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How do I create a Team Challenge that is just limited to certain teams?

When on the Issue Team Challenge page, just give your Team Challenge a name, enter dates for your Team Challenge, select a type of challenge, and invite at least one other team. Inviting teams is as simple as searching for a team name, and clicking the link to "Invite This Team." You may do a search, invite some teams, and then do another search to get a broad array of teams to invite to your challenge.

How do I invite teams from my team's country?

Unfortunately, the Issue Team Challenge team search doesn't filter by country. To invite teams from your country to your Team Challenge, you can filter by country on the Find A Team page, and then do a search by name on the Issue Team Challenge search for the teams that come up in the country-filtered Find A Team search. The best way to do this is to open two browser windows so that you can have each page open at the same time. The Issue Team Challenge page will not save the teams you've invited if you go to a different page before clicking the submit button.

How may I tell how much my team is contributing?

There are two ways to do this:

1. Go to the home page and sign in. On the My Contribution page, the team that you are a member of will be shown in the center of the page next to My Team. Select that link to view the team statistics.
2. Click Here to search for a team. This section is listed under "Find a Team" in the My Contribution section, but will allow you to search through all the teams that have been created at World Community Grid.

How is my team rank calculated?

A member may see their team stats on their My Team page for run time, points, and results returned. Your team rank is based on the total number of teams that have returned a result. You may see how many teams there currently are on the Team Statistics page.

How may I change my team name, description, or URL?

Team name, description, and URL may only be changed by the team captain. To change this information, sign in to My Contribution, select My Team from the left menu. From the My Team page, select Edit. On the Edit Your Team page, make the changes and select Save.

How do I quit a team?

Go to the home page and sign in. From the My Contribution page, select My Team from the left navigation menu, the system will return the team information for the team of which you are a member. Press "quit" and you will no longer be a member of that team. The statistics that you have contributed to this team will stay with that team.

If you are not currently a member of any team, "quit" will not be an option.

What is the difference between the Vina and AutoDock software packages used in the FightAIDS@Home project?

AutoDock and Vina are automated docking software tools. They are designed to predict how a small molecule, such as a substrate or drug candidate, binds to a receptor molecule of known 3D structure. In the context of this project, these docking tools are being used to find potential drug compounds which may inhibit the HIV-1 protease (a protein which encourages and controls the progression of the virus).

The two software programs use different algorithms, each of which may provide better results depending on the types of molecules being docked. The FightAIDS@Home project uses both software tools in its calculations: the Scripps researchers determine ahead of time which software package is more suited to the particular task at hand, and the selected software for those work units then runs on World Community Grid. The project may therefore switch back and forth between the two software packages depending on its needs. As a contributor to the FightAIDS@Home project, you may notice either of those software packages being run for this project, each of which has a unique screen saver (see below for details on both screen savers).

How are Team Points and Personal Points Distributed?

Points that you earn are only credited to a team if they are earned while you are a member of that team. Additionally, if you quit a team or join another team, then the points that you earned for your previous team will stay with that team. You cannot transfer credit you previously earned to a new team.

Any points you earn whether you are on a team or not will always show up under your personal statistics.

You can view the points that you have earned for different teams at the bottom of your My Contribution page.

How do I create a Team Challenge that is open to all teams?

When on the Issue Team Challenge page, just give your Team Challenge a name, check the box labeled "Open Challenge?", enter dates for your Team Challenge, select a type of challenge, and click the submit button. Done!

You can invite teams to an Open Challenge if you'd like. This will insure that your challenge invitation shows up in the team captains Pending Challenges under the Challenge Control Panel. If the team captain has chosen to receive Team E-mails (via the My Profile page) they will also receive an e-mail informing them of your newly created Team Challenge.

How do I create a Team Challenge?

As the captain of a team, you may create as many Team Challenges as you want; the only requirement is that they have different names so members can tell them apart from other Team Challenges.

To create a Team Challenge, go to My Contribution and click on My Team in the lefthand navigation. Just under the Team Information, you'll see the Team Control Panel with an Issue Team Challenge button. Click the button to be taken to the Issue Team Challenge page.

