A group of fans have organized a system for donating to Alzheimer’s research called matchitforpratchett.org . Terry Pratchett donated ?500k* after finding that only ?11 per patient was being spent on research for Alzheimers vs ?289 per cancer patient.

The aim is to get the donation up to a round 1mil and they’ve got Cafe Press Diskworld tees and suchlike.

The Sun has a great interview with him as well.

I also learned about http://folding.stanford.edu/ , a project run by Stanford University that asks this question:

What happens if proteins don’t fold correctly?

Diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis, BSE (Mad Cow disease), an inherited form of emphysema, and even many cancers are believed to result from protein misfolding. When proteins misfold, they can clump together (“aggregate”). These clumps can often gather in the brain, where they are believed to cause the symptoms of Mad Cow or Alzheimer’s disease.

So the program uses your computer’s CPU power when you’re not. You just choose a username and download a tiny program and off it goes, manipulating protein molecules in the background.

Bonus: it’s kind of hypnotizing to watch it at work.

---

*which currently equals aprox. a million billion US dollars