I am out of COVIDs on my 24-core Ryzen 3900X, including the buffer (64 total).

I think their real work begins after we help them develop the COVID folding models, so it is not that they are stopping work on COVID at all.
But we have done our part, for the moment. Maybe more later.

Lots of units don't have "covid" in the name but are stil Covid related, some units come from outside vendors and have names that make sense to them but don't have the word "Covid" in them.

Lots of units don't have "covid" in the name but are stil Covid related, some units come from outside vendors and have names that make sense to them but don't have the word "Covid" in them.

That is certainly true, but if none of them are named "COVID", I would expect that the unnamed ones are way down too.

However, that is not a problem but a solution insofar as I am concerned. There are plenty of drug candidates that have been developed and even proven effective in the labs, and are just awaiting human trials. I would prefer our efforts go to the next-generation viruses, which are not necessarily coronaviruses at all. How do you deal with them? And most people are dying from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc, etc. anyway. We might as well get back to those.

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I'm certain I read something about the IPD having a vaccine candidate ready and delivered to manufacturers, with human testing supposed to start in 2021.
100% it was from a post by someone on this forum. Not from anyone official of course, it was from a volunteer.

I haven't seen any WU's that had the COVID19 "official" name that told us it was directly from the Baker Lab.
All the more recent work in the past months seems to have been from Robetta. (The ones with the weird names).

EDIT: Found it. It was posted here https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=14155&postid=98458#98458

Direct Link https://www.ipd.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IPD_AnnualReport_2020-web.pdf

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I'm certain I read something about the IPD having a vaccine candidate ready and delivered to manufacturers, with human testing supposed to start in 2021.

Moderna is doing human testing of a vaccine at the 3rd level right now but it will take awhile to get the results back, one of their labs is in wilmington, NC about 40 miles from me so it's on the local News all the time. They have at least 30,000 volunteers involved in the testing and were recruiting from the community just a couple months ago.

Moderna is doing human testing of a vaccine at the 3rd level right now but it will take awhile to get the results back, one of their labs is in wilmington, NC about 40 miles from me so it's on the local News all the time. They have at least 30,000 volunteers involved in the testing and were recruiting from the community just a couple months ago.

Yes, there are a whole bunch of them in trials at various stages in many countries. You need a spreadsheet to keep track of them all.
https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

One significant problem is getting enough volunteers in affected areas, since the infection rate is going down (or up and down and up again more likely) in most places.
Brazil is getting to be popular, as they have a large number of cases and a good medical infrastructure for administering the tests.

And then there are a large number of antivirals too. The monoclonal antibodies look good from several companies, and I read of new ones all the time. They just need testing.

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I think most questions fall on how R@h lacks a better PR recurrent thread here in the forum.
I've seen so many people ask whether their WU are relevant against Corona or not, that perhaps it is less redundant for R@h team to develop a single thread with more constant posts. (In same style as Predictor of the Day)

Moderna is doing human testing of a vaccine at the 3rd level right now but it will take awhile to get the results back, one of their labs is in wilmington, NC about 40 miles from me so it's on the local News all the time. They have at least 30,000 volunteers involved in the testing and were recruiting from the community just a couple months ago.

Yes, there are a whole bunch of them in trials at various stages in many countries. You need a spreadsheet to keep track of them all.
https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

One significant problem is getting enough volunteers in affected areas, since the infection rate is going down (or up and down and up again more likely) in most places.
Brazil is getting to be popular, as they have a large number of cases and a good medical infrastructure for administering the tests.

And then there are a large number of antivirals too. The monoclonal antibodies look good from several companies, and I read of new ones all the time. They just need testing.

One suggestion someone on tv made the other day was to get a much higher percentage of Black people in the trials because they seem to be much more affected by Covid-19 than any other ethnic group yet historically they are not a large percentage of testing groups. I don't know if Brazilians qualify as 'Black' in their ethnic qualification or if they are more ethnically Hispanic.

I heard one person say there were about 136 different vaccines in various stages of testing, that bodes well for someone finding one, or more, that actually works.

