[extropy-chat] Nanotech educations

Tue Jun 29 16:37:38 UTC 2004

On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 08:48:17AM -0700, Adrian Tymes wrote:

> We seem to be talking past each other.  I don't know

Obviously.

> how to phrase it to get my point across, and I saw
> nothing in your post that convinced me of your point
> of view.

Only fair, as I've seen none in yours.

> Hmm.  Consider the architectures I posted in response
> to Chris's post.  Would you consider either of them

I've skimmed them (because that's a lot of text, and I get a lot of email). I
will look at them again.

> to use an extremely constrained (and thus relatively
> easy to create) library, in this sense?
> 
> > Where are nano people discussing formats on CML,
> > mmCIF, fricken OpenBabel of
> > all things? Where are they?
> 
> At the moment?  Elsewhere, discussing GDS, EBMT, and

What, Geriatric Depression Scale? Ah, it's a CAD format. I already told you
why hacking a CAD format to describe molecular systems (for which already
very good standard formats exist) is a really stupid idea.

I presume you also don't mean the European Group for Blood and Marrow 
Transplantation or Example-Based Machine Translation.

I can't find anything relevant on Google in the first few pages of hits. 
Which should tell you something. In comparison, try plugging CML or 
mmCIF into Google. Yes, you can feel lucky. The web is lousy with them.

> the like.  (It's not their fault they don't congregate
> where you already are.  If you would preach new

Where *do* they congregate? On Foresight meetings? There is absolutely no
online culture whatsoever? I *could* have missed that. URLs? 

> formats, you must come to them.)

These are NOT NEW formats (with the possible exception of CML which is
rapidly turning industry standard as we speak). There is absolutely no excuse for anyone
even vaguely interested in doing chemistry with computers, or even describing
structures to be ignorant of these formats.

If you're a nanotechnology person, I strongly suggest you spend an hour on
the web.

> > We're not talking about a software library. We're
> > talking about a reaction
> > library, which is a set of educts, products, and the
> > moeities trajectory and
> > tool constraints. Which is very unlike shared
> > object.
> 
> And more like part of a specification written in
> English, right?  If so, then we agree here.  I'm just

Not at all. It's a bunch of coordinates and geometry/dynamics descriptions,
described in standard formats. It will require added semantics to get the
geometry and dynamics constraints in, which is why it should be an extendable 
CML format. You can wrap it in a true language, if that's insufficient.

> pointing out the level of detail needed.
> 
> > There's almost nothing there as far as doing
> > chemistry by manipulative
> > proximal probe is concerned. Because it is extremely
> > demanding
> > instrumentally. Plus, very few people are seeing the
> > point.
> > 
> > In comparison, computers are cheap. But nano geeks
> > obviously don't grok
> > Gaussian and Gamess.
> 
> Yep.  Because, as you said, there's almost nothing
> there yet as far as the things they pay attention to.

Who are those mysterious "they", then? We know what the holy Trinity is, and
what they do where -- but where is everybody else? Peter McCluskey, Markus
Krummenacker, Tihamer Toth-Fejel, Will Ware, (we know where Chris Phoenix
is)? There must be new players, as well.

So give me the skinny, because I haven't been keeping current.

> However, "extremely demanding instrumentally" is
> something we could in theory fix, by coming up with a
> new instrument that can do this relatively easier.

Have you worked with a proximal probe? Do you realize what functionalizing a
proximal probe tip means, how do you characterize this, and how do you initiate a
reaction, and then measure what has actually happened? Let's start with those
dimers here: http://www.rfreitas.com/Nano/DimerTool.htm

How should that instrument look like? How do you expect to obtain it in near
future, which environment and which expertise is required to operate this?

> And once someone does fix it, more of the people you
> want will start paying attention.
> 
> You know they aren't paying attention.  I'm trying to
> explain why, and how that cause (lack of hardware) can
> be taken care of so the undesirable effect (them not
> paying attention) will start to go away.

I'm very unconvinced. (Also I have to run now, sorry).

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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