Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

A group of scientists and companies have formed a research coalition to help understand and combat Anthrrax. "The Anthrax Research Project" as it is known includes the likes of Intel, Microsoft, United Devices, the National Foundation for Cancer Research and Oxford University.

This is the most recent addition to the "Intel Philanthropic Peer to Peer Program" which also currently contains 2 other projects, the "United Devices Cancer Research Program" and the "Stanford Alzheimer and Amyloidogenic Disease Research Program."

Talk about putting that computer and those idle CPU cycles to great use, this is way darn cool! Distributed computing of this sort is not new of course, many previous efforts such as SETI, distributed.net, GIMPS and more have used the model very successfully. However, this is first time a national coalition of powerhouse corporations and learning institutions have combined forces to put computers everywhere to work.

For the uninitiated the principle is simple, download and install a screen saver that launhces only when your computer is otherwise idle and that code will retrieve a small "chunk" of data from a central site and then process it and then return the results. The resulting overall effort of millions of PCs is a far faster and more powerful computing power than any of the worlds supercomputers.

In this latest project, the ARP has a database of millions of molecules that need to be processed with computer models. Much chemistry today is performed in the machine before in the lab. This data will help scientists understand the way Anthrax works and hopefully help develop preventitive measures. In order to perform all this intensive computer processing on millions of molecules in a timely, cost effective and overall ultra efficient method (using machines otherwise sitting idle) the group has elected to use the distributed peer to peer model.

For more info on all of the projects check the links and hey, put that machine to work!
  Intel Philanthropic Peer to Peer Program