IBM Taps World Community Grid To Eliminate Tuberculosis

IBM uses World Community Grid to utilize unused computation power to eliminate Tuberculosis

IBM taps its World Community Grid’s power to battle with tuberculosis by reaching excess compute cycles of users across the world. The World Community Grid (WCG) of the New York based company has unveiled the "Help Stop TB" – an effort made to eliminate tuberculosis, led by the UK based educational institution, University of Nottingham.

The objective of the venture is to let science better comprehend the TB infection so that effective medical treatments can be developed. An infection from a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes TB. WCG is IBM Corporate Citizenship’s philanthropic initiative since 2004.

IBM Corporate Citizenship is IBM’s philanthropy and CSR division. The WCG enables everyone with a computer, Android tablet or smartphone to donate their unused computation power to make scientific research progress on topics related to sustainability, poverty and health.

Approximately 470 organizations and 750,000 individuals from 80 states have helped WCG on 26 research ventures up till now, including efforts to find out more effective medical treatments for HIV/AIDS, cancer and neglected tropical illnesses.

The WCG is hosted on the SoftLayer cloud technology of IBM and by tapping into the excess computation cycles of products across the globe, it offers power equivalent to the world’s fastest supercomputers, the company stated.

TB is amongst the largest global killers, according to Dr. Anna Croft who serves as the Help Stop TB project’s researcher and University of Nottingham’s professor. Two years ago, over 1.5 million people died from the illness and 9.6 million people were diagnosed of the disease.

According to an estimate, 1 million children were diagnosed of T.B while 140,000 were killed by the lethal disease. The World Health Organization declared Tuberculosis to be the deadliest infectious disease, along with human immunodeficiency virus, Croft added. She claimed that the TB bacterium has a coating that protects it from a number of drugs and the immune system of the patient.

Volunteers can play a role in stopping Tuberculosis by joining WCG. In other news, Japan Times suggests that District Court of Tokyo has nullified the dismissal of five workers by IBM Japan and ordered to reimburse their lost salaries. The former workers told they were dismissed between June and July in 2012 without proper reasons or adequate notice.

In his judgment, presiding Judge Toru Yoshida said IBM “had no justifiable reasons,” for dismissing the five plaintiffs and committed “an abuse of power.” Although some signs had actually indicated that their job performance had declined, the organization was not sufficiently strong to justify the decision to dismiss because they were yet competent enough to keep working, the judge told.