Donate your CPU Power !

Grid and cloud computing are the industries buzz words these days. But here is a practical, actionable opportunity for everybody to do something really useful:

Free Download  your desktop Grid software here.

Donate your (spare) CPU power of your PC (MAC, Windows, Linux, even PS3s ) for serious academic research.
You might support biochemical research for 3D structures of proteines (which might and will lead to a better understanding of the "mechanics" of life and thus the development of new medicine.
You might chose to support the search for extraterrestral life forms or their signals (SETI @ home), you might also chose a project for better weather forecasts with the benefit of earlier desater alerts and many more.
You can chose the project you like, and switch after some time to give some CPU power to somebody else.

All this is completely voluntary and "free" in the sense that only unused otherwise "wasted" CPU power is used. Modern PCs have a huge reserve in maximem CPU power which is fully used only in a fraction of the usage time.
"Screen savers" are typically purely cosmetic and otherwise useless programs to make some use of this untapped CPU time.
BOINC  http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ 
makes use of thousands  better millions of PCs running worlduwide. Download the 7MB academic screensaver and start making some "CPU time" donations today.

This image from a BOINC project display structures at the mars south pole.