If you’re reading this on any kind of computer, there is something that you can do that actually provides concrete, actual help in the battle against COVID-19. There is no commitment of money or time.
By installing a tiny Folding@Home app on your computer that will run calculations of complex protein computer modelling using the idle power of your computer processor, you can help. In effect, by using hundreds of thousands of home computers distributed around the world to do tiny spare time calculations, a giant SuperComputer is created. Research modelling that would take days on an (expensive and much in-demand) SuperComputer can be done in a few hours using distributed computing power. Indeed, with over 700,00 people around the world running these tiny apps, the network is producing results faster than the top 500 supercomputers in the world combined.
For those of you that want a little more detail, in Human Speak rather than Tecchie Babble, this link below leads to an excellent article by David Nield. There’s also (below) a useful video about the project and how to install and set-up the program (It’s easy).
I urge you to consider joining Folding@Home and installing this app. It offers a genuine opportunity to contribute using computer power that you are simply not using. I start the program just before I go to bed and leave it running over night. I have created a team named “TimOnTheTrain” with Team Number 263224 so you can enter this number when joining and we can see what we are actually achieving as a group.
Please share this, and encourage those you share with to share it as well. Folding@Home is on Facebook, Instagram and also Twitter if you want to know more.
TimOnTheTrain 