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What is the difference between the Computing for Sustainable Water project and the Computing for Clean Water project?

The Computing for Sustainable Water project is studying how changes in human activities could help improve the quality of watersheds, critical for sustaining life and food sources. The Computing for Clean Water project is trying to develop less expensive water filters so that it would be more practical to produce clean drinking water from poor water sources.

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.

What kinds of actions might be taken?

There are various methods that can be adopted to reduce nutrient and sediment loads reaching the Bay. These are collectively known as “Best Management Practices (BMPs).” For example, farms can leave buffer areas between planted fields and bordering streams. They can minimize their use of fertilizers, plant cover crops in the winter (to absorb excess nutrients), and provide for the proper removal of animal waste. Municipalities can provide for separate storm water runoff systems and increase the frequency of street cleaning. Even individuals can affect change through household practices (reducing lawn fertilization, planting trees and shrubs) and limiting automobile driving. These types of actions are called non-point sources because they collectively contribute to the nutrient and sediment problem but are not individually measurable. Manufacturing, power generation, and other industrial contributors are point sources and these are regulated through existing policy and laws.

Will this reduce battery life?

By default, the Android BOINC application is only active when your device is plugged into a power source (AC or USB) and your battery is charged 90% or more. Using the application will not significantly reduce your battery life or your recharge time. If you wish, you can override these default power use settings and customize how World Community Grid runs on your device.

Why enable World Community Grid on Android mobile devices?

The growth in mobile device ownership and usage is both undeniable and unstoppable. And while mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are small, they have become increasingly powerful. This makes mobile devices a potentially significant source of computing power and gives them an important role in the future of scientific research.

In addition, Android is an ideal platform for launching mobile volunteer computing; the number of Android devices is huge, 900 million as of May 2013, and growing rapidly. We are investigating options to expand to other platforms in the future.

How will The Clean Energy Project help find solar cell materials?

Understanding the properties of new materials that are the basis of alternative sources of renewable energy represents one of today’s major scientific challenges. Many of these materials are composed of large organic molecules that contain hundreds of atoms. These atoms can be rearranged in multiple ways to fine-tune the properties of the desired material. With the aid of World Community Grid, researchers will evaluate the conductive properties of at least 1,000,000 molecular structures (created by combinatorial methods) that are suitable for organic solar cells applications. The results of such an enormous number of computations will be used to create a public database of molecular properties for data mining.

How will The Clean Energy Project help find solar cell materials?

Understanding the properties of new materials that are the basis of alternative sources of renewable energy represents one of today’s major scientific challenges. Many of these materials are composed of large organic molecules that contain hundreds of atoms. These atoms can be rearranged in multiple ways to fine-tune the properties of the desired material. With the aid of World Community Grid, researchers will evaluate the conductive properties of at least 100,000 molecular structures (created by combinatorial methods) that are suitable for organic solar cells applications. The results of such an enormous number of computations will be used to create a database of molecular properties for data mining, which will be publicly available.

How can I help with this project?

You can help by joining World Community Grid and providing your computer's spare processing time. In addition, you can help support the researchers at their crowd sourced funding site at: www.crowdrise.com/CUREEBOLA
The researchers have turned to public support because the normal research grant process can take up to a year before any funds become available. Furthermore, because of public funding cuts and the sequester, fewer grants are available than in the past. The researchers are most grateful for any support you can give.

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.

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.

What is BOINC?

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is open-source software that supports volunteer computing. BOINC was developed under a National Science Foundation grant at the University of California, Berkeley and is used for many different volunteer computing initiatives. It consists of software that a user downloads and runs on their computer, as well as server components that handle distributing work units and receiving results.

World Community Grid uses BOINC as a key part of its infrastructure in order to help support research for multiple institutions. Volunteers participate in World Community Grid either by downloading the World Community Grid branded version of the BOINC software, or the BOINC software itself, available directly from BOINC's website.

More information about BOINC can be found here.

What are the potential benefits of the Genome Comparison Project?

• The resulting all against all comparative database will be of great use as a reference for many research projects on functional aspects, biochemical pathways, evolutionary aspects, and an invaluable source for correct annotation of previously sequenced and newly obtained genome sequences
• Precise annotation, assignment of possible functions to hypothetical proteins of unknown function, and the description of evolutionary relationships between proteins will be a major step forward towards our understanding of genome composition, genome evolution and cellular function
• The contribution to the understanding of host-pathogen relationships, and the means to develop new drugs and vaccines, will be of utmost benefit to the scientific community at large
• Research on biodiversity and new organisms will greatly benefit from reliable comparative data
• Future new sequence releases will build upon the growing cross-referenced database

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.

How exactly does this project use computing power to look for potential COVID-19 treatments?

The Forli Lab is using a process known as molecular docking, which is the study of how two or more molecules fit together, such as a protein in a human cell or in a virus, and a chemical compound. In OpenPandemics - COVID-19, the researchers are leveraging this technique at scale, thanks to World Community Grid's massive computational power, by virtually screening millions of chemical compounds to see which might be capable of binding to proteins of the SARS-Cov2, as well as other coronaviruses proteins. This helps them identify which compounds could be effective against the virus and therefore may be able to contrast the COVID-19 progression. Promising compounds will then proceed through the drug discovery process, which includes laboratory testing and chemical optimizations.

The researchers plan to screen compounds from various sources including existing commercially available and clinically tested compounds, focused libraries generated in silico, as well as in-house libraries of compounds that are available at Scripps Research.