NJournal Notes 7.0 The @ symbol and buckminsterfullerene (C60)

Yesterday I discovered a chemical notation that was new to me. It point to a way to construct a simple sentence that communicates the complex adaptive system characteristic of levels.


This morning there was an exchange on Face Book that gives a sense of where I'm going with this.
David Braden posted

I wrote a concept piece some time ago about the fabric of life:
"I once saw a documentary about a pygmy hunter. He had an opportunity to kill a forest giraffe but he let it go. He said he let it pass because killing it would leave a hole in the forest. 

After many years of thinking about and working with the relationships that make up our lives, I think I am beginning to understand in the way that wise pygmy hunters understand. The life in a place is a fabric. It comes in up to seven layers that we read about in the permaculture literature (plus the ones under water). It involves threads from all five kingdoms of life that we read about in the ZERI literature (Zero Emissions Research Initiative) 

When this fabric is thickly interwoven with all five threads in all seven layers we feel whole and call it beautiful. When this fabric becomes thread bare we suffer from the absence of its shelter. The fabric is made up from the participation of individual living things – in what biologists call the food web. We participate like all other living things. We are only different in the power we hold to tear holes in the fabric – or to use that same power to enhance the weave. 

The message from Permaculture and ZERI, and all the other organizations experimenting with the relationships that make up our lives, is that saving the world will not come about through political action (although that can be helpful). Government has its own specific role in the fabric. We will save the world by learning to enhance the weave of the fabric of life - in the place where we live."

You can find my response and follow the ongoing  conversation at David's FB thread 

The @ symbol 

The @ symbol (at sign) indicates an atom or molecule trapped inside a cage but not chemically bound to it. For example, a buckminsterfullerene (C₆₀) with an atom (M) would simply be represented as MC₆₀ regardless of whether M was inside the fullerene without chemical bonding or outside, bound to one of the carbon atoms. Using the @ symbol, this would be denoted M@C₆₀ if M was inside the carbon network. A non-fullerene example is [As@Ni₁₂As₂₀]³⁻, an ion in which one As atom is trapped in a cage formed by the other 32 atoms.

Wikipedia


 By Hajv01 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AEndohedral_fullerene.png

In general form the @ symbol would allow us to write  nP @nStn@nTun Since the notation is content and context agnostic, it can be used to write simple sentences about any living system ( complex adaptive system.) 

Two examples of use in specific contexts. In the context of permaculture we can write Individual @bioregion @biosphere.

In the context of education systems in the United States we can say student @classroom @school @district @state department of education @national department of education @national government