12.06-12.8

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/look-whos-curing-cancer.html
12.06
For the past four years, Lauren Moran has devoted herself to groundbreaking cancer research, chronicling the fickle interaction between molecules and proteins. Despite having a full...

Moran's laptop displays a screen saver of her latest WCG assignment, but the science, she admits, is "way over my head. I just know when I'm not using my computer, it's crunching numbers that could lead to a cure."

12.07
Most of us use our computers about as efficiently as we use our brains: We scratch the surface, never tapping the full potential. WCG exploits this unused computing power by borrowing ...

WCG, which hosted one project its first year, now runs a half dozen or more simultaneously. The latest: In hopes of discovering new organic electronic materials that could lead to cheaper solar cells, Aspuru-Guzik is screening about 2 million chemical compounds for photovoltaic properties. That's roughly 20,000 times more compounds than he could analyze on a single computer. And the project will take only a couple of years, instead of two decades.

12.08

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/look-whos-curing-cancer.html?page=0%2C1

The IBM team is acutely aware that its public grid is only as effective as the public allows it to be....

Worldwide, there are several dozen large public grids, says Berstis.Their membership tends to top out in the tens of thousands, while WCG continues to grow by several thousand members a week. Although IBM promotes the effort on Facebook, at conferences, and internally, the volunteers themselves are the best recruiters. Some 400 companies and schools that have signed on as partners receive marketing tools to spread the word. Today, people on some 24,000 teams -- from Slashdot Users (3,953 members) and Facebook (382) to Team Boulder (413), run by teenage brothers Grant and Max Buster in Colorado -- blog and post Web videos about the grid.