Intel is sponsoring something called "The Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer Program which is similar to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI@home) screen saver project.

The idea is that you download a screen saver which links your computer (just the spare processing power) into a network for the use of medical researchers working on today's thorniest problems like anthrax research, cancer research, alzheimer research and so on. So if you've got Internet access and DSL or Cable, you might want to check into it.