PS3 to cure Alzheimer's
Sony teams up with scientists.
If you're still wondering whether the PlayStation 3 is worth the £425 asking price, consider this - turns out Sony's new machine won't just play games, movies and music, but could hold the secret to curing diseases.
That's according to a BBC News report on the folding@home project. It's run by a group of US scientists who link up thousands of PCs and use their combined power to work out how diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntingtons are caused by proteins failing to "fold" correctly.
Still with us? Well, now the scientists are planning to hook up 10,000 PS3s, which they reckon will let them do a thousand trillion calculations per second.
And Sony is helping out by working with FAH to develop a new graphical interface that will allow users to see proteins from different angles, and view how they fold in real time. It's currently being tested, and the finished version should be ready next month.
In other news, Microsoft has announced that the secret to eternal life will be released on Xbox Live Marketplace next month, while Nintendo is planning to launch a motion-sensing cloak of invisibility.