change the world … [ with your computer ] Joining IBM Corporation and more than 100 companies, associations, foundations and academic institutions, United Way of Williamson County has become a partner of World Community Grid — and is encouraging others to join and contribute their idle PC time to assist humanitarian research as well. World Community Grid uses grid technology to establish a permanent, flexible infrastructure that provides researchers with a readily available pool of computational power that can be used to solve problems plaguing humanity. Grid technology joins together many individual computers, creating a large system with massive computational power that far exceeds the power of a few supercomputers. Importantly, World Community Grid is easy and safe to use. To join, go to www.worldcommunitygrid.org, then download and install a free, small software program on your computer(s). When idle, computers request data from World Community Grid’s server. Computers then perform computations using this data, send the results back to the server and prompt it for a new piece of work. “United Way of Williamson County is always looking for efficient and effective ways to make a difference on problems that plague humanity,” said Jennifer Edwards, chief professional officer of United Way of Williamson County. “We are asking our supporters to join World Community Grid as part of our overall effort to enrich the lives of our community.” In its first year, World Community Grid ran the Human Proteome Folding Project, which provided scientists with data on how individual proteins within the human body affect human health, enabling them to develop new cures for diseases like lyme disease, malaria and tuberculosis. Scientists now have descriptions of 120,000 protein domains that are critical to human well-being; without the benefit of this free grid technology, it would have taken 5 years to get these results, compared with just 12 months on World Community Grid. On Nov. 21, 2005, World Community Grid launched FightAIDS@Home. FightAIDS@Home, which is sponsored by The Scripps Research Institute, is using computational methods to identify new candidate drugs to block HIV protease, a key molecular structure that when blocked, stops the virus from maturing and thus is a way of avoiding the onset of AIDS and prolonging life. Possible future projects will address global humanitarian issues, such as new and existing infectious disease research; genomic and disease research; and natural disasters and hunger. United Way of Williamson County is asking that members who join World Community Grid become a member of the United Way of Williamson County team. Please go to www.worldcommunitygrid.org and become a member today.

© 2008 United Way of Williamson County