I think most questions fall on how R@h lacks a better PR recurrent thread here in the forum.
I've seen so many people ask whether their WU are relevant against Corona or not, that perhaps it is less redundant for R@h team to develop a single thread with more constant posts. (In same style as Predictor of the Day)

That has long been a concern for ALOT of Projects and the basic problem lies in that they are Scientists first and info requires data and PROOF while PR is often full of hyperbole and wishful thinking. Most Projects just don't have the money to pay for a PR firm or even a single person to do it so someone gets 'assigned' the job as a 'do this when you have time' thing which essentially means almost never. I believe Rosetta does have a twitter feed that gets updated regularly but that doesn't get copied onto the website, seems to me someone could setup something to do that automatically but so far they haven't. I would guess they would ONLY want what the Rosetta people post as opposed to all the 'followers' who may or may not be a fan.

About your comment "I don't know if Brazilians qualify as 'Black' in their ethnic qualification or if they are more ethnically Hispanic.". Brazil is the non-african country with the largest black population in the globe. Here, the word that is most used is "miscegenated", which I can't really pin down on any translation, except something like: lots and lots of people who are a total mix of many different backgrounds and whose cannot be labeled within the 0-1 spectrum. But yeah, since Brazil has a huge slave trade past, it is more than safe to say that the majority of the population has at least one black relative on the family tree.

I see your points, and now that I have read them, I agree with them. The problem here is with R@h client's motivation. Many people donate willing and are fine with it. However, many people are just anxious for this pandemic to be over with and don't really understand the depths of the project. In my point of view, R@h lost a lot of potential users thanks to this gap in communication. The real issue here, is that thanks to this pandemic, R@h is probably getting more computational power than it probably will ever get. It behooves a project such as this to leverage this opportunity while this still is going on.
Just my opinion. Initially I targeted 1M Cobblestones as my final personal goal, now I'm going to 2M, and the highest motivational tool for this is the 'Gamefication' of BOINC with credits and ranks. Still, a regular update could cheer people up for longer periods.

I see your points, and now that I have read them, I agree with them. The problem here is with R@h client's motivation. Many people donate willing and are fine with it. However, many people are just anxious for this pandemic to be over with and don't really understand the depths of the project. In my point of view, R@h lost a lot of potential users thanks to this gap in communication. The real issue here, is that thanks to this pandemic, R@h is probably getting more computational power than it probably will ever get. It behooves a project such as this to leverage this opportunity while this still is going on.
Just my opinion. Initially I targeted 1M Cobblestones as my final personal goal, now I'm going to 2M, and the highest motivational tool for this is the 'Gamefication' of BOINC with credits and ranks. Still, a regular update could cheer people up for longer periods.

I've been raising this issue here for awhile, now. Take 5 minutes to write 5 sentences about how things are going, and you are doing the absolute bare minimum. The sister project foldit, gets far more announcements and news than we do. It's not too much to ask... for something. At all. Just a two sentence: "There's no news to report, but we really appreciate your support. We will let you know when we have more developments to share."

Rephrase it slightly and post it once a month, until you have something to share.
Voila. It'll get annoying after awhile, but it's better than radio silence.

At one time, human inhabitants were divided into "racial groups," defined as Negroid, Caucasoid and Oriental.

Terms like "Hispanic," "Latino" and many others were seen as ethnic descriptors, not racial identifiers.

With DNA sequencing, it was found that the racial groups had such small genetic deviations from each other that the term "race" became scientifically undefinable. That realization has, of course, pushed all the buttons of those who so ardently use racial distinctions to influence social policy.

The bottom line is that "race" is not a valid way to categorize people.

Ethnic identifiers are probably more self-identification based upon upbringing and other socialization experiences, clearly a large measure of arbitrariness. I suppose then that "race" is also self-identified. Of course, both flawed classification systems may be and often are imposed by the self-interests of others.

