Contribute to Real Scientific Research by Playing a Game

By playing a computer game called Fold It YOU can seriously contribute to real scientific research in the areas of cancer, HIV, alzheimers, biofuel and more! Basically the game involves "folding" computer models of proteins. From the Fold It site:

The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many, many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers. Fold it attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins.

Also beginning this summer Fold It will have a feature that allows users to design brand new proteins that could help prevent or treat important diseases!

Here are videos to explain the game. I have not gotten to play Fold It because although they provide both a mac and pc version, the mac version is 10.4 and I am at 10.3 Boooo! I think Fold It is a fascinating bit of technology. The more people we have working on these devastating diseases the better chance we have of finding cures.

Feed the Hungry and Improve Your Vocab at the Same Time

I love this site. But beware it can suck you in and the next thing you know you've spent an hour...or more ;) Free Rice is a site that makes vocab learning fun and rewarding. You are presented with a vocab word and 4 multiple choice answers. For ever answer you get right, 20 grains of rice appear in your bowl symbolizing 20 actual grains of rice that will be donated through the UN World Food Program to Help Hunger. Also the more words you get right, the harder your vocab words become. Its a great site for kids or adults. Click on over, donate some rice and become a little smarter today :)