Pizza can be ordered to your home, and men can also be easily ordered to your home via dating portals. But fighting AIDS at home through scientific research? This is also possible thanks to a global computer network in the FightAIDS@Home project. The first promising results are now available, which may lead to better HIV drugs.
A team of researchers in California has discovered two new components that prove the existence of further docking sites in the HI virus. Enzymes play an important role in the replication of the virus. Current HIV drugs try to block these binding sites, among other things, which works for a while until resistance develops. Pharmaceutical scientists can now target the new sites.
These biological-chemical processes are analysed using mathematics, and this requires a great deal of computing power. So-called supercomputers, huge computer farms that run through climate change models, for example, would have this power, but are immensely expensive and constantly fully booked. The University of Berkely in California has therefore launched the "World Community Grid". A global network that utilises the unused computing power of private computers. Anyone who wants to take part downloads software and lets it run in the background. If you are not currently feeding your PC with your own tasks, the programme fetches a small partial calculation task from the grid and returns the result. The whole thing is risk-free, as the software does not access the user's private data.
The network now has access to around 1.5 million computers, which have nothing to do in the meantime, in 80 countries. This corresponds to the computing power of 15 supercomputers. More than 104 million calculations have been performed, which would have taken standard PCs 107,000 years. The grid was able to do this in five years. (dk)
More information on the discovery by researchers
FightAIDS@Home - Info and registration
