Gamers unravel Scientific Mystery by AnthonyT

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Gamers unravel Scientific Mystery

POSTED BY: ANTHONYT
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 03:43
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Monday, September 19, 2011 6:15 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/online-gamers-crack-aids-enzym
e-puzzle-161920724.html

Hello,

I thought this was interesting. It reminds me of certain works of science fiction, where a piece of software or a game or puzzle are not what they seem to be, but are rather tools for analyzing human behavior, recruiting soldiers, or some other disguised purpose.

I wonder what other benevolent ends the human mind might be tasked to pursue, without the participants even being fully cognizant of what wonders they are in the process of uncovering.

--Anthony

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"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Monday, September 19, 2011 7:02 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

AWESOME!

Same story - different source

http://www.rdmag.com/Life-Science-Computing-Gamers-crack-enzyme-puzzle
-make-AIDS-breakthrough/?et_cid=2106931&et_rid=259410134&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.rdmag.com%2fLife-Science-Computing-Gamers-crack-enzyme-puzzle-make-AIDS-breakthrough%2f

Players of the video game Foldit, a protein modeling program, have unlocked the structure of the protein CASP9, which is involved in the virus that causes simian AIDS. The breakthrough has eluded laboratory scientists for 15 years, yet, amazingly, the teams of gamers that worked on the problem needed just three weeks to make the correct decisions regarding the structure.

The difference maker, according to researchers who had previously worked on the problem, was the ability of Foldit and its users to make large-scale changes to the structure on a rapid basis. Previous modeling efforts conducted on dedicated supercomputers had locked researchers into certain assumptions on the most likely structure. Their ability to test variations on these assumptions was limited. The scope of Foldit allowed a much greater degree of freedom with regard to CASP9.

Recently confirmed by x-ray crystallography and published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, the finding illustrates the experimental potential of Foldit, a computer program developed at the University of Washington several years ago. Built by many of the same people that developed the Rosetta@home utility. Foldit allows users to not only contribute their personal computer’s computation power to the modeling of proteins, but also contribute their brains’ 3-D pattern-matching abilities to the complex problem of protein folding.

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither....

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Tuesday, September 20, 2011 1:41 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
I wonder what other benevolent ends the human mind might be tasked to pursue, without the participants even being fully cognizant of what wonders they are in the process of uncovering.

Insert The Last Starfighter reference here.

This is indeed very cool, though.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2011 2:09 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Totally the reason I've been dogging it on XBox. If I played up to my potential, I'd have been drafted years ago.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:01 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I think there are many more such applications, and not just for relatively limited applications such as protein unfolding.

Anything significant that we as a species have ever done, we've done together.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:42 AM

BYTEMITE

Not to diminish the accomplishments of gamers, but the Rosetta model doesn't look that much different from the gamer model, and both seem to be missing that last central alpha helix group.

I confess myself dubious.

But hey, I guess this will help with AIDs research.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2011 7:51 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Not one of us is near as able as all of us.
The human will is an amazing thing, when looked at from a perspective like this - and of course one of my dreams is to sever the chains that bind it, mutilate it, restrict it to the whims of fools, and by that action allow it to fly, one day bringing us to the stars which are our future, unbound by artificial divisions of a type which as you see, made no difference here.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Wednesday, September 21, 2011 3:43 AM

BYTEMITE

So long as that doesn't involve Instrumentality or The Singularity, I'm game.

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