Greetings from World Community Grid!

A great deal has been accomplished since our October 2007 newsletter. Two new research projects, Help Conquer Cancer and Nutritious Rice for the World, were launched, while another project, AfricanClimate@Home, was finished. The migration from UD (United Devices) to BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure Networking Computing) was completed. The web site was translated into Chinese, and a number of other interesting features were added. You can read about this, and much more, in this newsletter.

If you are no longer running World Community Grid, we ask you to rejoin this great cause. Just click here to download the grid agent. Remember, it's easy, safe and free.

Most importantly, we'd like to thank each and every one of our members for their continuing participation in creating the world's largest public computing grid benefiting humanity.


Research Update
Since World Community Grid's launch in November 2004, more than
1 million devices have been registered. The computer power that our volunteer community has donated equals one PC running nonstop for more than 170,000 years. Volunteers currently are donating an average of 1,400 years of compute time per week toward humanitarian research!

With this tremendous power, World Community Grid is able to run five projects at the same time and has completed four. Our newest projects — Help Conquer Cancer and Nutritious Rice for the World — are featured below. [read more]

World Community Grid Helps Conquer Cancer
In November 2007, IBM and the research team from the Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI) launched an exciting new project called Help Conquer Cancer. This project is analyzing the structure of cancer-related proteins in order to develop drugs that may one day prevent these proteins from causing cancer. [read more]


World Community Grid Tackles Rice Crisis
As concerns around the world mount about the shortage of rice, IBM and the University of Washington have launched the Nutritious Rice for the World project to develop new strains of rice that could produce crops with larger and more nutritious yields. The project will study rice at the atomic level using the computational force of World Community Grid, one of the world's most powerful computer systems, and then combine it with traditional cross-breeding techniques used by farmers throughout history. [read more]

BOINC Migration
World Community Grid is pleased to announce that the migration to BOINC has been completed. While this migration will improve the performance of World Community Grid, it may have affected your participation. These instructions will help you ensure that you have migrated smoothly to BOINC. [read more]

New Features
World Community Grid has added some new features to make the experience of donating your computing power more personal and exciting! Members can place World Community Grid's widget on their website and obtain access to information with Forum RSS feeds and XML statistics. Additionally, members can earn badges for significant contribution to projects. For new members, we've also simplified the registration process. Last, but certainly not least, we are proud to announce that the website has been translated into Chinese. [read more]



Technical Tips
Here are a few tips that can enhance your World Community Grid experience. [read more]

World Community Grid is four years old and to commemorate four years of outstanding work, we're dedicating this video to all of you who donated your computer's idle time, and to the families and friends that will benefit from all your contributions! Watch it here!

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We want to say a giant THANK YOU to everyone who submitted their dedications for the "I Dedicate" montage video! The response was awesome, and while we couldn't include every single video, we hope you enjoy watching the finished product as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Feel free to tell everyone you know and share your World Community Grid story with them too.

Happy 4th Anniversary!


The World Community Grid Team

New Project: The Clean Energy Project

World Community Grid is pleased to announce its 11th new project: The Clean Energy Project. This project comes to you from researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

The mission of The Clean Energy Project is to find new materials for the next generation of solar cells and later, energy storage devices. By harnessing the immense power of World Community Grid, researchers can calculate the electronic properties of tens of thousands of organic materials - many more than could ever be tested in a lab - and determine which candidates are most promising for developing affordable solar energy technology.

Ultimately, with your support, scientists are expecting to create successful materials to produce efficient and inexpensive solar cells that will serve as viable solutions for our future energy needs.

For more information about The Clean Energy Project and other projects running on World Community Grid, please click here

If you are currently contributing and want to check to see if you are contributing to this project, click here If you are no longer contributing but would like to contribute to this project, please click here


Technical Advisory: World Community Grid Moving Servers to a New Location

World Community Grid is getting brand new equipment and relocating its servers to a new IBM location. There is no action required on your part but we wanted you to be aware of the move.

The move starts on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 in the evening (approximately 0300 UCT January 8, 2009) and will require us to bring down the website for up to 48 hours.

During the downtime, your computer will be able to continue processing work units for your favorite World Community Grid research project. Your computer will know when the servers are back up and will then continue normal processing.

The move may cause your firewall to prompt you about World Community Grid. If this happens, please re-approve your computers access to World Community Grid.

For more information read this post in the member news forum

We sincerely appreciate your wonderful support!