A group of scientists and major technology corporations asked people around the world on Tuesday to use their personal computers to help develop a treatment for anthrax.
Members of the Anthrax Research Project, including chipmaker Intel, software maker Microsoft, computing services provider United Devices, the National Foundation for Cancer Research and Oxford University, announced the effort in a press release.
Individuals can participate in the project by downloading a screensaver at Intel's Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer Program and donating their PC's spare resources to build a virtual supercomputer capable of analyzing billions of molecules in a fraction of the time it would take in a laboratory, the group said.
The screensaver runs whenever computation resources are available. Once processing is complete, the program sends the results back to the United Devices' data center and requests a new packet of data the next time the user connects to the Internet.
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