Reno Nevada!?! I live near there! Cool!. I'll just continue crunching, last I heard, we were about 25% through the entire project. It gives you a warm feeling that you are part of the action. Don't forget, WCG is a volunteer based thing, but we will all miss you if you leave. Imagine, in the near future, the protein you are crunching right now could lead to the end of a disease that used to kill millions a year! Now that is worth the time. There's my two cents. *I wonder what the 2 cents mean... *

Malaise, cafard, cabin fever. These are all words that come after bored. Last week we were 30% through. If you go to http://www.systemsbiology.org/symposium2005/ you can read: " The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) will hold its fourth annual international symposium on Sunday, April 24th and Monday, April 25th at the ISB research facility in Seattle, Washington. This year's event, Computational Challenges in Systems Biology, will bring together world leaders in computational biology. "

If you look at the schedule at http://www.systemsbiology.org/symposium2005/schedule.html you will see that Dr. Viktors Berstis, WCG, and Dr. Richard Bonneau, ISB, are featured as speakers right after the opening speech on Sunday by Dr. Hood and just before the keynote presentation by Dr. Myhrvold. So there is going to be some more public notification of what we are doing. And there will be more information appearing in the Human Proteome Folding forum.

The trouble is that we cannot expect people to get very interested in the new database listing the human proteins and their predicted structures until it is ready for them to use. We all want encouragement and pats on the back. What we can expect is numerous citations in papers published over the next decade. We can use Google or more specialized indexes to ferret out these citations and see where we have been useful. But we will not pick up many commendations in advance, except among ourselves. When was the last time you attended a valedictory luncheon to commend someone for a poem or novel that they were going to write?

It's still worthwhile.

Look at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2005-02-26/mersenne/

It starts out:
"
42nd Mersenne Prime Found
By Eric W. Weisstein

February 26, 2005--Less than a year after the 41st Mersenne prime was reported (MathWorld headline news: June 1, 2004), the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project has discovered the 42nd known Mersenne prime. The candidate prime was flagged prime by Dr. Martin Nowak on February 18, independently verified by Tony Reix on February 25, and the exponent was reported on February 26 (Reix). Nowak's calculation required more than 50 days on a 2.4-GHz Pentium 4 computer, while verification took 5 days on a 16 Itanium CPU Bull NovaScale 5000 HPC. Additional details can be found in the Mersenne.org press release."

The Advisory Board is supposed to ferret out the most useful projects from all those proposed. Looking at alternative uses for my computer, I am willing to believe that they are doing their job. It is like the difference between an edited news journal and a news blog on the Internet. The projects we work on have been peer reviewed.

It is possible to make a difference.
Lawrence

Hi Michael
I have worked tirelessly to promote the project and I have had one article published on the BBC Technology Website: See Here
This article brought in over 3000 new members of which our team was fortunate enough to get a few
I am awaiting my second article to be published by TechNewsWorld and hope to bring in another 3000+ members

I keep up my interest by my active involvement in the forums while promoting the World Community Grid

Michael! Are you on a team with any member interaction?
I joined My Online Team 27th Dec 04 and have helped substancially to improve our position in the team rankings
I now have friends from all over the world as a result of joining this International team
A number of our members are on Skype Telephony [Free Internet Phone Calls] See Here:
It enables us to communicate with and help each other and have conference call of up to five members at a time

I felt the same way untill I joined My Online Team and now the comraderie and fellowship between the members makes being a contributor to this project that much more worth while

Please consider joining a team and see if they can stimulate you to get a bit more enjoyment out of this project
It worked for me
Best regards

Well maybe you should consider joining MY ONLINE TEAM as you will receive plenty of support in many ways. I was a member of Cancer Fighters and didnt get any support either. But this team was very helpful you couldnt find a better bunch of people. Come over to our side of the fence. you will not regret it. A friend in Virginia--MarysDuby