ACA Presentation 2009, Part 3
Note: Part 1,Part 2 are here if you missed them.
Some of you may be thinking “I’m not really interested in starting a blog”. That’s okay. However, I believe that there are big opportunities available to those who create online communities. The benefits being accessibility, changing the status quo, education and serving other’s needs.
A great example would be FoldIt– an innovative idea that takes a look at the protein folding problem. How many people do you think are currently trying to predict the 3-dimensional structures of proteins? 500? Maybe….1,000? Try over 105,000. This is what David Baker’s lab at the University of Washington has managed to do. They’ve designed an online game called FoldIt. Participants compete against each other to be the first to properly fold a protein.
Humans are now considered competition for even the most sophisticated prediction servers. Coming to this realization, the Baker lab is now analyzing how humans are solving the protein folding problem. They’re taking that information and incorporating it into their new software. All this is possible, why? Because the Baker Lab has built an online community.
FoldIt is Accessible. It encourages Change by providing a new way to solve the protein folding problem. The participants can Educate themselves and, by solving these structures, educate the Baker lab and help them create new and improved programs. Users are able to serve the scientific community by donating their time and brain power. The scientists, who benefit from this help, can then take these solved structures and, somewhere down the road, use it to give back to the community by, perhaps, introducing new vaccinations or drugs.
Part 4
Unfolded
August 5th, 2009 at 6:24 PM #
Foldit is just for “fun”, if you enjoy the game. The idea that “my game playing contribute to curing diseases” is ridiculous and they don’t even bother explaining it on their webpage. The score is base on an algorithm, and as everybody that has played computer games knows that we try our best to optimize the score, based on the rules. Give me greater score for helices and yea, I’ll make more of them…… I don’t care about the “cellular” function. I only want a high score.
Let’s be honest, this is a way to burn time while collecting datasets.
Sean
August 7th, 2009 at 4:33 PM #
I am unsure how much depth you want in an explanation, but the basic ideas are here:
http://fold.it/portal/info/science
ACA Presentation 2009, Part 2 - P212121
August 14th, 2009 at 11:56 AM #
[...] Note: Part 1 is here if you missed it. How was P212121.com made? I started this blog in February of this year. After making that decision, my first step was to come up with an available domain name. I wanted a name that was related to crystallography and that was easy to type and remember. I finally settled on P212121. I chose this name because it’s the most common space group in macromolecular crystallography. I bought the domain through 1and1.com for 7 dollars and I was the proud owner of P212121.com for a year. Once you buy a domain name, you can renew your ownership whenever you want. So, you don’t have to worry about someone else buying the name when your year is up. Once I purchased the domain I had set up hosting with 1and1.com so my website could be displayed on the internet. That cost is about $6 a month. So, if you can come up with a name that’s available and make at least $80 a year, you can do this. The website runs using Wordpress which is convenient since it virtually eliminates the need to learn code. Wordpress is a downloadable program that offers blog templates (here are some free examples). The best part is the coding is already done and many of the layouts are free. You just pick one out. It’s all pretty simple once you get to this point. The layout is really user-friendly. If you have a message you think is worth spreading by blogging and would like some help, feel free to drop me an email (sean@p212121.com). Part 3 [...]
ACA Presentation 2009, Part 4 - P212121
August 22nd, 2009 at 6:34 PM #
[...] Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 are here if you missed them. Can your research benefit from creating an online community? Since [...]