FR Folding@Home Project Update - Inside the Brain: An Interactive Tour

Alzheimer's Association ^ | 2007 | Alzheimer's Association

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The Brain Tour explains how the brain works and how Alzheimer's affects it.

Start Brain Tour

Taking the tour: There are 16 interactive slides. As you view each slide, roll your mouse over any colored text to highlight special features of each image. Then, click on the arrow to move to the next slide.

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Please click on the above link to learn more about Alzheimer's Disease and its formation.

Abour 270 current FReepers make up the FRee Republic Folding Team # 36120. We have enrolled about 1,200 computers into a distributed computing effort dedicated to finding a cure for Alzheimer's Disease and other diseases that have their genesis in misfolded proteins.

FReepers are now one of the largest teams in terms of members, and in less than a year have climbed up to # 56 in the world in our contribution to the efforts.

Join us to help the basic research into a terrible disease.

Please ping us here when you sign on and PLEASE ping us if you have any questions!

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New FReeper Folding@home thread.

Please ping if you want on or off the list.

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New FReeper Folding@home thread.

Please ping if you want on or off the list.

[wastedyears]

So what is it, you register with them, and you allow them to use part of your hard drive to store information, or what?

I’m extremely confused

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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 user-name.
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 they were given exclusive access to all of the world's supercomputers, Stanford 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

The Inner Life of a Cell

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 #18 #19 #20 #21 #22 #23 #24 #25 #26 #27 #28 #29 #30 #31 #32 #33 #34 #35 #36 #37 #38 #39

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Check out post 5 for more details.

You download a small program that acts like a screensaver. Instead of pretty fishies swimming around, you are literally folding proteins and uploading the results back to Stanford University.

Folding a single protein is a mammoth task. A single protein composed of 40,000 atoms can take years to simulate a millisecond of folding on a supercomputer. Stanford breaks the task down into tiny snippets and sends the work out to about 260,000 systems around the world.

It is very similar to the SETI project that searched the heavens for alien radio signals, and is a follow-on project to the Genome@home project from the 90’s.

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Scientists can also see the terrible effects of Alzheimer's disease when they look at brain tissue under the microscope: Alzheimer tissue has many fewer nerve cells and synapses than a healthy brain.

Plaques, abnormal clusters of protein fragments, build up between nerve cells.

Dead and dying nerve cells contain tangles, which are made up of twisted strands of another protein.

Scientists are not absolutely sure what causes cell death and tissue loss in the Alzheimer brain, but plaques and tangles are prime suspects.

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It is the creation of the plaques and the formation of misfolded proteins that Folding@home is currently focused on.

[Shadowstrike]

pinged for when I’ve got a chance to look.

[al baby]

I lost my mom to that nasty disease last November

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AD has stolen several of my family members away, often long before their bodies expired.

My father took the ACT at 53, cold with no study at all, and scored a perfect 36.

Twenty four years later he couldn’t remember my name, and I am a junior. I do NOT want to pass on like that.

Please let us know if we can help you get started folding.

[RhoTheta]

Reference bump.

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Please ley us know if we can help, when you have time to get started.

Blessings!

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"Free Republic Folders - A Tribute to Ronald Reagan"

Current production chart of our team, #36120.

[wastedyears]

Registered with my name on here.

Do I close the program when everything is finished?

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If you are watching a protein fold on a black background, then you can close it and a red flower will appear in the system tray by the clock.

F@H will run when your system is idle.

If you ran the console version then you will have a DOS text box full of geekspeak. Let it run overnight and lets see what the % completion is in the morning.

Be sure and turn off other screensavers so the two prograns don’t compete for CPU time.

[wastedyears]

I don’t run a screensaver.

I’m running the DOS version of it I guess.

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Did you download GUI version 5.03 or console version 5.04?

If you have a red flower in the system tray then you are running the GUI version. It works just fine, except that it doesn’t start folding until you have passed the login prompt when Winders starts.

I ran the GUI version for a very long time, until I put in multiple user accounts for my children. Then it would sit there waiting for some one to login before folding.

If you don’t have a login screen then leave it as is. We will watch for your first completed protein segment here:

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_list.php?s=&a=2&t=36120

It should complete and show up there in a couple of days.

[wastedyears]

I downloaded 5.04; no flower in the system tray; it’s completed 1250 out of 125,000 steps so far.

The machine gets restarted maybe once a week, other than that it’s always on. I just don’t know if I have to keep the program open for it to continue folding.

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OK, you are running the console version.

You do not need to keep the window open if you anwered Yes to the question, “Start as a service?”

If you answered Yes, then close the window, restart and turn the monitor off. You will be running F@H during the night as long as the system is turned on.

If you answered No, then we will do a little surgery.

[wastedyears]

It seems good to go. Thanks for the help, Texas :)