This is just a quick post on something I've been running on my computer to help contribute to a humanitarian issue.
The software I'm running is world community grid. This is software which allows citizens anywhere in the world to contribute computing power to solving humanitarian issues.
The software was first used by SETI as part of the search for extraterrestrial life. SETI has a network of radio telescopes which listen to radio signals incoming from space. Gathering the data is only half the problem. The data then needs to be sifted through to find anomalies, which could potentially be from civilizations on other planets.
This was a massive problem especially in the 1990s when the project was first started, as computing power was very limited. SETI came up with the genius solution of allowing computer owners from around the world to coordinate and each download a small segment of the data gathered to perform the processing. This essentially allowed for the creation of a distributed super computer.
Now this same software is being used by IBM, educational institutions, and non-profit organizations to use that same technology to tackle various humanitarian issues. Many of them related to bio-tech and fighting deadly diseases like cancer and the zika virus.
I've made my first contribution by completing a work unit and having it automatically uploaded. Here is part of the email I received from World Community Grid this morning.
Congratulations on completing and returning your very first World Community Grid task, helping the Mapping Cancer Markers research team advance their work. We thank you for your contribution and look forward to your ongoing support to cutting-edge research on important global humanitarian causes.
The particular issue I'm working on (simply by running a program in the background on my computer, only when CPU use is low, and power is plugged in) is mapping cancer markers. The issue is explained more in depth in the video below.
As a bonus you can get free ByteBall by pairing your account on World Community Grid to the ByteBall team and syncing your account using the ByteBall app.
You can check out my post on how to get started with ByteBall here. Once you have it installed start a conversation with the "World Community Grid linking bot" to start earning ByteBall for supporting charitable causes.