WCG 網格計畫發表新專案：Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together – Phase 2 (第二階段)

前陣子 (2010.2.17) 收到 World Community Grid (WCG) 的信 (不知道 WCG 是什麼的朋友請看這篇介紹：WCG網格計畫)，信中提到 Discovering Dengue Drugs (研製對抗登革熱、C型肝炎、西尼羅熱、黃熱病等等的藥物) 這個計畫要進入第二階段 (Phase 2) 了！(新聞全文請參考這裡)

這個專案事由 The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB)、The University of Chicago 兩所大學共同主持，計畫的詳細內容可參考這裡。在第二階段中的工作項目是以瀑布式 (waterfall) 的方式來組織，也就是說工作項目A的結果會產生工作項目B，而工作項目C的內容則是根據工作項目B的結果來決定。藉由如此的設計，研究人員期望可以節省大量的計算時間，以加速專案的進展。(基本上就是在進行B的時候，不用重新計算進行A的時候已經計算過的東東～)

為了提昇 WCG member 的參與感，很久之前 WCG 就設計了 Project Badge 的機制，Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together – Phase 2 的 Badge 長得像下面這樣：

(一隻蚊子加上一個數字 2，呃 …)

這已經是在 WCG 上 launch 的第 15 個專案啦，希望每個專案都可以順利的進行阿！

另外補充一篇科景 (Sciscapr.org) 的新聞：物理：網格運算未來將可進入家用電腦

World Community Grid – Facebook Integration

在 2010.01.09 的時候收到 World Community Grid (WCG) 的來信 (不知道 WCG 是什麼的朋友請看這篇介紹：WCG網格計畫)，信中提到，在 2009 年這一年中，WCG 共增加了超過 71,000 名志願者，總計貢獻了超過 97,000 年的 computing power! 有了這些生力軍的加入，在 2009 年中共完成以下三個 project 的第一階段：

• Discovering Dengue Drugs: 研製對抗登革熱、C型肝炎、西尼羅熱、黃熱病等等的藥物
• The Clean Energy Project: 目標找出下一代太陽能電池的材料，可參考這篇介紹
• Influenza Antiviral Drug Search: 目標找出新的藥物，可阻止流感病毒在體內的散佈

以上三個 project 在 2010 年都會進入第二階段，同時也會啟動新的 project。除此之外，由於社群網路的全球性熱潮，WCG 也推出一個 Facebook AP，首頁長這樣：



這個 AP 提供了以下功能：

• 自動將 WCG 的最新消息與朋友分享
• 可以在FB個人首頁加上一個tab，顯示你對 WCG 的貢獻，以及 WCG 的新聞，如下圖：

另外補充一點，從去年中我開始用Win7 beta以後，WCG Client (BOINC Manager) 就無法正確運作，可以打開執行，但是永遠抓不到 task，開啟來也是在那邊發呆，所以後來就一直放著不管它。一直到前陣子測試，在 Win7 RTM (6.1.7600, x64) 上搭配 6.2.28 版的 client 就可以正確運作，所以現在我的 CPU 除了在我種田的時候以外再也沒機會吃閒飯啦！



以下是目前WCG 的統計數字(2010/2/8)：

項目	全球	台灣
Member 數	498,007	2,542
Total Run Time	316,920 uears	3861 years

看來台灣區的member還蠻少的，希望未來可以越來越多，讓WCG計畫可以順利的持續運作下去，雖然 IBM 的東西很貴，但是他們願意支持這樣有意義的計畫，真的是很不錯阿！

New World Community Grid Project – Influenza Antiviral Drug Search

距離上次 World Community Grid 啟動的新專案 – Help Fight Childhood Cancer 不久，前幾天收到 World Community Grid 寄來的信，最近開始了一個新的 Research Project
- Influenza Antiviral Drug Search，顧名思義，就是要研發對抗流感的藥物，主要針對那些已經對一般藥物產生抗藥性的強大流感病毒。

如果你不想讓你的 CPU 繼續吃閒飯，那麼可以藉由這個機會加入這個人類對抗病毒的大戰！！

Mail 的內容如下：

Title: World Community Grid - You Can Help Fight Influenza!
World Community Grid has started a new research project that will use your donated computer time to find new drugs that can stop the spread of an influenza infection in an individual. The research will specifically address the influenza strains that have become drug resistant, as well as new strains that are appearing. Your computer will help identify the chemical compounds that are the best candidates. This will accelerate the efforts to develop treatments that would be useful in managing seasonal influenza outbreaks and future influenza epidemics.
If you are currently contributing and want to check to see if you are contributing to this project, click here. If you are no longer contributing but would like to contribute to this project, please click here.

For more information about the Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project or other projects running on World Community Grid, please click here.

Influenza Antiviral Drug Search 計畫首頁的說明如下：

Project Status and Findings: 
If you have comments or questions about this project, please visit the Influenza Antiviral Drug Search forum. For specific questions about the project, please go to the Influenza Antiviral Drug Search FAQs.