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I see your points, and now that I have read them, I agree with them. The problem here is with R@h client's motivation. Many people donate willing and are fine with it. However, many people are just anxious for this pandemic to be over with and don't really understand the depths of the project. In my point of view, R@h lost a lot of potential users thanks to this gap in communication. The real issue here, is that thanks to this pandemic, R@h is probably getting more computational power than it probably will ever get. It behooves a project such as this to leverage this opportunity while this still is going on.
Just my opinion. Initially I targeted 1M Cobblestones as my final personal goal, now I'm going to 2M, and the highest motivational tool for this is the 'Gamefication' of BOINC with credits and ranks. Still, a regular update could cheer people up for longer periods.

Absolutely!! But Rosetta is in this for the long haul and more crunchers means more demands on the hardware and that often means more maintenence and money, there is often a concious decision involved in Projects choices although most of us wouldn't always agree they were good ones they are the Projects choices to make. As I said earlier I would start a new group that copies the twitter posts by the Admins in with zero comments allowed by us users. They often post things that people ask about.

At one time, human inhabitants were divided into "racial groups," defined as Negroid, Caucasoid and Oriental.

Terms like "Hispanic," "Latino" and many others were seen as ethnic descriptors, not racial identifiers.

With DNA sequencing, it was found that the racial groups had such small genetic deviations from each other that the term "race" became scientifically undefinable. That realization has, of course, pushed all the buttons of those who so ardently use racial distinctions to influence social policy.

The bottom line is that "race" is not a valid way to categorize people.

Ethnic identifiers are probably more self-identification based upon upbringing and other socialization experiences, clearly a large measure of arbitrariness. I suppose then that "race" is also self-identified. Of course, both flawed classification systems may be and often are imposed by the self-interests of others.

Does that 'racial group' change thru intermingling of the 'groups' and make things more muddy or do they still stand out as one of the other? I'm guessing muddy genes especially the more times intermingling goes on.

Designed antiviral proteins inhibit SARS-CoV-2 in the lab

https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/designed-antiviral-proteins-inhibit-sars-cov-2-lab

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/09/08/science.abd9909

Thanks for this update!

From the New York Times today, regarding UW's work. They did not specifically mention Rosetta@Home:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/21/science/coronavirus-antibodies-artificial-intelligence.html

A good piece illustrating how research that's non-specifically Covid might have a significant effect on vaccines including Covid.
Relating to work I assume that's done here and why it's worth continuing with it even without Covid in its name.

UW Newsroom: Designer protein patches boost cell signaling

Proteins engineered to form honeycomb structures can block uptake of receptors from the surface of cells.

A new class of protein material that interacts with living cells without being absorbed by them can influence cell signalling by binding and sequestering cell surface receptors, a new study shows. This breakthrough could have far-reaching implications for stem cell research and enable the development of new materials designed to modulate the behaviour of living systems.

The research, which appears in the January 6 edition of Nature, was led by the Baker lab at the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Derivery lab at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. The paper is available here.

Cells interact with their environment via receptors at their surface, which can bind to hormones, neurotransmitters, drugs, and toxins. When such molecules bind to a receptor, this triggers some kind of response inside the cell, a process known as signalling. But for the cell, it is important that this response be transient, to still be responsive to the signal later on. To achieve this, cells will commonly terminate signalling by absorbing both an activated receptor and the molecule that stimulated it, targeting both for destruction inside the cell.

“This tendency of cells to internalize receptors likely lowers the efficiency of immunotherapies,” said Emmanuel Derivery, assistant professor at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. “Indeed, when antibody drugs bind their target receptors and then become internalized and degraded, more antibody must always be injected.”

To create a way around this, Baker lab postdoctoral scholar Ariel Ben-Sasson designed new proteins that assemble into large, flat patches. This molecular scaffolding was then further engineered to display signalling molecules. Graduate student Joseph Watson of the Derivery lab showed that such protein materials could latch onto cells, activate surface receptors, and resist being absorbed by the cell for hours or even days.

“This work paves the way towards a synthetic cell biology, where a new generation of multi-protein materials can be designed to control the complex behaviour of cells,” said David Baker, professor of biochemistry and director of the UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design.

By swapping out which cell surface receptors were targeted by the patch, the researchers showed that different cell types could be activated. “We now have a tool that can interact with any type of cells in a very specific way,” said Ben-Sasson. “This is what is exciting about protein engineering — it opens fields that people may not expect.”

