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While you are at work, asleep or watching TV, it sits there, placidly occupying itself with a screen saver. 

“Typically during the day you might use 5 percent of its capabilities,” Rice University Dr. Kim Andrews said.

But now the man who manages Rice’s super computer is encouraging giving the average computer some homework.

While supercomputers are super fast and have scientists lined up to use them, many researchers apparently just need basic calculations -- a lot of them.

“I open it up, and I can see that there are two different tasks that have been worked on while I was gone,” Carlyn Chatfield said.

Just this morning Chatfiled has joined what is called the World Community Grid.

With the download of a little software, she can choose the research her computer works on while she is away.

“I’m really interested in telling my teenagers about this because I know their interest, and they’re at the point where they are asking what can we do and that there are some worldwide problems,” Chatfield said.

The idea for solving those worldwide problems began in space. A number of years ago as scientists were using giant radio telescopes to search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, they discovered space was too vast and recruited people and PC’s to join the search.

IBM decided if people could listen for aliens, the same desktop army could be used for research from malaria to vaccines for cancer.

IBM started the Web site where Rice now has a team.

“People that come to Rice usually have that sort of bend as to try to make the world a better place, and this gives people the opportunity to cure cancer while they’re doing their dishes,” Dr. Andrews said.

While Rice will use computers in its offices and labs, people here think students and alumni will be interested too, maybe thousands of extra computers working from home.

One Rice researcher who was working on a petrochemical project knows firsthand how well that can work.

He wanted to find some new crystals called zeolites.

“It’s often said that every molecule of gasoline you burn in your car was refined through a zeolite,” Michael Deem said.

He went looking for his crystals with a small army of computers -- about 10,000 of them.

“If we can spread those calculations out over many different computers, then the amount of time it will actually take to complete the calculation you know may be a week instead of many years,” he said.

He’s found about 3.5 million structures.

And if it can work in the petrochemical industry, people here calculate it can work a lot of places.

“I don’t know if I would ever say, ‘Gosh, I helped find the cure for cancer,’” Chatfield said. “But what I can say is I helped contribute to the research and somebody will find the cure for cancer, and I was a small part of that.”

One question people are likely to have is whether using your computer to answer questions about the flu virus might invite a different kind of virus into your computer.

The people at Rice say they are convinced the research is safe and are equally convinced computers should be using their brains for more than the screen saver.