cystic-fibrosis
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Crowdfunded 'My Carnival' is a video game designed to help children with cystic fibrosis
AccessAble Games has announced a new campaign to raise funds for a free video game designed to help children with cystic fibrosis learn how to perform their breathing exercises correctly. Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that requires daily physiotherapy training, and while experts say there are some tools out there to teach affected children already, they're not as helpful and entertaining as they could be. Enter My Carnival, which will use a standard PC mic to track a child's breathing in and out, and can be adjusted depending on the child's ability. Once the breathing is tracked, My Carnival then translates that into playing games at an busy carnival, having the player do things like fill a balloon with a water stream. You can contribute to the project right now. AccessAble's "tipping point" budget of $29,000 would cover just four minigames, but the full budget of $40,000, if raised, would provide for eight minigames total. Currently, the team has only raised just over $1,000 with 23 days left in the effort.
Cure diseases using the PS3: March 23rd
Folding@home is finally coming to the PS3 next week. The program, which is bundled in the next firmware revision, will allow your PS3 to assist in the research of various diseases, such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and many cancers. The program leverages the unused processing power of the Cell chip, and can be set to run automatically when your PS3 begins to idle. According to the press release, "These simulations can take up to 30 years for a single computer to complete, Folding@home enables this task to be shared among thousands of computers connected via the network ... The Cell/B.E. processor inside each PS3 is roughly 10 times faster than a standard mainstream chip inside a personal computer (PC), so researchers are able to perform the simulations much faster, speeding up the research process."With more than two million PS3s worldwide, and many more to come, the collective power of the PS3 will undoubtedly provide crucial data in the fight against these diseases. If you'd like to participate, don't forget to update to the newest firmware on March 23rd, and access Folding@home from the Network option in the XMB.[Via Joystiq]
