatment with artemisinin, and its derivatives, have recently started to appear at the Thai-Cambodian border. The drug resistance phenomenon is the reason why discovering and developing new drugs that can eliminate multi-drug-resistant malaria infections is a global health necessity, and it’s the reason why we created the GO Fight Against Malaria project.
What is GO Fight Against Malaria?
GO Fight Against Malaria is a project of the Olson laboratory (http://mgl.scripps.edu). The project uses distributed computing to help accelerate research on the discovery of new drugs which can cure infections of multi-drug-resistant mutant “superbugs” of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the deadliest form of malaria.
How does The Clean Energy Project benefit humanity?
The Clean Energy Project is focused on understanding the fundamental science of how flexible solar cells work, so scientists can design more efficient energy-related technologies. The results of the project will eventually help us reduce our dependence on fossil fuels to lower our carbon emissions, keep our air cleaner, and contribute to the fight against global warming. Our research will facilitate the development of cheap, flexible solar cell materials that we hope will be used worldwide.
What are the potential benefits of the Help Fight Childhood Cancer project?
The Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute and Chiba University are using the computational power of World Community Grid to identify new candidate drugs that have the right shape and chemical characteristics to block three proteins – TrkB, ALK and SCxx, which are expressed at high levels, or abnormally mutated, in aggressive neuroblastomas. If these proteins are disabled, scientists believe there should be a high cure rate using chemotherapy.
What will our calculations for the Help Fight Childhood Cancer project produce?
The researchers have prepared a library of 3 million compounds - or potential drug candidates (called ligands) – and are using World Community Grid to simulate laboratory experiments to test which of these compounds block the TrkB, ALK and SCxx proteins. The best molecules will be selected from the project and tested in a laboratory for efficacy against neuroblastoma.
Why are my work units failing with exit code 234 “Error: cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics extension required by this program is not supported”?
The Help Conquer Cancer graphics card application requires the OpenCL extension cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics and will not run on cards that do not support this extension. If you see the error above it is because your graphics card does not support the extension.
Will my computing time only help the FightAIDS@Home project?
Your device will contribute to whatever projects you choose; however, only certain projects will be available for mobile devices. You can select from the projects currently active at World Community Grid by visiting the My Projects page. There you can view all available projects, and choose those in which you want to participate.
Where may I download pictures of the Help Stop TB graphics?
A screenshot of the project graphics is available for download in the following resolutions:
What are the goals of OpenZika and how are these goals being met?
The main goal of the OpenZika project is to identify promising drug candidates to treat a Zika virus infection. In order to help scientists reach this goal, World Community Grid volunteers are donating their unused computing power to conduct virtual experiments, called “docking calculations.” Based on the results of the docking calculations, the researchers will be able to predict which drug candidates are most likely to show promising results in laboratory tests.
How might the data generated by OpenPandemics - COVID-19 be valuable to scientists?
The data generated during the project could represent ideal starting points for the design of new classes of drugs to target COVID-19 and other coronaviruses. Additionally, OpenPandemics - COVID-19 could build a model for the fast deployment of computational resources to help identify potential treatments during fast-spreading pandemics.
And because all data, tools, and processes that are developed through OpenPandemics - COVID-19 will be shared freely, the project can benefit the scientific community at large.
How is World Community Grid helping with this effort?
The computing power donated by World Community Grid volunteers enables researchers to explore a much larger chemical space by screening hundreds of millions of molecules in the quest for promising drug candidates against COVID-19. The scale of the volunteers' donated computing power also means that a research effort of this scale can be done in a matter of months instead of years.
Why am I not contributing?
There are a number of reasons why you may not be contributing to World Community Grid. One of the primary reasons this happens is that you may have a new device, or a new storage disk, and you did not download the World Community Grid software to your new device. To understand why you are not currently contributing and learn how to start contributing again, please click here.
How is my computing time helping fight schistosomiasis?
There are many approaches that can help combat not only schistosomiasis, but many infectious diseases, whose genome is sequenced and proteins annotated. Using computational methods or bioinformatics, it is possible to predict or identify molecules that are essential to the survival of these organisms, so they can be then evaluated as drug targets or vaccines. Furthermore, it is also possible to identify whether a drug could interact and inhibit an essential protein of the parasite, in order to kill it or to stop its multiplication. For the design of new drugs, it is very useful to identify molecular targets in microorganisms, and then based on these targets, to design new drugs or evaluate some previously synthesized and used for other purposes. The availability of the complete genome of Schistosoma (http://www.sanger.ac.uk/resources/downloads/helminths/schistosoma-mansoni.html) will facilitate prediction of critical or important gene products, such as those involved in pathways or metabolic essential processes for the Schistosoma parasite.