Every once in a while you see something that is not only pretty neat in its own right, but just makes you feel good about your fellow man. For some reason this story, which I guess is making the rounds, gave me a real good feeling when I read it:
As fanciful as it may sound at first, gamers on Foldit, a crowdsourced, online protein folding simulator from the University of Washington, actually managed to solve a longstanding problem in AIDS research that has vexed scientists for more than a decade. And they did so in about 10 days.
Three players in particular were able to build upon each other to establish the most accurate model to date of an elusive protease enzyme in the AIDS-like Mason-Pfizer monkey virus.
“People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at,” said Seth Cooper, co-creator of Foldit and a researcher at UW Department of Computing Science and Engineering, in a statement. “Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans.”
The article brought this cartoon to mind. Maybe these parents were right after all.
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