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Canaan Schools - April 1, 2003

Lake Champlain Maritime Museum

On April 1st Canaan students went on a voyage to the depths of Lake Champlain via the Vermont Interactive Learning Network. Students met with Erick Tichonuk who shared some of his experience as an underwater archeologist, artifacts, and underwater footage of several of the many sunken ship that lie on the bottom of Lake Champlain. Students were encouraged to ask questions and take notes in this unique interactive opportunity.

Canaan Schools - March 27, 2003

Open Heart Surgery 101

Columbia Tribute

Canaan, VT - June 5, 2002

Canaan Schools and the Vermont Interactive Learning Network (ILN) linked up with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas to give sixth grade students a first hand look at the International Space Station, Space Shuttle and elements of the astronaut training program. Students from Canaan as well as other participating schools from all over Vermont had a face to face discussion with the educational correspondent from NASA. Many facts about the space program, Videos, slides as well as live feeds were made available for students viewing. Students came away with a greater understanding of day to day life on the International Space Station, and the benefit of the experiments that take place there. Students were also introduced to many of the aspects of training and preparations astronauts must undergo before heading into space. Our thanks goes out to the Vermont Interactive Learning Network and to NASA for making the presentation possible.

Canaan, VT - May 23-24, 2002

Canaan Schools is proud to present Journey East II. 28 student participants of Leland and Gray's Journey East program have just returned from a month of learning, observing, questioning, and performing in China. The performance and investigative tour of Beijing, Qufu, Xi'an and Hohhot featured a week-long collaboration with performing arts students in Inner Mongolia.

Now back in Vermont, the group has resumed classroom work in its semester-long Asian studies program and is preparing to take its show on the road to several schools throughout the state. These home shows offer other students in the state a chance to enjoy what Journey East II performed in China, see photos and documents of the journey, and ask questions about what participants learned about China, its people and its culture.

While the 28 participants of the Journey East program could not visit every school in Vermont, the May 24th performance was made available for broadcast live from Canaan Memorial High School via the Vermont Interactive Learning Network to all ILN participating schools throughout Vermont.

Canaan, VT - Feb. 15, 2002

We here at the Canaan Memorial High Schools are pleased to announce that the Anthrax Research Project is now complete.  It is our hope that by sharing the schools computer resources for this project we will yield positive results that may someday save lives.

Here is the notice that the school received from United Devices.

On January 22, United Devices announced the launch of the Anthrax Research Project.

United Devices is excited to announce that as of February 14, 2002, the screening phase of the Anthrax Research Project has been completed.

Prompted by recent events and a heightened concern around the threat of anthrax, this project's goal was to accelerate what is usually a time-consuming step in the lengthy drug discovery process. The project entailed presenting a key protein component of anthrax into the general rotation of the United Devices Member Community's current virtual screening project, which works with the MetaProcessor platform over the Internet. This allowed UD Members to lend their computers in the screening of 3.57 billion molecules for suitability as a treatment for advanced-stage Anthrax.

Screening is only one step in a long drug discovery process that ultimately must move from the computational realm into the actual laboratory. The project used a 5-time redundancy rate for each molecule to ensure a high level of accuracy and quality. With the invaluable help of the UD Member Community, NFCR Centre for Computational Drug Design in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, and corporate sponsors Intel and Microsoft, the project was completed in a stunning 24 days.

Dr. Graham Richards, Chairman of the Chemistry Department at Oxford and the Director of the Centre for Computational Drug Design, called the results "unprecedented," commenting, "Had we done this using traditional methods, it would have taken years instead of less than 4 weeks."

Preliminary indications are that we have narrowed the original pool of 3.57 billion molecules down considerably, having identified over 300,000 crude unique hits in the course of the project. This significantly reduces the next phase of the discovery process, in which the ranked hits will be further refined and analyzed, accelerating the overall time to availability of a treatment.

While the Anthrax research project is now complete, Canaan schools will continue running the United Devices program for cancer research. Again, this is just one of the ways that can show how a small community like that of Canaan can make a world of difference.

