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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Completed Research
Forum: Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2
Thread: *** Fundraiser Idea for HPF2 *** |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 11
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rbotterb
Senior Cruncher United States Joined: Jul 21, 2005 Post Count: 401 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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We'll we have all seen how a drop of government fund has cut the HPF2 project short. Even seems to be causing other projects now (like GFAM) to finish early (which is OK), but leaving crunchers with a quickly disappearing list of projects to crunch WUs for.
I was thinking about this situation while sitting on my train seat going to work today, and came up with an idea to bring HPF2 (and maybe other future projects drying up due to money issues) back up and running again. Time for a fundraiser for basic research..... Now if we were a bunch of Girl Scouts, we would sell a bunch of cookies to a worldwide group of Thin Mint addicts. If we were a local Church Group, we might put together some breakfast burritos to sell after the next church mass. But we are crunchers.... what do we have of value.... CPU CYCLES! So here's the fundraiser idea: 1) Say there are some drug companies willing to buy some some cpu cycles to do a drug search to find an a new orphan drug to help a small group of individuals around the world with some god awful disease which currently has no treatment. 2) The WCG can say sell those cycles for 1/2 off the current market price. 3) We crunch those WUs to help out. 4) WCG sends monthly bill to drug company for those cycles. 5) When money comes in, WCG calls up HPF2 scientists and tell them we now have a bucket of money to help them move their project forward. 6) SekeRob updates his HPF2 numbers to show 880 days of crunching still left to crunch. 7) We crunchers now have another badge to crunch for (for the Orphan Drug Search) AND more HPF2 WUs to crunch for the next higher badge.  8) Repeat Step 1 (When HPF2 is done, we can do this for other basic research projects). So there is my fundraising idea. So what does everyone think...Is this doable crunchers?????? |
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gb009761
Master Cruncher Scotland Joined: Apr 6, 2005 Post Count: 2977 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I certainly think it's do-able, although unfortunately, it's not up to me - it's all down to IBM and as to how creative they can be in drumming up ways to make this work (i.e. finding/getting the drug companies who'd be willing to pay, to get involved).
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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You mean like http://www.charityengine.com/ does already?
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rbotterb
Senior Cruncher United States Joined: Jul 21, 2005 Post Count: 401 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Took a look at http://www.charityengine.com/. My idea isn't too far off from what they are doing, though in my fundraiser idea the funding wouldn't be charity fundraising per se but raising funds by selling our cycles for companies like drug companies or other outfits that are doing commercial projects with big crunching needs which could result in new treatment drugs or possibly applications to help cities become more efficient in various ways, etc.
IBM could pull this off with a charity trust for WSG (They may have one set up already for other charity work they fund or even already for WSG for the resources they use up supporting the WSG). |
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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It sounds like the only difference between your proposal and charity engine is that one goes to a charity and the other would be yet another non-profit. I don't see much difference there. WCG could theoretically do that, but they would probably have a large backlash from the BOINC community. Many of the crunchers don't like the idea of using it for commercial money making. That might be a PR nightmare. It might be more beneficial for HPFP2 crew to ask Charity Engine to include them as a "charity". Then it still works out as you propose.
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rbotterb
Senior Cruncher United States Joined: Jul 21, 2005 Post Count: 401 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Well the problem at hand isn't one where HPF2 doesn't want to move forward with the rest of their project on WSG. The issue is funding for the project staff being cut by their government grant going away. So moving HPF2 to another platform doesn't address the fact there due to lack of staff funding, there isn't anyone left in their offices to review/study the data results.
My idea would generate funds for the staffing so they can continue their project. Now the commercial projects could be listed as such in the WSG and if some in the BOINC community are not interested to crunch those project's WUs for fundraising purposes - no problem. It's just a setting in their profile manager. As usual, each project and their WUs stand on their own merits. I would imagine commercial projects for a general S&P 500 running marketing plans wouldn't fly at all, but say those from a small drug company trying to design an orphan drug may be deemed of merit to be allowed on the WSG for this purpose. There are other studies that large cities may fund to help them become more efficient / less polluted / transportation flowing better etc. that might make the grade for this purpose as well. I'm sure there are other projects that could be reviewed and approved for this purpose - though if WSG went this route there may need to be a review by a board to see who gets in or not (probably one in place now to review and approve all science projects that come onto the WSG today). |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Rechristened I guess to World Science Grid [WSG].
Please do visit words posted by Dr. Perryman when alternate funding sources were proposed for GFAM. What I took away from it was: Too involved, too many bear-traps. Some are bitcoins crunching, but have not the faintest clue how/what/where if a benefactor can be defined. One of the bitcoin banks is apparently in [fiscal] trouble, so that might not be a viable avenue either. |
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rbotterb
Senior Cruncher United States Joined: Jul 21, 2005 Post Count: 401 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I've read Dr Perryman's status updates (and request to have everyone talk to their members of congress to stop the NIH funding cuts).
I guess my idea will not work. Too bad. I wish I would expect NIH funding cuts to be reversed, but given the current budget issues going forward for the US (Europe and Japan at not that much better), I suspect we'll see funding cuts to be more the norm over the upcoming years than otherwise. If the current set of government rules make it too hard to fundraise for research by alternative methods, then we'll see how these projects continue to progress do down the road and we'll see how many projects in the future we'll have to crunch for at the WCG. |
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I think if WCG started selling services for profiteers so that projects could get funding, that many people would come down hard on WCG. They would basically call us sell outs. GPUGrid faced many claims that were ill informed or poorly researched when they launched Donate@home. There are still many in the community who dislike the idea. It sort of taints the generally accepted idea of not using BOINC as a way to generate profit. Charity Engine also had several people's panties in a bunch. Some called David a hypocrite for contributing to it. I for one can see the greater good in doing what you propose. As long as there is clarity and transparency, I think it could work. However, being in the service industry for years has taught me that most people don't want anyone profiting off of their good will. Getting them to join a project that is reselling their resources without giving them a cut doesn't sit too well.
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rilian
Veteran Cruncher Ukraine - we rule! Joined: Jun 17, 2007 Post Count: 1452 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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i think HPF2 scientists can create a paper with research plan and get another grant. There are many science associations in Europe and USA so this is all quite possible. And we will be happy to provide the crunching resources.
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