Saturday, June 4, 2016

Help an International Research Team Fight the Zika Virus


SummaryThe Zika virus was relatively unknown until 2015, when it made headlines due its rapid spread and its link to severe brain-related deficiencies in newborns born to mothers who contracted the virus while pregnant. Dr. Carolina Horta Andrade, the principal investigator for the new OpenZika project, discusses how she and an international team of researchers are using World Community Grid to accelerate the search for an effective anti-Zika treatment.

Introduction

Few people had heard of the Zika virus before 2015, when it began rapidly spreading in the Americas, particularly in Brazil. The virus is mostly spread byAedes aegypti mosquitoes, although sexual and blood transmission are also possible. A currently unknown percentage of pregnant women who have contracted the Zika virus have given birth to infants with a condition called microcephaly, which results in severe brain development issues. In other cases, adults and children who contract the Zika virus have suffered paralysis and other neurological problems.

Currently, there is no treatment for the Zika virus and no vaccine. Given that Zika has quickly become an international public health concern, my team and I are working with researchers here in Brazil as well as in the United States to look for possible treatments, and we are using World Community Grid to accelerate our project.



Our Goals

The OpenZika project on World Community Grid aims to identify drug candidates to treat the Zika virus in people who have been infected. The project will use software to screen millions of chemical compounds against the target proteins that the Zika virus likely uses to survive and spread in the human body, based on what is known from similar diseases such as dengue virus and yellow fever. As science's knowledge of the Zika virus increases in the coming months and key proteins are identified, the OpenZika team will use the new knowledge to refine our search.

Our work on World Community Grid is only the first step in the larger project of discovering a new drug to fight the Zika virus. Next, we will analyze the data obtained from World Community Grid’s virtual screening to choose the compounds that show the most promise. After we have selected and tested compounds that could be effective in killing the Zika virus, we will publish our results. As soon as we have proven that some of the candidate compounds can actually kill or disable the virus in cell-based tests, we and other labs can then modify the molecules to increase their potency against the virus, while ensuring that these modified compounds are safe and non-toxic.

We are committed to releasing all the results to the public as soon as they are completed, so other scientists can help advance the development of some of these active compounds into new drugs. We hope that OpenZika will include a second stage, where we can perform virtual screenings on many more compounds.

Without this research--and other projects that are studying the Zika virus--this disease could become an even bigger threat due to the rapid spread of the virus by mosquitoes, blood and sexual transmission. The link between the Zika virus in pregnant women and severe brain-based disorders in children could impact a generation with larger than usual numbers of members who have serious neurological difficulties.

And without the resources of World Community Grid, using only the resources of our lab, we would only be able to screen a few thousand compounds against some of the Zika proteins, or it would take years to screen millions of compounds against all Zika proteins. This would severely limit our potential for drug discovery.

Enlisting the help of World Community Grid volunteers will enable us to computationally evaluate over 20 million compounds in just the initial phase (and potentially up to 90 million compounds in future phases). Thus, running the OpenZika project on World Community Grid will allow us to greatly expand the scale of our project, and it will accelerate the rate at which we can obtain the results toward an antiviral drug for the Zika virus.

By working together and sharing our work with the scientific community, many other researchers in the world will also be able to take promising molecular candidates forward, to accelerate progress towards defeating the Zika outbreak.


Please visit www.savethechildren.org and http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org

How you could help WCG

Friday, January 22, 2016

New crunching Gpu

Hi

Can't wait to get new crunching gpu!
It's shipped and arrives in 2 working days.

It's Asus gtx960 strix
Should give good boost to my crunching.



Thank you

LTDAkiles

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Tarvitsemme uusia jäseniä!

Moi

Pikku hiljaa alan saada koneita kasaan ja boincia jauhamaan. Tammikuun aikana lisää rautaa, jotta makuuhuone pysyy talvipakkasilla lämpimänä ;)

Tarviimme uusia jäseniä ja nykyisten jäsenten aktivoitumista.

