This note was sent out over the Popular Power ListServ and is posted here with the permission of Marc Hedlund, CEO Popular Power. I figured it would be great to share with everyone the impact that Distributed Computing has. Your comments are welcome.
<snip>
I asked Dr. Derek Smith, who runs the influenza project on Popular Power,
to write up the following, which gives some more information about the
project and its progress. I hope this gives more of the update
information you've all requested, and i hope you find it interesting!
-Marc <marc@Popular Power.com>
Give your computer something to dream about. (tm)
Popular Power - www.Popular Power.com
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Hi,
I'm Dr Derek Smith, the lead scientist on the influenza project that is
running on Popular Power. Marc told me about this egroup, and I thought I
would write a note to thank you all _so_ much for participating in this
project.
When Nelson Minar, the CTO of Popular Power, told me last January what he
and Marc were planning to do, my immediate reaction was "Wow, I could use
that machine today."
I've been conducting this research using computer modeling for the last
eight years. It has really made a difference to the experiments I can do
having such a powerful machine available. Experiments that would take
weeks can now be done overnight. We've already completed useful
experiments using Popular Power, and we are currently in the process of
doing a series of experiments that would just not have been possible
previously. Popular Power participants have already donated hundreds of
years of computer time and have completed millions of tasks. The size and
flexibility of the Popular Power system allows me to continually reviewuate
the results of previous experiments and then try out new hypothesis based
on those results.
While my research is ongoing, I've been able to share some of my findings
thus far with fellow researches in the flu community. I recently gave a
presentation at a major influenza conference. My presentation was on
optimizing influenza vaccination, and some of the results I presented were
the results of experiments done using Popular Power. We are in the
process of writing up those results, and they will be submitted to a
scientific journal, undergo the usual peer review process, and then be
published. I'll post information when it is published, but sometimes it
can take a few months to go through the whole process.
Influenza has a significant impact on public health. It results in the
death of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide every year, makes many
millions more ill, and causes enormous economic impact (estimated at
billions of dollars in the US alone each year). Being vaccinated every
year is the best way to prevent influenza and its complications. We will
soon put some more information about the flu on the Popular Power web site
for those who are interested in finding out more.
Influenza is also an important "model system" for helping to understand
some aspects of other viruses. HIV for instance is another virus that
changes over time, and scientists can look at influenza, and the way it
changes, to help understand some aspects of HIV. To this end I was
invited to give a talk at an HIV conference a few months ago in a session
titled "Lessons from other pathogens".
I thank you again for your cycles and for your ongoing support.
Derek
</snip>
Rob
<snip>
I asked Dr. Derek Smith, who runs the influenza project on Popular Power,
to write up the following, which gives some more information about the
project and its progress. I hope this gives more of the update
information you've all requested, and i hope you find it interesting!
-Marc <marc@Popular Power.com>
Give your computer something to dream about. (tm)
Popular Power - www.Popular Power.com
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Hi,
I'm Dr Derek Smith, the lead scientist on the influenza project that is
running on Popular Power. Marc told me about this egroup, and I thought I
would write a note to thank you all _so_ much for participating in this
project.
When Nelson Minar, the CTO of Popular Power, told me last January what he
and Marc were planning to do, my immediate reaction was "Wow, I could use
that machine today."
I've been conducting this research using computer modeling for the last
eight years. It has really made a difference to the experiments I can do
having such a powerful machine available. Experiments that would take
weeks can now be done overnight. We've already completed useful
experiments using Popular Power, and we are currently in the process of
doing a series of experiments that would just not have been possible
previously. Popular Power participants have already donated hundreds of
years of computer time and have completed millions of tasks. The size and
flexibility of the Popular Power system allows me to continually reviewuate
the results of previous experiments and then try out new hypothesis based
on those results.
While my research is ongoing, I've been able to share some of my findings
thus far with fellow researches in the flu community. I recently gave a
presentation at a major influenza conference. My presentation was on
optimizing influenza vaccination, and some of the results I presented were
the results of experiments done using Popular Power. We are in the
process of writing up those results, and they will be submitted to a
scientific journal, undergo the usual peer review process, and then be
published. I'll post information when it is published, but sometimes it
can take a few months to go through the whole process.
Influenza has a significant impact on public health. It results in the
death of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide every year, makes many
millions more ill, and causes enormous economic impact (estimated at
billions of dollars in the US alone each year). Being vaccinated every
year is the best way to prevent influenza and its complications. We will
soon put some more information about the flu on the Popular Power web site
for those who are interested in finding out more.
Influenza is also an important "model system" for helping to understand
some aspects of other viruses. HIV for instance is another virus that
changes over time, and scientists can look at influenza, and the way it
changes, to help understand some aspects of HIV. To this end I was
invited to give a talk at an HIV conference a few months ago in a session
titled "Lessons from other pathogens".
I thank you again for your cycles and for your ongoing support.
Derek
</snip>
Rob