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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Community
Forum: Chat Room
Thread: Are there any tangible successes that I can report? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 7
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Periodically I attempt to recruit new members in various forums; I will appreciate some assistance with a question, please. Now, admittedly my recruitment efforts are often to help my 'Homebrewers' team, such as when I post in beer brewing forums; but team identity in those forums should help recruitment because they are, after all, homebrewers. On the other hand, I often won't even mention my team and merely attempt to recruit for WCG in general, such as if I am posting to a cancer group. In any event, the thread/message I'm speaking about was recently posted in rec.crafts.brewing where this reply was posted:
I have a couple of issues with this concept. Can you point to anything tangible that has actually been accomplished using the technique? I've never heard any breakthrough announced with acknowledgment that grid computing was used in its development. I did a little reading and all I found was boasts of organizations that had built huge networks capable of vast amounts of calculations . . . is that the end in itself? Where are the actual tangible results? ... snip ... So my current take is high risk, zero benefit. Actual facts that would change my mind would be appreciated. But spare me things like "your computer could be doing important non-profit medical research" unless you can provide real information that demonstrates that it's important. So, can anyone refer me to any announcements or progress reports -- preferably with respect to WCG projects -- which demonstrate any tangible results so far. I know that we have "completed" a number of projects, but I think the public will appreciate something a bit more tangible than that. Thanks in advance for any help. Cheers. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Our biggest success story is Help Defeat Cancer.
Here is a Scientific American story about how the project is proceeding now that our grid part of the work is done: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cancer-software-technology |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thanks, 'D'; that will be useful. However, I seem to recall reading a report somewhere (this will teach me to be more diligent in bookmarking things) that there has already been some actual use of those cancer research results to begin to identify appropriate treatment for some patients; if anyone has a link, that would be fantastic.
Also, probably a year ago or more, I added a link on my website to an article which explained, in essence, that "in less than three months scientists identified 44 potential treatments to fight the deadly smallpox disease; without the grid, the same work would have taken years to complete." But that link -- http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/projects_showcase/viewProjectArchives.do -- now takes viewers to a page which makes no mention whatsoever of the smallpox research. Has that report been deleted, or just moved to another page? ... in which case I need the new link so I can update my page. Thanks. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
All the reports of progress are rather technical. Try the "Special Message from Dr. David Foran" here: http://pleiad.umdnj.edu/IBM/
The smallpox project wasn't actually a WCG project. There's an article about it here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031002060419.htm |
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JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3716 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hi Bill!
----------------------------------------In parallel to providing links to tangible achievements resulting of grid computing efforts I hope you will not leave this unanswered: So my current take is high risk, zero benefit. If you need help for answering the risk side don't hesitate to ask us again.Cheers. Jean. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
This FAQ may help: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=19467
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Can you point to anything tangible that has actually been accomplished using the technique? I've never heard any breakthrough announced with acknowledgment that grid computing was used in its development. I did a little reading and all I found was boasts of organizations that had built huge networks capable of vast amounts of calculations . . . is that the end in itself? Where are the actual tangible results? ... snip ... So my current take is high risk, zero benefit. Actual facts that would change my mind would be appreciated. But spare me things like "your computer could be doing important non-profit medical research" unless you can provide real information that demonstrates that it's important. So, can anyone refer me to any announcements or progress reports -- preferably with respect to WCG projects -- which demonstrate any tangible results so far. I know that we have "completed" a number of projects, but I think the public will appreciate something a bit more tangible than that. I apologize that this question had to even be asked. We know that everyone has a right to expect to know what the results of donating their computer to humanitarian research are. The information is available but it’s scattered all over the research pages and hard to decipher because it is mostly written in scientific lingo. But you have a right to know what has been produced and toward that end, we are working very hard on providing an easy way for everyone to see what's been accomplished on World Community Grid. This won’t be available for a several month’s yet but it’s coming. What we are aiming for is to show what each project has accomplished in one place. There will, of course, be the scientific papers and scientific journal articles. But we also want to provide abstracts of these so that they can be understood by non-scientific people like myself. Providing this information in an easy to absorb fashion should help answer the question: Is anything being useful being produced as a result of running on World Community Grid? BTW, the information that we are working on consolidating into one place is available now but you have to work hard to find it. We ask each research organization that we are running research for to create their own website about their project and keep it current during and after the project. To make sure that they do that we meet with them on a regular basis, every two week for active projects and monthly for finished projects. The World Community Grid team is very keen to know about research results. For one, we take great pride in providing support to this free platform that may someday provide a cure for some dreaded disease. For another reason, our sponsors are also interested in results. Finally, we on the World Community Grid team are also participating members in World Community Grid and also don’t want to waste our time. We hope to have the one-stop-shopping research results page available early in 2009. Thank you!! |
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