[extropy-chat] Nanotech educations

Adrian Tymes wingcat at pacbell.net
Tue Jun 29 17:14:57 UTC 2004


--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> > > 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.

You asked where they were.  I didn't say they were
doing things you'd consider smart.

> I can't find anything relevant on Google in the
> first few pages of hits. 
> Which should tell you something.

Only that the acronym "GDS" is used for many other
things.  Try "GDS nanotechnology format" for the GDS
that is a file format used in nanotech.

> > 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? 

The online culture is there, but it's waaay dispersed.
To be honest, I'm having a hard time finding central
points of online congregation myself.

> > formats, you must come to them.)
> 
> These are NOT NEW formats

They are to the people you'd be introducing them to.

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

I've spent far longer than that, but looking at things
directly relevant to my projects.  Right now, I'm only
theorizing about MNT; that which I attempt in the lab
is far nearer-term.  (Then again, if I had a possible
way to achieve MNT in the lab, I might bounce it by
this list and a few other places first.)

> > > 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.

Actually, that is a subset of what I meant.  We're
apparently in agreement here.


> > > 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?

The "nano geeks" you mentioned.  There are far too
many to list - even if I could honestly claim to know
of most of them, which I can't.

> > 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?

I said "in theory".  That means I don't (yet) have a
rock-solid idea for how to achieve this, but I
suspect someone could come up with one.  You ask the
right questions.

I'll have to think about it, but...those tool tips
are mostly diamond, with a few atoms added in, right?
I wonder...in theory, could one bombard a diamond
chip with one or two atoms of the right type?  It
might take several tries to get them to embed juuust
right, and even then future replications might be
hit-or-miss, but once one has a few successes, one has
(in theory) an easier way to build them.  Just an
idea off the top of my head.

> (Also I have to run now,
> sorry).

No problem.  I have things to do too.  (I've probably
spent too much time on this thread over the past few
days as it is.)



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