Could you help cure cancer? Maybe

Most of us have been touched in some way by diseases like cancer, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Seemingly daily, there's more grim news about food shortages and climate change. But you can help make a difference and it doesn't cost your time or money.

Your home computer does the work. The idea is genius. When a problem is too complex for one computer to solve it in a timely manner, pieces are delved out among many computers.

Each computer solves its portion of the problem. Then, results are sent back to a main server. This is called distributed computing.

Typically, distributed computing programs work as a screen saver. So they run when the computer is idle. To join a distributed computing project, you download a program. The program connects to a server to receive tasks and return data.

Distributed computing projects don’t require particularly powerful computers. If yours was purchased in the past three or four years, it will probably work. You do need an Internet connection. But speed isn’t important; many projects work with dial-up.

Here are a few popular projects to get you started.

Folding@home

Folding@home is run by the Pande Group at Stanford’s Chemistry Department. Its goal is to understand why proteins misfold. Protein misfolding can lead to diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer and Mad Cow.