Star Trek fans over at the Trek United community are doing much more with their time and resources than just trying to save a television program.

Members are donating their spare PC resources/CPU cycles to philantrophic efforts in an online volunteer program called “Distributed Computing.”

Within the Trek United community two teams currently exists in this effort. One team provides computer time for BOINC DC platform, and the other team provides their computing resources to the GRID.ORG DC platform.

DC platforms service many different projects such as, protein folding, drug therapy research, and disease research and space projects. Those who participate in these programs can choose which of its available projects to devote their computing resources to.

DC platforms service many different projects such as, protein folding, drug therapy research, and disease research and space projects. Those who participate in these programs can choose which of its available projects to devote their computing resources to.

Team member “Poko” was the first to get this started on the Trek United.com Website by introducing the BOINC platform to its members back in April of this year. Those interested and who register to participate must download the BOINC client and then have the option of choosing between several BOINC projects. Some of the projects are well known and others will be new. SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial-Terrestrial Intelligence is one of the most familiar projects on the BOINC client. Other less familiar, but just as worthy options are, Einstein — a project that searches out pulsars, Climate Predictor -(its area of study is evident by its name), and Protein — a project that studies protein-related diseases and their cures. What makes BOINC so appealing is that it has clients for Windows, Macintosh, LINUX, and Solaris operating systems.

The second team on Trek United.com was started at the suggestion of member “Dosman” and is based on the GRID.ORG platform. Here members are able to choose between medically oriented researches such as, Cancer Drug Therapy and the Human Proteome Folding research.

Currently GRID.ORG is limited to those using a Windows operating systems.

If you wish to participate in these programs there are some things you need to know. If you want to do so under the auspices of Trek United then you must register and become a member of that Sci-Fi Fan Forum Community. Also, both platforms (BOINC and GRID.ORG) require the user to register with them (to be able to track the user’s contributions online), and download a small program which will take advantage of the user’s idle CPU cycles on their computers. This idle CPU space is used by the user-selected projects to perform calculations and other functions important to the project.

Once registration and download is complete, the new member can then join the Trek United team for their chosen platform and contribute to each team’s overall statistics in comparison to the other teams. Being a member of a specific team is not necessary in order for you to participate in the program, however.

After reviewing Trek United’s new mission statement it is evident that a program such as this fits nicely into the new direction set by its President, Tim Brazeal. This program benefits charitable causes and aids humanity in medical advancement, mathematical formulation and space exploration, while at the same time raising public awareness and opinion of Trek United and Star Trek.