Once on the Issue Team Challenge page, you start by picking a name for your Team Challenge. After that, decide if you want your Team Challenge to be open to all teams, or if you want to choose which teams to invite. If you want an Open Challenge, check the box next to "Open Challenge?"

Next up, pick the dates for your Team Challenge. The Start Date must be at least one day in the future, but not more than 30 days away. The End Date must be at least one day after the Start Date, but not more than 180 days after the Start Date.

Once you've chosen the dates, select what type of Team Challenge you'd like. The choices are Points, Run Time, and Results Returned, or an Increase in one of Points, Run Time, or Results Returned. For more in the "increase" challenges, read this FAQ.

Next choose whether or not you want to allow Late Joiners; that is, allow teams to join the challenge after the Start Date. This applies to teams that are invited as well as for Open challenges. Teams that join a challenge after the Start Date will only receive credit for statistics after they join the challenge.

Last but not least, you may invite other teams to participate in your Team Challenge. You may invite teams even if your are issuing an Open Challenge. If you are issuing a Closed Challenge you must invite at least one team.

To invite teams, just search for the name of the team you want to invite, and click the link to "Invite This Team." For more general searches, only the first 25 teams are returned. If this happens, try being a little more specific in your search.

How do you change team captains?

If you are the current team captain, you may appoint a new team captain by following these steps:

1. Log in to your World Community Grid account.
2. Click on My Contribution, then click on My Team on the left side of the page.
3. Click on the 'Appoint New Captain' link, next to your Member Name listed as Captain.
4. Choose the team member who you would like to become captain, and click the 'Appoint as Captain' link next to their name.

How do I join a team?

• Go to the home page and log in.
• From the My Contribution page, select My Team from the left navigation menu.
• From the Find a Team page, under Keyword Search, Next to "Team" select the "Name" drop down and in the text box next to "Contains:", enter all or portions of the team name of the team that you wish to join,
• Press search.  If there is more than one team name returned, find the one that you wish to join.
• Click on the team name and the system will return the team information.
• Press "join this team" to become a member of the team.

How do I contact my team members?

Team captains may e-mail (email) the members of their team and team members may send e-mails to their team captain. To use this feature, just go to your team page and click the "e-mail team" or "e-mail captain" button.

Team e-mails will be sent to any member of the team who has opted-in to receive the e-mails. If there are no members opted-in, there is a warning message for the captain, and there is no button to send the e-mail. The same applies in reverse if the captain has not opted-in.

To opt-in to team e-mails, you may go to My Profile and select the option to receive team e-mails. You will also see that you can enter in an alternate email address that is used only for team emails.

Some teams have a URL pointing to their site where they have created a special forum for team members to chat. As an alternative, you might go to the World Community Grid forums by selecting Forums from the global navigation bar. The forums contain Team forums expressly for team activity. You might consider reaching out to other members from your team in one of these forums.

We recommend that you do not divulge any private information in the forums as they are public forums.

How will the captains of teams I've invited to my challenge know about it?

There are two ways that World Community Grid informs captains about challenge invitations:

1. If a captain has chosen to receive Team E-mails (on the My Profile page), they will receive an email for each challenge to which they are invited.
2. On the My Team page, there is a Challenge Control Panel. Team captains will see challenges to which they've been invited under a section called Pending Challenges. Captains can accept challenges directly from the Challenge Control Panel, or they can click the name of the Team Challenge to view the full details of the Team Challenge before accepting or declining the invitation.

How do I create a new team?

Your personal World Community Grid account must have a username before you can create a team. Please go here for instructions on how to create a username.

Go to the home page and sign in. From the My Contribution page, select My Team from the left navigation menu, then select Create a New Team from the left navigation menu. Follow the instructions on the page for adding a team and then select save.

Please familiarize yourself with what the World Community Grid considers objectionable before creating a new team.

How do the Increase in XXXX challenges work?

