Category Archives: Science
Optimizing arrythmia ablation
The heart is a muscular organ with four chambers designed to work efficiently, reliably, and continuously over a lifetime. The muscular walls of each chamber contract in a regulated sequence, pumping blood as required by the body while expending as […]
The dark collapse of merging galaxies as the origin of supermassive black holes
I remember very well my physics professor during my first year at university. She stressed the importance of having clear intuitions of what physical terms mean before any mathematics was invoked. ‘Imagine someone drops an 100-gram apple 1 metre above […]
Extreme decoherence in chaotic quantum systems
In physics there are some well-known fictional characters: the experimenters Alice & Bob, Maxwell’s and Laplace’s demons, or some astronauts travelling at incredible speeds, to name a few. But the queen of them all is a cat. Yes, you guess […]
Haplotypes, mitochondria and autism
An allele is each of the alternative forms that the same gene can have. The alleles differ in their DNA sequence and can manifest in different results after expressing that gene, such as differences in the color of the eyes […]
A photonic crystal the size of a single free space wavelength
You can read this article because I have used photonics in order to make it possible. It may sound futuristic, but photonics is a technology we use, one way or the other, on a daily basis. Photonic devices are analogous […]
Detection of the reversal of magnetic moments in an antiferromagnet
Some metals, alloys and transition-element salts exhibit a form of magnetism called antiferromagnetism. This occurs below a certain temperature, named after Louis Néel, when an ordered array of atomic magnetic moments spontaneously forms in which alternate moments have opposite directions. […]
The road to quantum gravity (1): Spacetime as the network of causality
Observations vs intuitions
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity introduced us to the concept of Spacetime, as a unified entity. This stands in contrast with the intuition that we develop since birth, which leads to naturally separate space and time.
Human intuition […]
Polariton anomalous Hall effect in transition-metal dichalcogenides
Two-dimensional materials, such as transition-metal dichalcogenides embedded in optical cavities, stand out as an excellent platform where strong light-matter interactions can be studied. Moreover, their band structures bring about nontrivial topological features, including the possibility of inducing some really […]
Is thermal sterilisation of preservative-free rice cakes possible?
High-moisture soft solid snack foods such as rice cakes have become increasingly popular. Most of these snacks are freshly made and sold on the spot, whilst industrially produced versions use chemical preservatives to inhibit microbial growth and improve shelf life. […]
Neuroscience of friendship
I told once to a very dear friend that my daughter had 1200 friends on Facebook and he answered me: well, I have just two and I am not sure about one of them. I hope to be the other […]