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Important scientific projects need you!
After completing this challenge you will be able to participate in scientific projects which are working to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars and conduct other types of research all over the world. You will be able to contribute processing time on your PC or laptop, and through the message boards of the projects, you will have the chance to learn more about the research that is motivating these projects.
This challenge will show you how to download, install and run the software you need to enable you to join the volunteer computing projects that are supported by the open source platform, BOINC.
There are many scientific projects that need the support of citizen scientists. The use of citizen-science networks often allows scientists to accomplish research objectives that would otherwise take much longer to achieve or at greater cost.
You can learn about one class of projects, called volunteer computing projects, from the website of BOINC, a popular open source platform for many volunteer computing projects. In particular, check out the BOINC list of supported projects.
Study the list of projects carefully, and choose the one you wish you to support. Remember that when you join that project, you are not just offering computing power, you are joining a community.
When you have chosen a project share with your peers in the discussion wall what you came up with:
There are some fantastic projects taking place... I had a hard time choosing which one I was going to go with because of my sheer interest in everything.. I ended up choosing the Test4Theory from CERN.
I began choosing a SIMAT project by BOINC (computational biology), and this is only the beginning!
I chose the e0n project via Boinc. This is a chemistry project calculating the long time dynamics of systems. I'm conributing my computer for processing when I'm not using it.
Hello again. I chose Mikyway@home as my project. I hav always been interested in astronomy. That in why this project is good for me. The physics and math involved are favorite sujects of mine.
I support the poem@home cancer peptides project. It is essential to understand the fundamental workings of the known cancer peptides in order to effectively implement them in treatment for cancer patients. By supporting them I hope to help research in this area move forward in what ever modest way possible.
The Lattice Project is the research in grid computing conducted by the Laboratory of Molecular Evolution. It can also refer to the grid computing system that is currently in production at the University of Maryland. Michael Cummings has directed The Lattice Project from its inception in late 2003 to the present, and Adam Bazinet has been the primary developer. During this time the system has been continually developed, improved, and used to complete many scientific analyses. We were initially motivated by the need for more computing power for our own research, but our development of the grid system has always been with general, non-domain-specific use in mind. In fact, the majority of our users have been other researchers throughout the world and at the University of Maryland.
I may not be able to help much but as I learned a long time a go every little bit helps.
"Even a single drop of rain raises the level of the ocean."
As a start, I have selected FightMalaria@Home because of the significant impact of the disease in many countries and the applied nature of the research. I like that it has a immediate, tangible goal. I anticipate adding and participating in other projects once I get comfortable that I can do so without any negative side-effects. I expect these projects to benefit from having just one more node to share the load.
I chose Docking@Home because I'm all for helping to cure diseases. I can be helpful by adding my computers power to the project.
Okay I think I am starting to get the hang of this.
I support the following projects plus many others. I support projects in medicine, mathamatics, climate prediction, physics, cosmology, astronomy, and basically any of the sciences. The following list is just a partial list of the projects I support and have running in BOINC across a number of machines.
ABC@home AlmereGrid Boinc Grid Climate Prediction Collatz Conjecture Constellation DistributedDataMining DistrRTgen Docking@Home EDGeS@Home Einstein@Home Enigma@Home eOn IBERCIVIS Leiden Classical LHC Test4Theory@Home LHC@Home Classic Malaria Control Mersenne@home MilkyWay@home Najmanovich Research Group (NRG) NFS@Home NumberFields@home POEM@HOME Primaboinca PrimeGrid QMC@Home RALPH@Home Rosetta@Home RSA Lattice Siever (2.0) SETI@Home SETI@Home Beta SIMAP SZTAKI Desktop Grid yoyo@home
I have tried to put the links in for some of the projects, but it would take me a while to do it for all of them, and they can all be found on a site like BAM (http://boincstats.com/). I highly suggest using a web based management tool like BAM as it will help you find projects, make Your user ID for you on new projects, and even help you to keep track of your stats.
Stone
Well done! Challenge completed!