The Increase in XXXX challenges, can also be viewed as "percent increase" challenges. In these challenges, a baseline is calculated based on the recent daily average production for each team in the challenge. During the challenge, the daily team statistics are averaged for the current duration of the challenge and then the baseline average is subtracted to yield an average increase (or decrease). That average increase/decrease is divided by the baseline average to determine the percent increase/decrease. For example, if a team averages 3 days of Run Time per day leading up to the challenge, and then averages 4 days of Run Time during the period of the challenge, the percent increase would be 33%. The math would be: (4-3)/3.

The final winner of the challenge will be the team with the largest percent increase over their baseline average.

What does the Progress Bar at the top represent?

This graphically shows the approximate percentage of how far along your device is in calculating the current task. When it reaches 100%, the computation is completed and the results will then be uploaded to the servers at World Community Grid before being packaged and sent back to the research team.

What is a Team Challenge?

A Team Challenge is essentially a competition between teams to see which team can return the most results, or generate the most points or run time in a given time period. A Team Challenge can be open to all teams on World Community Grid, or limited to only teams invited by the challenge creator.

What are the goals of the project and how are they being met?

The project’s primary goal is to identify drug candidates to control or cure certain types of childhood cancers. To meet this goal, the Smash Childhood Cancer research team is using World Community Grid to determine which of millions of chemical compounds may bind to certain target proteins or molecules involved with childhood cancers. These compounds would then be candidates for further testing and drug development, hopefully leading to treatments against these cancers.

To help achieve these goals, the research team plans to make the data from this project available to other scientists.

May I join more than one team?

No. A member may join only one team at a time but may leave a team and join another team at any time. The statistics that you accrue while on a team, remain with that team.

How are the goals of the project being met?

The research team is leveraging computational research techniques (where scientists run many computer-based, simulated experiments) to help accelerate the search for treatments for COVID-19 and other pandemics. These powerful techniques are effective because computational research can correlate different sources of information as soon as they are available (such as virus mutations and other types of data). This helps scientists build models that constantly evolve to provide insight on how to fight the infection being studied. 

World Community Grid's massive computing power allows scientists to leverage such research techniques at scale. For this project, this computing power is enabling the research team to rapidly study millions of chemical compounds that could be potential treatments for COVID-19, identify the most promising compounds, and flag them for testing in real-life laboratories.

How often do research projects provide updates for volunteers?

Active projects: We ask the research team for each project to provide at least two formal updates per year. We also try to provide short monthly updates in the forum thread for each project.

Completed projects: We provide updates when completed projects publish papers, start or finish major experiments, or have other big news.

How does the FightAIDS@Home software work?

At any one time, the project uses one of two software docking tools to automatically download small pieces of work to your device and performs calculations that model how drugs interact with various HIV virus mutations. After your device processes the information, the results are sent back to World Community Grid and then sent on to The Scripps Research Institute where they are analyzed by the Scripps research team. The process takes an enormous amount of computing time, which is why World Community Grid needs you (and your friends!) to participate in FightAIDS@Home project.

How can I help?

Anyone with a computer can help scientists understand how the human microbiome impacts disease, simply by joining World Community Grid.

It's easy: you create a World Community Grid account, select to support the Microbiome Immunity Project and then install our free and safe software on your computer. Then, whenever your computer has any unused computing power, it runs a simulation on behalf of the Microbiome Immunity Project team. The more people that participate, the quicker the researchers can get their work done!

What is a World Community Grid team?

Once you register with World Community Grid, you have the option to join an existing team, or create a new team.  (Please note: to create a new team you are required to have a username.)

When you are on a team, you may compete with other teams for total run time, points, and results returned. Joining a team does not affect your individual member statistics.

Where do I check on the status, statistics, etc. for my Team Challenge (or a challenge my team is participating in)?

Just go to your My Team page, and scroll down to the Challenge Control Panel. All team members will see up to five Current and Upcoming Team Challenges (team captains will see Pending Team Challenges as well). If your team has more than five Current Team Challenges or more than five Upcoming Team Challenges, you may click the link at the bottom of the Challenge Control Panel to view your team's entire Team Challenge History. In the Challenge Control Panel or Team Challenge History View you may click on the name of the challenge to view more details about the challenge; for example: scores for all teams in the challenge, the names of the other teams participating in the challenge, and whether the challenge is open or not. The Team Challenge History page is where you may view your team's past challenges.

