Folding@home proposal letter to my school

[brityank]

My biology teacher who has a Phd said that one problem would be: Not many scientists use the data from Folding@home. So this will only help the small number of scientists

Hi ruth,

Your biology teacher is correct; however he wouldn't have his degree if scientists didn't collaborate and share their findings -- each would start at Ground 0. F@H is at the fore-front of finding some of the answers as to why some people get certain diseases, and most of the ones I've seen discussed are those considered hereditary. Alzheimer's seems to run in families, yet not all members show evidence. Sickle Cell is another that doesn't hit everyone in the group. The starting commonality appears to be a mis-fold in certain proteins, and that's what F@H is engaged with finding and disseminating to other scientists.

Good luck.

[ruth]

Is Folding@home sorta like a non-profit thing?
I do know that those who do take care of Folding@home and work for F@H do need to get paid.

Are more and more scientists switching to Folding@home?

[karen]

I'm a pretty new folder (so don't have any input to the letter content), but do want to offer kudos to you, Ruth, for your initiative in sending this proposal letter.
Good luck!

[ruth]

Thanks for all the compliments.

I think the Tech Department wont be saying yes to this cuz they are over worked already.
But i will request them to try it on a few computers. Like 10 computers since every little helps.

[brityank]

Is Folding@home sorta like a non-profit thing?
I do know that those who do take care of Folding@home and work for F@H do need to get paid.

Are more and more scientists switching to Folding@home?

F@H is non-profit; it is a group run by Stanford University in California. Yes, the folks at Stanford get paid, but they rely on interns from the university as well as the larger Donator Community to provide the scientific info they develop.

Go to http://folding.stanford.edu/English/About and you will see the whole explanation.

Most notably, a large bulk of our funding comes from the United States' National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF). We also thank (in alphabetical order) Apple, ATI, Dell, Google, Intel, and Sony for their support over the years. Finally, we have been supported by NIH Roadmap centers Simbios and the Protein Folding Nanomedicine Center.

[bruce]

My biology teacher who has a Phd said that one problem would be: Not many scientists use the data from Folding@home. So this will only help the small number of scientists

The Folding At Home Project has written 52 papers about the folding process, so other scientist can learn about what they have discovered. Then more scientists can expand their knowledge, and try to expanded the research further, for everyone.

Be sure to show your biology teacher this information: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Papers

When he earned his PhD, he probably published one scientific research paper, so the 54 papers (sorry Cajun_Don, but there are two more now) represent a lot of scientific progress.

Here's the way the system works. Researchers work on specific projects. When they learn something new, they write a paper. The papers are reviewed by fellow scientists and if the results really contain new information (as opposed to just restating things that were already known) the paper is published in a scholarly journal.

Other scientists read those scholarly journals. Some come up with questions which lead to new areas for research. Some will do additional research which will be published for anyone to use ("placed in the public domain") and some will do additional research for private companies (like drug companies). All of this research benefits mankind.

Some who read the scholarly journals rewrite the information into simpler, layman's terms for future textbooks and for more popular magazines like Scientific American so people like you and I will learn about the latest science. Your science teachers and your Medical Doctor probably read a couple of specific scholarly journals but they also depend on articles rewritten for the layman. (If not, they're not keeping up with the latest advances in science.)

[theMASS]

As a former system administrator, and I was much friendlier than the average admin , I wouldn't go for it as my job was to keep things running smoothly and while the cause is something I believe in, allowing anything other than necessary software to be installed on company/school machines increases the possibility of compromising the stability of "my" network (and job). Also the added work even if I didn't mind doing it or allocating staff would take time from other projects that "always are on the back burner."

Another approach is to make students, faculty, and family aware, then you're shifting away from computers that are tightly regulated and "necessary," to home users which depending on demographics are likely to have newer (faster) computers than schools or non technical companies. My children attend a very "planet conscious" middle school that sends out weekly emails to parents with school information and status updates of various fund raising projects. I've been lazy lately but now that you bring the idea back up, I'm going to speak to the "Powers that be" at the school and see if I can get a "F@H recruitment page (or paragraph)" added to next week's PDF/DOC. If they go for it I'll put up a "follow these steps page" showing parents how to install F@H and how to join the school's "new" F@H team. As we know competition increases interest and output, so I'll have to have my kids do the dirty work of having their friends go home and nag their parents to fold because Alexander's family is in the lead and Amanda's family just started and "we're never going to catch them if we don't start NOW!"

Another bonus in this particular scenario is instead of going after the 100 or so aging computers on campus, I'm now going after potentially 1,000-1,500 computers and a high percentage of them are recent model computers.

So I semi-retract my opening statement. Your letter DID convinced this former admin to get F@H running on more than just my personal machines... even though I know I will become tech support ...well I guess I can steer them to this forum

SO GO FOR IT! WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE?

hmmm.. now you really got me thinking... I wonder how many PS3s the kids got for Christmas?....

