Regardless of a person's educational level or resources, he or she can fight AIDS at home -- using a personal computer.
Interested computer users can join the World Community Grid, which links PCs around the world to create a virtual supercomputer charged with finding new therapeutic approaches that are effective in the treatment of AIDS in the face of viral drug resistance.
Some 100,000 individuals have signed up for FightAIDS@Home, volunteering the power of 170,000 computers.
FightAIDS@Home is the second project that takes advantage of the World Community Grid.
Using the grid, the Human Proteome Folding Project in the past year produced a database describing the structure of approximately 120,000 protein domains which could not be described using traditional approaches.
Had researchers used only their supercomputers, it would have taken about 100 years to complete the task. By using the World Community Grid, researchers were finished in one year.
The World Community Grid, which is placed among the top 10 supercomputers in the world, will be the first virtual supercomputer devoted specifically to AIDS research.
Interested individuals, businesses, foundations, associations, universities and not-for-profit organizations are being urged to donate the idle and unused time on their computers by downloading World Community Grid's free software and registering at its Web site.
The Scripps Research Institute, a private, not-for-profit biomedical science research organization based in San Diego, is handling the data.
Keith McKeown, the spokesperson for the Institute, told the PlanetOut Network that the data produced on a user's computer is completely segregated from the user's personal operations.
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