Calling all Android users — you can now participate in important scientific research just by charging your phone.

Researchers at University of California Berkeley on Monday released a new Android app called BOINC that lets you donate your phone's idle computing power to "crunch numbers for projects that could lead to breakthroughs ranging from novel medical therapies to the discovery of new stars," the school announced.

You can choose which project to support from several different options, including [email protected], which searches for spinning stars called pulsars and [email protected], which seeks out more effective AIDS therapies.

The app is a product of the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (or BOINC) project, which is known for software that supports volunteer computing efforts around the world. The BOINC software allows projects to tap unused processing power donated by computer users around the world to analyze data without the need for costly supercomputers.

The new BOINC Android app was funded by the Max Planck Institute, which runs [email protected]; Google; and the National Science Foundation. It only computes when your device is plugged in and more than 95 percent charged, so it won't run down your battery. In addition, it only transfers data over Wi-Fi so it won't eat up your data plan. It works on Android devices running version 2.3 Gingerbread or later.

"There are about a billion Android devices right now, and their total computing power exceeds that of the largest conventional supercomputers," David Anderson, the app's creator and a research scientist at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Lab, said in a statement. "Mobile devices are the wave of the future in many ways, including the raw computing power they can provide to solve computationally difficult problems."

At this point, the app also supports [email protected], which is run by Charles University in Prague to study the shape and spin of asteroids, along with the privately run math and physics projects [email protected]; and [email protected]. Going forward, it's expected to support UC Berkeley's [email protected] project, which analyzes radio telescope data in search of intelligent signals from space.

If you like concept of the BOINC app, but don't have an Android just sit tight. "A BOINC app for Apple products like iPhone and iPad may be Anderson's next project," researchers said.

For more, see UC Berkeley's FAQ page. Then head over to Google Play to download the app.

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