[CAnet - news] Join the hunt to feed the world's hungry through broadband Internet

For more information on this item please visit my blog at=20
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/ or http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com
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 [Another good example of citizen science. Excerpts from NY Times =
article --
BSA]

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/join-the-hunt-for-super-rice/?re=
f=3Dt
echnology

Join the Hunt for Super-Rice

There is no quick fix to the world food crisis, but a project getting
underway Wednesday could make a difference in the long run.
Rice

A team of researchers at the University of Washington are putting a =
genomics
project on the World Community Grid in the computational search for =
strains
of rice that have traits like higher yields, disease resistance and a =
wider
range of nutrients.

The purpose is to hasten the pace of modern rice genetics, which since =
the
1960s has delivered a series of new strains, starting with =
higher-yielding
semidwarf varieties, a breakthrough that was hailed as the Green =
Revolution.

But the demand - all those mouths to feed - keeps rising. Rice is the =
main
staple food for more than half the world's population. In Asia alone, =
more
than two billion people get up to 70 percent of their dietary energy =
from
rice.

The World Community Grid, begun in 2004, gives selected humanitarian
scientific projects access to massive computing resources. It taps the
unused computing cycles of nearly one million computers around the world =
-
much like SETI@home, the best-known distributed computing effort, which
claims it has harnessed more than 3 million PCs in the search for
extraterrestrial life.

The World Community Grid places a small piece of software on your PC =
that
taps your unused computing cycles and combines them with others to =
create a
virtual supercomputer. Its equivalent computing power would make it the
world's third-largest supercomputer, according to I.B.M., which has =
donated
the hardware, software and technical expertise for the project.

The grid will run a three-dimensional modeling program created by the
computational biologists at the University of Washington to study the
structures of the proteins that make up the building blocks of rice.
Understanding the structures provides clues to their functions, =
interactions
between the molecular parts and how certain desired traits are =
expressed.

.


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