Online Gamers Help Crack AIDS/HIV Enzyme

[seconteen1001]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2393200,00.asp

This put a smile on my face when I was watching fox news this morning.

[Lulu_Jane]

Holy crap, thank you for posting this! I posted links about the game itself only about a week ago on the Abandonia network. I can't believe it already managed to be this successful. This makes me smile :D

[TheChosen]

Comment on io9 about this thing:

Dear Media,
It was trained scientists who decided to pitch this one to the gamers. Its not as if gamers decided to fire up Foldit to solve this problem-- they are not an organized group. Also inherent to this decision was scientist knowing that humans have better spacial skills than a computer and that Foldit would help organize hundreds of people to this singular task.

So stop typing headlines like "Scientific novices solve AIDS mystery", it not like the gamers were using the scientific method to solve an age old problem. They were performing a task over and over again until it conformed to predicted scientific theories.

What he said. Still, splendid news otherwise.

[Dave]

Awesome!
@Lulu: is it similar to that "Phylo" game you posted about on FB?
http://phylo.cs.mcgill.ca/eng/index.html

I played it alot during my spare time and I think these kinds of projects are wonderful (and even funny to play :p)

[Lulu_Jane]

Oh wait, I posted Phylo and this is Foldit :p

Man, this flu is killing me.

Either way, I _love_ hearing things like this! :)

[seconteen1001]

Comment on io9 about this thing:



What he said. Still, splendid news otherwise.

I agree with this. It gives gamers something more productive to do than just blowing someone's pixelated brains out on another vidya. Not to say, that's not really really fun and all.