According to co-author Hannele Ruohola-Baker, professor of biochemistry and associate director of the UW Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, versions of these new materials could eventually help physicians alleviate the dangers of sepsis by controlling the inflammatory response to infection and even enable entirely new ways to treat COVID-19, heart disease, and diabetes, and even mitigate the downstream effects of strokes, including Alzheimer’s disease. “This breakthrough helps pave the way for the use of synthetic cell biology in regenerative medicine,” said Ruohola-Baker.

This research was supported by the UK Medical Research Council, UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Wellcome Trust, Human Frontier Science Program, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, US National Institutes of Health, US Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences Biomolecular Materials Program at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Medimmune, and Infinitus.

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Description of embedded video created by Ariel Ben-Sasson:

Self-assembly is a process where same molecules, or building blocks, interact to form complex materials. Here we show yet a more complex process - co-assembly - where materials are assembled from a mix of two different building blocks. For materials engineers and biologists looking for new tools this is an important breakthrough as it allows to control where, when, or under what conditions the material would assemble and its emergent properties evolve. In the video we show that we can form flat arrays embedded to cell surfaces, trigger and boost biological activation through receptors clustering and uptake impediment (endocytosis block). This proof-of-concept demonstrates the far-reaching potential of this new class of designer materials to narrow the gap between synthetic and living systems. This video was produced using python and the Pymol graphical interface (Schrödinger).

News release written by Ian Haydon, UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design.

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BBC: Two more life-saving Covid drugs discovered

By Michelle Roberts
Health editor, BBC News online

Two more life-saving drugs have been found that can cut deaths by a quarter in patients who are sickest with Covid.

The anti-inflammatory medications, given via a drip, save an extra life for every 12 treated, say researchers who have carried out a trial in NHS intensive care units.

Supplies are already available across the UK so they can be used immediately to save hundreds of lives, say experts.

There are over 30,000 Covid patients in UK hospitals - 39% more than in April.

The UK government is working closely with the manufacturer, to ensure the drugs - tocilizumab and sarilumab - continue to be available to UK patients.

As well as saving more lives, the treatments speed up patients' recovery and reduce the length of time that critically-ill patients need to spend in intensive care by about a week.

Both appear to work equally well and add to the benefit already found with a cheap steroid drug called dexamethasone.

Life-saving coronavirus drug 'major breakthrough'
Although the drugs are not cheap, costing around £750 to £1,000 per patient, on top of the £5 course of dexamethasone, the advantage of using them is clear - and less than the cost per day of an intensive care bed of around £2,000, say experts.

Lead researcher Prof Anthony Gordon, from Imperial College London, said: "For every 12 patients you treat with these drugs you would expect to save a life. It's a big effect."

In the REMAP-CAP trial carried out in six different countries, including the UK, with around 800 intensive care patients:

- Nearly 36% of intensive care Covid patients receiving standard care died
- The new drugs reduced that by a quarter, to 27%, when given to patients within 24 hours of them entering intensive care

Prof Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said: "The fact there is now another drug that can help to reduce mortality for patients with Covid-19 is hugely welcome news and another positive development in the continued fight against the virus."

Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock said: "The UK has proven time and time again it is at the very forefront of identifying and providing the most promising, innovative treatments for its patients.

"Today's results are yet another landmark development in finding a way out of this pandemic and, when added to the armoury of vaccines and treatments already being rolled out, will play a significant role in defeating this virus."

The drugs dampen down inflammation, which can go into overdrive in Covid patients and cause damage to the lungs and other organs.

Doctors are being advised to give them to any Covid patient who, despite receiving dexamethasone, is deteriorating and needs intensive care.

Tocilizumab and sarilumab have already been added to the government's export restriction list, which bans companies from buying medicines meant for UK patients and selling them on for a higher price in another country.

The research findings have not yet been peer reviewed or published in a medical journal.

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I understand that all work units for Rosetta are important. But some would like to think they are contributing to a pandemic and would like their resources focused on that. Like World community grid. Anyway, thats just my thought.