Tässä hiukan ohjeita kuinka päästä alkuun:

Käytä tietokoneen joutoaikaa parantamaan sairauksia(Aids,Ebola,Syöpä...), tutkimaan ilmaston lämpenemistä, puhdasta energiaa(aurinkokennoihin paremmin soveltuvia materiaaleja), tekemään 3d-kartta Milkyway galaksista ja tekemään monia muita tieteellisiä tutkimuksia.

Asenna Boinc http://boinc.berkeley.edu/index.php

Käynnistä Boinc ja ensimmäisen käynnistyksen yhteyssä kysyy projektia johon halut liittyä( Voit liittyä myöhemmin toisiin projekteihin Boinc ohjelman ikkunan ylälaidasta löytyvän
"Työkalut"->"Liity projektiin" kohdasta.

Kun olet valinnut projektin, niin Boinc yhdistää projektiin ja kysyy "Oletko jo liittynyt tähän projektiin?" valitse "En, uusi käyttäjä" ja laita sähköpostiosoite ja luo salasana.

Nyt pääset Projektin sivuille luomaan profiiliasi. Anna nimeksi vaikka alias/nick tai vastaava ja paina ok.


Etsi tiimi ja key words kohtaan "My efforts against childhood cancer" ja hae.
Klikkaa My efforts against childhood cancer ja seuraavalla sivulla "Liity tiimiin" (Join this team)

Boinc ohjelmasta huomaat, että Boinc laskee tehtäviä ja monesti asetukset niin kun käytät tietokonetta Boinc lopettaa laskemisen ja laskee vain kun tietokone käyttämättömänä.

Tässä hiukan lisätietoa projekteista:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php


Kiitos

LTDAkiles

Thursday, December 24, 2015

I'm back

Hi everyone


     I had to take a break from Boinc and other internet activities for family reasons.
Here's a short list what was going on:

- Spent 100% efforts for recovery from injury (took 4 years with bad pains and physical training), but now i have been 100% and pain free over a year now.

- It's a boy and and 2 years later it's a girl. Two kids born, it's 4 kids total now. Have spend a lot of time with them so they could have childhood that i never had( Dad at home)

- This year my focus was to get my job licences in order and to find a job. I have something coming up early next year for primary job and i have a contract at my desk all signed for second job(my evening job).

- Powerlifting to get my physical condition on bar to my job

- Quit smoking and i turned into vaping. Easy and my body thanks me for that decision (i can smell, taste again and no cough).


Now i'm 100%, i'm crunching Boinc again. In coming months i will update my boinc crunchers and might get one or two crunchers online. Hopefully our team members will go active too. It's winter here and all need more warmth from our crunchers ;)

Thank you happy holidays

LTDAkiles

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Boinc 7.0.25 Released to public!



Release of Boinc 7.0.25 makes Poem@home available to crunch with AMD gpu's which is first medical project for AMD gpu's.

 Boinc

Use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. It's safe, secure, and easy:
  1. Choose projects
  2. Download and run BOINC software
  3. Enter an email address and password.  
Boinc homepage for more details

Thursday, February 23, 2012

New World Community Grid project: Say No to Schistosoma

Mission
The mission of the Say No to Schistosoma project is to identify potential drug candidates that could possibly be developed into treatments for schistosomiasis. The extensive computing power of World Community Grid will be used to perform computer simulations of the interactions between millions of chemical compounds and certain target proteins. This will help find the most promising compounds that may lead to effective treatments for the disease.

Significance
Schistosomiasis is a tropical disease caused by parasitic worms that are transmitted by freshwater snails. The disease kills 200,000 people each year and affects over 207 million people. Schistosomiasis is second only to malaria in its socioeconomic devastation. Researchers at the Infórium University in Belo Horizonte and FIOCRUZ-Minas, Brazil, are using World Community Grid to search for chemical compounds which may lead to new drugs for treating the disease.



