Category archives: Science

Molecular recognition is a critical process for many biological functions and consists in non-covalent binding of different molecules, such as protein-protein, antigen-antibody and many others. The host-guest molecules involved often show a shape complementarity, and one of the leading specification for molecular recognition is that the interaction must be selective, i.e. the host should strongly […]

Experiments performed in 1909 by Geiger and Marsden, also called Rutherford gold foil experiment because Rutherford was their supervisor, led to the discovery of nuclear structure in the atom: the nucleus of the atom is its central core and contains most of its mass and the nucleus is positively charged. Further research during the next […]

Recently, the journal Science showed in its cover an amazing image of a close up into the fly brain. This is the result of the combined effort of two research groups working on imaging. The first one (Boyden’s) had developed a way to increase the size of preserved samples, like a brain slice, up to […]

Quantum computing is the future. Or the present, if you believe that some real quantum computers are commercially available already. Because it is hard to admit that any computer system whose design and theoretical basis depend on quantum effects for their operation may be on the market today, even though IBM says otherwise. The trick […]

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 little energy as possible during each heartbeat. Contraction of the muscle fibres in the heart […]

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 your head’, she would say; ‘the pain you feel is the equivalent of a joule […]

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 right, that is Schrödinger’s cat. This cat first appeared in a thought experiment designed by […]

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 or in the blood group. Human beings are diploid, we have two sets of chromosomes […]

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 to those used in electronics, but with the electrons replaced by photons. Thus, photonics is […]

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. There is therefore no net resultant magnetic moment in the absence of an applied field […]