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^Protein Folding^

Joined
Mar 14, 2005
Messages
275
Reaction score
4
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
iMac G5 17", 1.8 Ghz, 1GB RAM
How exactly does the protein folding program in -->(http://folding.stanford.edu/) work?

Sorry if I sound slow, but I've been to the site, but I don't really understand it. How could downloading their client help in the research of "protein folding"? And how does one help and what are the pounts for? Thanks! :biohazard
 
E

Ex_PC_Puke

Guest
I've been curious here too - as I've got a new mac (and am still learning how and where OS X puts things) I'm hesitant at loading more crap than I really need to ----- how does the SW work with your machine going to sleep etc --- uninstalling ??
 
K

Kokopelli

Guest
The short version is protien folding is a complex part of biology that man does not understand all that well yet. A simulation of the process on a conventional computer, or even supercomputer, would take a very long time. Fortunately the process of the simulation can be broken down into smaller computational units which can then be shuffled to the hundreds of thousands of systems running the folding client speeding up the process a great deal. In essence the combined might of all the folding clients is making a giant computational cluster.

A point means you have completed one of these computational units. There are team and individual totals and the teams compete against each other for position. Quite a few tech sites have folding teams. Basically it is for bragging rights.

As far as effect on your computer. When it is running your CPU is usually pegged, with all the associated factors. If your computer is asleep obviously the client is not running and if you uninstall the client it will have definite problems running as well. In the end the folding client is just a program like any other, just one that never runs out of work.
 
Joined
Jun 11, 2003
Messages
4,915
Reaction score
68
Points
48
Location
Mount Vernon, WA
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Pro 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo 4GB RAM OS 10.5.2
Yep and we have our own team here also, that is doing pretty decent. It just runs in the background, taking up any processes that you are not currently using.. and adjusts accordingly. You can look at my sig to find out how we are doing thus far.
 

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