Mission
The mission of the Influenza Antiviral Drug Search project is to find new drugs that can stop the spread of an influenza infection in the body. The research will specifically address the influenza strains that have become drug resistant as well as new strains that are appearing. Identifying the chemical compounds that are the best candidates will accelerate the efforts to develop treatments that would be useful in managing seasonal influenza outbreaks, and future influenza epidemics and even pandemics.

Significance
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world die each year as a result of influenza infections. If a particularly virulent strain emerges that is readily transmitted among humans, a pandemic can potentially kill millions of people. The influenza virus mutates rapidly and therefore new varieties of influenza appear each year. Influenza vaccines are designed to anticipate the strains likely to be prevalent for the next flu season but can often miss newly evolved varieties. While drugs such as oseltamivir (commercial name Tamiflu) and zanamivir (commercial name Relenza) help keep influenza from spreading in the body, they do not work for all types of influenza and new drug resistant forms of influenza evolve and cannot be treated with these drugs. When drug resistant strains emerge, manufacturers designing vaccines may not be able to respond quickly enough to prevent a large outbreak of the disease. This project will search for promising new drug leads that stop the replication of the influenza viruses within the body, potentially helping patients who are not immune to a particular form of influenza. The discovery of both broad-spectrum and specific antiviral drugs is expected to significantly improve global health.

Approach
One promising approach to combat these viruses and prevent them from causing disease is to develop new drugs that inhibit neuraminidase (N1, N2, etc), NS1 protein, hemagglutinin, and possibly other targets that influenza needs to spread in the body. Using the known chemical structures of these target molecules, the project will perform virtual chemistry experiments and determine which of millions of known compounds attach to these target molecules in a manner that can disable or inhibit them, thus potentially keeping the influenza virus from spreading in the body. These experiments are performed using a program called AutoDock, from the Scripps Research Institute. This software is used for several other projects on World Community Grid. These include FightAIDS@Home, Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together, and Help Fight Childhood Cancer projects. Once drug candidates are identified using World Community Grid, then additional laboratory work, testing and ultimately drug trials will be required. This will likely not lead to any immediate treatments for influenza during the current H1N1 outbreak. However, influenza viruses cause recurrent seasonal disease outbreaks and have the potential for evolving into dangerous forms. Thus, proceeding on this project at this time will give us a better chance to be prepared for more serious outbreaks in the future.
In an effort to spread the words about WCG, I will include a link to my last post about WCG – here it is: Help Fight Childhood Cancer

world community grid (WCG)– Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Just received the newsletter from WCG, which is about a new project – Help Fight Childhood Cancer. This project aims to find a therapy which helps to cure a severe childhood cancer – neuroblastoma.

Since I’m clearly no expert in cancer or the related research, I think it’s best to post the entire letter from the WCG team.The following is the fulltext of the newsletter:

You Can Help End Childhood Cancer
Alert to all members of World Community Grid - your donated computer cycle time may now help find a cure for childhood cancers! There is a group of cancers that are particularly loathsome because they normally only strike young children.

Neuroblastoma is one of these cancers, arising in children under the age of two and resulting in a less than 40% survival rate.

While scientists have uncovered the three proteins that enable this cancer to grow, they now need to search the three million drug candidates for a treatment. And your computer can help us complete this search in the next year.

If you are currently contributing and want to check to see if you are contributing to this project, click here. If you are no longer contributing but would like to contribute to this project, please click here.

The cause of neuroblastoma is unknown, but most physicians believe that it is an accidental cell growth that occurs during normal development of the sympathetic ganglia and adrenal glands. It occurs most often during the first two years of a child's life, and has a high risk for disease relapse with survival rates of less than 40 percent.

The rapid advancement of genetic research at Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute holds great promise for treating neuroblastoma. The new Help Fight Childhood Cancer project will use the idle computational power from your computer to identify which of the three million potential drug candidates can inhibit growth of three particular proteins believed to prevent successful treatment via conventional approaches, such as chemotherapy.

"Our promising research will be further advanced by the free computing power we will use from World Community Grid," said Dr. Akira Nakagawara, the principal investigator at the Chiba Cancer Center Research Institute. "It would take us about 100 years using our own computing resources to make progress, but with access to one of the world's largest virtual supercomputers, we estimate to complete this project in two years, and begin laboratory trials."

Dr. Nakagawara recently earned the Princess Takamatsu Cancer Research Fund Prize 2008 for his neuroblastoma research. In his work, he discovered that one protein, TrkB, is expressed at high levels in aggressive neuroblastomas and enhances the tumor cell's growth. World Community Grid will conduct complex chemistry simulations to determine which drug candidates bond to TrkB, as well as the proteins ALK and SCxx, so that those can be tested further in the laboratory. All results will be made available to the general scientific community to advance the field of cancer biology and drug discovery.

For more information about the Help Fight Childhood Cancer Project and other projects running on World Community Grid, please click here.

