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Tribune de Genève en ligne - www.tdg.ch - Malaria (15.07)
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Vos ordinateurs peuvent aider la
lutte contre la malaria
MONDE Recherche
linn levy
Publié le 15 juillet 2006
z
Sans bouger le petit doigt, vous pouvez aider à combattre l'un des plus grands défis
humanitaires, qui décime aujourd'hui le continent africain: le paludisme (malaria en anglais).
Grâce à votre ordinateur, vous pouvez participer à un projet révolutionnaire né en Suisse.
C'est une première à Genève. Des chercheurs du CERN, d'ONG genevoises - Informaticiens sans
frontières et ICVolontaires -, de l'Université
de Genève et de l'Institut tropical suisse de Bâle, ont mis en commun leurs connaissances pour faire
avancer la recherche sur la malaria, une maladie
qui tue plus d'un million de personnes chaque année. De cette coopération est né un projet inédit:
Africa@home.
Malaria virtuelle
Chacun peut aider à lutter contre le paludisme. Il suffit pour cela d'avoir un ordinateur. Lorsqu'elle
est en mode «veille», votre machine pourra ainsi effectuer de précieux calculs pour faire avancer la
recherche. Ce, sans que vous n'ayez rien à faire.
Il y a quelques années, l'Institut tropical suisse a développé un modèle informatique permettant de
reproduire la transmission de la malaria. Grâce à cette simulation par ordinateur, il devient possible
d'analyser les conséquences de la maladie sur une population. Ce système aide les chercheurs à
trouver les stratégies optimales pour l'utilisation de moustiquaires imprégnées, de la chimiothérapie
ou de nouveaux vaccins actuellement à l'essai. «Grâce à ce programme, on pourra aussi évaluer les
coûts économiques, sociaux et humains de la malaria», souligne Nicolas Maire, chercheur à l'Institut tropical suisse.
Or, pour donner des résultats probants, ce système exige une puissance de calcul immense et un
travail intensif des ordinateurs. Mais les ressources manquent. «D'où l'idée de faire participer la
population à cette aventure, explique le professeur Christian Pellegrini, directeur du département
informatique à la Faculté des sciences de l'Université de Genève. Et c'est là que le concept de «calcul
volontaire» entre en jeu.»
Nouveau serveur
Il suffit à chacun de télécharger un logiciel gratuit sur son ordinateur. Celui-ci effectuera les calculs
scientifiques essentiels. Une fois les données traitées, le programme renvoie les résultats au serveur
et télécharge de nouvelles données à traiter. «Les privés n'ont rien d'autre à faire, explique Silvano
http://www.tdg.ch/tghome/toute_l_info_test/enjeux/malaria__15_07_.html
16.07.2006
Tribune de Genève en ligne - www.tdg.ch - Malaria (15.07)
Page 2 of 2
de Gennaro, d'Informaticiens sans frontière, une ONG basée à Genève. Car vos ordinateurs sont
cent fois plus puissants que ce que vous utilisez habituellement.»
Aujourd'hui, c'est le CERN qui abrite le projet et le RUIG, le Réseau universitaire international de
recherche, qui a apporté son financement. «Pour l'instant, nous n'avons qu'un serveur à disposition,
souligne le professeur Christian Pellegrini. Et nous sommes à la recherche d'un deuxième.»
http://africa-at-home.web.cern.ch
Partenariat avec l’Afrique
«Nous tenons absolument à ce que l'Afrique participe», souligne Viola Krebs, directrice et fondatrice
de Volontaires internationaux de conférences (ICVolontaires), une ONG basée à Genève qui recrute
des volontaires pour des projets internationaux. La plateforme Africa@home ne doit pas être un
nième programme humanitaire occidental parachuté sur le continent africain, comme l'explique la
jeune femme.
«Dès le début, de jeunes chercheurs africains ont contribué à ce projet. Et nous travaillons pour une
collaboration accrue avec des universitaires qui travaillent en Afrique.» Des partenariats existent
notamment déjà avec les Universités de Bamako et de Dakar.
Linn Levy
Le paludisme
z
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Le paludisme, ou malaria, est une maladie infectieuse qui sévit essentiellement dans les pays
chauds et humides. Il se transmet par la piqûre de la femelle du moustique anophèle.
Chaque année, on dénombre entre 350 et 500 millions de cas, dont plus de 85% se trouvent
en Afrique.
La malaria tue un Africain toutes les trente secondes, fait chaque année plus d'un million de
victimes et menace plus de 40% de la population. (ll)
Edipresse Publications SA, tous droits de reproduction et de diffusion réservés.
