Jeff (Digital Parasite) has gotten a thread posted over at www.kuro5hin.org about Distributed Folding and the CASP5 trials.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/6/4/10511/55753
It is under the "internet" topic group if you have trouble with the direct link.
A submission was sent to Slashdot as well but I don't know if they will post it. Here is info so anyone interested can "re-submit" (i.e. catch the attention of the guys at /.) the information:
Help get DF on SlashDot!
quote:
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Originally posted by aegion:
Incidentally, my earlier article has now been submitted to Slashdot.
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Ok EVERYBODY please go to Slashdot http://slashdot.org/submit.pl and submit a copy of aegion's post which can be found on page 25:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?q=Y&a=tpc&s=50009562&f=122097561&m=9270985704&p=25
Under Topic you probably want "Science" and then "Articles" beside it. To create the links to the site aegion has in his post, you can use real HTML tags for that.
I put in www.teamstirfry.com as my web page for the post to try and attract more people to our team even though the story itself is team-neutral.
Jeff.
If you want to copy and past with HTML tags here is the story:
Since early this year, The <A HREF="http://www.distributedfolding.org/">Distributed Folding Project</A> has been hard at work predicting protein folds conformations with help of thousands of participants. This distributed computing project should not be confused with the similarly named Folding@home distributed computing project, which aims to simulate the act of protein folding rather than simulate the outcome of the phenomenon. The reason for this work is that the sequence of amino acids that for a particular protein can now be predicted in many cases due to research in genetic sequences, but proteins do not stay in two-dimensional structures. The Hydrophobic Effect causes protein’s amino acid chains to fold into complex three-dimensional structures that can’t be easily predicted by mere knowledge of the protein’s amino acid sequence. Knowledge of the shape of these folded proteins is vital for determining their behavior and function, therefore obtaining this knowledge is the goal of the project. This is an important area of medical research that could have implications for the treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer's and AIDS. In order to do this, the project utilizes a distributed computing system where individual computers run a software algorithm which produces predicted shapes for the folded protein structures, which are then sorted by another piece of software and uploaded to a central server where the data in analyzed. Additional information about the science behind the project can be found on <A HREF="http://sushi.dbestern.net/distributedfolding/index.php">this page</A>.<BR><BR>
The <A HREF="http://predictioncenter.llnl.gov/">CASP 5 Trials</A>, are when different groups of scientists use different techniques to predict the structures of selected folded proteins during a designated period time. This "competition", with different groups and varying methods, is an effort to determine the abilities and limitations of current protein structure prediction techniques. The Distributed Folding Project will be competing against other major scientific groups to deliver the most accurate predictions. Given the limited time period of the trials (occurring between May and August), it is very important that the project obtain as much processing power as possible. This will produce large numbers of predicted conformations in order to ensure the results are closest to the actual shapes of the proteins studied. This is an opportunity to play an important role in potentially revolutionary medical research aimed at solving one of biology’s most difficult problems!<BR><BR>
The software client supports a variety of operating systems including Linux, Windows, Solaris, OSX, FreeBSD, Tru64, HP-UX 11 and more. In order to join the project, you first <A HREF="http://www.distributedfolding.org/cgi-bin/trajstore">go here</A> and register, while making sure you record the handle that you are assigned by the server. You can then download the client software <A HREF="http://www.distributedfolding.org/Download.html">here</A>, and give the program your previously assigned handle name the first time you run it in order to start participating.