The Cognitive Surplus, Ctd

The online game "Foldit," released in 2008, "enlists the help of online puzzle-solvers to help crack one of science's most intractable mysteries - how proteins fold into their complex three-dimensional forms."

Some new data on the effort:

When the researchers analyzed the strategies employed by a group of 57,000 Foldit players, they found that humans were better at some aspects of pattern recognition and protein structure prediction than current computational software.

As Bubble might say, we're not completely useless you know.