World Community Grid Update - 100,000 Years and Genome Comparison Completion

World Community Grid has reached the 100,000 years of run time mark! THANK YOU to all our volunteers who have enabled us to reach this amazing milestone! Because of your contributions, results on critical health issues have already been achieved, demonstrating World Community Grid's potential to make significant inroads on a great range of future projects that can benefit the world.

World Community Grid also is pleased to announce that the Fiocruz Genome Comparison (FGC) project is finished. The last work units have been sent out and when the final results are returned, the project will come to an end. This project, which launched on November 16, 2006, will have run for just over 8 months by the time the last results are returned. During this time 146,000 members will have donated 3,800 years of computer time on 280,000 different computers. This is a significant contribution to helping scientists better understand human genes, how they play a role in disease processes, and ultimately in understanding how to devise drugs to combat human diseases.

But the end of this project is really only a beginning. Based on the results, the researchers who are working on this project have a plan to not only use this data, but to also make it available to other researchers. World Community Grid's team will keep in close touch with the research team and will post updates on the website in the Research pages. The researchers will also continue to update their FGC website with exciting updates about this project and the inroads it is making to research.

We still need your help with other ongoing projects! World Community Grid continues to run the FightAIDS@Home and Human Proteome Folding - Phase II projects. These critical research projects need your computer time as well.

We also are preparing three new projects that are due to be launched later this summer, including ones focused on flaviviruses, climate modeling, and cancer. We will publish more information about these projects when they launch.

On behalf of the research staff at Fiocruz, in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, World Community Grid's team wish to express our thanks to you for contributing your PC power to this project. With your contribution, this project was completed in a fraction of the time it would otherwise have taken.

World Community Grid Update - Muscular Dystrophy

World Community Grid is pleased to announce that Phase 1 of the Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy (HCMD) project is coming to a close. This project, which launched on December 19, 2006, will have run for just over seven months by the time the final results for Phase 1 are returned. During this time 106,000 members will have donated more than 8,000 years of computer time on 154,000 different computers. This is a significant contribution to muscular dystrophy research.

The end of Phase 1 means that the researchers are doing significant work in preparation for Phase 2. To learn more about what is going on between phases, please read the posts by Dr. Alessandra Carbone and Dr. Sophie Sacquin-Mora, two of the researchers on the HCMD project, in World Community Grid's forums. In addition, the research team has prepared a progress site which may be reviewed here. Phase 2 is scheduled to start in early 2008. World Community Grid's team will continue to meet with the HCMD researchers on a regular basis and will provide updates on the forums as information becomes available.

We still need your help with other ongoing projects! World Community Grid continues to run the FightAIDS@Home, Genome Comparison, and Human Proteome Folding - Phase II projects. In a few months, we'll be launching new projects for cancer, dengue fever, and climate prediction. All of these important projects need your computer time.

Go to World Community Grid to sign up and help.

Help Scientists Find Cures For Diseases

The World Community Grid is a project sponsored by IBM where hundreds of thousands of people around the world donate their spare computer capacity to help perform the huge computing calculations required for medical research. This is known as "grid computing".

All together, thousands of years worth of comuputing have been performed to date on projects like:

• Cancer research
• Muscular Dystrophy research
• Fight AIDS@home project
  
• Human Proteome folding
• Genome comparison

World Community Grid's mission is to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. Our work is built on the belief that technological innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can change our world for the better. Their success depends on individuals - like you - collectively contributing their unused computer time to this not-for-profit endeavour.

You can help by donating the time your computer is turned on, but is idle, to projects that benefit humanity! They provide the secure software that does it all for free, and you become part of a community that is helping to change the world. Once you install the software, you will be participating in World Community Grid. No other action must be taken; it's that simple! To learn more and join, go to the World Community Grid site.

I have been running the World Community Grid on my PCs since November 2004 and have not had any problems affecting the performance or security of my system.

We can't always afford to give money to medical research, but we can afford to give our PC's spare time.