Folding Forum

I have been folding for a while now, and I am wondering why people are folding?

I am during it because:
Main reason is a "What if I got one of those diseases and by folding now I could live with a few more "nice" years if am folding now"-scenarie ?
Sitting at another univerity and working with modelling (mainly fasset.dk) as tech I am interested in the science and Technical approach by folding@home
And a little bit of showing off

Why ar you folding?

I find this project very fascinating. I'm majoring in Computer Science, and I find parallel processing particularly interesting. Instead of using an expensive fast computer, how can the problem be divided up and solved in pieces concurrently? I have a lot of respect for people that can take seemingly serial tasks and parallelize them. I also like molecular biology, and I continue to be astonished by how "smart" biological cells actually are. It's so cool how a collection of wiggling molecules can accomplish so much and keep the cell alive.

This project continues to take huge leaps forward, and is making excellent progress in helping find cures for our most devastating diseases. My sister was just 12 years old when she died from cancer in her chest, as chemotherapy was ineffective and surgery/radiation were not viable. Even the clever drugs used by Burzynski's Clinic were not able to eliminate it. We need better solutions, and better drugs. There's a lot of people working towards this problem, and I'm so thankful and exciting that I can help accelerate what looks like the front lines. I know of no other way of do this acceleration and see the results of our efforts. I've read through the majority of the F@h publications, and many of them introduce an task critical to understanding something, express how difficult it is to solve, and then explain how they overcame it with F@h. Seriously impressive.

My computer is stationary most of the time anyway, and I'm now at the point where I'm bothered if it's not running F@h. Guess that makes it an addition. I think the community here is pretty great, I learn something new from this forum all the time. F@h combines computer science, molecular biology, parallelization, and productive top-notch research, all of which I'm interested in. That's why I fold.

I fold because I want to put diseases like cancer and others - which have affected my family and friends - into the garbage can of history.

It keep my bedroom warm in the winter

i started out doing it to help out the research, but now i don't feel right if i am not folding.

My computer needed a hobby, something to keep it off the internet super highway at night.

This is my post on EVGA's forums. I didn't see this type of topic here, and figured maybe we could all share stories on why we fold. Below is my story that I also posted on EVGA's forums.

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Why do I fold? This question is probably one of the hardest questions that I have attempted to answer. Explaining it to people who are not tech geeks is even worse.

Why do I fold? I fold because as a 28 year old single child helping take care of his mother who has early onset Alzheimer's disease, watching helplessly as the person that I call Mom slowly slip away into the depths of a dark disease that cares not about the families it destroys, the memories it erases, or stealing the love and compassion that only a mother can give. I fold because I don't want others to have to experience the painful trip through the stages of Alzheimer's Disease, to see every day the person that you love, the person that raised you by herself working tirelessly every day to ensure you had a warm place to live, food in your belly, and clothes on your back, slowly slip into the dark depths of hell that is Alzheimer's Disease.

I fold because I have seen first hand, on more than one occasion what cancer can do to a person. I've seen the toll it takes on family, friends, nurses, doctors, the young, the old, and everyone in between. Cancer has shown its awful face in my family more than once, and it continues to creep up from time to time. I've had my family torn apart by cancer. Like Alzheimer's, cancer doesn't care who's life it destroy's, it doesn't care that your grandmother is only 57, or your grandfather 52, or your great grandmother into her 80's, or your uncle in his 60's, or another uncle into his 70's, or your mother while battling Alzheimer's also has to battle breast cancer. The trips to the hospitals, to doctor's offices, countless hours worrying and wondering if this would be the last time you ever see or talk to them. And in the end, the always inevitable trip to the funeral home and graveside for services.

I fold because I want a small part of my legacy as a human being to be contributing to the better good of man kind. To help science improve treatments for terminal diseases like HIV, Alzheimer's, Cancer, and others. I fold because I want to leave my planet and my fellow human beings in a better position to continue to taking care of our future generations.

I fold because no one should have to suffer through the heartache, the pain, the guilt, the sleepless nights, the anger, the financial hardship that these terrible diseases so lovingly give to the families of the victims. I fold because I hope one day, when a 10 year old child gets the news from his Mother or Father that one of them has cancer, that they can look at their child in the eye and say "Don't worry, the doctor has a cure and I will be going tomorrow to see him." I fold because while I may not suffer directly from these diseases, I suffer from the effects of the diseases on the families.

I fold....because I care.

Wow.

