Want to do your bit for science? LHC@home

13 Replies Christopher Roberts

What on earth is LHC@home?

LHC@home stands for Large Hadron Collider at home. LHC@home is a new project involving your PC and the Large Hadron Collider. But why do they need your PC?

Too much data

Basically, the Large Hadron Collider throws particles around a 27km tunnel underneath the Swiss Alps and then smashes them into each other. The process is much more complicated than that, but you get the idea.

All this creates astronomical amounts of data, far too much for the projects computers to cope with. So how are the scientists ever going to make sense of the data they have gathered? The answer: you.

LHC@home 2.0

Way back in 2004 there was the idea to use the computing power of willing members of the public, to help analyse the data collected from the collider. This project was called LHC@home. To say the least, it didn’t really work out as planned, which is why project LHC@home 2.0 is now underway.


LHC@home 2.0 is an improved and updated version of LHC@home. Home computers are now much more powerful than in 2004 meaning that they are more likely to be able to cope with the complexity of simulating highly complex particle collisions.

The public aren’t going to be doing all the work, the Large Hadron Collider has it’s own massive supercomputer network, however by harnessing the spare capacity on (hopefully soon to be) millions of peoples home PC’s worldwide, then data can be analysed much faster.

SETI@home

LHC@home isn’t the first project of it’s kind however. SETI@home is another project which users can get involved in. All you do is install a screen saver and then when you are not using your PC, it starts to help in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence!

SETI@home screen saver

The SETI@home project screen saver

Do your bit for science!

Why not do your bit for science and offer your PC to help the LHC@home or SETI@home project?

Improve your cooking experience with an app

26 Replies RonF

Having a tough time inside your kitchen? Cooking is not an easy task, especially for those who feel it is strenuous and time-consuming. Favorite Recipes is the app that changes those notions and adds a new dimension to the overall cooking experience.

Developed by CulinartMedia Inc. for iCook2day, Favorite Recipes has a bunch of delicious recipes with clear explanations on how to prepare the dishes. Their collection is divided into categories like soups, salads, seafoods etc. On choosing a particular recipe, you can easily add it to the menu list by checking the orange circle given alongside.

Favorite Recipes iPhone appPreparing a dish is really exciting as each recipe has awesome images and details like cooking time, preparation time and the level of difficulty. You can see the ingredients for each recipe and easily add them to your shopping cart by checking the required ingredients.

There is an option called ‘Serve‘ on the top right corner of the screen. It indicates the quantity of ingredients needed to cook a particular dish for a certain number of people. This ingredient calculator provides options to cook for only 4 or 6 people. It would have been good if there was more flexibility so that users could have a wider choice, may be from 2 to 10 people.

I also noticed that the app crashed in this particular area when I tapped the ‘Cancel‘ button.

The ‘Directions‘ tab gives you an explanation of the steps to be followed while cooking. You can see the text version in the landscape mode and text with associated images in the portrait mode, which is a cool idea from developers. The ‘Shopping List‘ is a convenient option to collect all the ingredients you need to purchase for different dishes. You could place your order via Email or take your list along with you when you go shopping. Ingredients which you already have at home can be easily removed from your list.

Favorite recipes iphone app shopping list‘Menu‘ option is similar to the add to favorites section, where you can add recipes to the menu thereby deciding on the dishes you will be cooking for the day. Apart from all these great features in the app, there is a collection of Chef Michael’s cooking videos! This section has a list of dishes with detailed videos on the making of each recipe. It’s quite less in number and I feel a version update with more new recipes and videos would be welcomed.

This app is well-designed with beautiful photos of finished recipes, high-quality videos and some interesting features. The developers should have kept the user’s perspective in mind while developing the app’s interface. Apart from some minor bugs like the app’s tendency to crash, Favorite Recipes is a much recommended one!

You can download the Favorite Recipes app here.