May I invite more teams to my Team Challenge after I issue it?

Once a Team Challenge has been issued (by pressing the submit button on the Issue Team Challenge page), no more teams may be invited. If you have issued an Open Challenge, other teams may still join the challenge up to the Start Date, or until the end of the challenge if you have chosen to allow Late Joiners (Late Joiners only get credit for statistics accumulated after joining the challenge).

Is there any way to express how close a project is to completion as a percentage? Can the progress bars show that a project is X% complete?

Over the years, we've found that most research teams don't load a certain number of work units into World Community Grid, let them run, and then declare the project complete. Rather, they create work units based on their initial research questions, then make adjustments to future work units based on their findings on World Community Grid and on outside research findings. This makes it impossible to accurately express project completion as a percentage.

How are project updates created?

We work closely with each research team to create project updates. Since the scientists are detail-oriented and want to provide good updates for the volunteers, they often take a few weeks to create just the first draft of updates.

World Community Grid generally adds any explanation or background to the updates to make them easier for the general public to understand, which can take additional time. Also, we often work with the scientists to create graphics, videos, presentations, or to find photos for the updates.

How does this phase of the project build on the progress already made with FightAIDS@Home?

Significant new aspects of the biology of HIV have been discovered over the past 10 years. The research team's work on HIV protease has discovered new sites on the protein that represent targets that may result in new classes of drugs. Their work on HIV Integrase is exploring new chemical compounds that target a newly discovered mechanism to inhibit HIV infectivity. Again, this work may result in a new class of drugs that will work to defeat the virus and its ability to evolve drug resistance. The BEDAM approach being used in Phase 2 will help move us closer to the discovery of such drugs.

How did the Genome Comparison software work?

The software automatically downloaded small pieces of data (predicted protein sequences) and performed sequence comparisons to accurately calculate the similarity level among them. After the information was processed by members computers, the results were sent by World Community Grid to Fiocruz where they are being analyzed by the Bioinformatics Team at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Large-scale comparative analysis applying Smith-Waterman algorithm is computationally intensive and demanded exceptionally huge computational power, which is why it was a perfect project for World Community Grid.

How is World Community Grid helping with this effort?

While effective, protein folding simulations are resource-intensive and often require more computational power than scientists typically have access to. The Microbiome Immunity Project research team is therefore enlisting the help of World Community Grid volunteers, each of whom runs these simulations on their computers. Each of these simulations is a virtual experiment to predict the structure of a protein.

The massive amount of aggregated computation power World Community Grid brings to this project will greatly advance and accelerate this new area of health research.

How can I help?

Anyone with a computer can help the search for potential COVID-19 treatments by joining World Community Grid.

It's easy: you create a World Community Grid account, select to support OpenPandemics - COVID-19, and then install our free and safe software on your computer. Then, whenever your computer has any unused computing power, it runs a simulation on behalf of the OpenPandemics research team to evaluate the effectiveness of chemical compounds as potential COVID-19 treatment options.

The more people that participate, the quicker the researchers can get their work done!

Plan Ahead for Team Challenges!

It's a good idea to make the Start Date of your Team Challenge at least a week in the future so that other teams will have a chance to join your challenge before it starts. Remember, after the Start Date, no teams may join your challenge, unless you opt to allow Late Joiners, so try to give the other team captains adequate time to get in!

How is this different from the team's previous project, Help Fight Childhood Cancer? Why is neuroblastoma being targeted again?

Help Fight Childhood Cancer, which ran on World Community Grid from 2009 to 2013,  found several potential new drugs candidates for neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer with poor prognosis when not diagnosed in the earliest stages. Further testing of these drug candidates continues.

The Smash Childhood Cancer project expands the scope to address not only neuroblastoma, but also additional pediatric solid tumors with poor outcomes.

