A group of scientists and major technology corporations is asking people around the world to use their personal computers to help develop a treatment for anthrax.
Members of the Anthrax Research Project - including chip maker Intel, software giant Microsoft, computing services provider United Devices, the National Foundation for Cancer Research and Oxford University - announced the effort in a press release today.
Individuals can participate in the project by downloading a screen saver at http://www.intel.com/cureand donating their personal computer's spare resources to build a virtual supercomputer capable of analysing billions of molecules in a fraction of the time it would take in a laboratory, the group said.
The screensaver runs whenever computation resources are available. Once processing is complete, the program sends the results back to the United Devices's data centre and requests a new packet of data the next time the user connects to the Internet.
The United Devices program incorporates a comprehensive system of security and privacy technologies to protect user privacy, the group said.
Anthrax was used in tainted letters through the US mail in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on the United States, killing five people and infecting 13 others since early October.
The initiative is modelled on the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project, which utilised the computing power of 1.3 million personal computers around the world to provide scientists access to a virtual supercomputer more powerful than the world's 10 largest supercomputers combined, the group said.
The anthrax project will draw upon the same distributed computing technology to help scientists screen 3.5 billion molecular compounds against the fatal anthrax toxin protein.
Results of the project will be made available to the United States, Britain and other governments for further development and research.