Points Milestone - poptart87PS3 - 2k

poptart87PS3 has passed the 2,000 Points Milestone!

Currently on 2,590 points from 9 work units, he sits 422,892nd out of 1,161,702 all-time folders. Good stuff mate!

New Team Member - newtronbom

newtronbom is our latest New Team Member!

Returning their first work unit for 548 points, thye sit 706,397th out of 1,161,702 all-time folders. Thanks for joining up!

Points Milestone - Ugly - 100k

Ugly has passed the 100,000 Points Milestone!

Now moving up into the 100k Points Major Milestone Club, Ugly is a vital team member, that has made a great contribution since joining.

Using his Mac and PS3 to fold, he's currently sitting 7th on the team, with 107,833 points earned from 133 work units. He also stands 43,789th out of 1,161,702 all-time folders.

Well done to Ugly on his achievement!

Folding@Home Stats Server updates to be quicker in 2009

Folding@Home's Statistics Server, used to provide all Team and Donor stats etc. will receive an update sometime in 2009 to speed up the time it takes to update the stats database, meaning that instead of waiting the first 45 minutes of each 2 hour update cycle just to see our Team stats page, it might only take the first 15 minutes, and hopefully with an hourly update cycle.

Currently you see this message in approximately the first 45 minutes of the current 2 hour update cycle:

Stats update in progress

External access to the Folding@home stats server is currently not available in order to expedite the stats input process. This was started on the hour and we expect this to take about 45 minutes. The stats updates run in 2 hour cycles.

An intention to update message is currently sitting beneath the lines above, telling us:

"In 2009, we will be upgrading our stats server such that the whole database will fit in RAM (this used to be the case, but FAH has gotten quite big over the last few years and the related databases require over 20GB). We expect that this new stats server should greatly speed up stats updates."

It's good to see that the Folding@Home team works to constantly improve their systems.

New Team Member - Valvak

Valvak is our latest New Team Member!

Joining before the end of '08, they have already returned their 1st work unit for 450 points. Sitting 738,437th out of 1,158,627 all-time folders, they have quite a bit of work in front of them! :)

Thanks for joining our Team Valvak!

Stanford's Winter Holidays Schedule

Vijay Pande has informed us of the Winter Holidays Schedule for Stanford University on his blog recently. SU will be closed until January 5, 2009, however Folding@Home will still be operating as always, but there is warning that should problems arise, the corresponding response will be slower than normal due to reduced staffing during the holidays.

Most of the F@H team finished up on the 20th, however they worked very hard to add more jobs to the Servers, clear out hard drive space of previously returned work units etc. so that this holiday period can be as problem-free as possible.

On behalf of the F@H team, Vijay writes:

"We'd like to wish all the FAH donors a happy holiday and thank all of you for all your great help with our project."

New Top 5 Team Member

We've got a New Top 5 Team Member, with peterdiva now occupying 5th place on the Team Leaderboard, nudging my 2nd PS3 - Lahm_Family_PS3 back to 6th.

Well done to peterdiva! Here is the current top 5:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	Jens_Klausen	343177	757
2	smASHer88_PS3	307434	1235
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	peterdiva	116514	168

Merry Christmas & have a Happy New Year!

Ahhh, what a wonderful time of year! Staying up late on Christmas Eve, posting on my blog early Christmas morning! Can't wait to get stuck into my presents later today!

I would just like to thank everyone involved in Aussie Rules Footy (team members & power-bill payers!) as our Team has made some real progress in 2008, and i'm glad we are now part of the Top 1,000 Folding@Home teams, that definitely is an effort!

As i've got plans to go away after Boxing Day, the blog might go for a week or so without any updates... bad news I know! lol But I will be sure to pickup the slack when I get back, hopefully flooding with new posts! I'll see how busy the 26th is, and i'll try to make a post or two then that i've been meaning to make.

Anyways I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, your Friends and Family as well. Have a safe Holidays, whether your travelling around or whatever, and also, have a Happy New Year!!!

