The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is preparing for the annual Great Strides walk on the weekend of May 17 -18. This year’s national goal is $40 million dollars, a substantial addition to the $180 million raised through the event since the inception in 1989. Here are some of the unfortunate statistics Great Strides is attempting to remedy:

• Nearly 1,000 cases of Cystic Fibrosis are diagnosed each year
• The mean survival age is 37 years old
• 30,000 U.S. children are suffering from Cystic Fibrosis

The foundation requires online registration, allowing teams and individuals to view fund-raising progress and interact with other participants. Walk locations and other event information is also included in the simple online portal. Hopefully, new initiatives in Data Portability such as Google’s “Friend Connect” platform will allow the foundation to easily enhance both awareness and the relationships formed during the annual Great Strides campaign. Feel free to comment on the benefits of portable social networks to fund-raising efforts below.

Link to [Great Strides]

A new game developed by University of Washington researchers called Fold It, turns protein folding into a game.

In a ground breaking first, Foldit asks volunteers for more than processor cycles on idle computers and seeks to help solve some of the most complex biological problems using people’s inherent problem solving skills.

After about 20 minutes of training, people feel like they’re involved with video game but are actually applying the same laws of physics which cause protein strands to curl and twist into 3D shapes.

Link to [ Fold It ]

Frozen Pea fund is a organization with Susan’s post and photo about a bag of frozen peas that started it all (explained here). Members of Susan’s Twitter community soon began adding peas to their avatar images; this supportive action quickly spread throughout a broader Twitter community and beyond.

It’s also the story of Connie Reece. A suggestion via Twitter for donating the equivalent of the cost of two bags of frozen peas to cancer research led to Connie Reece stepping into the peas picture with the formation of the Frozen Pea Fund, a fundraising effort for breast cancer research and programs through the American Cancer Society.

Link to [ Frozen Pea Fund ]