Researchers at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Washington have developed foldit (http://www.fold.it), a distributed computing project that will help scientists develop better algorithms for predicting protein structures, as well as better protein design.

How does foldit work? Because humans are highly skilled at pattern recognition and 3D problem solving, we can solve problems that are difficult for computers. You play the video game and try to solve protein folding puzzles. You earn more points the better the protein is folded, and you compete against other users to get the highest score. So it’s a lot of fun!

You don’t need to be an expert in biochemistry; you just need to enjoy games and solving puzzles. Why don’t you download foldit and give it try!

We recently came across a brilliant design solution for neonatal incubators intended for use in developing countries. The team at Design that Matters sought to overcome the prohibitive costs of buying and maintaining conventional incubators, the lack of available spare parts to fix broken incubators, and inconsistent electricity supply among other problems. Based on extensive research of the problem, Design that Matters developed the NeoNurture incubator, an incubator made from car parts. As the team states on their website, they considered in their design process the “abundant local resource in developing countries: car parts and the knowledge of auto technicians” http://www.designthatmatters.org/portfolio/projects/incubator/.

Its components include headlights as a heating element, a dashboard fan for convective heat circulation, a motorcycle battery, and a door chime as an alarm. For a full description of this amazing design solution and other projects, visit the Design That Matters website: http://designthatmatters.org/portfolio/projects/.

If you have an interest in astronomy, why not help scientists to classify the hundreds of thousands of amazing images of galaxies taken by the Hubble telescope. More than 250,000 people already have helped the Galaxy Zoo team to classify galaxies according to shape, by determining the presence of features in an image, such as spiral arms and the prominence of a galaxy’s central bulge. According to the Galaxy Zoo team, humans are much better at classifying the images than a computer.

In the latest project, some of the images to be classified come from the Extended Groth Strip, which contains at least 50,000 galaxies.

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We really love the clothes recycling service from Uniqlo. It’s so easy to return the clothes we bought when we’ve finished with them and they will then be distributed through the UN Refugee Agency to refugees across the world.
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The High Wire ePublishing enterprise run by Stanford University Libraries provides access to a huge database of published research papers that are free of charge to access (currently 1,999,913 free full-text articles available). > > >

The announcement of the Nobel Prizes each October is an exciting time for all scientists. For all those of us not anticipating a phone call from Oslo ourselves, it is fun to speculate about who will be awarded the prize, but more importantly, it is great to see ground-breaking research honored.> > >

This great non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program donates 10 grains of rice for every answer you get right. Every time you answer a question correctly, you move to a more difficult to question…> > >

Social networking sites are now among the most popular sites on the Web. You can keep in touch with your friends and family on Facebook, receive status updates from Twitter and maintain business contacts on LinkedIn. But did you know there is a social networking site especially for researchers? > > >

A recent news story came to our attention about a mistranslation which has caused some considerable embarrassment to local authorities in Wales, as well as wasted taxpayers’ money! This story illustrates perfectly why you need to be sure you can rely on your translator to communicate with you effectively about your translation! > > >

While Adidas’ new Jabulani soccer ball created specially for the 2010 World Cup is receiving quite a lot of press, we think this amazing new soccer ball deserves much more attention.

The sOccket is quite simply an ingenious invention – a soccer ball that is a simple, portable generator. It uses an inductive coil mechanism similar to those found in shake-to-charge flashlights: the movement of the ball forces a magnet through a coil that induces a voltage to generate electricity. > > >