Conditions générales | Contacts | Copyright | Charte
http://www.tdg.ch/tghome/toute_l_info_test/enjeux/malaria__15_07_.html
16.07.2006
swissinfo - Swiss researchers harness computers to fight malaria
Page 1 of 1
July 17, 2006 - 4:16 PM
Tapping computer power to fight malaria
Two thousand volunteer computer users are taking part in a project in Switzerland to
develop new strategies for fighting malaria in Africa.
The extra computing power is being used by the Swiss Tropical Institute (STI) in Basel to p
models of the spread and effects of a disease that kills more than a million people a year.
The project is the result of a partnership – Africa@home – involving the STI, Geneva Unive
Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) and the non-governmental organisations Interna
Volunteers and Software without Borders.
Using a computer model for malaria epidemiology developed by the STI, preliminary studie
last year using a cluster of 40 computers in Basel.
Malaria parasites are carried by female Anopheles
mosquitoes (CDC)
But as more intensive calculations have been undertaken, more computer power has been
phase of work launched in March this year saw 500 computers users join the network, and
risen to 2,000.
Volunteer computing is based on the idea that most privately owned computers are idle mo
could be otherwise used to solve scientific or engineering problems that require large amounts of computer power.
The results of MalariaControl.net will be used to determine optimal strategies for delivering mosquito nets or new vaccines which are currently und
testing.
"There are a lot of people out there who want to contribute to science by volunteering their computers," Nicolas Maire, a researcher at the STI, told
really pleased with the response we have had."
Three-year project
Such has been the response that MalariaControl.net now has over 2,000 registered computer users – more than the three-year project needs at p
Maire said that recent publicity attracted up to 300 people a day to register online. But he expects more computer power to be needed later this ye
develops.
"There is a huge potential out there for making computer power available through volunteer projects such as this," he said.
"There is so much power that is not used. There are hundreds of millions of computers connected to the internet at any one time, but mostly they a
that use only a tiny fraction of the power they can offer."
The basic model is that the volunteers download software from the web that will do the scientific calculations. Every so often the programme will a
upload results and download more data to be processed.
Maire stressed that at no time did researchers have access to anyone's private data, pointing out that it was the computer itself which made conta
Geneva University.
swissinfo, Adam Beaumont in Geneva
SPECIALS
The Malaria Business
Malaria kills over one million people a year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Switzerland and Tanzania are working together to try to ease the burden of the disease and bring it under control.
KEY FACTS
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90% of malaria deaths occur in Africa.
Malaria costs Africa more than $12 billion (SFr15 billion) every year in lost GDP, even though it could be controlled for a fraction of that sum.
There are at least 300 million acute cases of malaria each year globally, resulting in more than a million deaths.
RELATED SITES
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Africa@home
MalariaControl.net
Swiss Tropical Institute
Geneva University computer department (French)
Cern
International Conference Volunteers
Software without Borders
WHO - malaria
http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/front/detail/Tapping_computer_power_to_fight_malaria... 20.07.2006
New Scientist News - Fight malaria with your home computer
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27 July 2006
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You can now help fight malaria without ever setting foot in
Africa. The Africa@home project wants volunteers to
donate time on their home computers to help control
malaria in Africa. You just download some software that
will run in the background and send results back to the
project's servers. The aim is to optimise strategies to
combat malaria, including finding the best way to distribute
mosquito nets.
"We have been testing it with 500 users and already saved
years of computing time," says computer scientist François
Grey at the particle physics lab CERN in Geneva,
Switzerland, which hosts africaathome.org. The team is
now looking for more users.
An African university will eventually take over running the
project, the latest in a growing list of similar schemes that
includes the searches for extraterrestrial intelligence
(SETI@home) and gravitational waves (Einstein@home).
From issue 2561 of New Scientist magazine, 26 July 2006, page 6
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27.07.2006 06:51
Initiatives Mali Gateway > Internet et les nouveaux outils de calculs scientifiques : vers un partage ...
Page 1 of 3
© initiatives.net.ml
Coordonné par Axe Formation
Korofina-sud, rue 96, porte 561,
Bamako, Mali, BP 9081.
(223) 224-98-22
[email protected]
Internet et les nouveaux
outils de calculs
scientifiques : vers un
partage des ressources
numériques
Séminaire d’information sur Africa@home :
développement d’une modélisation de la
malaria grâce à une technologie qui permet la
mise en réseau d’ordinateurs pour qu’ils
puissent transmettre des données de taille
importante.