There's a similar topic here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=20297

Well shucks. Thats why I didn't see it. It's buried down the list Maybe the moderators can make this a sticky??

Edit by Mod: Topic stickied and merged.

Thank you to the moderator who stickied this.

I don't really know why I fold, but it just feels wrong not to... I like to know that I am offering my contributions to science, and that one day we may know all the answers that we seek for :/ Though I know what my computer does 24/7 will hardly make a difference, but it's just like turning off the lights when you go out I guess. If everyone does it, then it would probably make a huge difference in the world. Though not many people that I know seem to give a damn about the world...

I started folding 7 years ago when it was proposed as a group project in a online forum I was a participant in. Forget what diseases were listed as being investigated then, but I recall that at least a couple were of interest to me. The group still has about a dozen and a half folders still, some have gone through deaths, others because they did not see immediate benefit to medical research. I continued because it does contribute to the base of knowledge. Between losing a grandfather to stomach cancer, a grandmother to diabetes and Alzheimers and other family and friends to other causes, the project resonates with me.

On a personal level I still fold after going through treatment for stage 3 colon cancer in 2010. Someday hopefully the research done by F@H will help in the treatment, cure and possibly prevention of cancers. I am currently free of recurrence, but others are not.

I've been fortunate enough that my dad being diagnosed with rectal cancer at a very early stage is the entirety of the extent to which my immediate family has been affected by serious diseases (the odds of me being getting it down the line are rather high, but since I know about it my doctor should also be able to catch it very early). But I realize that there are far too many people who are affected by these diseases, and I would love to be a part, however small, of curing them. Perhaps it's the desire to be part of something greater than myself that I don't get elsewhere.

At this point I don't see any good reason not to; I can afford the power costs, I don't mind the noise (in fact, when I'm away from home the lack of fan noise takes a bit of getting used to), and I don't worry about any reduction in hardware lifespan (I'll upgrade long before then). I'm never going to make a contribution to chemistry or biology through my work (I'm a computer engineer), but I can help some very knowledgeable people make theirs.

#Zagen30: "never going to make a contribution to chemistry or biology through my work" as some hard word, speciel in a world that change so fast. I have seen at least a dozen firms that works with biology that is looking for computer engineer. Often is is cheaper to make a mathematical model/programs to test something than test it out in the real world. I also started out as an computer engineer but I am now working with an Agroecology model (more spicific a whole farm model http://fasset.dk/). If you want the source code for it I can give it to you since I convinced my boss that we should put it under LGPL licens

Why do I fold.. There is no short answer I suppose. The easiest thing to say would be because of many of the reasons listed prior to my post. I had cancer at the age of 22. Friends and family and people I don't know die, or suffer of illnesses we don't fully understand. Computers are a hobby to me, I have several in my house and many years ago I stumbled upon my first distributed computed project of I believe that exact name. It was a group set up to enter contests to crack encryption, or whatever bids they could take or get involved in (moo! anyone?). I ran far less systems, but always thought the theory of distributed computing was cool, and since I'm a believer in leaving my PC's on (generally), I figured why not put them to use while I was away.

After many years of doing that, I saw this little ditty on the news about SETI online, how they were using the same ideals as what I was in, but.. for a more practical, in my opinion use. I started searching online as the reporter revealed there were actually several of these types of projects, scattered from think-tank to university, all looking for "the average Joe and his idle PC". Short searches later I found this project, and started reading up on it. Obviously I liked what I saw, and immediately began taking part. While I ran only one PC for the other project, I instantly realized when taking up this project the waste to the world I'd be guilty of if not to harness the most that I could, so it went on every PC, and continues to do so with each additional rig that enters the house. My family (have several kids) and I also are big into video games, and have several consoles in use often. As an aside, I really wish the Pande Group and Microsoft could work out a deal, I'd have 4 more units to contribute with if they would. But since that hasn't come to pass, I did literally buy a PS3 JUST to fold with. We own maybe 3 games really, just for the folding that PS3 was bought.

I don't really know how much of a dent to anything I've put. But I do know that I honestly feel a sense of pride knowing that in some small way I too have helped fight for humanity. I may not have the education to run such a project, or develop the code behind it, or clearly not the education to get into the biology and medical side of things, but I can build PC's, I can run software, and I can pay the bills to power these rigs, whether they serve another purpose or not and do my part to help those who can decipher and understand what it is their looking at, and perhaps in turn help the world, a country, a neighbor, a friend, a family member survive something profound.

That's why I do what I do.