When we hear somebody wheezing, coughing, showing chest tightness and shortness of breath, most of us will immediately recognize the underlying cause: Asthma . This is not a minor issue, but one affecting approximately 5% of the entire world population (and steeply growing every year) and causing the death of nearly 400000 people back in […]
Mimicking natural processes has been a recurrent strategy for the development of new technologies, from velcro to bullet trains. Thanks to the advances in scientific knowledge and technological tools achieved over the last decades, biologically inspired research has evolved from the macroscale to the nanoscale. This poses an interdisciplinary challenge, involving fields such as molecular […]
Our core theory of fundamental physics, the Standard Model (SM), describes a vast range of phenomena precisely and very accurately. In that sense it is close to Nature’s last word. It presents, however, some shortcomings. For example, the SM contains three different forces and many independent fields. It is attractive to imagine that a deeper […]
Microglial cells are the immune cells that reside in the central nervous system. They have phagocytic capacity, constitute 10% of the cells of the brain and form a fairly regular three-dimensional network in which each microglia has a unique territory. Its cell body presents many expansions with numerous fine processes, amazingly mobile, with which they […]
Condensed matter • Materials • Nanotechnology • Physics • Theoretical physics
For centuries, metals were employed in optical applications only as mirrors and gratings. New vistas opened up in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the discovery of surface-enhanced Raman scattering and the use of surface plasmon (collective electronic oscillations at the surface of metals) resonances for sensing. However, it was not until the 1990s […]
Nowadays, most important news concerning science focuses on applicability ; if you read a newspaper or magazine you will see news about how a new drug or appliance can be applied in the fight against disease, hunger, etc. However, behind the results lies a lot of hard work on the part of different group s- […]
Our immune system comprises a great variety of cell types and each of these groups is specialized in separate and defined actions. Macrophages play an essential role within this defence system by enhancing the immune response. In particular, they are in charge of “swallowing” (technically speaking, fagocyting) waste products, foreign materials and microorganisms. In addition […]
During the last decades, the electronics industry has been very successful in pushing forward the advancement of electronic building blocks, but the limit of silicon-based electronic devices especially in terms of miniaturization are almost reached. There are many ideas how to overcome this problem, for example, by adding functionality based on approaches originating from molecular […]
The scattering of conduction electrons in metals owing to impurities with magnetic moments is known as the Kondo effect, after Jun Kondo, who analysed the phenomenon in 1964. This scattering increases the electrical resistance and has the consequence that, in contrast to ordinary metals, the resistance reaches a minimum as the temperature is lowered and […]
Biochemistry • Chemistry • Condensed matter • DIPC Biochemistry
We all know that the main role of DNA is the storage of genomic information leading to the biosynthesis of proteins via diverse forms of RNA. In turn, proteins play multiple roles in living systems, catalysis being among the most important ones. These are the standard functions that we may find in any general chemistry […]