Article publié le 16 avril 2006
http://initiatives.net.ml/article.php3?id_article=441
Introduction
Le 13 avril 2006 a lieu un séminaire d’information sur le projet Africa@home. L’objet du
séminaire se rapportait sur « l’Internet et les nouveaux outils de calculs scientifiques : vers
un partage des ressources numériques ». Cette technologie a permis de développer des
expériences de recherche sur la façon dont le paludisme se propage dans les pays en voie de
développement.
Plusieurs personnes étaient présentes à ce séminaire : Dr Abdoulaye Salifou de l’AUF,
Mme Siby Bellegarde Recteur de l’Université de Bamako, Monsieur Adama Samassékou
Président de l’académie des langues africaines, Mme Viola Krebs du Programme Cyber
Volontaires au service de projets TIC, Professeur Christian Pellegrini de l’Université de
Genève et Monsieur Bakary Sagara enseignant de l’Université.
Qu’est ce que Africa@home ?
Africa@home est un site web dédié aux projets de calcul partagé bénévole. Le calcul partagé
bénévole offre un potentiel énorme permettant d’aider à résoudre les problèmes urgents de
santé et d’environnement, auxquels sont confrontés les pays en voie de développement.
Africa@home répond à ces défis en fournissant une plate-forme commune pour les projets
de calcul partagé bénévole centrés sur les besoins africains.
L’un des buts de Africa@home est d’impliquer des universités africaines et des étudiants
africains dans l’élaboration et le déroulement de projets de calcul bénévole.
La première application développée pour Africa@home s’intitule MalariaControl.net. Cette
application modélise la façon dont le paludisme se propage en Afrique et l’impact potentiel
de nouveaux médicaments et vaccins antipaludiques sur la région.
source http://africa-at-home.web.cern.ch
Une puissance de calcul partagée pour l’épidémiologie de la malaria
Africa@home est un projet interdisciplinaire. Il est le fruit d’un partenariat entre le Centre
Européen de Recherche Nucléaire (CERN), l’Université de Genève, l’Institut des Maladies
Tropicales de Bàle, les Universités de Bamako et de Dakar, l’Agence Universitaire de la
http://initiatives.net.ml/article.php3?id_article=441
20.07.2006
Initiatives Mali Gateway > Internet et les nouveaux outils de calculs scientifiques : vers un partage ...
Page 2 of 3
Francophonie (AUF), ICVolontaires et Informaticiens sans frontières (ISF). La première
phase de ce projet a été financée par le Réseau universitaire international de Genève
(RUIG).
La première phase d’Africa@home a permis de développer une modélisation de la malaria,
gràce à une technologie du Grid (de la Grille). Cette technologie permet de mettre des
ordinateurs en réseau de sorte qu’ils puissent transmettre des données de taille importante.
La technologie choisie pour Africa@home est libre de tous les droits et s’inscrit dans une
perspective de solidarité numérique. Elle est compatible avec des postes clients sous logiciels
propriétaires et sous les logiciels libres.
Rappel du contexte de la malaria
La malaria contamine environ 500 millions de personnes par an et entraîne la mort de plus
d’un million d’entre elles essentiellement en Afrique sub-saharienne. Au delà de cet immense
fardeau, la malaria constitue un des facteurs majeurs qui freinent le développement
économique dans les pays endémiques ; ces pays enregistrent un taux de croissance du PIB
par habitant inférieur de 0,25 à 1,3 points à celui des pays industrialisés.
Les communautés africaines les plus pauvres sont celles où la maladie fait le plus de
ravages, aggravant davantage les inégalités sociales.
Epidémiologie et informatique
Des programmes de simulation de la dynamique de transmission de cette maladie et de ses
effets sur la santé sont des outils importants pour contrôler la malaria. Ils peuvent être
utilisés afin de sélectionner le vaccin le plus efficace, de déterminer les meilleures stratégies
en matière de distribution de moustiquaires ou en matière de chimiothérapie ainsi que dans
le domaine de la vaccination.
L’Institut Tropical Suisse (STI) a développé un programme informatique d’épidémiologie de
la malaria et a entrepris des études préliminaires dans ses locaux en exploitant une
quarantaine de PC. Mais plus de puissance informatique est nécessaire pour valider ces
programmes.
Africa@home
C’est dans ce contexte que le projet Africa@home a pour objectif de centupler les ressources
informatiques sur l’épidémiologie de la malaria disponibles à l’STI, ce qui est réalisable en
adaptant le programme informatique du STI afin qu’il puisse fonctionner sur une plate-forme
appelée BOINC (Infrastructure ouverte de Berkeley pour le Réseau Informatique),
technologie disponible au Grid computer lab du CERN. Ainsi le programme de modélisation
pourra être téléchargé à partir d’un site Internet public par des milliers d’individus dans le
monde prêts à consacrer une partie de leurs ressources informatiques au projet.
