The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a clever way for all of us to donate idle computer time. It enables researchers to submit huge masses of data that would require many years of main frame computing time by farming out the work to thousands of participating computers.

I have joined a couple of BOINC projects - Fight Malaria @ Home and Rosetta@stone, both of which are medical research projects. There's nothing specifically related to RA so far as I can see so I have opted for what I consider to be some medical priorities.

You can set you PC up to process in the background and limit the amount of processing so that your normal PC work is not inhibited.

It's great way to contribute to knowledge so if you are interested, follow the link

It's very safe as it uses a program distrubuted by the university