Moving Up!

[Paratima]

Yesterday #8. Today #7!

Team Ninja should be easy to get past. Then there's a long climb to reach the guys that have been doing this longer.

Let's borg some more machines.

[FoBoT]

[Moogie]

What is this project all about anyway?

[willy1]

Originally posted by Moogie
What is this project all about anyway?

STATS!

[PCZ]

The climb to 5th place wont be as long as you think.

BTW
The linux client is the fastest by a big margin.

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by Moogie
What is this project all about anyway?

i think it relates to materials science, like figuring out how to make better materials for making high tech stuff

but that is a WAG

[PCZ]

we just took 6th place

[Moogie]

Why would you want to crunch for a project that you were not sure what contributions it was making?

[willy1]

Blimey, lass -

STATS !

[Moogie]

LOL Willy1...yes, I realize it's stats. But wouldn't you want to get stats from a project that you actually know where your WUs are going and what they are helping?

[Paratima]

Originally posted by Moogie
LOL Willy1...yes, I realize it's stats. But wouldn't you want to get stats from a project that you actually know where your WUs are going and what they are helping?

That's what the other thread here is for! I've sent messages to hopefully lure in someone who can tell us. Anyway, we know where they're going ==> U of W. We're just not sure what they're doing there.

Meanwhile, it's, as so eloquently pointed out by my colleague a couple of posts up, STATS!

[PCZ]

Why would you want to crunch for a project that you were not sure what contributions it was making?

Because this is Free-DC not [H]

[Moogie]

Yep...I saw the other post. Are you telling me that you would do a project for stats and stats alone?

[Paratima]

Originally posted by PCZ
BTW
The linux client is the fastest by a big margin.

If this is true, I'll throw in a couple more Linuxes.

Moogie: What do you think?

Anyway, it says on their site that it's worthwhile. They couldn't say that if it wasn't true!

[Moogie]

Originally posted by PCZ
Because this is Free-DC not [H]

I realize that it's "Free-DC". That's NOT what I was aiming at. I'm fully aware that we are a team that supports crunching wherever we want PCZ. It wasn't an intential nor unintentional dig at the team. It was more curiosity. Unlike you and many others, I DON'T have alot of power to contribute but I do what I can. I like to know ahead of time what I'm getting into so that I can feel that I am contributing something worthwhile.

It's not wrong to go forward in a different manner...just different than what "I'm" used to so I wanted to ask the question. Didn't mean to piss you off.

[PCZ]

Moogie
No I'm not upset at all.

I think the Science in the EON project is valid but it appears that none of us fully understand it.

Perhaps somebody will translate the scientist speak into english for us.

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by Moogie
Yep...I saw the other post. Are you telling me that you would do a project for stats and stats alone?

i would, but only for a short while, only if it was really quick/easy to get up on the other teams/others on our team

[FoBoT]

its right on their site

The Jónsson research group is interested in calculating the long time dynamics of systems. We have developed a method for doing this, using the dimer method for saddle point finding combined with the kinetic Monte Carlo to advance the system over barriers. This method has been used to study island formation and growth. An aluminum system was used to develop a serial implementation of our methods. This project will be devoted to ice growth.

In broad strokes, a system is advanced along a series of minimum energy configurations which are all separated from one another by one first order saddle point. From each new minimum structure, a set of independent dimer searches is launched. The dimers crawl up the potential basin away from the minimum and converge upon saddle points. After a sufficient number of saddles are found, the searches are stopped, and one is chosen. This is done by weighted each possible process (defined by a saddle point) by the rate for that process. The rate of a process is based upon the energy barrier required to cross the corresponding saddle point, and a harmonic prefactor. The system is advanced over the chosen process and the process is repeated.

Our method is particularly suited to distributed computing. The swarm of dimer searches launched from each minimum (from the server) are independent and can be run on separate machines (clients). Furthermore, only a tiny amount of data is needed to initiate each search on the clients and report the results back to the server. The small communication requirements means that the system can be implemented over the internet. Finally, it is not critical to get results back from searches. If a search goes bad, or a client does not report a results, the server can simply go on without it, or farm more searches out to different machine.

[Paratima]

Yep. That there says it all, I reckon.

[Moogie]

OK FoBoT..translate that for me...in plain English.

[Moogie]

Originally posted by Paratima
Yep. That there says it all, I reckon.

But what does it say?

[Paratima]

I already toldja I've sent out for

Start with these from the Concise Oxford Dictionary:

dimer
· n. Chemistry a molecule or molecular complex consisting of two identical molecules linked together.
– DERIVATIVES dimeric adj.
– ORIGIN 1930s: from di-1, on the pattern of polymer.

and

saddle
· n.
5 Mathematics a low region of a curve between two high points.