La mise en œuvre d’Africa@home a engendré des échanges interculturels à travers la
participation de deux cyber-volontaires issus d’universités africaines et recrutés par le
Programme CyberVolontaires. Bakary Sagara, qui enseigne l’informatique à l’Université de
Bamako, a passé deux mois et demi au sein de l’équipe d’Africa@home au CERN.
BOINC pour et en Afrique
Trop souvent, la recherche s’effectue exclusivement dans le Nord, alors que le sujet de la
recherche concerne avant tout le Sud. L’un des points forts d’Africa@home a été, dès sa
conception, d’associer des chercheurs et des étudiants africains dans un projet de recherche
de haut niveau, ainsi offrant une opportunité de contribuer au développement de la
technologie de la Grille.
http://initiatives.net.ml/article.php3?id_article=441
20.07.2006
Initiatives Mali Gateway > Internet et les nouveaux outils de calculs scientifiques : vers un partage ...
Page 3 of 3
L’une des conclusions du projet était qu’il serait important de bâtir à partir des acquis de la
première phase du projet, notamment en matière de formation et développement de
compétences en vue de la constitution d’une équipe d’une Grille Africaine.
Informations et formations
Une série de sessions d’information et de formation sont prévues en Afrique, qui
comprendront les sites suivants :
Mali : Université de Bamako www.ml.refer.org/univ-mali et Campus Numérique de la
Francophonie www.auf.org
Sénégal : Université Cheick Anta DIOP de Dakar www.ucad.sn
Afrique du Sud : Cape Peninsula University of Technology www.ctech.ac.za, Le Cap et
Stellenbosch University www.sun.ac.za, Afrique du Sud
Cameroun et/ou Congo-Brazza : Université de Yaoundé www.uninet.cm et Campus
Numérique de la Francophonie, Cameroun et/ou Université Marien Ngouabi de Brazzaville.
Le but de ces sessions est notamment de :
Sensibiliser et informer les chercheurs au potentiel qu’offre BOINC et la technologie de la
Grille pour les instituts de recherche africains ;
Bàtir un réseau de partenaires africains qui souhaitent utiliser ces technologies et qui
seront petit à petit en mesure d’être inclus dans le réseau de la Grille ;
Construire la Grille Africaine (avec l’installation de serveurs à plusieurs endroits en
Afrique).
La structure du module d’information et de formation est :
Recrutement de chercheurs africains pour la deuxième phase du projet ;
Création de Comités de pilotages locaux là où il est prévu d’installer des serveurs BOINC ;
Installation de serveurs et formation concernant leur fonctionnement et leur
administration ;
Documentation du processus afin de le reproduire (effet multiplicateur) du projet ailleurs.
Pour plus d’informations
home.web.cern.ch
sur
Africa@home
voir
l’adresse
suivante
http://africa-at-
©Initiatives Mali Gateway, un site dédié à la promotion des initiatives locales de développement
du Mali
http://initiatives.net.ml/article.php3?id_article=441
20.07.2006
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Africa@home
Africa@home is a new project that
is harnessing the spare processing
power of several thousand home
computers to tackle some of the
challenges facing Africa.
Most popular now, in detail
In its test phase, it has already
been able to test a model of the
way malaria is spread, and now
that it has been formally
launched, many new projects are
planned.
Viola Krebs of ICVolunteers,
Africa@home's Geneva-based
coordinators, tells Gareth about
their ambitious plans.
Africa@home has already looked into
how malaria is spread
ICVolunteers want to install servers in Africa to host the grid and
are asking African scientists how their research could use this
resource.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4849402.stm
26.07.2006
BBC NEWS | Technology | Digital Planet
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A Podcast with a Message
Welsh Water, the supplier of water to Wales, is running a campaign
to dissuade people from swimming in its reservoirs.
With icy temperatures, the reservoirs are very dangerous places to
bathe.
The company is using a podcast to get its message across to young
teenagers - a group which is notoriously resistant to such warnings.
Wynford Emanuel of Welsh Water tells Dee Palmer how they worked
with youngsters from a Cardiff school to create the podcast.
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Published online: 20 July 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060717-15
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Spare computing power tackles thorny questions in malaria.
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Helen Pearson
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Researchers want the help of your
home computer for an urgent new
mission: fighting malaria.
Malaria kills more than 1 million
people every year, mostly young
children in Africa. Many researchers
build computer models to mimic the
spread of the disease. But such efforts
would take vast amounts of computer Spare some time? Computing hours
can now be used to help the fight
power if scientists wanted to include
against malaria.
all the various complicated factors of
how the parasite hops from mosquito
© WHO
to human and back, and how each
person's immune system reacts
differently.
