Besides donating money, an example of micro-volunteer work is helping a museum add tag words to the tons of images in its database to help them be searchable for future use.

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The EU is pushing to bring in a Europe-wide passenger database for air-travel which in future could help track individuals down.

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GlaxoSmithkline researchers discovered the gene for Lp-PLA2 a decade ago with the help of a gene database licensed from Human Genome Sciences.

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Also, T-Mobile has not been able to get my 911 address correct in their system, and if I dial for help right now, the police will see the address in their database as the T-Mobile store on Broadway, some 250 miles from my home, which they insist does not exist, despite the fact that I have owned it for 20 years.

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Oracle also announced plans to launch 4 new hardware products by Sun, which will help it drive sales of its database and middleware software, which is optimized for the new SPARC super clusters.

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They are tied to greater needs such as the need for a global drug patent database to facilitate access to safe, cheap generic drugs that would help to undercut the black market.

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To help sort out the dizzying array of objects sold at auction, check out the Artfact.com database for complete coverage of the art world.

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