[Moogie]

So tell me what that means in laymens terms.

[Fritz]

Folks,

Maybe I can shed some light on the purpose of the Eon project. From a few interactions with the Eon developers and some reading it appears the U of W group is trying to simulate how metal atoms rearrange themselves on surfaces over time.
Why would this be of interest? Many chemical reactions are made possible by catalysts, which frequently consist of metals or metal oxides coated on substrate surfaces. With time and use the metal atoms can rearrange themselves in such a way as to reduce the number of active reaction promoting sites on the material. In other words, the reactions no longer take place as efficiently. If one understands the processes involved and can model them as the Eon project is attempting to do, it follows that longer life or more efficient catalysts might be produced. This might translate into a cleaner environment(lower auto emissions) or less expensive plastics or chemicals.

Fritz

PS...I noticed they also mentioned ice in the description that was posted a few posts up. Its not clear to me what value understanding the formation or growth of ice crystals might have, although if the knowledge could be used to make road surfaces or aircraft wings more resistant to icing then I could see the value.

[FoBoT]

thank you Fritz !

[Paratima]

Thanks, indeed!

See? Easy!

[Moogie]

If it's easeir..give it to me in brief laymen's terms

[Paratima]

Huh? Who? ME? I was just trying to be agreeable!

Midnight here. Going to sleep now. Will wake up & all will be clear. :sleepy:

[Moogie]

Well, if a good nites sleep can make it clear, you are a better human than me.

[Paratima]

Never underestimate the power of a good night's sleep! Or the lack thereof!!

Nope! It's not any clearer yet. Waiting official enlightenment.

[Moogie]

As long as it doesn't come in the form of a lightening bolt you should be ok. Last time that happened to me, I sported an "afro look" for a few months and all my fillings fell out.

[rsbriggs]

Originally posted by Fritz
-snip-

Fritz

PS...I noticed they also mentioned ice in the description that was posted a few posts up. Its not clear to me what value understanding the formation or growth of ice crystals might have, although if the knowledge could be used to make road surfaces or aircraft wings more resistant to icing then I could see the value.

Actually, a quick look around the internet reveals that the scientific community really don't understand even the simplest things about many areas of the subject "crystal growth", in solids in general, or ice/snow flakes specifically:

Why do snow crystals grow differently at different temperatures?
This is still not known, believe it or not. The different ice facets grow at different rates in different temperatures, and to date we don't really know why the growth rates depend so strongly on temperature. The growth depends on exactly how water vapor molecules are incorporated into the growing ice crystal, and the physics behind this is quite complex and not well understood. It is the subject of current research in my lab and elsewhere.

So far as I can tell, EON is essentially breaking new ground in understanding some of the complex physics involved in the growth and formation of solids.

[PCZ]

So far as I can tell, EON is essentially breaking new ground in understanding some of the complex physics involved in the growth and formation of solids.

So its good science then ?

[FoBoT]

it is too bad their forum is borked/gone/messed up

[willy1]

Well, it's not breaking any new ground in coping with corporate firewalls.

[Paratima]

Originally posted by willy1
Well, it's not breaking any new ground in coping with corporate firewalls.

I noticed that, too. So much running it on my borged boxen!

[Fritz]

Folks,

I agree that very little is understood about the formation of ice crystals. I think the science is probably valid since there is at least one refereed journal article on it. Practical applications of any related discoveries are probably 10+ years out.

Fritz

[PCZ]

What settings are you using in the following section of the cfg ?

[firewall]
active=no
host=hostname
port=1080
userpass=userasswd

[rsbriggs]

Oddly enough, the more that is understood about the science of crystal formation, the better we understand the operation and routing characteristics of complex networks, like the PSTN (the telephone network), or even the internet.

Just how crystals form, and how they minimize the distance between atoms or molecules is a mystery. In many other cases, we don't understand even simple things, like how two hydrogen atoms "know" to approach an oxygen atom from certain specific angles to form a water molecule. IIRC IBM actually holds several process-patents on algorithms to optimize switching-networks based on their research into how water molecules form into ice. And just exactly what happens when it does is still a poorly understood mystery.....

A curiosity of our time: We can calculate and understand the properties of a Bose-Einsteinium condensate, where, due to the "uncertainty priciple", multiple Fermions smear into a single -something- at temperatures very close to zero degrees Kelvin, but we don't have much of a clue about what happens when water freezes, exactly....

[willy1]

Originally posted by PCZ
What settings are you using in the following section of the cfg ?

[firewall]
active=no
host=hostname
port=1080
userpass=userasswd

There was no configuration options for firewalls during install, and nothing in the readme.txt.

Basically, if the client doesn't talk on port 80 or 23, it's out of luck.