Enter MalariaControl.net, a new project involving several research
institutions in Europe and Africa, and coordinated by the particlephysics lab CERN. The organizers are asking members of the public to
download software on to their computers that runs while machines are
idle.
This type of distributed computing is already being used to search for
extraterrestrial life and to predict climate change and protein
structures. MalariaControl.net uses the same software and is the first
to harness it for disease modelling.
The results could help governments and aid organizations to decide
how best to deploy future vaccines against the disease or distribute
insecticide-treated nets and drugs. "This is a great project," says
Simon Hay, who studies malaria epidemiology at the University of
Oxford, UK. "I encourage others to be generous with their CPU time."
live newsfeeds
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(BOINC)
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ADVERTISEMENT
Model investment
The computers signed up to MalariaControl.net will run a model that
has been in development by Tom Smith at the Swiss Tropical Institute,
Basel, and his colleagues since 2003. The team originally wanted to
predict the amount of protection afforded by a prototype malaria
vaccine in order to decide how effective it must be before it is worth
investing in.
The model attempts to individually simulate malaria infection in each of
50,000 to 100,000 people over a lifetime. It simulates how often each
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individual is bitten, becomes infected and fights off an infection, plus
their age, health, changing number of parasites in the blood and level
of immunity. It updates this information every 5 days over a
population's lifetime, a computing feat that takes about an hour to tot
up on an average PC.
To refine the model, the researchers have to adjust each component
multiple times until it best mimics real data collected from infected
areas. This means they must run the simulations many thousands of
times, eating up thousands of hours of computing time.
The team has already carried out a pilot project using 40 computers,
and the results will be published next month. They found from clinical
trials that the malaria vaccine being tested (GlaxoSmithKline's RTS,S
jab) would be around one-third as effective in real life as it was in the
controlled conditions of a clinical trial.
But infectious-disease researcher Azra Ghani of the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine points out that gathering more data
about patterns of malaria exposure and infection will also be crucial,
otherwise it won't be possible to tell whether these extensive models
are accurate.
Heavy load
Now the team wants to compare different models and include in their
simulations the number of mosquitoes that each person attracts. They
also want to find out how the natural immunity triggered by an
infection, which decays over time, affects their predictions. "All these
things lead to major computing loads," Smith says.
Around 2,800 people have already enlisted for MalariaControl.net and
the team hopes to recruit about 10,000 in total. Smith says that the
results should emerge within a few months and will eventually be put
into an open-access database.
The project is the first to be launched as part of a broader scheme
called Africa@home, which aims to find distributed computing projects
that both help and involve Africans. The participants are already
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From The Economist print edition
Linking up computers to defeat malaria
More article
Computing and
IF MANKIND ever makes the acquaintance of an extraterrestrial alien, the chances are that first contact will come through
a humble desktop computer. The SETI@home project, which searches for signs of intelligent broadcasting among the
natural radio signals coming from the sky, depends for its computing power on the spare capacity of a zillion small, private
machines around the world.
Although SETI@home may or may not find what it is looking for, it has unarguably started a fashion. Donating spare
computer cycles to worthy causes is a cheap way of helping those who cannot afford huge piles of hardware to achieve
their goals. The latest organisation to take advantage of this is one of the most worthy of all. Africa@home aims to use that
spare capacity for no less a task than the defeat of malaria, a disease that kills more than 1m people a year.
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Africa@home is a collaboration between the Swiss
Tropical Institute, CERN (a big particle-physics
laboratory also based in Switzerland) and a group of
universities, including three from Africa. Its aim is to
develop a long-term model of malaria epidemiology,
which it can use to test different ways of combating the
disease.
Health
Websites
Africa@home, S
SETI@home
Advertisement
The institute already uses models to study the shortterm dynamics of malaria transmission. However, the
computing power needed to generate accurate longterm results is beyond its means. Which is where CERN
comes in. Besides studying the fundamental nature of
reality, the laboratory is also a huge computing centre.
Indeed, it is where the world wide web was invented.
And, in the wake of the web's success, it has
maintained an interest in how to link up lots of small
computers so that they can perform tasks beyond most
large ones. Long-term epidemiology is an excellent
example of such a task.
