Hi all,

i really enjoyed reading the article about Ebola from @grider123, so i gave it a go and took deep look into other projects that are directly aimed at helping people by finding cures for diseases, cancer or Aids. In this process i stumbled over the promising "Help stop TB" project out of the World Community Grid run by IBM using BOINC as a computational service.

What is Tuberculosis ?

Tuberculosis, shortform TB, is a disease caused by a bacterium that spreads through the air when people who have active TB cough or sneeze.It affects mostly the lung. Most infections do not have symptoms, they are known as latent TB. It is thought that 1/3 of worlds population is infected with TB. 10% of the latent TB can progress to become active, killing 50% of all patients if remain untreated. Antibiotic resistance is becoming a problem in the fight of this disease.
This disease is threatening mankind since ancient times.
It is according to the World Health Organisation it is there were 9,6 million cases of active TB which resulted in 1,5 million deaths in 2014. It is known as being one of the worlds most deadliest diseases.
A very high percentage of this deaths occured in developing countries with less hygiene standards and worse nutrition, which in the end means that the ones that anyways are on the lower end of luck are much more affected than the developed countries.

How can you help fight Tuberculosis ?

The University of Nottingham set up a project in 2016 called Help Stop TB. This project is trying to analyse the coat of the bacterium that is responsible for TB infections by running simulations of how specific molecules within that coat offer protection to the bacterium, shielding it effectively from drugs and the immune system. By understanding this mechanism the scientists hope to find new attack vectors and better treatments for this disease.

As said in the above this is using a lot of computational power using the World Community Grid which is powered by BOINC.
So by letting your Computer, Laptop or even Android Phone work for this project you could actively take part in the fight against this deadly disease.
Here is a link to the latest news from the researchers.

08/17/2017 Help Stop TB Uncovers New Data on Mycolic Acids

What is in it for me ? (apart from the good feeling of doing the right thing)

If you are directing your spare computational power to help such a project by joining the BOINC Network and installing the BOINC Client you can also go one step further and join Team Gridcoin.
Gridcoin is a cryptocurrency that bases upon a DPoR (Distributed Proof of Research) mechanism that exactly rewards this behaviour by giving you Gridcoins (Ticker GRC) in return for the scientific work that your computers are doing.

If there are questions to any of those topics, especially BOINC, Gridcoin and how to set this all up please take a look around here on steem, there are a lot of very good articles describing how to set this up.

---

Content credit:
Header, @joshoeah