The drug discovery targeting the TrkB protein, which was a neuroblastoma target during Help Fight Childhood Cancer, will be continued in this study. The research team will also study additional proteins which may be important in the development of cancer cells.

How might the data generated on this project be useful to researchers?

The project's structure and function predictions for each of the proteins encoded by each unique gene in the human gut microbiome will be made available as an online resource for researchers interested in furthering the impact of this project.

Knowledge about gene function is critical for understanding not only which bacteria live in a specific environment, but what they actually do. By compiling their function predictions, the research team will greatly enhance the repertoire of annotated genes, and therefore help other researchers to better understand what specific microbes or communities of microbes are doing.

Additionally, the researchers aim to design small molecules (i.e. drug candidates) which inhibit harmful interactions between microbial and human proteins in Type 1 diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease. Designing an effective drug is an extremely complicated and laborious process, so through scientific publications the research team will encourage other researchers to investigate those molecules further and open up avenues for entirely new therapeutics.

Why is solar energy important?

It is expected that by the year 2050 the world's energy requirements will double today’s demand. Energy is without doubt a prerequisite for economic stability in both the developed and developing world; despite its current importance, the actual energy system is far from being self-sustainable. Achieving a completely sustainable energy system will require technological breakthroughs that radically change our paradigms on how we produce and use energy. A possible solution to this problem is to use solar energy. Every hour, our sun produces enough solar energy to supply the whole world’s annual energy requirements. Finding the means to convert the incident solar energy into usable forms to maintain the current way of life represents a main objective of The Clean Energy Project team.

What is the Verification Code and what is it used for?

The Verification Code is a private, personal code that you can use to verify your team membership and team stats. There are teams that provide incentives and/or rewards to members for being a part of their team. World Community Grid is providing the Verification Code as a way for these teams to verify their members' statistics and team membership without requiring members to give the team their password.

Note that your Verification Code will change if you change your member name and/or password. If your team is relying on your verification code to verify your membership and statistics, be sure they have your current Verification Code.

To verify the team membership and statistics for a member, use the API:
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/verifyMember.do?name=MEMBERNAME&code=VERIFICATIONCODE

You must set your data sharing preferences to "Display my data" for this API to return data for your account.

You will get a response in XML containing the membership information for that member. If there is an error, it will be reported back in the XML response.

When are points and statistics updated?

World Community Grid points and statistics are updated twice a day. This occurs at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC. This includes all statistics on World Community Grid except for Team Statistics.

Team Statistics are updated once a day at 00:00 UTC.

My team page contains the words "BOINC Team ID." What does that mean?

World Community Grid has members who participate through BOINC. On BOINC, these members have a layer of team statistics as they are able to participate in multiple distributed computing projects. BOINC Team ID" refers to an identifier found on the BOINC site for this purpose (http://www.boincstats.com/). For more information about BOINC, please go to the Help facility and search on BOINC.

How does the GO Fight Against Malaria software work?

The GO Fight Against Malaria project uses software that automatically downloads small amounts of input data and then performs calculations that model how well different drug candidates interact with various molecular targets from the malaria parasite. After your device finishes one set of calculations, the results are sent by World Community Grid to a computer at The Scripps Research Institute. The Scripps research team then analyzes the results produced by all of the different donor machines on World Community Grid.

This project uses AutoDock 4.2 and the new AutoDock Vina computer software to evaluate how well each candidate compound (molecule) attaches ("docks" or "binds") against a malarial target (usually a protein molecule.) Millions of candidate compounds will be tested against 14 different molecular drug targets from the malaria parasite in order to discover new compounds that can block (inhibit) the activity of these multi-drug-resistant mutant superbugs. These candidates will be tested by docking flexible models of them against 3-D, atomic-scale models of different protein drug targets from the malaria parasite, to predict (a) how tightly these compounds might be able to bind, (b) where these compounds prefer to bind on the molecular target, and (c) what specific interactions are formed between the candidate and the drug target. In other words, these calculations will be used to predict the affinity/potency of the compound, the location where it binds on the protein molecule, and the mode it uses to potentially disable the target. Compounds that can bind tightly to the right regions of particular proteins from the malaria parasite have the potential to “gum up” the parasite’s machinery and, thus, help advance the discovery of new types of drugs to cure malaria.