Using CERN's tools, the universities have devised a
program called MalariaControl.net, which takes the
institute's model and converts it into a form that can be
scattered meaningfully across hundreds—or even
thousands—of computers. MalariaControl.net can
handle a lot of different sorts of variable, from the
changing density of parasites within a human host as an
infection progresses to the sort of treatment available in
different places around the continent. It also looks at the relationship between parasite density in people and the rate at
which humans transfer those parasites back to the mosquitoes that carry them. It can even take account of the time of
year, and thus the amount of standing water around for mosquitoes to breed in. Using these variables, it can then predict
the result of deploying various drugs, the likely success of methods such as insecticide-covered bed nets that are used to
block transmission of the disease, and the probable impact of a vaccine, if and when one becomes available.
A test run using 500 computers has just been completed successfully and the project is now being opened to 1,000 more
volunteers (the Africa@home website is accepting registrations). Those volunteers will be able to bask in the knowledge
that they are helping to create a cheaper and longer-lasting way of dealing with one of the world's biggest killers. That
should be some compensation for not being the first to contact little green men.
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Donating computer power to fight malaria
[Date: 2006-07-17]
Help scientists tackle malaria by
volunteering
your...computer!
CERN, the European Organization
for Nuclear Research, is calling on
people worldwide to donate some of
the spare capacity on their home
and business computers in order to
run Malaria.net, a computer model
for malaria epidemiology. The model
aims to help improve the ability of
researchers to predict, and hence
control, the spread of malaria in
Africa.
Malaria is the world's most frequent parasitic infection. It is a potentially
deadly disease transmitted by mosquitoes, living in hot marshy regions.
At least 500 million people are infected each year in the world, resulting
in more than a million deaths, mostly in Africa and in young children.
Malaria kills one African child every 30 seconds.
Simulation models of the transmission dynamics and health effects of
malaria are an important tool for malaria control. They can be used to
determine
optimal
strategies
for
delivering
mosquito
nets,
chemotherapy, or new vaccines which are currently under development
and testing. But such modelling is extremely computer intensive,
requiring huge amounts of power for simulations of large human
populations involving a diverse set of parameters related to biological
and social factors that influence the distribution of the disease.
This is where the MalariaControl.net programme comes in. Developed by
the Swiss Tropical Institute, the Malaria.net computer model can be
downloaded onto any computer in the world from the AFRICA@home
website to make scientific calculations. It does this in the background,
while the computer is being used for other tasks. Results are collected at
regular intervals and returned to the project team for evaluation.
In its first test phase, the Institute used 500 computers to run a malaria
simulation, which, it claims, would otherwise have taken 150 years of
processing time on a single computer. Speaking about the results
obtained so far, Professor Tom Smith of the Swiss Tropical Institute
said: 'We have already done more epidemiological modelling in a few
months than we could have achieved on our own computer cluster in a
few years.'
While most of the volunteer-computing power will come from the
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20.07.2006
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developed world - North America and Europe in particular, one of goals
of the project is to involve African universities and institutions in
developing and running the applications that will run on the volunteer
computers. Already researchers from the University of Bamako in Mali
and the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie in Bamako and in
Yaound?, Cameroon, have joined the project team. 'CERN has
traditionally been a meeting place for scientists from around the globe,
and I am glad that we could host the joint African-European team that
launched this project. This underlines our continued commitment to
promoting the role of science in the information society, as emphasised
at the World Summits on the Information Society in Geneva and Tunis,'
said Dr Robert Aymar, Director General of CERN.
Contact person:
For more information, please visit:
http://africa-at-home.web.cern.ch/africa%2Dat%2Dhome/index.htm
Remarks:
Category: Miscellaneous
Data Source
CERN
Provider:
Document of
Based on information from CERN
reference:
Subject index:
Scientific Research, Information Processing,
Information Systems, Medicine, Health
Programme
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Record control number (RCN): 26024
Quality validation date: 2006-07-17
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20.07.2006
Fight Against Malaria In Africa: Put Your Computer To Work
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While you are sending an email or surfing the web, your computer could be helping to tackle
one of Africa's major humanitarian challenges, malaria. Africa@home, a project conceived
and coordinated by CERN , was launched publicly this week. It is recruiting volunteer
computers in homes and offices to run a computer-intensive simulation program called
MalariaControl.net , developed by researchers at the Swiss Tropical Institute (STI) .
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Malaria is responsible for about a million deaths every year in sub-Saharan Africa, and is the
single biggest killer in children under five. The MalariaControl.net program is being used to
simulate how malaria spreads through Africa. Running the simulations on thousands of
volunteer computers will enable researchers to better understand and improve the impact of
introducing new treatments.
To install MalariaControl.net, volunteers just need to download the necessary software from
the Africa@home website (www.africaathome.org), which will do the scientific calculations in
the background, while they are doing something else. The results are regularly returned to a
server at the University of Geneva , so that the researchers can evaluate them. Already, in a
first test phase over several months with 500 volunteers, Africa@home was able to run
simulations equivalent to 150 years of processing time on a single computer.
