Posted on 07/20/2007 9:27:34 PM PDT by texas booster
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas TX are seeking patients to participate in medical studies for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and low-back pain. All clinical trials are approved by UT Southwestern’s Institutional Review Board, which reviews them for benefits, risks, side effects and informed consent.
Parkinson’s
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers are enrolling patients with Parkinson’s disease to determine if creatine, normally used as a nutritional supplement, can slow the progression of the disease. Study participants will receive either creatine or a placebo and must not take creatine outside the study during the trial. The investigators will measure quality of life, ability to walk and cognitive function. Participants must have early Parkinson’s for less than five years and must have been taking dopaminergic drugs for at least three months, but less than two years.
Alzheimer’s
Omega-3 fatty acids, long endorsed as components of a heart-healthy diet, are now being studied to see whether they can protect the brain as well. Scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center are seeking people 50 years of age and older with mild Alzheimer’s disease for an 18-month clinical trial to test whether an omega-3 fatty acid called DHA can inhibit the progression of Alzheimer’s. Participants will undergo cognitive and physical tests.
Low-back pain
Patients with acute low-back pain may be eligible for a new research study at UT Southwestern Medical Center investigating treatments for the condition. Eligible participants must have experienced low-back pain for the first time, for 10 weeks or less. Those who are screened be compensated for their time spent completing the forms. Study participants qualified for a more extensive pre-treatment evaluation will receive additional payment.
The link above contains contact information for each of these trials. If you are in the Dallas area and are interested in advancing medical research by donating your body before death, please take a look at these to see if you can help.
If you are in other parts of the country then ping us and I will find medical research in which you may participate.
You can also donate a computer or a Playstation 3 to run a snippet of code that "folds" proteins in your computer, then returns the result to Stanford University for merger into many research projects. About 200 FReepers currently donate around 1,100 computers to the project under the FReeper team 36120, with the number of donated systems rising to over 1,400 when school restarts.
Pinging out the the Folding team. Please come on over to participate!
New FReeper Folding@home thread. Not your usual thread. Please come on over to participate.
Please ping if you want on or off the list.
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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Can’t get the Mac command-level F@H to work, so I’ve been slipping. Is there a GUI-Mac client?
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/download.html
Look toward the bottom. If you have a Mactel, then jump on the SMP clients.
If you do not then you can run the Mac OS X 5.02 GUI client.
OS X really allows Macs to be running fast and clean.
Thanks, TB - Yes, I’m on a MacTel - never going back!
I’ll get it going.
bump
This forum post from the Folding forums is specifically about Macs and SMP.
Expect to jump in points and standings a ridiculous amount.
I think it’s actually running, though it doesn’t “dock” itself.
Username and Team Number defaulted themselves quite nicely, so at least the cookie was held from a prior version.
Unfortunately, what may or may not be running is a Beta, that supposedly expired 7/2/07. Might explain a few things.
BTTT
Yeah, I had to reload the GPU GUI about then also.
I think that it runs fine and crunches OK, but won’t start up sgain on reboot.
A new core should set everything alright.
Your first work unit completed and you are now on the board!
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_list.php?s=&a=2&t=36120
And many thanks to whomever PS3 is. Don’t know the FReeper name but we are glad to have you on the team.
Remember, when in doubt, set your UserName to Egon.
If you're interested in tracking your folding machine(s) over the web, please Freepmail me or follow the links below.
Available features include:
Links
Please Freepmail me with any questions.
save
Let us know if we can help get you started!
F@H uses almost no graphic resources, even though it runs a GUI. On my system I run a console version (no graphics to see at all) and a special beta for my ATI video card. Booth run together just fine. My ATI peaks at 90% usage of it pixel shaders and my CPU runs at 30% for ATI support and 70% for the console edition.
Yep, 100% CPU utilization, pretty much 24/7. I FReep, build presentations and databases and download videos.
What I cannot do, courtesy of M$ OpenGL, is run a program that requires any OpenGL support. M$ wrote it so that only one program can manipulate its threads at a time.
I do run Visio on occasion and have never noticed a problem. I also run Voloview but only to support a customer.
I close my GUI to run one older game, since I know that it uses OpenGL. I never close the console version.
If you are running at “only” 40% then you are only processing on one core of your dual core chip. I have a dual core system that I keep two console versions running at 100% each, one on each core. I get lotsa points for that one.
Hitting 40% isn’t a problem; that is F@H running just fine. We may need to tweak you system to get rid of the CAD conflict. As important as F@H is, it does take a backseat to making a living and playing games.
Long time no speak. :-) I just put my primary workstation back onto the team, and I’ll get another one or two in the next day or so running as well.
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