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@Home Team Scoutnet - giving your help
[SETI] [Einstein]
[Rosetta] [Africa]
This page gives you a brief explanation about the idea behind the
network computing and participating to it - as a Scout or Guide. These
projects are one way of Being Friend to All, being Courteous and
fulfilling one's Duty to be Useful. Yes, you can do your part about living
up to the Scout/Guide Law even with your computer. This is an example
about that.
What is BOINC?
BOINC, Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, is an Open
Source platform, open for new projects as well, offering a way for
individual users to give a share of their computers' calculating power
for greater good cause of their own choice. When you are doing nothing
with your computer, a scientific project will gain those idle computing
cycles. There are several projects going on and the same BOINC software
can be used for all of those. In each of the projects, there are also
so-called Teams, groups of people/computers that want to be identified
as something they represent. There are universities, cities etc. - and
of course, us Scouts and Guides! Read more about BOINC at
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/.
What is SETI@home?
SETI@home is a continuation of the original NASA SETI project - Search
for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. If you take part to the SETI@home,
your computer will get data collected with the radio telescopes, see it
through and return the finished calculations to the server. If there is
something peculiar, someone will have a closer look at it - and if not,
no actual work will be wasted on that bit of data. It's just those idle
cycles that would have gone past anyway. Read more about SETI@home:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
You can participate to the SETI@home effort and identify yourself as a
Scout or a Guide by joining to the Team Scoutnet in the address
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=34477 - on
that page, click on the link after "Join this team" if you already have an
account, or click on the link after "Create team account URL" to create
yourself a new account that is automatically a member of Team Scoutnet.
What is Einstein@home?
Einstein@home was started in the World Year of Physics 2005, to process
the data gathered by the American LIGO and European GEO projects, aiming
to detect and analyze gravitational waves, "ripples in the structure of
spacetime", caused by e.g. pulsars (spinning neutron stars). The @home
project analyzes these findings just like in the SETI project and
reports them back to the server. Read more about Einstein@home:
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/.
You can participate to the Einstein@home effort as a Scout or Guide by
joining the Team ScoutNet (just like described above) in the address
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/team_display.php?teamid=803.
What is Rosetta@home?
The Rosetta@home is a project to calculate new 3D models of proteins in
medical research. The protein design is aiming to find cure for diseases
like the HIV, cancer and Alzheimer's. Finding and understanding the
shapes of the proteins is important, because the shape has a major role
in the interaction between the protein and other molecules. To create
synthesized proteins, scientists must first know how the amino acid
chains fold into complex proteins. Read more about Rosetta@home:
http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/.
You can participate to the Rosetta@home effort as a Scout or Guide by
joining the Team ScoutNet (just like described above) in the address
http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/team_display.php?teamid=3459.
What are Africa@home and MalariaControl?
Africa@home is a volunteer computing project to contribute to African
humanitarian causes. The fields of the project are mainly health and
environmental problems in the developing world. It is not a project only
FOR the Africa, it is mainly a project WITH the Africa, as an important
goal of Africa@home is to involve African students and African
universities in the development and running of the volunteer computing
projects. The Western world, on the other hand, does have the largest
computing power to use for the project. That's collaborative for us!
Read more about Africa@home:
http://www.africaathome.net/.
MalariaControl.net is the first project under the Africa@home effort.
The goal of the project is to compute large-scale simulations involved
with the malaria control efforts. They are to be used for example to
determine optimal strategies for delivering new vaccines, chmeotherapy
and mosquito nets to the areas where the need is the highest. Read more
about MalariaControl:
http://www.malariacontrol.net/.
You can participate to the Africa@home/MalariaControl effort as a Scout or
Guide by joining the Team ScoutNet (just like with SETI@home) in the
address
http://www.malariacontrol.net/team_display.php?teamid=261 - do
note, though, that at the time of writing this, the project is still in
beta testing stage and might not let you create new accounts.
Choose your way to help based on your own interest - and join in!
You can have a look at what other possibilities there are to use your
computer, related to Scouting/Guiding, at the Global Scoutnet's website:
http://www.scoutnet.org/.
Page written by Kipe, kipe (ät) scoutnet.fi - feedback is welcome!