PS3 SUPPORTING CANCER CURE?

When was the last time you searched for a strong justification to buy a Gaming Console? If you are a humanist, you have a very good reason (apart from entertainment) to buy a PS3. Now, what does $400 PS3 has to do with Cancer? Till late 1990s medical researchers were unsure about the cure for 200 different types of Cancer. Ironically, my 100 billion brain cells took a roller-coaster ride when I came to know that PS3 is helping cure Cancer. But how is that possible? Well, our eternal geeky friends from Stanford have an answer for this seemingly rhetoric question.

                                          Protein Simulation

According to Jane Mc Gonigal, a renowned online game designer, gamers have tremendous ability to solve real-world’s problems because they are so good at solving virtual problems in games. This is because of the inference from leading psychiatrists that if a person below 21 spends 10000 hrs on “something”, he/she will get the ability to do anything in life. The new slim and sleek PS3 gives us an opportunity to help protect humanity from horrifying Cancer. And if this project is successful, all the credit goes to gamers.

                                                                        Distributed Computing Project

Stanford School of Medicine started a distributed computing project called “Folding @ Home” in 2000 articulated to simulate the protein foldings. With the release of PS3, Sony joined hands with Stanford to support Folding @ home. Because PS3 has 20 times more computational power than an ordinary PC, Folding @ home relies on an army of PS3s to compute at Petaflop performance (that’s a Quadrillion – 1,000,000,000,000,000 – floating point operations per second). But what does analysis of proteins got to do with Cancer? The logic is very simple: Proteins are responsible for the biological functions in the body. They fold at a millionth of a second. 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. Though the process of their foldings is a mystery, analyzing the protein foldings can help us make new drugs that could cure Cancer.

                                           Computations of Folding @ Home

Every PS3 can contribute its computational power to Folding @ home project. All you need to do is get a PS3 (version 1.6 or later), click on Folding@home in ‘Life with Playstation’ application, sit back, relax and watch the protein foldings. If you don’t have version 1.6 or later, you can always perform a system upgrade. As PS3 client supports advanced visualization features, you can clearly see the actual folding process in real-time. You can also navigate the 3D space of the molecule using the interactive controller of the PS3, allowing you to look at the protein from different angles in real-time. In addition to this, you can also see the locations of PS3s running Folding @ Home at the moment. This data is updated fairly regularly.

In a literal sense, think about this: why not ask Cancer Hospitals to get PS3s and give them to cancer patients to play games? As the gaming experience in PS3 is far more superior to any other gaming console and PS3 being the world’s most powerful gaming system, the patient gets deeply involved in the game for considerable amount of time and the brain cells will become very active. This might not cure cancer but at least their last days can be happy days, don’t you think?

Now you can get a PS3 and become the “Savior of Mankind”!

                                                                                                Thanks for reading...

                                                                                                Written by Anirudh