Dear Rosetta@home Participants, A wonderful aspect of Rosetta@home for me has been the marvelous contributions of the many dedicated volunteers around the world. We are about to begin the 7th biennial CASP Structure Prediction Experiment and from May 10th until August 1st our need for computing power will be even greater. In a bid to solicit more of your 'crunching time', R@H volunteers have put together the following letter which we are sending to all participants. With all of your collective efforts it should be possible to do wonders! Thank you! David Baker
Dear Rosetta@home Contributors,
We are writing you to thank you for donating your computer time to Rosetta@home. We'd also like to bring you an update on recent improvements as well as ask for your help during this year's Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP7).
Rosetta@home is working to develop software to accurately predict the folding structure of proteins, which is a key function in developing cures for diseases such as AIDS, cancer, and Alzheimer's. The Rosetta software is used by other scientists and distributed computing projects. Any improvement we can make in this project will benefit other scientists and projects as well.
Cutting-Edge Research with an all new Application package
The Rosetta@home science application has improved greatly in recent weeks. We now have "smarter" software and new techniques which help find the best structures faster. We have also released a number of new features:
Work unit runtimes based on preference setting can minimize your internet use.
More frequent saves (checkpointing), means more science output and more credits for you and your team.
The "Watchdog" keeps work flowing by ending work units that appear stuck or hung.
All work units will receive credit even if they return late or with an error result.
All these improvements guarantee a problem-free and most useful contribution of your valuable computer time.
CASP7 is here - Be part of the competition and the winning team!
There are many science teams working on protein studies, and every 2 years they conduct a contest of sorts, to define the current state-of-the-art. Now the 2006 event is underway, and you can help. CASP will present proteins no one has ever seen before and ask the research teams to give their best structure predictions for this computationally intense problem. We are very hopeful the improved Rosetta software, now with the added power of distributed computing, will again find the most accurate predictions.
CASP7 runs from May 10th to August 1st. The more computing power we apply, the better the predictions become. Please be sure to run Rosetta@home, at least during the three month period of the competition. Read more about CASP7, and check for published results on the Rosetta@home website through the end of the year.
Be a part of the project team with new information and user recognition
A number of new informational features have been added to help you participate with the research team:
"Dr. Baker's science journal" where the project's lead scientist posts regular updates and project news.
Work Unit information describes the proteins and tests being performed for each work unit type.
The Application Version Log explains new features and scientific improvements in the application.
The project staff is very responsive to questions and suggestions and is working to incorporate them into Rosetta application improvements.
What you can do to help
If you discontinued Rosetta for any reason, please attach again and you will find the application improvements have resolved the problems many were having.
Dedicate a greater resource share to Rosetta, at least during CASP7.
Attach additional computers to the project.
Contact your friends and teammates and help them learn more about Rosetta so they will want to crunch more too. Here is a simple explanation you might use.
If you are a member of a team, please ask for more Rosetta processing time on your team message boards.
Thank you for your past participation, and we hope you can provide additional support to Rosetta@home in the future.
Mark, Joachim, Gerry and the Rosetta@home volunteers
P.S.: Still not convinced? Take a look at "10 reasons why I support Rosetta@home and you should too."
P.P.S.: Your account preferences suggest that you wouldn't mind recieving our rare newsletters. If this is not true, you can 'opt-out' of future mailings by changing the "Should Rosetta@home send you email newsletters?" setting in your account preferences here: Rosetta@home preferences.
At least it now seems that the issues with v4.x application have been resolved (for now).
regards,
Tim
(PS If anyone wants this email forwarded to them (including all the various "weblinks") then please email me (or by PM) with your email address (saves me having to look it up !!) and I'll forward it on to you).
