[texas booster]

Folding@Home FAQ for new users:

What is Folding@Home? A Stanford University project to find out how proteins fold.

Why it's important: Proteins folding wrong causes all kinds of diseases, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and forms of cancer. Folding@Home uses novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. Through Folding@home, scientists now have the horsepower to study the mechanics of protein folding. With its ability to share the workload among hundred of thousands of computers economically, Folding@home can help scientists understand how proteins snap, or don't, into their predestined shapes - and may help to explain the origins of diseases such as Alzheimer's and apparently unrelated diseases. We're fueling research that could end all that.

How does it work?: You download a safe, tested program (see link below) that is certified by Stanford University. It gets work from Stanford, runs calculations using your spare computer power, and sends the results back to the University.

Is it safe? Yes! Folding@Home rarely effects computer performance in any way and won't compromise your privacy in any way. It only uses the computing power you aren't using so it doesn't slow down other programs.

How do I get started folding for Team FreeRepublic?:
1.) Download the folding program from Stanford University's folding download page (Folding@home Client Download). Type in your desired username.
2.) Type in 36120 for the team number. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - if you get the number wrong, you won't be folding for team FreeRepublic!
3.) The third question asks, "Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service?" - We recommend you answer YES. Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.

How can my computer help? Even if he were given exclusive access to all of the world's supercomputers, Standford still wouldn't have as much processing power as they get from the supercluster of people's desktop systems Folding@home relies on. Modern supercomputers are essentially a cluster of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. But Stanford needed the power of hundreds of thousands of processors, not just hundreds.

There's no reason to not get involved! It's free, easy, and you can know you're helping every minute without lifting a finger.

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List of Relevant Folding Links
Why Fold - Watch This !!

Another Folding Clip

Folding@home Client Download

FreeRepublic.com Folder Stats

Extreme Overclockers Stats for FreeRepublic

Another Stats Page

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Competition (Not!!) Dummies ..Daily Kos

Dummie Folding Threads #7 #8 #9#10#11 #12

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Other Useful Stuff - Links

How much are those work units worth? And what are they?
All Projects Listed
Point Summary for Workunits

Stat Image Generator

Fahmon Third Party Monitoring Software

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Past FreeRepublic Folding threads

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #17 #18 #19 #20

[texas booster]

New thread so we can watch the clock tick down to 10,000,000 points produced by the newest big team on the server!

Go Team Ronaldus Maximus!

[texas booster]

Check out this thread by Dr. Scarpetta on the role of vitamin B6 on protein folding:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1676666/posts

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"Vitamin B6 is essential for metabolism of protein and proper immune and nervous system function, and is found in both meat and vegetables.

There is evidence that high levels of the amino acid homocysteine could cause damage to brain cells. To see whether higher intake of folate and vitamins B6 and B12, which can reduce homocysteine levels, would also reduce Parkinson's risk, researchers followed 5,289 men and women aged 55 and older who were free of the disease at the study's outset.

During nearly 10 years of follow up, 72 people developed Parkinson's disease, Dr. Monique M. B. Breteler of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and colleagues report in the journal Neurology.

The researchers found no association between consumption of B12 or folic acid and risk of developing the disease. However, the more B6 people consumed, the lower their risk."

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Bump to eating more veggies and meat!

[Straight Vermonter]

We finally passed those Tasmanians!

[Egon]

My shameless self-promotion for this thread:

If you're interested in tracking your folding machine(s) over the web, please Freepmail me.

Available features include:

• Timely snapshot of each machine's progress on it's current project
• Point values for project
• Estimated completion dates/times
• Warning indicators for machines that appear to have stopped communicating or folding
• Warnings for machines that won't make their deadline
• Team ranking status box (courtesy of EOC)
• Machine stats like PPD (points per day)
• Project comparison stats: PPD, average time taken to completion, etc.
• It's free-- and always will be
• ...other features as time permits, and people request

Beware. It's addictive.

[Egon]

I finally managed to get off my butt and write a stats page for the projects.

Instead of being taken to FAH's project summary page when you click on a project, you're taken to a project page showing stats based on our team's experiences with that project.

I'll be adding some more in depth analysis as I think of some, and get more ambitious.

[Drango]

Folding for the Gipper!

[JCEccles]

My favorite DU folding@home post:

"FREEPers team losing CPUs -- they lost 25 CPUs since May 4--The wheels are coming off the FRmobile." .

[ahayes]

Still in the 50's here although my production has dropped dramatically. With thunderstorms my chief computer has been off a lot, now we have a heat wave so I'm shutting it off to save electricity and prevent overheating (AC at 80 likewise to save electricity!), and for some reason the people at work keep rebooting the computer there and it doesn't restart the program, so that's lagging too. I should go set that up to restart on reboot as well.

[Mount Athos]

Take that tasmania!

[Flyer]

Laundry bump!

85 / Flyer_FR / 19902 / 123

[NerdDad]

bump to home pc

[soccer_maniac]

Thanks for starting the new thread.

I've been really busy the last few days.

[DocRock]

BTTT

[Son Of The Godfather]

Hmmmmm... I've been running SETI@home for several years, but now that I see FReepers have a good cause (and DUmmie competition), I'll have to look into this Folding@home thing.

Thanks for posting.

[Son Of The Godfather]

OK, I'm on board. :)

[Son Of The Godfather]

Any tweaks to make it crunch faster?

[Private_Sector_Does_It_Better]

I've been folding using Bionic and not affiliated with any team. I just uninstalled it and installed @home and signed on to the FR team.

Wish I'd know about the FR team a while ago.

[Delta 21]

I did this for SETI for a few years. I'll be folding very soon.

[Mount Athos]

I made 20,000 points, do I get a cookie?
Not bad for one computer.

If I had a dual core CPU would it be twice as fast or more like 30%?

[ParityErr]

Add me to your list. I'm a system administrator and we have a few servers/workstations that can run this program along with my own workstation.