Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle

[Blyaunte]

News article can be found HERE.

 

Now, when your parents say, why aren't you doing something "useful" instead of playing video games, you can tell them you are ...

 

:lol:

[Ieyfura]

News article can be found HERE.

 

Now, when your parents say, why aren't you doing something "useful" instead of playing video games, you can tell them you are ...

 

:lol:

 

 

For some reason, I just find this article very hard to believe.

[Jimmyw3000]

lol, i was doing some work experience at University College London where a researcher was explaining this concept to me.

 

Good to see it's working.

 

 

basically instead of scientists manually figuring out each arrangement of proteins/viruses, they're essentially letting the general public do the same thing for free.

[Napalm]

Sort of liike recaptcha in a bigger scale, really interesting. It's nice to know that they found a way to make the public useful.

 

I only skimmed through the article, but isn't it an over-statement to say they cracked an HIV enzyme? It seemed to me that what they were aiming for was not particularly for HIV.

[Zierro]

"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."

 

Exactly, I don't know why nobody believes me. Whenever we get invaded by aliens in 2012, you can all thank me for developing the Halo skills needed for our race's survival.

[Perakp]

Nice example of crowdsourcing.

[Duff]

"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."

 

Exactly, I don't know why nobody believes me. Whenever we get invaded by aliens in 2012, you can all thank me for developing the Halo skills needed for our race's survival.

I've always thought of how sweet it would be if we somehow got into a war with an alien race and were able to 'play' actually robots like in Halo and fight against them (instead of respawning, you'd just be given another robot). We'd just find all those MLG players and they'd do some serious work, haha. :P

[obfuscator]

Moving to OT as I think it is general enough that it can be there :)

[Giordano]

Gamers? Sounds to me more like people with some sort of interest in biology, perhaps students or bored adults. :-|

[i_love_burritos]

It's the SMH which I hate with a passion, but the paper is from Nature (probably the most important peer-reviewed scientific journal today), so eh. That's pretty cool.

 

There's similiar things too, IBM (world community grid) and multiple american universities have software which uses your computer to model certain folding proteins / cancer cures etc. (It runs all the time in the background and then sends the "results" back to them.)

 

Example; http://folding.stanford.edu/

[aeternitatis]

I like how the scientists used gaming as a way to link human and artificial intelligence in order to solve something meaningful. Interesting read.

[i_love_burritos]

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/31902.wss

[Tesset]

>gamers.

 

These nubs are casuals at best.

[fastortoise]

It's the SMH which I hate with a passion, but the paper is from Nature (probably the most important peer-reviewed scientific journal today), so eh. That's pretty cool.

 

There's similiar things too, IBM (world community grid) and multiple american universities have software which uses your computer to model certain folding proteins / cancer cures etc. (It runs all the time in the background and then sends the "results" back to them.)

 

Example; http://folding.stanford.edu/

Yeah, if it wasn't for the fact that it was published in Nature I would've wrote and angry post or something. I'm probably not gonna look that far into it however, they just figured out the 3D structure of a protease... not even close to curing AIDS.

[Furah]

It's the SMH which I hate with a passion, but the paper is from Nature (probably the most important peer-reviewed scientific journal today), so eh. That's pretty cool.

 

There's similiar things too, IBM (world community grid) and multiple american universities have software which uses your computer to model certain folding proteins / cancer cures etc. (It runs all the time in the background and then sends the "results" back to them.)

 

Example; http://folding.stanford.edu/

What do you have against the SMH?

[marcustullius]

Now we just need to tap into the ingenuity of drug smugglers.

[i_love_burritos]

What do you have against the SMH?

 

Heh, sorry I missed this.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/

 

Yeah, just look at the difference between the front page of the SMH and ABC news. The SMH has long been inching towards a more tabloid like structure (60 pages of [cabbage] that no one but middle aged women read, 10 pages of actual news.) Think "Your Sydney, Life and Style, Entertainment." I wouldn't go as far as to say they've only got hack writers but you can easily pick out bias and a tendency to support more conservative views. Plus the headlines are completely sensationalist and misleading most of the time - oh and the annoying invasive ads, being forced to watch ads to watch any video news etc etc etc. Cross promoting 2UE and 2GB is also pretty bad. Oh and the whole Fairfax, Newscorp thing isn't too encouraging either.

 

Do you like Channel 7 news ? You know when they play the blockbuster-movie music and the text comes on like a sledgehammer with the scaremongering titles and the dun-dun-dun tp match ? It's terrible isn't it ? The SMH is an online and in print version of that. (Channel 7, 9 and 10 have gone to [cabbage] too, IMHO - occasionally they'll show an interesting doco but that's about it.)

 

The only real saving grace is it's National Times (formerly "Opinion" section.)

 

I can rant about the SMH endlessly to be honest ....

[Furah]

The only times I turn on the tv any more is for ABC. Every other channel has nothing I want to watch, or a show comes on that I've watched the first few season of already because America has had the show for a while. I must admit, the only time I look at SMH article is because of a link on reddit, and I'm usually throttled and can't watch the videos anyway, but what I do read seems like quality stuff.