So-called “valleytronics” is a new type of electronics that could lead to faster and more efficient computer logic systems and data storage chips in next-generation devices. Valley electrons are so named because they carry a valley degree of freedom, a pseudospin. This is a new way to harness electrons for information processing that’s in addition […]
Back in 1929, theoretical physicist Hermann Weyl predicted the existence of a new elementary particle with intriguing properties. Specifically, it would be massless (like a photon), have half-integer spin (like an electron) and exist in two mirror-image versions (like left- and right-handed gloves)—a property known as chirality. Imagine there exist a material in which an […]
Zoë Firth & Priscila Borba Borges, students, European Master’s in Clinical Linguistics (EMCL+) and Adrià Rofes (advisor) ‘ I can’t control my brain’. So sang Weezer in their 2001 hit ‘Island in the Sun’; how fitting, then, that this was the song teenager Kira Iaconetti chose to sing during her brain surgery. That’s right: during […]
In the previous chapter of this series, we went over the subjective, relative separation of the network of events known as Spacetime into space and time. The speed of light played a major role in the discussion. In particular, we divided Spacetime into three regions (with respect to a particular event) defined by the existence […]
With the possible exception of Avogadro’s number, which was in reality defined and made popular by Stanislao Cannizzaro, many things in the sciences are usually named after the person who makes them popular. The Seebeck effect is an example. Originally discovered in 1794 by Alessandro Volta, it is named after Thomas Johann Seebeck, who in […]
Spiders build their webs using the silk they synthesize and secrete from their spinning glands, structures located in the back of the abdomen. The most primitive species have few glands and build their nets with fairly uniform silks. The most evolved spiders, on the other hand, have up to seven different spinning glands with which […]
Biology • Biomedicine • Computer science • Nanotechnology • Neuroscience • Physics
In 1873, the microscopist Ernst Abbe stipulated a physical limit for the maximum resolution of traditional optical microscopy: 0.2 micrometers, or 200 nanometers (the shortest wavelength for visible light, the extreme limit of violet). This meant that scientists could distinguish whole cells, as well as some parts of the cell called organelles. However, they would […]
On 8 October 2013, following the discovery at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider of a new particle that appeared to be the long-sought Higgs boson predicted by the theory, it was announced that Peter Higgs and François Englert had been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics. But they were the survivors of the bunch of […]
In the last two decades, the easiness in the obtaining of genetic information from patient biological samples, together with the advanced knowledge on the physiological consequences of patient genetic alterations, has transformed the daily clinical practice in our hospitals. As a result, the current use of the precision medicine concept, as disseminated today in the […]
A region containing a maximum of potential that prevents a particle on one side of it from passing to the other side is called a potential barrier. The net in a tennis court is in a certain way a potential barrier, as the ball needs to have kinetic energy in excess of the height of […]