EDIT: Feel free to add a comment to let us know how you are spending these Holidays!

Points Milestone - poptart87PS3 - 1k

poptart87PS3 has passed the milestone for 1,000 points!

Currently on 1,370 points from 5 work units, he's positioned 530,607th out of 1,156,939 all-time folders.

Work Units Milestone - Ugly - 100

Ugly has passed the 100 Work Units Milestone!

Sitting on 108 work units for a total of 89,484 points, he's placed 7th on the team leaderboard, and 50,419th out of 1,154,479 all-time folders.

Apologees to Ugly as this was meant to be posted yesterday, when he was at 103 work units! lol

Scheduled Maintenance at SU during the Holidays

Vijay has given us a heads up on his blog about some Scheduled Maintenance that is going to be performed over the Holidays period at Stanford University.

The Network Backbone is to undergo improvements between maintenance windows - Every morning between 4 AM and 8 AM PST, December 20 to January 4 (For us East Coast Aussies - every night between 11 PM and 3 AM AEDT, December 21 to January 5) and it is hoped that normal operations should not be affected at all by the works. If users experience troubles though, it should only last up to around 5 minutes.


PST = Pacific Standard Time = UTC-8
AEDT = Australian Eastern Daylight Time = UTC+11

Aussie Rules Footy is now in the Top 1,000 Folding@Home Teams!

Our team, Aussie Rules Footy is now finally apart of the Top 1,000 Folding@Home teams.

It has taken quite a while to enter this territory, as it's really competitive out there amongst all the teams. At the end of May earlier this year, we had just broken into the top 2,000 teams. Being apart of the top 1,000 is a real achievement for a team participating in this Project. But it's one thing to break in, it's another to stay in there, and keep pushing up the stats! So guys I want to thank you all very much for your efforts so far and I hope we can keep churning out more work units and making more an more points, pushing us further up the team rankings.

I am hoping by this time next year, we're atleast a top 500 team!

Team stats:

Aussie Rules Footy

Date of last work unit	2008-12-18 04:38:49
Active CPUs within 50 days	46
Team Id	52735
Grand Score	1724478 (certificate)
Work Unit Count	5831 (certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate)	998 of 149988

Points Milestone - brolli55 - 1k

brolli55 has now passed the 1,000 points milestone!

Currently on 1,425 points from 4 work units, he sits 521,886th out of 1,153,768 all-time folders. Well done mate.

New Team Leader - Jens_Klausen

Jens_Klausen is now top of the team leaderboard, moving to 1st position!

It's a bit hard to believe that Jens_Klausen only joined the team 3 months ago!
Moving up a bit quicker than I honestly expected, just under a month ago I mentioned:

"As of today, Jens_Klausen now sits 2nd on the Team Leaderboard, with quite a stretch to reach my ol' faithful - smASHer88_PS3!!! No doubt this guy will chew through the 100k points buffer in no time, i'm just not looking forward to reporting on my own de-throning!"

The writing was on the wall though in early November when Jens_Klausen added a 2nd GPU to his system:

"Future Team Leader, Jens_Klausen has recently added a second ASUS EN9600GT SILENT graphics card to his Computer, boosting his PPD (points per day) output even further!"

Giving up the crown, my Playstation 3 - smASHer88_PS3 had held 1st spot since around February this year. After I started folding on Boxing Day 2007, I set out a goal of 300,000 points within 12 months (PS3's PPD = 900~1,000 x 365 days = 328,500~365,000 ... minus some gameplay and a bit of downtime here and there = 300,000 points). Lucky I compensated a bit, I only had 8 days spare! I'd also like to point out (cheekily) that by looking up Kakao Stats Update History for both smASHer88_PS3 and Jens_Klausen, I can say my PS3 snuck in the 300k points mark a couple of hours before Jens_Klausen! Haha, some small consolation that is!

Congratulations to Jens_Klausen who has made a stellar contribution to Aussie Rules Footy and Folding@Home since joining.