We sincerely appreciate your wonderful support!
The following is the fulltext of the project introduction:

Project Status and Findings:  
Information on the Help Fight Childhood Cancer project may be found on these pages, on the Chiba University Help Fight Childhood Cancer website (Japanese here) and on Chiba Cancer Center's Help Fight Childhood Cancer website (Japanese here). The latest status updates may also be found at this site. To discuss or ask questions about this project, please visit the Help Fight Childhood Cancer Forum.

Mission

The mission of the Help Fight Childhood Cancer project is to find drugs that can disable three particular proteins associated with neuroblastoma, one of the most frequently occurring solid tumors in children. Identifying these drugs could potentially make the disease much more curable when combined with chemotherapy treatment.

Significance

Neuroblastoma is one of the most common tumors occuring in early childhood and is the most common cause of death in children with solid cancer tumors. If this project is successful, it could dramatically increase the cure rate for neuroblastoma, providing the breakthrough for this disease that has eluded scientists thus far.
 
Approach

Proteins (molecules which are a bound collection of atoms) are the building blocks of all life processes. They also play an important role in the progress of diseases such as cancer.

Scientists have identified three particular proteins involved with neuroblastoma, which if disabled, could make the disease much more curable by conventional methods such as chemotherapy. This project is performing virtual chemistry experiments between these proteins and each of the three million drug candidates that scientists believe could potentially block the proteins involved. A computer program called AutoDock will test if the shape of the protein and shape of each drug candidate fit together and bond in a suitable way to disable the protein.

This work consists of 9 million virtual chemistry experiments, each of which would take hours to perform on a single computer, totaling over 8,000 years of computer time. World Community Grid is performing these computations in parallel and is thus speeding up the effort dramatically. The project is expected to be completed in two years or less.
In an effort to spread the words about WCG, I will include a link to my last post about WCG – here it is: WCG-The Clean Energy Project

WCG Program Status Update:


Global
Total Members: 434,685
Total Devices: 1,212,255
Total Run Time: 227,282 years

Taiwan
Total Members: 2,370
Total Devices: 11,861
Total Run Time: 2,554 years
Me: please see the bottom of the page :)

WorldCommunityGrid(WCG) – The Clean Energy Project

話說…今年七月中的時候寫了一篇介紹 WCG 的文章，當時run了一個月左右，
排名在17萬多，不知不覺已經run了半年(2008/6/14 ~ 12/14)，
排名變成2萬5千多，似乎很難再進步了 XD (砍泥這個偷懶的傢伙進步更慢…)
之前run的時候發現一件麻煩的事情，就是WCG Client必須要用administrator身份執行，
因此每次開機就會在 Notification Area (工具列最右邊的區塊，一直搞不懂中文叫啥 =.=)
看到 WCG Client被禁止執行的訊息，真的是被這個UAC的機制搞得很煩，
但是為了安全只好每次都手動去啟動 WCG Client，但是現在可以避免這個麻煩 囉！
前陣子在看log檔的時候發現，有出新版的 Client，而且好像有接到新的project的task，
於是上去了久違的WCG官網，果然出了最新的「6.2.28 版」Client，更新之後發現，
現在不需要administrator的權限就可以順利的執行 WCG Client 囉！
相信這個修正對於使用 Vista 以上 OS 的 member 來說是個大好消息，
雖然 Vista 出了這麼久，這個更新來的有點慢 XD
（在 Win7 Blog 上 10 月初對 UAC 的討論中提到，目前大部分的軟體都已經不再需要 administrator 權限就可正確執行了，對於系統安全性有很大的幫助。）
除了 Client 的改進之外，前陣子也推出一個新的 project –> Clean Energy Project，
剛好搭上最近很熱門的能源議題，感覺現在開始 run 是有點慢了 Orz
這個 project 是要利用電腦作分子的物理性質和電子結構的運算，
試圖找出最適合用來作為下個世代的太陽能電池的材料，
聽起來蠻複雜的，希望可以很順利的進行下去～
喔對了，WCG 計畫現在已經有 41萬8千多個 member (台灣有 2,293 人)，
註冊的機器超過 114 萬台 (台灣有 11,044 台)，累積運算時間超過 20 萬年，
共完成超過 2億2千萬個 task (統技數據)。

WCG網格計畫 (World Community Grid)

六月份的時候，看到 TWGrid 有一篇新聞，講到 IBM 在 2004 年成立的 WCG 計畫 (World Community Grid)，後來在 6/14 就下載了 Agent 開始 Run，總覺得跟現在的工作相比，這樣對世界比較有貢獻，反正每天晚上電腦就開著給他跑，除了抓一些盜版的影片以外，也貢獻一些資源出來。

目前這個計畫的參與者有 39萬多人，共註冊了100多萬台機器，每天平均貢獻的 CPU Time 有 12x 年的樣子，自己 run 完的 job 有分數可以拿，目前我排名 17萬2千多（努力設法累積 Project Badge中:p），感覺累積這些數字比 online game 的數字有意義的多，如果有興趣的話，請至 WCG 官網。