I was speaking to a cancer doctor (oncologoist) and chemist over the weekend with the intention of enrolling him in Rosetta. He already knew about protein prediction and that University of Washington is the Center of the (known) Universe for this kind of work. My intention was to inspire him about the project and he ended up totally inspiring me!

He said,

"Chemistry is a predictive science. You can take a chemicals before a reaction and predict what will be left over after a chemical reaction. The left-hand side of the equation equals the right-hand side.

"Biology is currently a descriptive science. We can roughly describe what happens, yet we cannot predict what will happen with any certainty." Some drugs work or some people, some not, etc. "If you take a chain of amino acids, you cannot say for certain what that protein does because you do not even know the shape of it."

In short, "If biology could become a predictive science. Then look out! Many things are possible." I replied, "Yes, humanity would be elevated and transformed." Meaning, we wouldn't have to worry so much about diseases, etc. What if the next great leader of man will only survive adolesence if malaria is stopped in its tracks?

It ends up that the guy I was talking to is on a school planning commission and he now wants to convince the 6th-8th grade science labs to run Rosetta on BOINC! Awesome! I'm committed to talk to as many people as possible about Rosetta over the next year.

-Bradford

Glad to hear it! Here's an idea for making such a talk before an audience. And there are lots of other links with info. that you may find helpful in the endeavor.

As you have ideas, or questions, be sure to post. In general, you will find that after some discussion the idea grows into something better then you had originally envisioned. (just don't mention "credits", "cheating" or "optimization" and it's really a constructive community).

---

Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

That's great. Growth in a project depends on these kinds of small incremental steps multiplied over and over. Things like this are why Rosetta grows and/or retains members better than most projects.

---

Founder of BOINC GROUP - Objectivists - Philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

I actually inspired myself to join! I was looking at the site, and realized that Rosetta spelled sideways is Toaster. As I was hungry at the time, I flopped a couple pieces of my fave bread in, and voila, a minute later I was enjoying a great piece of toast with jam. Now, if crunching can TASTE this good, I'm all for it, so I joined! Hurray...

Dj

---

I actually inspired myself to join! I was looking at the site, and realized that Rosetta spelled sideways is Toaster. As I was hungry at the time, I flopped a couple pieces of my fave bread in, and voila, a minute later I was enjoying a great piece of toast with jam. Now, if crunching can TASTE this good, I'm all for it, so I joined! Hurray...

Dj

I think that makes Cafe Rosetta: Face Toaster

not sure what it means, but it could be very pleasant or very unpleasant depending on how you look at it

---

Within the past two weeks I have started a small yet growing movement to inform the users of www.facebook.com similar to myspace about the ablility for them to participate in research with BOINC. Rosetta is the most popular so far. I've created a group on the site called "Boinc Researchers" and am incourageing everyone to join and to help out in the promotion. My goal is to inform students about this program, because they usually leave their computers on in their rooms durring the day and over night and why not put them to some good use!

---

GridRepublic - bringing BOINC mainstream: http://www.gridrepublic.org

GridRepublic Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/GridRepublic

Progress Thru Processors Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/progressthruprocessors

i plan on doing my english oral on boinc. that might convert a few.

---

http://www.cnn.com/exchange/ireports/topics/forms/breaking.news.html.................................................................................................................maybe someone could send a news report to cnn

[reply to Feet1st, from another thread]

So here I figured the "SO" in SOAN must be for St. Olaf, then I see your profile and your team is Carelton. And team Carelton has a RAC of 645. 1,900 students... what can we do to help you get the word out about Rosetta? Perhaps a contest between serparate teams of different majors could be organized?

I've thought about this a little bit, but I haven't come up with anything that seems to have much potential for a small school with Carleton's character. Probably a result of very little free time for me to think about it.

I've considered a competitiion between departments but I really don't think that kind of thing would work very well here. A competition between the two colleges in town would probably work better. St. Olaf isn't too far behind us now - I think they only have 5 people on their team too.

Anyone have any ideas that worked at other small colleges?

P.S. A search of our website for "SoAn" will quickly reveal what my user name stands for. One of the result pages even has my name on it ;)

Crosstown rivalry... oh you're on to it now. How about the first team to 25 members... well you have to devise the incentive. The trump card though is that the first team to one HUNDRED and 25 gets...

But, you're college students, so fiancial incentives aren't easy to devise... unless you could find a business to sponser the grudge match. Is there a pizza place or a local hangout that might help co-sponsor or promote the rivalry? How about you get a St. Olaf hangout to go up against a Carelton hangout? First team to 25 members gets pizzas at the rival college hangout (paid by them). ...and the same for 125. This will encourage THEM to make YOUR team reach 125 first... so they don't have to foot the bill. The waitresses will be telling all their customers about it. You could inkjet some little business cards that tell people how to get started. In fact, (I'll dig up the link tomorrow), Nathan already has a CD image to help load up Rosetta.

...and it's too easy to just count registered users, so you'll probably want to use team point totals, starting on a given date (in the past will help assure people aren't hording completed results), and ending on a given date (and time!), or perhaps ending at a given point total (deducting what you started with to get a fair start).

---

Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Two words: Extra credit
Two more words: College rivalry (as has been noted by others)

My students are joining up to earn extra credit (10 pts out of about 800 for the course). We're just barely outpacing Vermont Technical College (VTC) for second place in the Junior College rankings. I think the students enjoy this competition and are motivated to beat TEAM JESUS (have you seen the picture of their founder??? hahahaha all in good fun)

One thing that could help recruitment is creating more categories for teams, like leagues - the small 4 year colleges can't compete with the state schools for number of users or computers, and should have their own league. If my team (Truman College) had to compete with the 4 year schools we'd even never be in the top 100 and would not be as motivated to move up in the rankings. Perhaps there should be a category for Liberal Arts Colleges and/or a division among East Coast/West Coast/Flyoverland universities?

It would be great if you could list your team on several of these leagues at once, so you'd have a chance to compete against all groups in the same city or region, as well as all groups that are similar in other ways (4 year schools, etc.)

---

Here's the link to the post talking about the download of a CD image to easily install BOINC and Rosetta. I've not tried it my self. I'm sure Nathan would be glad to respond to any questions you post to that thread.

---

Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Heheh I was running Folding@HOME without knowing my own university (Univ of Wash) has its own project. I ditched Stanford's and joined this one!!! yay!

---

I was thinking the other day of a sort of spoof video of Dr. David and his motley crew at the lab late at night. Someone could run with this into a recruitment effort with ease. Geez, all it would take is a few people and a video camera, a few good lines and some funny antics to boot and the myspace and youtube crowd would come running to see what all the fuss is about at the Rosetta web site!

---

(Click for detailed stats)