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laptops can help cure world hunger

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Next time you get up from your computer, consider this - you could be helping scientists discover new ways to attack the global food crisis, find a cure for cancer or understand the impact of climate change on Africa.You can do so not by giving money or time, but by sharing your computer's unused processing power with a nonprofit network organized by IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) known as the World Community Grid. So many people - 383,558, last time I looked - and so many devices - 989,479 - have signed up for the grid that it now packs as much power as the third most-powerful supercomputer in the world.The World Community Grid launched in 2004, the same year as Facebook. Think of it as social networking for the common good.This week, IBM announced its latest grid project - an effort by a research team at the University of Washington to develop stronger and more nourishing strains of rice. Ram Samudrala, a 36-year-old PhD who leads a 30-member research team, says it would have taken them decades to complete their rice research using the computing power at their disposal. With access to the World Community Grid, he says, he could generate results in less than two years.The work is timely, of course, given rising food prices and global shortages of rice. But projects like this can't be cobbled together in response to a headline. Stan Litow, IBM's vice president of corporate citizenship, told me that the overseers of the grid have been talking with Samudrala and his team for about a year."There are certain kinds of research, like studying 60,000 rice proteins, that require the heft of one of the world's largest supercomputers," Litow told me.Five other research efforts - aimed at better understanding cancer, climate change, AIDS, drugs for dengue fever and human proteome folding - are also underway. All findings from the research must be left in the public domain.
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