One of the first steps in discovering and understanding biodiversity is to identify the organisms around us. Traditionally, this has been done using paper-printed keys which enable us to correctly name an organism. Most of them, however, are "difficult" and hardly usable for educational purposes. KeyToNature is developing a range of new, much easier and paper-free identification tools, for use within schools and universities across Europe. They are available on a variety of platforms including laptops and mobile phones, some of them can be tailored to individual requirements. The project mobilizes 14 partners from 11 EU countries, including leading centres in biology, pedagogy, education, and information technology. KeyToNature mainly addresses the formal education systems of Europe, from teachers to pupils, from primary schools to universities. ... [Information of the supplier]
Our goal: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases. Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery. Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. You can help by simply running a piece of software. Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved. We have had several successes. You can read about them on our Science page, on our Awards page, or go directly to our Results page. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]