In the last month Team TSA has made it into the top 2000 F@H teams. It is getting harder to climb up the ranks as we get higher but with 88 members having contributed our team is growing. Join us for some paper cut-free folding and hopefully by next month we will break into the top 1500.

What is Folding@Home?

It is an application the makes use of your PS3’s processing power to solve biological puzzles.  These particular puzzles are looking at how protein molecules assemble themselves or ‘fold’.  Proteins are exceptionally important molecules and F@H’s biomedical research is currently studying diseases like Alzheimer’s, Huntingdon’s, Parkinson’s and cancer as well as working to develop new antibiotics.

Other research aided by F@H recently has been the, very topical, study of the influenza virus looking at how mutations might affect transmission rates of different strains of the virus to help predict and understand future pandemics.  It is not only biomedical science that benefits either.  Earlier this year two of the principal scientists behind F@H presented a paper entitled “Folding@home: lessons from eight years of distributed computing” at the IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium.

By contributing to F@H you are helping advance biology, chemistry and computer science, you get to do your bit for the good of humanity, become part of the most powerful distributed computing cluster in the world, according to Guinness, and join in with TSA’s community.  If you often listen to music stored on your PS3’s HDD then your PS3 could be Folding while you listen.  So go on, join our team and see how high you can climb in our list of TSA’s top 50 folders.

How do you Join the Team?

The first step is to make sure that you change your PS3’s F@H identity from the default “PS3″ to your TSA ID.  It could be anything but if you use your TSA ID it will help us recognise you.  Then you will need to tell the F@H application you want to be in our team.

Not Just For PS3s

Remember that you do not have to ‘Fold’ only (or at all) on your PS3 to contribute.  See last month’s update, Cb’s recent post or the forum for more info.

TSA’s Top 50 Folders