Schlagwort: ibm

  • Volunteer your Raspberry Pi to IBM’s World Community Grid

    Volunteer your Raspberry Pi to IBM’s World Community Grid

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    IBM’s World Community Grid is working with scientists at Scripps Research on computational experiments to help find potential COVID-19 treatments. Anyone with a Raspberry Pi and an internet connection can help.

    Why is finding potential treatments for COVID-19 so important?

    Scientists all over the globe are working hard to create a vaccine that could help prevent the spread of COVID-19. However, this process is likely to take many months — or possibly even years.

    In the meantime, scientists are also searching for potential treatments for the symptoms of COVID-19. A project called OpenPandemics – COVID-19 is one such effort. The project is led by researchers in the Forli Lab at Scripps Research, who are enlisting the help of World Community Grid volunteers.

    What is World Community Grid and how does it work? 

    World Community Grid is an IBM social responsibility initiative that supports humanitarian scientific research. 

    Image text reads: Accelerate research with no investment of time or money. When you become a World Community Grid volunteer, you donate your device's spare computing power to help scientists solve the world's biggest problems in health and sustainability.

    As a World Community Grid volunteer, you download a secure software program to your Raspberry Pi, macOS or Windows computer, or Android device. This software program (called BOINC) is used to run World Community Grid projects, and is compatible with the Raspberry Pi OS and most other operating systems. Then, when your device is not using its full power, it automatically runs a simulated experiment in the background that will help predict the effectiveness of a particular chemical compound as a possible treatment for COVID-19. Finally, your device automatically returns the results of the completed simulation and requests the next simulation.

    Over the course of the project, volunteers’ devices will run millions of simulations of small molecules interacting with portions of the virus that causes COVID-19. This is a process known as molecular docking, which is the study of how two or more molecules fit together. When a simulated chemical compound fits, or ‘docks’, with a simulation of part of the virus that causes COVID-19, that interaction may point to a potential treatment for the disease.

    An image of a calendar with the text: Get results that matter. As a World Community Grid volunteer, your device does research calculations when it's idle, so just by using it as. you do every dat you can help scientists get results in months instead of decades. With your help, they can identify the most important areas to study in the lab, bringing them one step closer to discoveries that save lives and address global problems.

    World Community Grid combines the results from your device along with millions of results from other volunteers all over the world and sends them to the Scripps Research team for analysis. While this process doesn’t happen overnight, it accelerates dramatically what would otherwise take many years, or might even be impossible.

    OpenPandemics – COVID-19 is the first World Community Grid project to harness the power of Raspberry Pi devices, but the World Community Grid technical team is already working to make other projects available for Raspberry Pi very soon.

    Getting ready for future pandemics

    Scientists have learned from past outbreaks that pandemics caused by newly emerging pathogens may become more and more common. That’s why OpenPandemics – COVID-19 was designed to be rapidly deployed to fight future diseases, ideally before they reach a critical stage.

    A image of a scientist using a microscope. Text reads: Your device could help search for potential treatments for COVID-19. Scientists are using World Community Grid to accelerate the search for treatments to COVIS-19. The tools and techniques the scientists develop to fight COVID-19 could be used in the future by all researchers to help more quickly find treatments for potential pandemics

    To help address future pandemics, researchers need access to swift and effective tools that can be deployed very early, as soon as a threatening disease is identified. So, the researchers behind OpenPandemics – COVID-19 are creating a software infrastructure to streamline the process of finding potential treatments for other diseases. And in keeping with World Community Grid’s open data policy, they will make their findings and these tools freely available to the scientific community. 

    Join a global community of science supporters

    World Community Grid is thrilled to make OpenPandemics – COVID-19 available to everyone who wants to donate computing power from their Raspberry Pi. Every device can play a part in helping the search for COVID-19 treatments. Please join us!

    Website: LINK

  • Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera powers up homemade microscope

    Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera powers up homemade microscope

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Wow, DIY-Maxwell, wow. This reddit user got their hands on one of our new Raspberry Pi High Quality Cameras and decided to upgrade their homemade microscope with it. The brains of the thing are also provided by a Raspberry Pi.

    Key features

    • Raspberry Pi OS
    • 8 MegaPixel CMOS camera (Full HD 30 fps video)
    • Imaging features from several centimetres to several micrometers without changing the lens
    • 6 stepper motors (X, Y, tilt, rotation, magnification, focus)
    • Variable speed control using a joystick controller or keyboard
    • Uniform illumination for imaging reflective surface
    • Modular design: stages and modules can be arranged in any configuration depending on the application

    Here’s what a penny looks like under this powerful microscope:

    Check out this video from the original reddit post to see the microscope in action.

    Bill of materials

    Click image to enlarge

    The user has put together very detailed, image-led build instructions walking you through how to create the linear actuators, camera setup, rotary stage, illumination, title mechanism, and electronics.

    The project uses a program written in Python 3 (MicroscoPy.py) to control the microscope, modify camera settings, and take photos and videos controlled by keyboard input.

    Click image to enlarge

    Here is a quick visual to show you the exact ports you need for this project on whatever Raspberry Pi you have:

    Click image to enlarge

    In the comments of the original reddit post, DIY_Maxwell explains that $10 objective lens used in the project limited the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera’s performance. They predict you can expect even better images with a heavier investment in the lens.

    The project is the result of a team at IBM Research–Europe, in Zurich, who develop microfluidic technologies for medical applications, needing to provide high-quality photos and videos of their microfluidic chips.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBSYnk9T4o4]

    In a blog for IEEE Spectrum, IBM team member Yuksel Temiz explains: “Taking a photo of a microfluidic chip is not easy. The chips are typically too big to fit into the field of view of a standard microscope, but they have fine features that cannot be resolved using a regular camera. Uniform illumination is also critical because the chips are often made of highly reflective or transparent materials. Looking at publications from other research groups, it’s obvious that this is a common challenge. With this motivation, I devoted some of my free time to designing a multipurpose and compact lab instrument that can take macro photos from almost any angle.”

    Here’s the full story about how the Raspberry Pi-powered creation came to be.

    And for some extra-credit homework, you can check out this document comparing the performance of the microscope using our Raspberry Pi Camera Module v2 and the High Quality Camera. The key takeaway for those wishing to upgrade their old projects with the newer camera is to remember that it’s heavier and 50% bigger, so you’ll need to tweak your housing to fit it in.

    Website: LINK

  • High-End Gaming Rig Video Review

    High-End Gaming Rig Video Review

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    At first glance, this appears to be a ’90s computer, but open up the case, and you’ll discover it’s actually a high-end gaming rig, created by Reddit user „Gilmour509″.

    [mbYTPlayer url=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-TkQ7KZcbI“ opacity=“.5″ quality=“medium“ ratio=“auto“ isinline=“false“ showcontrols=“false“ realfullscreen=“true“ printurl=“true“ autoplay=“true“ mute=“true“ loop=“true“ addraster=“true“ stopmovieonblur=“false“ gaTrack=“false“]

    90s-computer

    Specifications include: an Intel Core i7 6700K 3.4GHz processor, a 250GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO, ASUS Radeon R9 390 8GB graphics, and 16GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 RAM.