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	Jens_Klausen	301541	656
2	smASHer88_PS3	300615	1212

New Team Member - poptart87PS3

A mate of mine has joined the team - poptart87PS3!

Obviously folding with his Playstation 3, he's returned 1 work unit so far for 110 points. He sits 948,716th out of 1,152,400 all-time folders. Good stuff mate!

Points Milestone - brolli55_ps3 - 2k

brolli55_ps3 has quickly passed the next major points milestone - 2,000!

Returning 6 work units for a total of 2,070 points, he sits 453,867th out of 1,151,601 all-time folders. Keep up good work mate.

Points Milestone - peterdiva - 100k

Our latest member to conquer the 100,000 points milestone - peterdiva!

He jumps up a category in the Major Milestone Club as our 6th team member to achieve the 100k points mark. Only joining in late September, he's become a vital team member for Aussie Rules Footy, producing heaps of points in only a short time. Only problem is, I still haven't been able to get in contact with the guy to thank him!

As i've mentioned before, he seems to be running a mix of an SMP client and a regular PC, single-core client, churning out about 2,000 PPD. Not too shabby I say!

So currently he's positioned 6th on the team leaderboard and 45,069th out of 1,151,601 all-time folders. This is a result of his 101,587 points contribution from 156 work units. Well done mate!

Points Milestone - brolli55_ps3 - 1k

brolli55_ps3 has passed the milestone for 1,000 points!

Currently on 1,590 points from 4 work units, he's placed 499,151st out of 1,150,843 all-time folders. Well done mate.

New Team Member - brolli55

As promised, brolli55_ps3's computer, brolli55 has made it another new team member today!

So far returning just the one work unit for 326 points, his computer sits 786,306th out of 1,149,702 all-time folders. Good stuff mate.

Important Update to Folding@Home's End User License Agreement (EULA)

Vijay Pande has posted on his blog a very important notice about an update to the Folding@Home End User License Agreement (EULA).

Straight from Vijay:

"We added the word "written" to this sentence:

"You may use this software on a computer system only if you own the system or have the written permission of the owner."

We felt that this was an important addition in order to avoid any confusion. There have been a few situations where donors felt that they had permission, but the owners of the computers did not. Having written permission is the best way to make sure that there is no doubt. It also gives protection to the donor in that he/she would then have proof of permission, avoiding problems involving oral agreements."

I'd like to re-affirm that you could find yourself in a situation of getting sued for installing and running this program unauthorised, as many people have gotten into trouble setting up multiple computers at they're place of work (such as a school I.T. Administrator setting up tens to hundreds of computers) when they weren't authorised to do so, and have in some cases been ordered to pay damages for things such as increases in power bills, internet bills etc. Also, not having sufficient knowledge about the program and how it can affect different computers etc. (such as Notebooks being advised to run at no more than 90% CPU usage due to their less than optimal cooling systems) can lead to a bit of a blame game as far as what caused the computer to pack itself in and who is going to pay for it!

So guys, make sure you get written consent to run Folding@Home on computers or machines that are not your own. And be sure to inform those owners or bill-payers of the potential to have slightly higher power and internet bills whilst running this program (not a big deal for one or two machines, but any more, the extra power and internet usage quickly adds up!). Providing you do the right thing by the owner, i'm sure they will enjoy helping out a Distributed Computing Project such as Folding@Home.

New Paper published on the Playstation 3 Folding@Home client

Vijay Pande's blog yet again brings good news with yet another Paper being published, this time about the Playstation 3 Folding@Home client - Accelerating Molecular Dynamic Simulation on the Cell processor and PlayStation 3.

A collaborated effort between the Folding@Home and Sony Development teams, this is the first paper resulting from the Playstation 3's involvement in the Project. The paper is more of a 'how does it work' with details about how the PS3 accelerates simulations through use of it's powerful streaming processor, the CELL Broadband Engine.

