In science we try to be very precise with the wording of our texts. One of the consequences of this is that we are not afraid of repeating some words in a paragraph, or even in a sentence, if that contributes to avoid possible misunderstandings, even though it may be not recommended stylistically. Another feature […]
Author: Mikel Lezaun is professor at the University of the Basque Country – UPV/EHU where he is director of the Mathematical Technology Transfer Group Production centers for blood components have the job of supplying hospitals with the products that they need in time and strive to discard as few units as possible due to outdating […]
Until 1932, atoms were considered to consist in positive charges, called protons, located within the atomic nucleus, where the majority of the mass of the atom is concentrated, and negative charges, identified as electrons, surrounding the nucleus to make it electrically neutral. However, in 1932 James Chadwick discovered the neutron, an uncharged particle located at […]
Author: María Girbés Mínguez is a doctoral student at Center for Molecular Neurobiology Hamburg (ZMNH) / UKE (University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf) A recent study published in the journal Cell Systems uncovered that bacterial communities (biofilms) can store complex patterns of information through membrane potentials at the cellular level, in a similar way to neurons. But […]
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016 was awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart and Ben Feringa “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”. Molecular machines are made by one or a few molecules linked together, comprising several hundred atoms. If a molecule can use an energy input to perform a mechanical movement (output) it […]
The Hodgkin-Huxley model for the generation of the nerve action potential is one of the most successful mathematical models of a complex biological process that has ever been formulated. Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley described the model in 1952 to explain the ionic mechanisms underlying the initiation and propagation of action potentials in the squid […]
When we consider the variety of possible wonder applications of plasmonic nanoparticles we usually forget a key aspect: how these laboratory results can be transformed into something really usable in everyday life. For that to occur some not-that-simple problems must be resolved first. For example, plasmonic nanoparticles exhibit excellent light-harvesting properties in the visible spectral […]
One of the most important scientific objectives in recent years is to find solutions to the problem of climate change and environmental pollution. Unfortunately, this issue is not only related to the amount of CO 2 that is released into the atmosphere from fossil fuels. The chemical industry, in the complex processes it carries out […]
Graphene is a diamagnetic material, this is, unable of becoming magnetic. However, a triangular piece of graphene is predicted to be magnetic. This apparent contradiction is a consequence of “magic” shapes in the structure of graphene flakes, which force electrons to “spin” more easily in one direction. Triangulene is a triangular graphene flake, which possesses […]
Condensed matter • Materials • Nanotechnology • Quantum physics • Theoretical physics
When two photons with the same energy interact with a nonlinear material, they “combine” and generate a new photon with twice the energy of the initial photons. More precisely, two photons at the fundamental frequency are absorbed by a plasmonic structure to emit one photon at the second-harmonic frequency. This is called second-harmonic generation. Second-harmonic […]