![]() Form Better Crystals to Build Better Cancer Drugs: To better understand proteins involved in cancer formation and growth scientists first need to isolate and crystallize them as a way to understand their shape.Now that many candidates have been discovered Phase II is further narrowing the candidate pool by performing detailed calculations at the quantum mechanical level. ![]() By testing a massive number of potential candidates through distributed mathematical modeling scientists hoped to greatly increase solar cell efficiencies and test the best ways to manufacture them. Improve Solar Cells: The Clean Energy Project first attempted to increase the efficiency of solar cells by identifying organic molecules that best collect, store and transfer energy from the sun.Click on our BOINC blog post for easy directions on getting started. Researchers will then compare the resulting value of certain physical values (such as the cosmic microwave background, rate of expansion, distribution of galaxies, etc.) against their current known values. Model our Universe's Formation: The project is trying to understand the conditions present when the universe began and simulate it's development over billions of years.To test this theory, researchers are modeling the Sagittarius galaxy (a nearby companion galaxy to ours) to identify the path it may have taken through our galaxy and whether it would look the same way it does today after such a collision. Model our Galaxy's Formation: The project is trying to understand how our Galaxy was formed and whether it collided with smaller galaxies in the past.Since they create a huge amount of data the project scientists have turned to distributed computing users for the massive amount of analysis needed to identify a wave. Scientists expect they are finally ready to detect them and have built to gravity wave detectors (one in the U.S., one in Germany) for that purpose. Discover Gravity Waves: Gravity waves were predicted by Albert Einstein, and although many astronomers agree that violent events in space can cause gravitational "ripples", none have ever been found.The program does not look at individual asteroids but finds the best way to use valuable telescope time. Spot Incoming Asteroids: is developing statistical models to identify the best places to identify near-Earth asteroids and most accurately determine their likelihood of hitting our planet.See OpenScientist's SETI-at-Home blog post for more details. Running for nearly 12 years, the project uses your computer to help search space-based radio signals for signs of intelligent life. Search for Alien Life: one of the first and most popular programs available.So if any of these sound interesting to you here are a few you may want to try. Since the benefit of distributed computing lies in solving hugely complex problems, many of the projects deal with such issues as climate change (modeling the entire earth), astronomy (searching vast arrays of stars) or chemistry (understanding how every molecule is designed and how they all interact with each other). ![]() Although each part of the network only works on a small part of the problem the project collects all the pieces and puts them all together. In the projects listed below, you can volunteer your computer to join a network of many other computers taking part in huge number-crunching efforts. The technical term for all of this is "Distributed Computing". So instead we need many hands, or in this case, many computers, to make light work. But despite recent gains in computer technology many problems would still takes months (or years!) of data crunching even with the fastest supercomputers. For really large problems a scientist could just build a giant supercomputer, plug in the data, and let the computer zip along until it finds an answer. ![]() This is a big part of the citizen science ideal with everyday people chipping in to help full-time scientists with their research. The more data points collected the better the data set becomes, and the more analysts we have the more (and quicker) we can make sense of the information presented. When it comes to developing new ideas or testing new theories we often rely on the concerted efforts of individuals to collect data or analyze information. As your mother always said, "Many hands make light work."
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