The abstract reads:

"Implementation of molecular dynamics (MD) calculations on novel architectures will vastly increase its power to calculate the physical properties of complex systems. Herein, we detail algorithmic advances developed to accelerate MD simulations on the Cell processor, a commodity processor found in PlayStation 3 (PS3). In particular, we discuss issues regarding memory access versus computation and the types of calculations which are best suited for streaming processors such as the Cell, focusing on implicit solvation models. We conclude with a comparison of improved performance on the PS3's Cell processor over more traditional processors."

Papers of this type not only help the Folding@Home team at Stanford, but can potentially help many others outside of the Project. Whether it helps out others involved in the field of Molecular Dynamics, or people that intend to use and program for the CELL processor, knowledge gained can be knowledge shared!

Work Units Milestone - ROO_BOY29 - 50

ROO_BOY29 has made the milestone for 50 work units!

Due to a bit of downtime, after needing a re-format/re-install, his computer unfortunately didn't tally any points for our recent November = 2nd Team Birthday Foldathon. However, his got 4 services of v5.04 text-only console client running on his quad-core again, and should see a pretty consistent return from him now.

Currently on 13,736 points from 50 work units, he sits 186,173rd out of 1,149,041 all-time folders. Well done mate.

New Team Member - brolli55_ps3

We have a new team member! Another one of my mates - brolli55_ps3 has joined the team currently folding with his Playstation 3. brolli55 will also appear on the team stats soon, as we await his computer to return it's first work.

With one work unit currently to his name, brolli55_ps3 has made 450 points, and sits 729,857th out of 1,149,041 all-time folders. Good stuff mate.

Another new Paper! Ribosome Gate

Only on Tuesday Vijay Pande announced on his blog that the Project published New Alzheimer's Disease Work. Now another paper, Folding@Home's 59th to be exact, has been published - 'Side-chain recognition and gating in the ribosome exit tunnel'.

The Ribosome plays a very important role in Protein research says Vijay:

"The ribosome is a fascinating molecular machine, responsible for the synthesis of proteins. For this reason it is of fundamental importance to protein folding (as the last step in the central dogma of biology) as well as to human health (since the ribosome is the target of a very large fraction of antibiotics)."

Vijay mentions that this paper has been made possible by the contributions of folders running 'bigWU' enabled classic clients stating:

"the ribosome is so huge that it would not run on regular classic clients."

It's certainly good to see a couple more important research papers come out lately, and only a day after another! I can't wait to see what other papers get released and how they can help us move forward in the Protein research field.

Points Milestone - Lahm_Family_PS3 - 100k

My 2nd Playstation 3 - Lahm_Family_PS3 is the 5th team member to achieve the 100,000 points milestone! Thus moving up a category in the Major Milestone Club.

Joining the team in late August, I was hoping to gain atleast 100k points by the end of the year, so i'm very happy it's achieved that. Pretty much folding 24/7 (with only occassional power outages and a bit of music playing in between), it wasn't overly hard to achieve. Now I want to set a target of 300,000 points by 27 August 2009.. which would mean a tidy 300k points per year.

Currently on 100,383 points from 343 work units, it's sits 5th on the team leaderboard, and 45,147th out of 1,147,479 all-time folders. No doubt i'll keep her folding as much as possible!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

Racing up the Team Leaderboard, Ugly has brought about another shuffle in the top 10 order, this time by moving to 7th spot, overtaking zoneur who now sits at 8th.

Current top 10 order:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	293785	1189
2	Jens_Klausen	265299	569
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	100383	343
6	peterdiva	94067	152
7	Ugly	66590	69
8	zoneur	65715	145
9	smASHer88	56240	193
10	BulleenAnt1	42574	145

New Alzheimer's Disease Work published

The latest news from Vijay Pande's blog is about the publication of a key paper relating to Alzheimer's Disease - 'Simulating oligomerization at experimental concentrations and long timescales: A Markov state model approach'.

