Screensaver Lifesaver

Screensaver lifesaver

Anyone, anywhere with access to a personal computer, could help find a cure for cancer by giving 'screensaver time' from their computers to the world's largest ever computational project, which will screen 3.5 billion molecules for cancer-fighting potential.

The project is being carried out by Oxford University's Centre for Computational Drug Discovery - a unique 'virtual centre' funded by the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR), which is based in the Department of Chemistry and linked with international research groups via the worldwide web - in collaboration with United Devices, a US-based distributed computing technology company, and Intel, who are sponsoring the project.

How It Works

To join the effort to find a treatment for cancer and other devastating diseases, all you need is a PC and Internet access. Virtually any desktop or laptop PC can take part in finding a cure.

Installation Steps

1. Download the file.
2. Run the file you downloaded and follow the installation instructions.
3. Click on step two in my banner and join Team Andrax.

The program is approximately 2MB in size — only slightly larger than a floppy disk. When you run the program, it will automatically guide you through an installation process.

As the program runs, it uses your computer to begin processing a small packet of data. Once processing is complete (about a day later), the program sends the results back to a server and requests a new packet of data. If you aren't online when the processing is done, your computer will wait to send and receive data packets until the next time you're connected to the Internet.

The research program operates in the background, so you shouldn't notice it's running during computer use. It's designed to run only when computing resources are unused. As soon as you run an application that needs computing power, the research program will back down, and your computing performance will not be noticeably impacted.

Please consider joining us today. See banner at top of this page for the two simple steps that take less than 5 minutes. Nothing else to be done. All welcome to join.