Computer sharing tackles anthrax

A drug-discovery effort using more than a million personal computers worldwide has identified thousands of compounds that could form the basis of a cure for anthrax, researchers at the University of Oxford in England announced March 8.

The anthrax project rested upon a strategy known as distributed computing, in which individuals download a special screensaver to their Internet-connected personal computers that enables the machines to work on assigned calculations during their free time (SN: 3/4/00, p.