Drugs & Rockets
My father, Tony, has always had a scientific mind. When he was young he built model rockets for which he mixed his own fuel. He and his friends would judge how good the fuel mixture was by how big a hole it could blow in the vacant lot (his younger brother Roger still contends that one of his rockets was responsible for burning down a local charcoal plant some 50 years ago, but dad says there’s no proof). Tony’s always been inquisitive, industrious and very smart and he did his best to impart that to me. I like to think he did a pretty good job.
Tony is able to walk with the aid of a rolling walker. Even with his walker he walks stiffly, knees locked, so that if his brain suddenly tells his leg muscles to let go he might be able to catch himself before he collapses to the floor; he still falls twice a day.
So when my mother presented Tony with the possibility of entering a clinical trial for a new dopamine stabilizing drug known as ACR16, my father handled it the way that I expected that he would. He decided that he’d like to be involved. The trial duration is only 13 weeks, so even if he doesn’t get the placebo and it actually does help to reduce his chorea it will be only fleeting. But for Tony any relief from the constant wrestling with his own body would be only a bonus.
No, the reason that my father is enrolled in the trial is the same as the reason I run my folding farm. To fight back, to do something. To help science overcome Huntington’s Disease so that people as yet unborn won’t have as hard a time as he and others do. Because my father wants the human race to succeed, to get better, to overcome our bodies’ inherent frailties by using our minds.
Watching my father willingly go hundreds of miles out of his way to find himself in a room full of family and strangers to struggle and fail with a coordination test as basic as sticking out his own tongue has been very humbling. The experience has forever changed they way that I perceive myself and this project. It has been quite simply demonstrated to me that no matter how big, fast, or expensive Atlas Folder ever gets, it can never be as significant as the sacrifices made by people like my father Tony.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I noticed from viewing your online stats that you use the 1.19 version of FahCore_11.exe
http://atlasfolding.com/fahstats/summary.html
There is an experimental version of FahCore_11.exe 1.27 that reduce overheating for large protein WU
Here is the forum post url
http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=10404
And thx. from Folding@Home team ID 12072
team member noprob
fold on
May 5th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Nice article.
Tony is one of the coolest and smartest people I’ve ever met.
Take care,
Joe
April 24th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Hey Jason,
The reason why I fold is very similar to you, my mother passed away from cancer, and I think even if my little contribution can go towards finding a cure for any disease, it will be worth it 100%.
I love your dedication, and I wish to do that same some day.
Keep up the good work, your an inspiration to all.
Dennison
April 14th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Hi Jason,
Thanks for taking time out of your day to reply to my post on folding@home. My user ID (englandr753). I am very touched and impressed with what you do and how to apply yourself to do something about it. I wish I was able to set up at your level, I would do it in a minute. My wifes family is strickened with Alzheimers and I feel the same compassion as you about it. You and your dad have our prayers.
Best of wishes,
Rodney
April 13th, 2009 at 2:57 am
I have been folding for some years now and I am impressed with your folding “monster” I will in the near future build a mini monster
in the same spirit you built yours.
April 8th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Well, you conviced me. Since my computer is often running without anybody using it, I decided to download and run the folding@home application. I hope I can help your project with that!
April 8th, 2009 at 6:31 am
This was an outstanding blog article. All the best to your father and keep up the good spirit!
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Thank you for the kind words everyone.
Jason
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:55 am
I too believe. Just to let you know, I have been folding for years. My current PPD is 145,000 per day, and I have 22 video cards and 19 smp clients working. I am number 31 in the world right now in total contribution.
I also hope to help in ending these ailments.
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:05 am
I really admire Your work. I admire, how you step out of comfort zone, inventing new solutions, thinking 2 steps forward…like Your share/scalability solution.
Jaak
March 30th, 2009 at 3:25 am
In 1957, Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched by Russia and it stunned a sleeping America. Tony was awarded a Navy cruise on the U.S.S Intrepid aircraft carrier in the National Science Fair competition. His entry was a rocket with a camera tracking system. Each component in the rocket and the camera was built from scratch and used no pre-assembled parts. It was a preamble to his contribution of circuits for the space program and military years later.
It was his work on the rocket and camera tracking system that led to his first patent application. The device was a transducer. The application was dropped several years later with the invention of the transistor that made transducers out of date components.
Mike, I am so pleased that Tetrabenazine is helping. It is awsome to be able to read a book again. Maggie
March 29th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Please thank your father for all of us. ACR16 may have great benefit but we won’t know until the testing is complete and in the HD world it’s actually hard to get enough people to do a statistically-significant pool of volunteers. My Allie has been on Xenazine (tetrabenazine) for about two months now and it has knocked her chorea down to almost nothing. She can now read 500 page books again and isn’t embarrassed to go out in public.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Lucas,
I have heard about the card. I think it offers maybe better cooling and reliability but I don’t see 12/14 GPUs happening soon. The nVidia driver only supports 8 GPUs right now, so to get that many working in one computer would take some virtualization. It does maybe offer a bigger choice of motherboards though, and that is good.
Jason
March 29th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Best wishes for your father and yourself, Jason…
Have you heard already about 295 made in 40nm process? On a single board like 4870×2? 12/14 GPU nod would be possible soon (April/May?)…
I keep my eyes on your statistics, very impressive. Keep on going.
Good luck,
Lukasz