Web watch

To suggest topics or sites for Web Watch, please visit http://www.physicstoday.org/suggestwebwatch.html . Compiled and edited by Charles Day

http://fold.it

Predicting a protein’s shape from its sequence of amino acids is one of the toughest and most important problems in science. Most attempts to solve it involve a combination of physical insight and computational brute force. The online game Foldit introduces another element: human intuition. The game challenges players to solve protein-folding problems and collects the results. Any shortcuts the players divine could end up in new, faster protein-folding algorithms.

http://nuclearinfo.net

Should Australia build nuclear power stations to meet its growing demand for energy? To help answer that question, a group of physicists at the University of Melbourne has created nuclearinfo.net . Without taking sides, the website aims to ensure that Australians and anyone else understand the risks and benefits of both using and not using nuclear power.

http://www.youtube.com/AIPJournalChaos

Every year the American Physical Society’s topical group on statistical and nonlinear physics holds a contest to find the best images of convection, chaotic oscillators, and other nonlinear phenomena. The winning entries form The Gallery of Nonlinear Images, which appears in a special issue of the journal Chaos . Now you can also watch the entries on YouTube.