IBM Wants to Tap Your PC and Android Devices to Cure Ebola

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Free app puts your Android device to work crunching data when it would otherwise be idle

Scientists are hard at work looking for a definitive cure to Ebola, and you can help. More precisely, if you're willing to donate idle time power from your PC and/or Android device, you can help the cause. How? The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has partnered up with IBM and its World Community Grid to form a volunteer computing project called "Outsmart Ebola Together," and all you need to do is install a free app.
Once installed, your PC and/or Android phone or tablet will crunch data at times then they would otherwise be idle. Small computational assignments are sent out to participating devices, which the software then completes and returns to scientists. It's essentially another distributed computing project, like Folding@Home, and so far almost 3 million PCs and mobile devices used by more than 680,000 people and 460 institutions from 80 countries have contributed virtual supercomputing power this this and other WCG projects over the past 10 years.
"Our molecular images of the Ebola virus are like enemy reconnaissance," said Dr. Erica Ollmann Saphire of TSRI, one of the largest private biomedical research institutes in the United States. "These images show us where the virus is vulnerable and the targets we need to hit. In the Outsmart Ebola Together project, we will be able to harness World Community Grid’s virtual supercomputing power to find the drugs we need to aim at these targets."
It took just one week on the grid for the Ebola project to complete what it would have taken a single PC with a single processor around 35 year to complete, Time reports. Speed is critical in this case as Ebola continues to spread and mutate.
The caveat? One would presume lower battery life since idle time is now being put to work. There's also no iOS version of the free app yet, though IBM is working on it.
For more information, go here.
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