@jarvist.bsky.social
To physicists: a chemist. To chemists: a physicist. To mathematicians: an empty set. RSURF & Lecturer, Imperial College London. Computational chemist / physicist. Photovoltaics, batteries, antibacterial peptides; lasers, cryostats, (ML)(Q)MC/MD/TB/DFT.
The environmental / climate necessity of renewables has been clear since at least 2000; the technology was on 'learning curves' to make it affordable since at least 2010; hopefully the current security threat / wake-up call is enough to make all countries finally follow through!
I'm one of many professors quoted in this report from Alice Speri. I really appreciate The Guardian taking an angle which has basically eluded every other major outlet.
Anyone who attempts to use a pure DFT functional in a Gaussian basis is, of course, living in a state of sin.
What beastly molecules! I'll definitely have a read.
The UK's Eurovision entry this year, actually a banger! www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XR2...
Converting between chemistry and physics is sometimes quite easy!
sed -i s/b3lyp/PBE1PBE/ *.gjf
<LLM: Insert Linked-In humble-brag filler>
I'm HUMBLED by the team I'm working with,
We're guided by the beauty of our algorithms
First we model Y6, then we model ITIC
etc. etc.
Have you ever noticed that range-separated hybrids are LESS accurate for modern strongly-absorbing low-bandgap organic semiconductors such as Y6?
We believe we know why and how to fix: the implicit model of the dielectric function is incorrect; simply reduce ω to fix.
arxiv.org/abs/2603.05379
I dunno, I do wonder whether there's some fundamental energy cost of computation in our universe (well known for classical computers from thermodynamic arguments).
So to retain the coherence for a sufficient number of qubits given no-cloning and no-deletion, ends up with the same energy cost.
Ah, merely '60 tons of TNT' energy equivalent. So could easily be setting off an underground ammo store. www.omnicalculator.com/other/earthq...
I dunno, at least it wasn't their ex-grad student this time!
I would be very interested in then trying to bring these back to physical limits (rather than just cash).
clune.org/posts/per-to...
Suggests about 2 kWh/million tokens, with a typical single-node 70b parameter model (I suppose Opus & etc. have much larger per-token energy consumption...).
But 'total adults' is not the correct metric! There's only ~700k school leavers each year. And if you did have an actual industrial strategy trying to build up industry (or even build some houses), the demand could increase quite quickly...
Definite Feb 2020 vibes!
I was idly wondering the other day whether imported cases from the current American surge would outgrow whatever background we have in the UK; not that it matters once the chain reaction starts...
I wrote a science St Valentine poem 9 years ago for a competition. I did not win, but I still like the poem.
Solid-state physics; Cooper pairs; the superconducting gap. To be fair, a little niche!
Ice-9 but for killing demons...
Quite apart from the excellent course, two weeks in Miramare in June living and talking science with a cohort of like-minded computational / theory students is the best possible start I could imagine to a PhD/PostDoc...
It was always clear this was an injustice - but now we know by how much. Absolutely shameful, and as bad as the Nobel neglect of Lise Meitner, if not worse.
Spoke to Shleagh Fogarty yesterday sbout why the Chancellor is wrong: our “student loan” system is not remotely fair. It’s regressive and embedding inter and intra generational wealth inequality. It’s not a loan system, it’s a bad grad tax in all but name.
youtu.be/uOC6Arrf2us?...
I even misremember the book title (should be "Monday begins on Saturday") and it still infers what I was actually talking about.
OK OK, Prism is terrible and likely to destroy peer-review and preprint servers, BUT it is also pretty funny and means I can enjoy the fan-fiction academia-adjacent work I'd never have time to write myself.
(Go read Strugatsky! It's hilarious.)
arXiv is not going to survive the wave of slop heading its way
In this day and age at least that means you have some DNA if in the future you need to verify that the student actually sat the exam, not an imposter!
And now something positive:
solar and wind energy production in the EU surpasses fossil energy for the first time.
☀️ 💨
#TippingPoint
Source: dr.dk
2024: can Europe defend itself ALONGSIDE America?
2025: can Europe defend itself WITHOUT America?
2026: can Europe defend itself AGAINST America?
OpenBind is a new open science effort to dramatically increase the number of protein:ligand structures in the PDB, pairing this with high-quality affinity data to enable a new generation of predictive structure and affinity models for drug discovery. Check it out: openbind.ai
In Our Time returns this week. Thanks for waiting patiently and/or impatiently www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
He should have been elected 'captain of industry' or whatever the term is; at the time SpaceX was so cool and Tesla do green I think they thought they would get reflected 'outreach' glory.
Perhaps one of these funny situations where shocks force the discovery of more efficient methods, much like the tube strikes leading to overall more efficient journeys as people trial alternatives.