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A key objective of the project was to involve African academic institutions in the development
of the software. Thanks to the efforts of NGOs ICVolunteers and Informaticiens sans
Frontieres , researchers from the University of Bamako in Mali and the Agence Universitaire
de la Francophonie in Bamako and in Yaounde, Cameroon, were able to join the project
team, which was based at CERN. They were funded by the Geneva International Academic
Network (GIAN) .
Speaking about the results obtained so far, Prof. Tom Smith of the Swiss Tropical Institute
said "Africa@home and volunteer computing really open up new horizons for us scientifically.
We have already done more epidemiological modelling in a few months than we could have
achieved on our own computer cluster in a few years."
Dr. Robert Aymar, Director General of CERN, emphasized the importance of knowledge
sharing with Africa through such projects "CERN has traditionally been a meeting place for
scientists from around the globe, and I am glad that we could host the joint African-European
team that launched this project. This underlines our continued commitment to promoting the
role of science in the information society, as emphasized at the World Summits on the
Information Society in Geneva and Tunis."
GIAN has just awarded another grant to the Africa@home project, to adapt other applications
of significance to Africa to run on volunteer computers. The project will also train technical
staff at African universities to manage the servers that run the volunteer computing projects,
and help African researchers create their own volunteer computing projects. H.E. Mr. Adama
Samassekou, President of ICVolunteers and previously Malian Minister of Education, noted
that "getting Africans involved in world-class research like this is a great way to boost the
self-esteem of the African scientific community, and putting African institutions at the heart of
a worldwide scientific network will be a very concrete step towards bridging the digital divide."
###
For further information please visit the website: http://africa-at-home.web.cern.ch/
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Background Information
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, (http://www.cern.ch/) has its
headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the
Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland
and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of
America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have observer status.
MalariaControl.net (http://www.malariacontrol.net/) uses the same BOINC software platform
that allows hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to participate in projects such as
SETI@home and Climateprediction.net, searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence or
forecasting the climate in the 21st century. See http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ for more details.
click for details
The Swiss Tropical Institute (http://www.sti.ch/) is based in Basel but has activities worldwide
in support of its mandate to contribute to the improvement of the health of populations
internationally and nationally through excellence in research, services, and teaching and
training. It is a statutory organisation with core support from the Swiss Federal Government
and the Canton of Basel-Stadt. The malaria modeling activities are supported by the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation.
University of Geneva (http://www.unige.ch/) is the second largest university in Switzerland
and is a public institution of the Republic and Canton of Geneva. It pursues three missions:
teaching, research, and service to the wider community. From the time of its creation in 1559
by Jean Calvin, right up to the recent discovery by University astrophysicists of extrasolar
planets, the University of Geneva has continued to grow and develop while maintaining its
longstanding tradition of excellence with an international angle.
ICVolunteers (http://www.icvolunteers.org/) is an international non-governmental organization
that recruits, trains and coordinates volunteers for non-profit projects and conferences
(cybervolunteerism, language services and conference support). Its CyberVolunteers
Program (http://cyber.icvolunteers.org/) works with information and communication
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Fight Against Malaria In Africa: Put Your Computer To Work
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technology specialists who offer their skills and time to development projects. The Program
benefits from the patronage of UNESCO-Switzerland.
Informaticiens sans Frontieres (http://isf.cern.ch/) is an independent organization composed
of international volunteers the aim of which is to help bridge the Digital Divide through
education and communication in a form that is specially adapted to the needs of the
developing world. ISF focuses on free Open Source solutions, and proposes a range of
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The Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN) (http://www.ruig-gian.org/) is an
international research network whose primary objective is to reinforce cooperation among
international organisations and academic institutions. The GIAN funds research activities that
involve a partnership between the academic world and international organisations and that
concern at least one of five thematic areas: globalisation, sustainable development, social
equity, intercultural dialogue or human rights. The GIAN benefits from the collaborative and
financial support of the Swiss Confederation and the Republic and Canton of Geneva.
Contact: Francois Grey
CERN
www.globalcrossroad.com
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Africa@home is similar to the climateprediction.net project launched in 2003 to
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probe climate).
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Based on prior experience, the organisers expect to do in a few months with
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Volunteers can download the malaria computer
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CERN, the world-leading particle physics
laboratory in Switzerland, launched the shared
computing project Africa@home and its first
application, MalariaControl.net, last week (13
July).
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The Swiss team is working with researchers from the University of Bamako in Mali
and the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie in Bamako and in Yaoundé,
Cameroon, who have been funded by the Geneva International Academic Network.
