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The Greening of IT
186 How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment

Understanding the Structure of Rice

The Nutritious Rice for the World project will run a three-dimensional
modeling program created by computational biologists at the University of
Washington to study the structures of the proteins that make up the build-
ing blocks of rice. Understanding the structure is necessary to identify the
function of those proteins and to enable researchers to identify which ones
will help produce more rice grains, ward off pests, resist disease, or hold more
nutrients. The project will create the largest and most comprehensive map of
rice proteins and their related functions, helping agriculturalists and farmers
pinpoint which plants should be selected for cross-breeding to cultivate
better crops.
“This project could ultimately help farmers around the world plant better
crops and stave off hunger for some,” said Stanley Litow, vice president of
Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, and president of the IBM
International Foundation. “People who want to be a part of something big
can take a small step today by donating their unused computer time.
Volunteers can personally effect how quickly this research is completed and
can make a significant difference for farmers and people in great need.” ptg

The Clean Energy Project

This is a new World Community Grid project from researchers at Harvard
University. The mission of The Clean Energy Project is to find new materials
for the next generation of solar cells and energy storage devices. By harness-
ing the power of World Community Grid, researchers can calculate the elec-
tronic properties of tens of thousands of organic materials—more than could
ever be tested in a lab—and determine which promising candidates can
develop more affordable solar energy technology. With this information, sci-
entists expect to create successful materials to produce efficient and inexpen-
sive solar cells that will serve as viable solutions for our future energy needs.
This short discussion on the World Community Grid is certainly not a
typical green IT case study. However, the idea of implementing a worldwide
computing grid to make use of unused computer power in thousands of lap-
tops and other computers around the world fits well with the most important
method to implement green IT at data centers—that is, use virtualization to
make more efficient use of computer resources and reduce the periods of very
low CPU utilization that is typical of traditional stand-alone servers. World
Community Grid is designed to not require the donor machines to remain
powered on any more of the time than they normally would and limits CPU