Approach
A software program called VINA from The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, will be used to perform the virtual chemistry experiments. These virtual experiments will search to find which of millions of drug compounds might be able to disable particular proteins essential for the parasite's survival. Screening for the best potential drug compounds is an early step in the process of developing effective treatments for the disease. With enough computing power, this screening can be done much more quickly than using conventional laboratory experiments. Existing computers available to the researchers would require approximately 30 years to perform the screening. However, it is estimated that the power of World Community Grid can reduce the time required to one year or less. Information about the best candidate compounds will be published by the scientists, and this information will be available in the public domain for other scientists to build upon with their research. Further laboratory work using the best candidates identified by this project could lead to the development of better drugs to fight schistosomiasis. 


Project Status and Findings:  
Information about this project is provided on the web pages below and by the project scientists on the Say No to Schistosoma website. If you have comments or questions about this project, please visit the Say No to Schistosoma forum.

Join our World Community Team  My efforts against childhood cancer

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Referral Race 2012

Hi team.

We're having a great start for the year 2012 and i want to boost it with small referral race.

Referral race is simple.

1. Crunch in our Boinc team and get at least one friend to join our Boinc team.
2. Soon as your friend is crunching regular(10 000 boinc points from cpu project and 100 000 boinc points from gpu project untill 29/02/2012) Ask your friend to email your nick and project to Akiles@windowslive.com and i will add one ticket from each friend to prize drawal. More friends to join, more tickets and better chances to win.
3. Main prize is NEW Battlefield 3 game download ticket and winner will be announced 29/02/2012.

Everyone can join and chance to win is good. I will add small prizes in the mix if i will receive more.

If you have any questions, please email Akiles@windowslive.com

Thank you
LTDAkiles
Team Captain
Email/Msn: Akiles@windowslive.com

You can join the team by searching team with "My efforts against childhood cancer".

Here is direct links to the team page in our main projects( Click bolded project name)

Milkyway@home : Milkyway@Home uses the BOINC platform to harness volunteered computing resources, creating a highly accurate three dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy using data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Cpu and AMD Gpus(AMD 4830 or better,5830 or better, 6950 or better)

World Community Grid : World Community Grid brings people together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power. We believe that innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can help make the planet smarter. Our success depends on like-minded individuals - like you. Projects: GO Fight Against Malaria, Drug Search for Leishmaniasis, Computing for Clean Water, The Clean Energy Project - Phase 2, Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase2, Help Fight Childhood Cancer, Help Conquer Cancer, FightAIDS@Home, Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together - Phase 2


MalariaControl.net :

What is malariacontrol.net?

The malariacontrol.net project is an application that makes use of network computing for stochastic modelling of the clinical epidemiology and natural history of Plasmodium falciparum malaria.

Simulation modeling of malaria

The fight against malaria was given a new impetus by the call for eradication at the Gates Malaria Forum in October 2007, making more but still limited resources available for research, development, and combating malaria. To inform decisions on which new or existing tools to prioritize, we have developed a general platform for comparing, fitting, and evaluating stochastic simulation models of Plasmodium falciparum malaria, programmed in C++ (openmalaria).

We use this to inform the target product profiles for novel interventions like vaccines, addressing questions such as minimal efficacy and duration of effects needed for a vaccine to be worthwhile, and also to optimize deployment of established interventions and integrated strategies. Field trials of interventions consider effects over 1-2 years at most, but the dynamics of immunity and human demography also lead to longer term effects. We consider many different outcomes, including transmission reduction or interruption, illness, hospitalization, or death, as well as economic aspects.


GPUGRID.net is a distributed computing infrastructure devoted to biomedical research. Thanks to the contribution of volunteers, GPUGRID scientists can perform molecular simulations to understand the function of proteins in health and disease. Projects: Cancer : Unveiling mechanisms of drug resistance and malfunctions in cell signalling pathways in Cancer. Hiv/Aids : Modelling the process of how HIV maturation first starts by simulating the activation of one of its key proteins: the protease. Neural disorders : Investigating features of neurologically important proteins that have thus far evaded traditional experimental techniques. Nvidia Gpus