How are points calculated?

Points are calculated in a two-step process which attempts to give a consistent number of points for similar amounts of research computation. First, the computational power/speed of the computer is determined by periodically running a benchmark calculation. Then, based on the central processing unit (CPU) time spent computing the research result for a work unit, the benchmark result is used to convert the time spent on a work unit into points. This adjusts the point value so that a slow computer or a fast computer would produce about the same number of points for calculating the research result for the same work unit. This value is the number of point credits "claimed" by the client. More information about that formula is available here.

Second, research results returned to the servers are validated in a manner which depends on the research project. Then the claimed points for valid results are examined for anomalous (excessively high or low compared to other machines computing the same or equivalent work unit) values and adjusted accordingly. The servers assign the resulting adjusted point values to the member (and team) for each of the returned work units. This process eliminates the ability for malicious users to tamper with results and artificially claim higher points for their work.

What are the goals of OpenPandemics - COVID-19?

The primary goal of the project is to search for potential treatments for COVID-19, so studying proteins from SARS-CoV2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is the highest priority.

Additionally, the project's scientists want to fight not only the current emergency, but also prepare for the ones that will likely follow. Future pandemics could stem from a progressive accumulation of mutations, which can eventually lead to a new virus variant. This is what happened when the virus SARS-CoV1 mutated to become SARS-CoV2. So the research team is including proteins from the SARS-CoV1 and other viruses to be studied as part of OpenPandemics - COVID-19, which will help them assess how difficult would it be to find or design molecules capable of overcoming the inevitable mutations.

The secondary goal is to create a fast-response, open source toolkit that will help all scientists quickly search for treatments for future pandemics.

In keeping with World Community Grid's open data policy, all data, tools, and processes that are developed through OpenPandemics will be made freely available to the scientific community.

Is there an easy way for my friends to join my team?

Yes. At the bottom of your My Team page are two web addresses that provide an easy way for your friends to join your team.

The first web address may be sent in an email to your friends that are already members of World Community Grid and they may just click on the web address and then click on the join now button on the page that appears.

The second web address may be sent in an email to your friends that are not currently members of World Community Grid. When they register, the team will be automatically selected for them. Let them know that they will still need to download and install the World Community Grid software.

What does The University of Nottingham logo in the screen saver represent?

The University of Nottingham, in the United Kingdom, was rated No. 8 for research power in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework and is the home of the research team behind the Help Stop TB project.

What does the Scripps Research Institute logo in the screen saver represent?

The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, is the largest private biomedical research institute in the US and the home of the research team behind the FightAIDS@Home Project.

Why do I need to verify my email address?

Verifying your email address is necessary if you want to:

• Receive World Community Grid related emails, which can be customized in your Communication Preferences
• Post in the forums
• Create a team
• Become team captain
• Make your World Community Grid data public
• Recover your password

Why don't my statistics show up on the web site?

Your results are not counted until they are validated. You may read about result validation here.

Also, World Community Grid points and statistics are updated twice a day. This occurs at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC. This includes all statistics on World Community Grid except for Team Statistics.

Team Statistics are updated once a day at 00:00 UTC

What is the World Community Grid widget?

The World Community Grid widget is a way for you to promote World Community Grid and show your team or personal contribution on your website or blog. It consists of a small piece of HTML code that you place on your website. This HTML code will display your custom widget with the most current statistics for you or your team.

Here is an example:


To get your custom widget, just log in to World Community Grid, go to the Settings page, and click on the Create a Widget link in the left hand navigation. This will take you to a form where you can customize a widget with the World Community Grid logo, and your personal (or your team's) statistics. When you're happy with your widget, just copy the code at the bottom of the form, and paste it into your website!
 

I have a platform that isn't supported by World Community Grid. Could I get a copy of the research application code and compile it myself?