Vijay comments saying:

"I am very happy to announce that a first key work from the Folding@home project on Alzheimer's Disease (AD) was just published"

"In many ways, this paper is the "tip of the iceberg" for the Folding@home activities in AD, with a lot more interesting results to come, especially in terms of experimental tests of our predictions and interesting new possibilities for new drugs and AD therapeutics. So, while we're excited that this result is now past peer review, we're even more excited for what's coming down the pipeline, waiting peer review. We'll keep you posted as more results become public, hopefully with some even bigger announcements in 2009."

Hopefully this will mean Folding@Home as a Project will start to see some real fruit for all it's labour!

UPDATE:

"It was asked which clients participated. This work started several years ago and took some time to analyze and then publish. So, it ran exclusively on classic clients. For the follow up simulations, we are using a mixture of GPU, SMP, and classic clients. Due to the large number of classic clients, they allow us to calculations not possible on the other platforms. However, the raw speed (but smaller number) of the GPU and SMP clients allow us to get a good rough idea quickly, refining later with classic clients."

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

With the latest change to the Top 10 Team Members order, Ugly has now moved to 8th spot on the team leaderboard, overtaking my computer - smASHer88, which is now at 9th spot.

Current top 10:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	290635	1178
2	Jens_Klausen	251679	538
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	97053	333
6	peterdiva	89374	132
7	zoneur	65715	145
8	Ugly	57770	54
9	smASHer88	55491	192
10	BulleenAnt1	42445	144

Work Units Milestone - Ugly - 50

Ugly has now returned 50 work units to claim his first work units milestone.

Currently on 55,040 points from 50 work units, he's 9th on the team leaderboard, and 73,169th out of 1,145,122 all-time folders.

Points Milestone - Ugly - 50k

Ugly joins eight other team members on the Major Milestone Club list for achieving the milestone for 50,000 points!

Since joining the team in late October, Ugly has managed to gain 51,950 points from just 45 work units! How? Well as you'll read in joining post, he has been running the SMP client on an Apple MacBook Pro, which usually fetches him between 1,000 and 2,000 points per work unit! Of course his points to work unit ratio show hes much closer to 1,000 points / work unit. This could be because he's recently added a PS3 to fold under Ugly as well, bringing his average points per work unit down.

He currently sits 9th on the team leaderboard and 76,306th out of 1,144,455 all-time folders. Well done mate.

Work Units Milestone - Jens_Klausen - 500

Jens_Klausen has become the 4th team member to make the 500 work units milestone as he bumps himself up a category in the Major Milestone Club!

Since joining nearly three months ago, he has returned exactly 506 work units for a total of 237,864 points. This means he has contributed approximately 15% of the team's points, and nearly 10% of all work units!

He's currently coming 2nd on the team leaderboard, and could easily overtake my main PS3 - smASHer88_PS3 just after New Years! He sits 19,715th out of 1,143,682 all-time folders. Well done mate.

Where Folding@Home is heading

Vijay Pande has posted a 'Long term vision' on his blog about Folding@Home about where it is heading and what sort of results we can expect Science wise.

He mentions the fact that the first few years of the project was spent working out the right types of methods to use to enable a functional Distributed Computing network.

The next step was to work in the latest range of clients (Playstation 3, SMP and GPU) which has been a big task to accomplish and still not perfected as of yet. An 'SMP2' client is the next target for the development team, with hopes that it will be similar to the transformation of the GPU to GPU2 client. Vijay comments saying -

"Our goal is to be bleeding edge in the nature of our science, but get back to the simplicity and stability found in the classic client"

Science wise, we are to expect some pretty big results very soon, with many research papers to be published after peer review is completed. Vijay comments -

"In particular, results on Alzheimer's Disease, Huntington's Disease, and some other surprises in the works"

So there you go guys, the real reason we are all folding hasn't been forgotten. Hopefully a lot can be learned from these future publicly-released research papers, and we can see the benefit gained from lending our CPU cycles!

Points Milestone - Jawgz - 20k

My mate Jawgz has now hit the 20,000 points milestone!

