It's time for our first science chat of 2016!

Things we're likely - but not entirely guaranteed - to talk about:
VEGFR update
Drug Design Updates
An update on the UMichigan challenge
Upcoming puzzles/themes (More Marburg? Ebola? Some other disease?)

The Date: 14 January 2016 (Thursday)
The location: #veteran, IRC (Get help with chat here.)
The Time: 1930-2030 (or so, but the official chat ends after an hour) GMT (aka 1230-1330 PT)
The Time Zone Converter: Right this way!

Please post your questions in this thread to get priority in the queue.

Hi community!
Looks like we are experiencing some lingering campus network issues here, directly related to our issues on campus over the weekend. You may (if you haven't already) encounter both clientside and website sluggishness. We have contacted support about these issues and do hope for a speedy resolution soon.

Hang in there!

Hello community!

We apologize for the brief downtime this morning and thank you for all the alerts letting us know that things went a bit haywire this morning. We had a small database issue, which was resolved by resetting the database service and rebooting a good majority of things. We strongly urge if you have not done so to please make sure your clients are fully up to date - or if you were connected restart your clients, as there may be lingering scoring issues (old clients appear to have an issue with puzzle scores not updating) that could be affecting you. We strongly recommend if you haven't done so by now, don't get caught unaware and be sure all your Foldit clients are up to date to the most recent version.

Thank you!

While the weather outside here at Foldit Central looks like anything but a “white winter holiday”, we remain committed in our efforts to bring some snowfall to campus. As I'm posting this, the weather outside has been steadily raining through the afternoon here in Seattle.

Some of you may remember our challenge two seasons ago, Puzzle 825: Snowflake Design. Now that our community is more skilled at Foldit, we’re not just revisiting this effort, but we have also made a few notable adjustments to make things a little more challenging for all of you.

You can read about some of the details here, including the use of the H-bond Network Filter this year for an extra festive touch.

Submit your best "protein snowflake" using the Upload for Scientists button and the Foldit team will post their favorite snowflakes on the blog (and probably announce them at our next science chat in January) once everyone has returned from the holidays.

Good luck and see you in 2016!

Happy weekend, folders!

With the newest update, team scientist bkoep has put together another great installment "Through the Eyes of Scientist". In this long video (nearly a half hour - set some time aside), he talks a lot about hydrogen bond networks and looks at some recent examples made from recent puzzles. I know I learned a lot here, and imagine you will too.

Please enjoy the new video.

As a side note, please be aware with the upcoming holiday season, many members of our team are taking a little bit of well deserved time off through the new year. As always, we appreciate your patience for any slowdowns and delayed replies for non-emergency/time sensitive issues that may pop up.