No. The code has to remain in the control of the World Community Grid support team. Even the slightest change in the code, including using a different compiler, could render the research results useless. In addition, the license agreement that we have with the researchers for their code stipulate that only the World Community Grid support team can touch the source code. The source code usually differs slightly from potential public versions of the same code due to changes made for use with the specific grid project. Furthermore, we typically run many tests to make certain there are no problems on a given platform.

How long does the scanner take to scan in a whole slide?

Usually under an hour, but it depends on how many discs are on the specimen.

What is Q-Chem?

To obtain the electronic structure of molecules, one needs to use Quantum Mechanics. Q-Chem is a suite of electronic structure programs which can calculate molecular structures, electronic spectra, molecular vibrations and many other parameters solving quantum mechanical equations. Q-Chem is the electronic structure software preferred by the CEP team. All these properties will contribute to find ideal molecules for organic photovoltaics.

What is an intermittent project?

Intermittent projects are projects that will only periodically have work available to download. This could be because the project has finished but the researchers may not be finished analyzing all the results, and as such, may discover that they have to run a few more work units through the grid. This could also be because the project team may have periods where they cannot produce work as fast as the members are able to process their work.

Am I required to add a username to my profile?

No. Adding a username to your profile is optional, after you have completed the registration process.   However, you will not be able to do any of the following if you have not added a username to your profile:

• post in the forums
• create a team
• become a team captain
• make your World Community Grid data public
• recover the email address associated with your member account

Once you have added a username, you will not be able to revert back to having no username associated with your account.  You can change your username at any time. If you do change your username, your previous username will become available to other members.

Please remember our collective goal.

World Community Grid brings together people from across the globe to benefit humanity by creating the world's largest non-profit computing grid. We do this by pooling surplus processing power from volunteers' devices. We encourage your participation on the forums and provide information on team development and progress to make it easier for individuals to participate, to recruit new members and generally increase the amount of computing run time available for the humanitarian research projects we run. This web site is not a place to promote any other cause or issue.

What is Genome Comparison?

Genome Comparison is a project of the Bioinformatics Team at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Fiocruz that used the compute power of World Community Grid to calculate the sequence similarity level among the whole protein content encoded in completely sequenced genomes of hundreds of organisms, including humans and several other species of medical, commercial, industry, or research importance. The calculated similarity indices will be used, together with standardized Gene Ontology, as a reference repository for the annotator community, providing an invaluable data source for biologists.

Is there any way we can find a history of how much data has been sent to and received from the World Community Grid server?

No. At this time there is no way to see how much data has been actually transferred by a given client.

How many characters may I use in a forum post?

The database limit is 32,700 characters. If special characters are used, the character count is decreased due to how special characters are stored in the database. If you have more than 32,700 characters, or utilize special characters, you will need to create 2 or more posts.

What kinds of childhood cancers will this project focus on?

The initial childhood cancers being addressed are: neuroblastoma (nerve cancer), brain tumors, Wilms' tumor (kidney tumor), germ cell tumors, hepatoblastoma (liver cancer), and osteosarcoma (bone cancer).

The project is focusing on these particular childhood cancers because the researchers have discovered target molecules related to these diseases. The molecular structures of these targets have already been determined through previous research, and scientists believe these targets can be used to control the cancer. The research team aims to find drug candidates which can disable or enhance the activity of these target molecules, in order to control or cure the cancer.

Some of these target molecules are also involved with a number of adult cancers (colorectal cancer, lung cancer, gastric cancer, pancreatic cancer, renal cancer, liver cancer, nasopharyngeal cancer, prostate cancer and others) and may therefore help with treatments for those diseases, too. 

What would be the long-term anticipated outcomes as a result of this research?

The results will provide a detailed understanding of the conformational behavior of mycolic acids, which can shed light into their biological role and how it is linked to their folding pattern. With these details, we will have a greater understanding of how mycolic acids help the TB bacterium to survive and spread.

Additionally, we will be able to create a database of structures that will be used to build a detailed model of the bacterium’s outer layer. This model will be used to investigate the bacterium's biological properties further, and to assess how this knowledge can aid in TB drug development.