# The results of FAH



## DrPepper (Mar 3, 2009)

Ok I've been looking everywhere to see what the results of everyone's folding efforts.

I checked thier website but I didn't really get my answer so can I ask here what have we learned from FAH.


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Mar 3, 2009)

Is this what your looking for?

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=50711


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## DrPepper (Mar 3, 2009)

No I was meaning like scientific breakthroughs or targets that needed to be reached


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Mar 3, 2009)

Ah. My bad then.


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## DrPepper (Mar 3, 2009)

CrAsHnBuRnXp said:


> Ah. My bad then.



Thanks for trying though


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## DonInKansas (Mar 3, 2009)

Here's what you want.

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Papers


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## DrPepper (Mar 3, 2009)

I was looking at that page and to be frank I really didn't understant much of it. Could anyone stick it in laymens term what thier biggest discovery was ?


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## DonInKansas (Mar 3, 2009)

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5854

That's probably as close as you're going to get, TBH.  Vijay himself responded in the thread summarizing the achievements.


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## DrPepper (Mar 3, 2009)

Thats what I was looking for  so FAH is like the foundation for biochemistry.


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 3, 2009)

No, it isn't the foundation for anything.  All it does is test therories for biological physics.  So far, it doesn't have much to show for it; just a lot of smoke and mirrors.


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## DrPepper (Mar 3, 2009)

I'd have thought testing theories is the foundation of any science.


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 3, 2009)

It is but remember, computers only do as instructed.  If you aren't exploring the right questions, you won't get useful answers.  You could have all the computers in the world working on a solution but if the question isn't right, what's the use?

I'm not saying they won't eventually come up with good results that can be applied to every day life, it just doesn't look like it will happen any time soon largely because the pool of scientists involved is small.


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## DrPepper (Mar 3, 2009)

I was at least expecting a timeline or a deadline. I wonder when the results can be used.


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 3, 2009)

Research isn't like making software or something of the sort where you can call it good half way through.  You have to develop a theory, develop a method for testing the theory, throw every curve ball you can at it to test the strength of the theory, and then you have to get it peer reviewed.  Once it is peer reviewed and it is actually something applicable, it may then be turned into consumer products.  It is a very lengthy process and most of the time, the theory proves incorrect or incomplete so you can't get anything applicable out of it immediately.


At this point, I think most of these distributed projects (BONIC, F@H, etc.) are more to test/develop the theory of distributed computing than actual scientific work.  The scientific work that is there is more for a pool of data to crunch than an actually foundation for research.  As a testament to this, look at the research/papers pages of the projects.  9/10 are about cloud computing and 1/10 is about what they are actually computing.

My conclusion: most of the applicable advancements in science are still being done on supercomputers where the processing method/hardware is strictly controlled therefore producing more solid (difficult to dispute in terms of computing error) results.


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## theorw (Mar 3, 2009)

come on guys!Do u really think that there would be any serious result from distributed computing???
They have hypercomputers for that!!!Or if GPUS are so strong they can get like 100000 4870s easily!!
Do u expect to find the cure for cancer through our pcs!!!!
I mean its rediculous!!!If they want the companies invest money and find cures.They dont need our GPUs for this!!!
I d much rather belive that theres agreement between power companies and stadford univ to increase the power consumption by folding,than actually expecting to make progress on any research!!!!


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## theorw (Mar 3, 2009)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Research isn't like making software or something of the sort where you can call it good half way through.  You have to develop a theory, develop a method for testing the theory, throw every curveball you can at it to test the strength of the theory, and then you have to get it peer reviewed.  Once it is peer reviewed and it is actually something applicable, it may then be turned into consumer products.  It is a very lengthy process and most of the time, the theory proves incorrect or incomplete so you can't get anything applicable out of it immediately.
> 
> 
> At this point, I think most of these distrobuted projects (BONIC, F@H, etc.) are more to test/develop the theory of distrobuted computing than actual scientific work.  The scientific work that is there is more for a poll of data to crunch than an actually foundation for research.  As a testiment to this, look at the research/papers pages of the projects.  9/10 are about cloud computing and 1/10 is about what they are actually computing.
> ...



He is right too!!!!!


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## red268 (Mar 3, 2009)

FordGT90Concept said:


> It is but remember, computers only do as instructed.  If you aren't exploring the right questions, you won't get useful answers.  You could have all the computers in the world working on a solution but if the question isn't right, what's the use?



42?


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## DrPepper (Mar 3, 2009)

FordGT90Concept said:


> At this point, I think most of these distrobuted projects (BONIC, F@H, etc.) are more to test/develop the theory of distrobuted computing than actual scientific work.  The scientific work that is there is more for a poll of data to crunch than an actually foundation for research.  As a testiment to this, look at the research/papers pages of the projects.  9/10 are about cloud computing and 1/10 is about what they are actually computing.



Thats why I couldn't find any results because most of it was about improving the core and algorithms etc.


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 3, 2009)

This is one some of the staff at F@H were getting excited about:
Side-chain recognition and gating in the ribosome exit tunnel

It is an example of something that needs to be investigated further.


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## kid41212003 (Mar 3, 2009)

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Science

Guys, read.


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## Ptep (Mar 3, 2009)

DrPepper said:


> so FAH is like the foundation for biochemistry.



No, Protein folding is the foundation of biochemistry, folding at home is a simulation of this.

This might help explain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_folding - particularly the part on incorrect folding which is i think, what a lot of the folding at home project is simulating.


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## DonInKansas (Mar 4, 2009)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Research isn't like making software or something of the sort where you can call it good half way through.  You have to develop a theory, develop a method for testing the theory, throw every curve ball you can at it to test the strength of the theory, and then you have to get it peer reviewed.  Once it is peer reviewed and it is actually something applicable, it may then be turned into consumer products.  It is a very lengthy process and most of the time, the theory proves incorrect or incomplete so you can't get anything applicable out of it immediately.



+1 to this.  Remember, "What goes up must come down" is still only the "*Theory* of Relativity."


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## dna1x (Mar 4, 2009)

red268 said:


> 42?



Yes that's it! The ultimate answer to the ultimate question of the universe, life, and everything else!


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## johnspack (Mar 4, 2009)

Good lord,  it's already been proven that the majority of current incurable diseases are triggered by  misfolded protein molecules in the human brain.  The folding project folds all known protein molecules in the human brain,  among others,  in simulation of course, to see which ones misfold.  Once they find the culprit,  a treatment or cure becomes possible.  All of the millions of graphics cards folding are producing far more results than a single supercomputer can.  A high end graphic card is 20x more powerful than an average cpu in terms of folding power.  I'm not really into biology,  so I can't be more specific in how this project works.  Sometimes a leap of faith can do wonders!


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