World Community Grid

IBM have launched this project to make GRID technology available for many different research goals. One of the first looks at human proteome folding.

www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

Climateprediction.net

"Climateprediction.net is the largest experiment to try and produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century." It uses GRID computing, so that the climate model is run on your computer during downtime - it runs by using your computer's processor power when you aren't. This one runs a model of global climate, first processing through past data and then moving into climate forecasts.

www.climateprediction.net

Darwin Pond

"Darwin Pond is an imaginary gene pool, a primordial puddle of genetic surprises. More technically, Darwin Pond is an Artificial Life Simulation: a virtual world exhibiting the emergence of life-like behaviors. But it's more than just a fun and informative thing to watch, you can participate in this artificial life simulation by building scenarios and setting up experiments," say the creators, Jeffrey Ventrella and Brian Dodd together with Rocket Science Games.

Visit the Darwin Pond site, with free download.

Biots - an ALife Java applet by A. Joseph Rheaume

More fun with evolutionary algorithms. This time the interface has a bit of a Nintendo feel, with mushrooms, emus and other strange creatures evolving together.
Go!

eFloys

As Ariel Dolan says on his site, "eFloys (evolving Floys), are social, territorial, evolving artificial life creatures, implemented in Java.

They belong to the flocking Alife creatures variety, sharing with them the social tendency to stick together, and the lifelike emergent behavior which is based on a few simple, local rules. They differ from most other flocking Alife animals by having the following properties:

• Territorialism (they defend their territory against intruders)
• Potential individualism (each can possess a different personality)
• Ability to evolve (using a Genetic Algorithm code)."

So, they embody a number of scientific principles, but they are also rather fun to play with!


Take a look here.