Download a programme off the UD.Com
website and your PC will beaver away in the background at screening a hundred
molecules for anti-cancer activity.
Cancer researchers are excited at
the prospect not only of the research but of involving potentially millions of
people in the fight against the disease.
And when your computer has
finished processing its share - the next time you log onto the internet the
programme will send its findings automatically to the researchers at Oxford to
fit into the jigsaw of two hundred and fifty million chemicals.
Peer to Peer networking, as its
called, took off two-years ago with the Search for Extra Terrestrial Life - or
SETI project. A similar screen saver programme has since been downloaded by over
two million people and processes information received from space by
radiotelescopes - in the hope that some it might make sense and prove ET is out
there somewhere.