Found an article about distributed computing in the sciencemag 6 May 2005 Vol 308:
Here is the cover http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol308/issue5723/cover.shtml
sciencemag.org
COVER Computers processing data for the Oxford University project ClimatePrediction.net (see page 810). Scientific computing ventures in fields as varied as number theory, genomics, and particle physics have asked people to donate their computers’ spare CPU cycles to create a virtual machine that dwarfs the top supercomputers.
And here you can find the full article: http://www.climateprediction.net/press/science_grassroots_supercomputing.pdf
A realy 
read.