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The network has also awarded a grant to adapt the concept of shared computing
time to other research tasks related to Africa and to train technical staff at African
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SouthAsiaNews.com - Fighting malaria with computers
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Fighting malaria with computers
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7/17/2006 10:17:00 AM
New Delhi, July 17 (IANS) Simply switching on computers all over the world could help to tackle
one of Africa's major challenges - malaria - with the installation of a specialised software.
Africa@home, a project conceived by CERN (Organisation Europenne pour la Recherche Nuclaire the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) - lets volunteers download the software that
crunches potentially insightful numbers as long as a computer is turned on.
When the software runs in the
background
of
an
idling
computer, it records simulations
that model the spread of malaria
through Africa. The programme
is currently recruiting volunteer
PCs in homes and offices to run
a computer-intensive simulation
programme
called
MalariaControl.net,
developed
by researchers at the Swiss
Tropical Institute.
MalariaControl.net
takes
the
institute's model and converts it
into a form that can be
scattered across hundreds of
computers.
updated 1330 IST
NIKKEI
HANG SENG
NEC
-2 11488 'The
MalariaControl.net
+51 13846 programme is being used to simulate how malaria spreads through Africa. Running the simulations
on thousands of volunteer computers will enable researchers to better understand and improve the
-9 4164
impact of introducing new treatments,' said a CERN release.
To install MalariaControl.net, volunteers have to download the necessary software from the
Africa@home website, which will do the scientific calculations in the background while they use
their PCs.
Results are regularly returned to a server at the University of Geneva so that researchers can
evaluate them.
Already, in a first test phase over several months with 500 volunteers, Africa@home was able to
run simulations equivalent to 150 years of processing time on a single computer.
A key objective of the project was to involve African academic institutions in the development of
the software.
Due to efforts of non-profit organisations ICVolunteers and Informaticiens sans Frontieres,
researchers from the University of Bamako in Mali and the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie
in Bamako and in Yaound, Cameroon, were able to join the project team based at CERN.
Tom Smith, a professor at the Swiss Tropical Institute, said, 'Africa@home and volunteer
computing really open up new horizons for us scientifically. We have already done more
epidemiological modelling in a few months than we could have achieved on our own computer
cluster in a few years.'
Malaria is responsible for about a million deaths every year in sub-Saharan Africa and is the single
biggest killer of children under five.
CERN, the world's leading laboratory for particle physics, has its headquarters in Geneva. India is
one of the countries with observer status at CERN.
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Fighting malaria with computers
SIMPLY switching on computers all over the world could help to tackle one of Africa’s
major challenges - malaria - with the installation of a specialised software.
Africa@home, a project conceived by Organisation Europienne pour la Recherche
Nucliaire (CERN) - the European Organisation for Nuclear Research)- lets volunteers
download the software that crunches potentially insightful numbers as long as a
computer is turned on.
When the software runs in the background of an idling computer, it records simulations
that model the spread of malaria through Africa. The programme is currently recruiting
volunteer PCs in homes and offices to run a computer-intensive simulation programme
called MalariaControl.net, developed by researchers at the Swiss Tropical Institute.
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MalariaControl.net takes the institute’s model and converts it into a form that can be
scattered across hundreds of computers.
“The MalariaControl.net programme is being used to simulate how malaria spreads
through Africa. Running the simulations on thousands of volunteer computers will enable
researchers to better understand and improve the impact of introducing new treatments,”
said a CERN release.
To install MalariaControl.net, volunteers have to download the necessary software from
the Africa@home website, which will do the scientific calculations in the background
while they use their PCs.
Results are regularly returned to a server at the University of Geneva so that researchers
can evaluate them. IANS
Already, in a first test phase over several months with 500 volunteers, Africa@home was
able to run simulations equivalent to 150 years of processing time on a single computer.
A key objective of the project was to involve African academic institutions in the
development of the software.
Due to efforts of non-profit organisations ICVolunteers and Informaticiens sans
Frontieres, researchers from the University of Bamako in Mali and the Agence
Universitaire de la Francophonie in Bamako and in Yaoundi, Cameroon, were able to join
the project team based at CERN.
Tom Smith, a professor at the Swiss Tropical Institute, said, “Africa@home and volunteer
computing really open up new horizons for us scientifically. We have already done more
epidemiological modelling in a few months than we could have achieved on our own
computer cluster in a few years.”
Malaria is responsible for about a million deaths every year in sub-Saharan Africa and is
the single biggest killer of children under five.
CERN, the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics, has its headquarters in
Geneva. India is one of the countries with observer status at CERN.
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20.07.2006