In addition to his Mac, he's now got some computers at work crunching away for him as well! Sitting on exactly 20,966 points from 29 work units, he sits 15th on the team leaderboard and 143,102nd out of 1,143,038 all-time folders. Good stuff mate!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

Ugly has pushed ahead to 9th spot now on the top 10 team leaderboard, which means BulleenAnt1 slips back to 10th.

Current top 10:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	285805	1160
2	Jens_Klausen	229388	487
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	92013	317
6	peterdiva	79806	116
7	zoneur	64217	141
8	smASHer88	55491	192
9	Ugly	45060	31
10	BulleenAnt1	42274	143

2nd Team Birthday Foldathon! Results

As we finish our 2nd Team Birthday Foldathon, we look back at some interesting stats that have happened just over the month of November.

A total of 376,655 points was generated by Aussie Rules Footy in November by returning a total of 884 work units. Our team ranking position has advanced 199 places up to 1,080th! (previously 1,279th).

We've seen eleven changes to the top 10 team leaderboard, and two changes in the top 5 order. We've had a few work unit milestones - three 100, two 200 and a 5k for the team. Also, for points milestones, we've had three 5k, two 10k, four 20k, two 50k, one 100k and one 200k. We've also brought in a new team logo, had two new team members join, and have had some interruptions to our foldathon in the form of server troubles.

But past all that, we

EDIT:
WILL UPDATE AS SOON AS I HAVE ENOUGH FREE TIME TO WRAP UP THIS HUGE POST, SORRY!

Winner: Jens_Klausen - 144,096 points from 306 work units, averaging 4,803 PPD

Aussie Rules Footy

Date of last work unit	2008-11-30 06:44:37
Active CPUs within 50 days	39
Team Id	52735
Grand Score	1483416 (certificate)
Work Unit Count	5286 (certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate)	1080 of 148592
Home Page	http://team52735.blogspot.com/
Fast Teampage URL	http://fah-web.stanford.edu/teamstats/team52735.html

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	284585	1155
2	Jens_Klausen	229004	486
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	90273	314
6	peterdiva	75820	113
7	zoneur	61625	135
8	smASHer88	55491	192
9	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
10	Ugly	39450	21
11	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138
12	DSE_352_Notebooks	33652	137
13	mikael	26502	127
14	QCKRNU	24728	153
15	BIGMAN	20343	58
16	Delta_Leviathan	18817	132
17	Jawgz	16992	25
18	Greg	16622	114
19	magicgate3	15835	66
20	ROO_BOY29	13055	46
21	ahmsnake	11179	45
22	savernake	9445	38
23	Jacko	7230	36
24	rossqo	6186	13
25	Ravenge	6090	38
26	mgpower0	5280	3
27	bec_clarke	4413	41
28	PS3	3982	33
29	hobbozzrock	3685	15
30	MitchAllen	3614	42
31	nitty	3080	5
32	erBotty	2250	5
33	J4CKT	2220	9
34	BOONDOCKS	1500	1
35	TheePi	1388	36
36	ningcaptor	1036	9
37	terminator80	960	2
38	luigi4562	953	7
39	Rfscann	935	6
40	Suzy_Wong	837	4
41	SHELL86	765	2
42	CCz619	625	5
43	Bennymac	598	4
44	wilson	545	2
45	QUEBEC	500	2
46	Bioufaxxx	500	3
47	Revolutionary_For_Life	372	2
48	goddest	340	1
49	NTC	313	2
50	PS34LIFE.ZACHZEHRUNG	287	1
51	KillerKahuna	287	2
52	Curer_Of_Diseases	256	3
53	naomi	250	1
54	captinmax	250	1
55	nigel	250	2
56	Beauwoodland	186	1
57	chris_be	186	1
58	J4CKT_PC	149	3
59	Shinobi	125	1
60	dcbunny	98	2
61	Jorgo	30	2
62	THAmyth	0	4
63	ronnie	0	3
64	Bernard	0	5

PPD = Points Per Day