You can help by simply running a piece of software. Folding@Home is a distributed computing project -- people from through out the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer makes the project closer to our goals.
Download the software then join the EarthLandRealms.com Folding@Home team # 85036, just enter team # 85036 in the Folding@Home program to join the EarthLandRealms.com team. http://folding.stanford.edu/
What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
Basically its a program that simulates proteins so scientists can figure out how they work so they can cure diseases. It is very slow to run on one computer, so they are asking for volunteers. The program runs in the background on your computer. The more people that join, the more protein simulations they can run. You can download the program for Windows, Linux, Mac, and PS3.
What do you mean? Like a game? It just flashes pictures of the proteins if you open the window, if you have it run in the background you won't even know its running.