Canaan, VT - Jan. 23, 2002

Canaan Memorial High School has joined forces with Oxford University, Intel and United Devices to help find a cure for Anthrax.

Oxford University chemist Graham Richards has enlisted the help of computer user worldwide to help in research aimed at finding a cure for anthrax. Richards wants to get at least 160,000 computer users to download specialized screensaver software called THINK Life Sciences, which will help his team scan 3.5 billion molecular compounds in hopes of finding one that will short-circuit the process that makes the anthrax virus deadly. Learn more about Richards' computer project at his Web site -- www.chem.ox.ac.uk/anthrax.

Canaan School's Technology Coordinator Thomas Mays has been involved with United Devices for over a year in an effort to find cures for different forms of cancer. Recently he learned about the efforts to find a cure that would fight against the anthrax virus. After checking with Intel and Microsoft to make sure that there wouldn't be any security issues with running the THINK Life Sciences software on the school's network, Mr. Mays then checked with Canaan Schools Principal Mr. French before proceeding with the download and installation of the THINK Life Science software on the school's Proxy server. To get a better understanding of how THINK software works visit http://members.ud.com/projects/anthrax/think.htm .

Additional Press Release

SCIENCE AND COMPUTING LEADERS ASK THE GLOBAL PC COMMUNITY TO JOIN FORCES TO FIGHT ANTHRAX
Peer-to-Peer Technology to Accelerate Time to a Cure

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 22, 2002 — Intel, Microsoft Corp., the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR), Oxford University and United Devices today asked computer users around the world to join with them in the Anthrax Research Project, an international effort designed to help scientists develop a treatment for the anthrax toxin.

Individuals can participate in the project by downloading a screensaver at www.intel.com/cure and donating their personal computer's spare resources to build a virtual supercomputer capable of analyzing billions of molecules in a fraction of the time it would take in a laboratory. The screensaver works by running whenever computation resources are available. Once processing is complete, the program sends the results back to the United Devices' data center and requests a new packet of data the next time the user connects to the Internet. The United Devices program incorporates a comprehensive system of security and privacy technologies to protect user privacy.

"This is an example of a problem that we can use technology to solve. In biotechnology research today, a lot of that is actually driven by advances in computer technology. Technology is helping to accelerate the process," said Rick Rashid, Senior Vice President of Microsoft Research. "This is a great fit for distributed computing and Microsoft is proud to support this worthwhile effort to help scientists find new ways to treat and cure anthrax."

The philanthropic initiative is based on the successful Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project that has harnessed the computing power of 1.3 million PCs around the world to provide scientists access to a virtual supercomputer more powerful than the world's ten largest supercomputers combined. This new initiative will draw upon the same distributed computing technology to help scientists screen 3.5 billion molecular compounds against the fatal anthrax toxin protein and hopefully render it useless as a weapon. Results of the project will be made available to the United States government, the United Kingdom Chief Scientist and other friendly governments for further development and research.

"I'm excited to see international research cooperation and technological innovation come together to accelerate a response to the anthrax danger," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel's chief technology officer. "Using peer-to-peer technology and the power of millions of PCs, we're now in a new era of computing directed at improving the quality of life that will open the door for use in other compute intensive areas."

"We continue to identify the short and long term benefits of distributed computing in our efforts to discover more efficient and speedy ways to identify new drug candidates," said Professor Graham Richards, scientific director of the project at Oxford University. "Particularly with anthrax and other related bioterrorist threats, speed to discovery is of the essence. Without this technology and support of the coalition, there would be no other way to tackle such a tremendous task."

"The combined effort of this coalition continues to reinforce the importance of edge distributed computing as a means of helping solve real-world science problems more quickly and efficiently," said Ed Hubbard, CEO of United Devices. "We are only too happy to be a participant in this effort to help counter the effects of bioterrorism."

"Because tumor cells assemble deadly molecules the same way harmful bacteria create toxins, cancer research can shed valuable light into other diseases and create new medicines," said Dr. Sujuan Ba, science director for the National Foundation for Cancer Research. "With the computational power of over one-million computers we hope to find the 'silver bullet' that will stop anthrax from continuing as a terrorist's weapon."