You Can Help Fight Cancer By Just Sitting Around Doing Nothing

November 07, 2007

This week, the World Community Grid, the largest public computing grid, announced the Help Conquer Cancer project. The organization has teamed with the  Ontario Cancer Institute, Princess Margaret Hospital and University Health Network to improve analysis of 86 million images, an effort that could increase the understanding of cancer and its treatment. You can help out by donating your computer's processing time when you're not using it. So-called grid computing draws on, not just your computer's processing power, but on thousands of computers from around the world. The resulting computational power is more massive than a supercomputer. And because a huge body of research is distributed in tiny pieces to all of those PCs, the time it takes to produce results is cut down from decades to years, or from years to months. To sign up, first read the FAQs on the WCG website and then consider becoming a member.