There seems to be some confusion about, this, so let me expalin and confuse every body else so every body can be equally confused or maybe not.

MalaraiControl.net is running several applications. Some are test applications.

Other projects have a separate alpha or beta site for testing, but not here, as this can be controlled by the user in preferences.

There are several type of work currently available, See also Applications. not all applications run on all platforms.

• 
  
• malariacontrol.net = the main or normal simulation application, usually always available work, See Server Status Results ready to send.
  
• malariacontrol.net test = a test version of above, only available when testing of new parameters is needed. Test work has a shorter deadline, because it needs to be returned promptly so they can determine if changes are needed with more testing before releasing as the main application. Currently deadline is around 28 hours. If you run off line this type may not be suitable for you. Note you should only run test applications if you are willing to accept some risk, test applications might crash, not complete, hang up, and so on. It is possible you will not get credit for them. They always try to release bug free, but due to the complexity and vast number of different computers it is not always possible to account for every situation. Please also report problems observed when running test applications to help the MDdN developers.
  
• Prediction of Malaria Prevalence - A special limited run which has also been nicknamed map or map predictor. These have short run times or a minute more or less and are only available sometimes. See thread Mappredictor 5.20 for details. This was covered before that running these can swamp your client with lots of work and bog it down, 1400 tasks per core or cpu. Think about it, if your normal run time is 2 hours, you could get 120 of these instead of 1. This can make you boinc client_state.xml file quite large if you have a large queue setting. You should adjust your connect interval and keep extra work to some small number to avoid this if you run these types. A setting of .5 days can still give you several hundreds, depending on what other work and client version you have.
  
• Estimation of parameters of infection dynamics, nicknamed \'Optimizer\' - a new application, see thread A THIRD science application for malariacontrol for more details. These too have a shorter variable run time than the main application, from < 1 to 20 minutes mostly with some up to 2 hours.
  

To change which types of application(s) you run, follow these steps,
Go to your account page
next click view or edit next to malariacontrol.net preferences
next click Edit malariacontrol.net preferences

You will see several options, those that use venues can set individual options for each venue, and yes they are obeyed, I personally use them and only have test applications running on certain computers assign to one or two of the 3 extra venues, counting the (---) default you have 4 venues. ** more below

• 
  
• Resource share
  
• Run test applications?
  
• Should malariacontrol.net send you email newsletters?
  
• Should malariacontrol.net show your computers on its web site?
  
• Default computer location
  
• Run malariacontrol simulation application
  
• Run malariacontrol test application
  
• Run map predictor application
  
• Run optimizer application
  

To run only the normal or regular main application, set the Run malariacontrol simulation application to YES
and
set the other run options to NO.

To run only test applications set the Run malariacontrol test application to YES and the Run simualtion application to NO

To run new test applications set the Run test applications? to YES

You can also select which types of test or special applications you want by only selecting one, two or a combination of any of those (simulation, map, optimizer, test), I think you might get the point by now.

** to use venues, first you need to set the individual preferences as mentioned above, such as having your default not run test applications and the set one of the other venues to run only test (or both). Next you need to change each computer(s) venue. go to your account, then view Computers on this account, then view a specific computer, at the bottom will be a venue box, select the venue (--- = default, home, school or work) you want assigned to that computer and update. Upon next contact by that computer to the malariacontrol scheduler it will receive and begin using the new venue setting, either just wait for it to contact automatically or you can do a manual \'update\' in you boinc manager.

Notes for the 'Estimation of parameters of infection dynamics (2h, no progress bar)' tasks, also known as 'Opt' as identified by 'opt...' in the task or result name.

See the application title when it is running, it will say something like (#h max, no progress bar).

This means it with not show progress (percent complete) when running. This is due to it is a legacy wrapper application and the applciation has no way to report progress back to boinc.

The #h max will mean it will run anytime up to that number of hours, this total CPU time and has nothing to due with the speed of your CPU. If it says 2h, then it will run up to 2 hours on a 400MHz computer and up to 2 hours on a 3.2Ghz computer. It is normal for them to not run this long and terminate early, but they should never exceed this time.

Currently only Windows XP or above computers can process these.

See previous post if you wish to opt out of running Opt tasks.

Explanation of the short 3 day deadline.

Most of the simulations running on malariacontrol.net serve the purpose of estimating parameters of the underlying mathematical models. In essence, we iteratively try a lot of different model parametrizations, and let an optimization algorithm decide which parameter set to try next. This process is more efficient if we use shorter deadlines. In other words, with the same number of computers, we can reach the same goals in shorter time if we use shorter deadlines.

There is an interesting (though quite technical) publication from the team from milkyway@home which discusses this topic in some detail:

http://wcl.cs.rpi.edu/papers/desell-gecco-2008.pdf

The workunits are created continously, one parametrization at a time, whenever the number of workunits ready for download drops below a certain number (e.g. 700).