[randomperson1]

Hi, I just found out about FAH and I am asking my school whether they can run it. Just a few questions:

1. Would it require any config to run on a windows domain (such as getting the screensaver to run when people are logged off)
2. Would it have any adverse effects on the performance of the computers at school? I have noticed that it doesn't affect me much on my computer, I hardly notice the difference.
3. Would the school start worrying about their electricity bill? (!)
4. Does it cause the CPU to heat up significantly or can it make a system unstable?
5. Any other issues?

Thanks for any advice!

[ruth]

I agree to what you wrote (theMass)
But i dont see the kids doing it very much

All the kids in our school are spoiled rich kids which iPhones and what not. Most of them dont even care about school and thier life. And maybe out of like 1000+ kids in our school maybe 10 of them will be serious about it. On a second thought, maybe 1 of them...me

School will have to start with like 5 computers and then 10 and then 20 and then a more and more.

If our school does it, i would have to think that they did it only because they saw a possibility in the national spotlight with their Folding@home cause

[ruth]

The principal ask me to make an appointment with his assistant to talk to me sometime next week.
Looking good so far.

[ruth]

Hi, I just found out about FAH and I am asking my school whether they can run it. Just a few questions:

1. Would it require any config to run on a windows domain (such as getting the screensaver to run when people are logged off)
2. Would it have any adverse effects on the performance of the computers at school? I have noticed that it doesn't affect me much on my computer, I hardly notice the difference.
3. Would the school start worrying about their electricity bill? (!)
4. Does it cause the CPU to heat up significantly or can it make a system unstable?
5. Any other issues?

Thanks for any advice!

Can someone please answer these questions since i know the principal will be asking me these for sure!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[uncle fuzzy]

1- A service install of v5.04 or v6.0 would be unseen and not require anything special to be done to the computers. It would fold as long as the computer does not go to sleep or hibernate. It should continue running through multiple logins/logouts.
2- It shouldn't have any impact, but they might want to run at less than 100% if they're nervous.
3- Folding would draw more power than an idle computer. I won't guess how much more.
4- Yes, maybe yes. Most people set the cpu usage % to keep the core temps down. It will heat up. Folding can affect stability, but if these are stock machines, it's unlikely.
5- Nothing comes to mind.

Good luck.

[jrweiss]

From experience with machines of many "colors" (P3/550 -> P-M -> dual Opteron -> Core2Duo I have seen no instabilities with the CPU client. All stability problems were caused by the beta GPU and SMP clients. The CPU clients running as Services on the same machines caused no problems.

While machines will run a bit hotter with F@H running than without, I have not seen any problems with any machine (none are overclocked; all have stock cooling) coming even close to limit temps, including laptops (HP and IBM) running at 100%. If the machine runs hot without F@H, though, it will run even hotter with it.

Another possible issue is network bandwidth. Each Work Unit will download, and subsequently upload, a package of tens of KB to several MB of data. Since the size and timing of data packages will vary widely, after the initial installation the distribution of upload/download events will be relatively random. However, it is possible that occasionally a group of WUs will finish about the same time, and attempt to upload results and download new WUs from many computers in a "burst" of activity. That could slow down the network for a couple minutes. However, the probability that such an event would happen during a high usage time during the school day (6/24 hours, 5/7 days) is relatively low.

[theMASS]

Computers with less than 1GB of RAM can get sluggish. I did service installs of 5.04 on three computers with 256-512MB RAM (Pentium 4 class machines) and they were nearly unusable as email/web browsing machines. Immediate complaints from all three users.

I bumped them up to 1GB and as long as I'm not the one using them F@H is fairly transparent. (I have a bad habit of keeping 20+ sites open)

Conversely, on C2D or better machines with 2GB RAM I find the SMP client to be extremely transparent, even when using programs such as Photoshop and editing standard definition video doesn't have any perceivable slow down.

Right now I'm writing this on a C2Q with 2GB RAM running Vista (urgh) and I have 2 Lin SMP clients running under VMware Server, Photoshop Elements opened with 15 2MB images open that I'm doing minor editing on, 10 websites open, running WindowsLive Messenger & Yahoo Messenger, and playing mp3 files in Windows Media Player and not only is the machine responsive, it's doing over 4,000/PPD. This machine is overclocked 25% and uses stock cooling.

My point is... It depends on the machine.

Another thing I know from volunteering at my kids' school, open the machines and get rid of the dust! That will do more to keep the temps down than lowering CPU usage % ...and they'll be quieter. (the computers not the kids...lol)

[v00d00]

If you switch BigWU off and set the available memory to 256mb (on a 512mb machine), then sluggishness isnt a problem. Furthermore if you reduce cpu cycles percentage to 75%, it reduces the issue even more..

I'd suggest any administrator who cant run FAH on a medium spec'd computer (>=1GHz and 256-512mb ram), has done a pretty crap job of setting up the network, and the computers running on it.