The Help Conquer Cancer Project, thanks to IBM and World Community Grid, is proudly announcing that the distributed computing project is successfully identifying whether protein crystallization within a sample has occurred. Currently undergrad lab techs coupled to a microscope is the technology of choice in X-ray crystallography labs around the world, but now a camera scanning through hundreds of samples can farm out the analysis of those images to thousands of computers worldwide. And you can help by having your computer join the World Community Grid.

From the announcement:

Using the Grid, scientists trained the system to successfully recognize 80% of crystal-bearing images and 98% of the clear drops of protein solution that existed prior to crystallization. This enables six times as many images per protein to be examined compared to human review, and in dramatically less time.
Automating the identification of crystals could speed research in numerous biological science and genetic research projects, as crystallization holds the key for investigating a variety of biological processes.

Spotted here

»www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9RaBlbYLpA