Volunteer computing for African Humanitarian Causes

[Cara.]

What is AFRICA@home?

 

AFRICA@home is a website for volunteer computing projects which allow your computer to contribute to African humanitarian causes.

 

There is a huge potential for volunteer computing to help solve pressing health and environmental problems facing the developing world.

 

AFRICA@home addresses these problems by providing a common framework for volunteer computing projects that focus on African needs.

 

An important goal of AFRICA@home is to involve African students and African universities in the development and running of these volunteer computing projects.

 

The first application being developed for AFRICA@home is called MalariaControl.net. This application models the way malaria spreads in Africa and the potential impact that new anti-malarial drugs may have on the region.

 

More on MalariaControl.net. And here

______________________

 

To join the MalariaControl.net project, http://www.malariacontrol.net/

[Tahliil]

I am sorry to admit but I haven't read the article posted. However, I have always had an issue with these self-congratulating individuals who claim their devotion to the dark continent and the people who live there...selfish, self-interest causes that you need to subscribe whenever your popularity shrinks and your face disappears the front page for a little while...Sorry I aint fallin for that kind of sentiment.

 

Somehow I am sure I am off topic, but that is me, throwin in..

[Captain Xalane]

Well i second to Tahliil.Many of those individuals have a hypocritical trait in the manner of not doing what they preach or when they actually have other agendas besides that ... :mad:

[Nur]

The declared goal behind this program is to help africa and its residents by studying deseases such as Malaria, because the program cant afford a supercomputer to crunch numbers needed for calculating endless series of algorithems for the cycle of this bug, the idea is to use the excess processing capacities of computers which combined can speed up the calculations, in other words, 200 years worth of computing time can be done within days of enough computers are hooked up together, as of this writing the org claims to have 6000 volunteer computers to be connected for that declared purpose.

 

Now, if we take it on its face value, its indeed a good thing, however like the two other respondents has cautioned, planting a computer program in your computer that is using complex algorithems may be another infingement on privacy in a world at war with its maker. Cutting a branch of a tree is not safe if you are sitting on the side away from the trunk of the tree,( The Tree is Devine Guidance) but that is what those steering humanity to an abyss are precisely doing.

 

 

Nur

[Caano Geel]

Originally posted by Tahliil:

I am sorry to admit but I haven't read the article posted. However..

ummm dude, u know the response to that, so i wont say it.

 

Aside from that, i dont think this is about dark continents or the political ramifications of the africa saga. It is simply a study to try to analyse the structure of the malaria virus and how it might *theoretically* respond to various drugs.

 

The problem is that the are too too many possible combinations of components that can be used to make a drug and all of them have to be tested to see if they could work -- after all science is not an exact science --

 

What these computer programs do is they generate combination of the components (lickle' bit' a this and lill' a that = a new drug model) and try to model how certain proteins in the maliria virus might respond to this new drug. If the model predicts/finds something interesting, it notifies the scientists that this might be a rewarding avenue to go down.

 

Now according to the world health organisation

 

There are at least 300 million acute cases of malaria each year globally, resulting in more than a million deaths. Around 90% of these deaths occur in Africa, mostly in young children. Malaria is Africa's leading cause of under-five mortality (20%) and constitutes 10% of the continent's overall disease burden. It accounts for 40% of public health expenditure, 30-50% of inpatient admissions, and up to 50% of outpatient visits in areas with high malaria transmission.

source

 

So in effect, if you think malaria is an important disease to tackle, then africa is where the plight is the 'darkest'

 

Originally posted by Nuur

planting a computer program in your computer that is using complex algorithems may be another infingement on privacy in a world at war with its maker

No this isnt that type of program, these programs number crunch and thats all they do. Your MSN messenger has more spywear capacity loaded on it and it needs to do more than test for possible malaria cures before god disapears in a 'puff of logic'. Sorry i didnt understand the rest of your sentence.

 

Anyhow donate your machines if they run idle i.e. your not always using them to come up with the latest killa putdown on the SOL politics section.

 

U never know, your little grey boxe's number crunching might one day save your life also.