British Researchers 'Gamify' Cancer Cure Search 20
nk497 writes "Scientists from Cancer Research UK are working with Amazon, Facebook and Google to design and develop a mobile game aimed at speeding up the search for new cancer drugs. The first step is for 40 computer programmers, gamers, graphic designers and other specialists to take part in a weekend "GameJam" to turn the charity's raw genetic data into a game format, with a working title of GeneRun. 'We're making great progress in understanding the genetic reasons cancer develops. But the clues to why some drugs will work and some won't are held in data that needs to be analysed by the human eye — and this could take years,' said Carlos Caldas at Cancer Research UK's Cambridge Institute. 'By harnessing the collective power of citizen scientists we'll accelerate the discovery of new ways to diagnose and treat cancer much more precisely.'"
Captchas (Score:3)
Pity they can't make this work as a captcha -- harnessing the power of all the spammers instead of the gamers to solve the problem.
Computer games about nutrition instead? (Score:2)
For preventing most cancer: http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrmans-anticancer-solution.html [diseaseproof.com]
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx [drfuhrman.com]
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/gbombs.aspx [drfuhrman.com]
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This has been around since before WWII and is the reason Hitler became a vegetarian. It's good, but it doesn't work all the time and where it does work they can't explain why.
Gerald Potter figured out the solution in 2007 and his work makes the work described here redudent.
It took 100 years for medical "science" to understand omega-3 oils were a good thing. Hopefully it won't take as long to start treating cancer properly and successfully like a very small number of people already are.
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Interesting: http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/Private-hell-Leicester-scientist-searching-cancer-wonder-drug/story-12084144-detail/story.html [thisisleic...hire.co.uk]
"Gerry's relentlessly obsessive pursuit of medicine's holy grail shattered his sanity -- and saw him sectioned for his own safety. He read about his breakthrough, plastered over the front pages of the national press, while locked up in a mental health unit. Today, we tell his remarkable story -- the eureka moment that saw him imagine the blueprint for a $1 billion
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Either Bitcoin thrives for a decent while, or cancer gets cured. How is this a bad thing? :D
(Intentionally simplifying things, yeah, but still)
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They need to convert the visual data into something that any human can identify as falling into group A or group B (or c, etc)
al la Galaxy Zoo.
http://www.galaxyzoo.org/ [galaxyzoo.org]
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I think the problem using it as captcha (note speculation, ftfa) would be that the answer is almost always the same (not interesting). My bot would simply need to always say nothing of interest here to pass.
Cheat code (Score:1)
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but don't forget that you need to use the SHOULDER A and B buttons for it to work (the top A and B will make the cancer worse)
Folding@Home? (Score:1)
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Besides, why not both? Play this game on your mobiles, and fire up F@h on your less shackled machines--a one-two punch to the disease. :)
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Evidently we've all forgotten about http://folding.stanford.edu/ [stanford.edu]...
This is much more akin to foldit [fold.it]. foldit is quite satisfying in its own way, but the learning curve is very steep.
off topic... (Score:1)
My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. She is working though the last leg chemotherapy now. She had recently visited the local American Cancer Society, liked it, and thought about getting a job there.
Last week she visited the job section of their site, and found a job that seemed interesting to her. I said 'what does the job description say? "Must love cancer?"'. She thought that was hilarious.