This is appealing to me, since me, myself doing research stuffs too. I was ever trying to find a way to make the algo much meaningful by using it for some purpose, but failed to see the importance of that, and the way we can make it really meaningful. Then I decided to mess up something. I don't know the bio stuffs though, but was trying to figure out primecoin which searches for prime numbers. I admit appealing of its achievement, but who really cares about that, and that doesn't really sound science, to me. It is fun by achieving historical record, we can make efforts aftering "perfect", for example, finding the pi number: http://www.angio.net/pi, but does that really matter using 200 number of pi or 100 numbers in computation? It's perfectly fine running a PC for few days to figure it out, but totally waste having 1000 PC for this task again and again.
As an example, 1000 pc running for searching a PoW question, one found the solution, aka, minting a block, whilst the efforts of other 999 pc are simply wasted at the time when one of them found the solution. Importance which makes sense is to use the network hashing power concurrently, and find something that really needs repetition of solving.
I don't see the impossibility of finding algo which does this purpose (let me know if other coins did, like the one folding proteins did?). If not, we should take a look at the wasted hashing power in maintaining the block chain, e.g., the primecoin or the one doing protein cal, and compare that with the hashing power used in magi. I think one can easily figure that out.
I agree doing science or making it something is better than none, but that is just an appealing point, and that is totally nothing if not doing right. I keep thinking / finding the purpose of a cryptocoin. A coin should maintain this purpose a coin is supposed to be; being emphasizing on other stuffs without addressing the original purpose is mostly trivial. A coin should at least aim at saving energy, keeping distribution fair, mining accessible to most of people, a purpose I've viewed.
Point me anything I missed. I open to any suggestions, and surely to the direction we can make change to something meaningful. The algo change doesn't matter the magi design, so we have room for that purpose, being "science" and without compromising the purpose.
I think karma coin is one coin that tries to use the computer power to do good(i don't know what algo they use). I am realy only like two weeks into cryptocurrency and have yet much to learn. But i was looking for good coins, thats why i came to magi. It's kind of unique with it's M7 algo. But i found others too. Storj and maidsafe try to use your hdd space to create something like a decentralized dropbox and more. Etherium is trying to do much more and i realy can't explain how, but it sounds like they are trying to decentralize the whole internet. Burst is atleast power efficient by mining files on your hdd, but they too want to create decentralized storage in the future. And to be honest i only see a future for coins with a purpose for all this computation power and hdd space.