Awesome. The implications are Huge. Not only for AIDS research, but for the burgeoning awareness and a newfound intellectual power found within a Collective. From Raw Story. Excerpts:
Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.
..
Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.
Their weapon? A science video game.
Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game (Foldit) in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -- using a set of online tools.
To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.
Which also leads to a milestone of equal or greater importance:
It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.
"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release.
"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."
One of Foldit's creator's, Seth Cooper had a much less imaginative explanation for the discovery:
"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," he said.
Although..
"Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."
Advances not possible before..
What, and now How, we Create, accelerates.. The Global Consciousness begins to form, to achieve cohesion.. And the Pace continues to quicken..
Wow; We live in Interesting Times!
Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.
..
Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.
Their weapon? A science video game.
Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game (Foldit) in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -- using a set of online tools.
To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.
Which also leads to a milestone of equal or greater importance:
It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.
"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release.
"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."
One of Foldit's creator's, Seth Cooper had a much less imaginative explanation for the discovery:
"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," he said.
Although..
"Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."
Advances not possible before..
What, and now How, we Create, accelerates.. The Global Consciousness begins to form, to achieve cohesion.. And the Pace continues to quicken..
Wow; We live in Interesting Times!
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