Seti@home - I ran this one mainly due for testing reasons, after I had compiled BOINC from source I was getting some errors about projects not having any work. Well I knew seti@home had tons of work to be pushed out, so I used seti@home as a testing for getting my BOINC settings properly setup. After I got everything working, I just kept Seti@home in my BOINC_client, it is more of a background only using 20% of cpu computation. I like the idea of SETI, I think it is important, but at the same time I wonder if it is actually a smart idea. This gets into a huge debate and discussion, but my opinion is, Humanity is not yet at a stage to deal with an alien species. So why reach out to others when we cannot even control ourselves? We are way too young and immature to be messing around with this. Again, its my opinion and probably a hot topic. I used it because it had a huge workload so I could iron out the bugs in my BOINC configuration.
lhc@home - The Large Hadron Collider is really cool. It is a key step we need before SETI (IMO) more learning about physics and ourselvs. It seems this project does not put out many work orders often, but I still contribute to it, as I feel its important. Just to learn more and more about where we come from, what we are made of, the laws of physics, the weird and confusing side of quantum physics. If our specis is going to survive, this is a tool and knowledge we need. One day our sun and our planet will die, which comes first is anyones guess, but the fact is, Humanity will have to leave this planet at somepoint if we are to survive. This will help us achieve that.
TestforTheory@home - Same reasons for lhc@home, also I used it to see if it would actually work on my system, which it does so I am happy about that! Except for one small annoying issue, I cannot kill the vbox session once it has started, I have to login as root in a shell and issue a kill command to stop it. This is a downside for me.
Hi,
You have chosen really interesting projects! About Test4Theory issue: we know that this issue exists and we are working on it with the official BOINC team, we will hopefully solve this problem in the coming months, so stay tuned :)
Cheers,
Daniel
1. One is SETI@Home, and the other is World Comunity Grid.
2. I've picked SETI because aliens are pretty cool. I have chosen WCG because humans may use my help too. I'm not completely sure about WCG, it's a bunch of seperate projects all running when the server assings them to me, the ones running now are for clean energy and clean water, sometimes it's Malaria or AIDS.
3. SETI needs help processing all the data their dishes collect, so they know when they've spotted another civilization. World Comunity Grid is more than one, the one about clean water wants to make drinking water by using nanotubes more efficient in design, I think what my computer does is run somekind of simulation.
Good answers DasRake! The Clean Water project is really, really, interesting. However, as you have said, Aliens are important too :-)
I run almost all of the available BOINC projects. I'm also interested in the PrimeGrid prime number searches and the Enigma project, which attempts to decode the remaining undecoded German enigma machine messages from WWII.
All of these projects are worthy of support. The WCG effort investigates important scientific issues that need addressing. PrimeGrid provides valuable mathematical data that would otherwise not be available to mathematicians, and the Enigma project is just very interesting.
All of them will benefit from the work generated by my CPUs when they're not busy doing other work.
You are are cruncher by all means :-) I like also a lot the Enigma project. Do you know the status of the latests codes to decode?
Hey Daniel,
I know that there are still some undecrypted messages available. According to the forums, the project owner is dependent on the source enigma projects to some extent and it also takes a lot of work to generate WUs. I haven't had any work in ove a month, now, but he does say that it isn't a 24/7 project, because of these factors. So I guess the work will come when it comes.
Ciao.
Dear Denis,
Your answers are fine too. I guess this is not your first time participating in a BOINC project, right?
Regards,
Daniel
Hi Richard,
Your answers are good. Thanks for answering them!
Daniel
Nice!! David, you have completed it very well. The only minor detail is that the next time you can use the bullet list to make your answers more readable :-)
1.Identify the project you have chosen to support
World Community Grid
2. Explain why you chose this project?
This is a wrapper for many project and it is sponsorized by big company; also the project is researching in many fields, especially medicine.
3. Explain how this project will benefit from your contribution?
I'm particular interested in The Clean Energy Project, because I think that affordable and clean energy is a priority for this century.
Nice! Luigi thanks a lot for completing this challenge!
Friends Its My First time doing this.
I am a student.
And I am from India.
I would like to learn from you and help you.
Can you help me friends?
Sure! Can you start accepting one of the first challenges?
