How would you measure the dynamic viscosity of cytosol, the liquid inside the cells, without destroying the cell? It seems not an easy task. However, a team of researchers that includes Nuno de Sousa (DIPC & IFIMAC), has just provided a way of achieving this and other similar feats using upconverting particles. An optical trap […]
Chemistry • Condensed matter • Materials • Nanotechnology • Physics • Quantum physics
Worldwide research efforts on plasmons and metamaterials have been growing exponentially for the past ten years. Now, Antonio I. Fernández-Domínguez (IFIMAC), Francisco J. García-Vidal (IFIMAC & DIPC), and Luis Martín-Moreno (ICMA) discuss new directions for the future, such as the use of 2D materials and strong coupling phenomena, which are likely to shape the field […]
Can radiotherapy with laser-produced ionizing radiation be an alternative to conventional radiotherapy? Can we deep our understanding of the basic mechanisms of radiation damage? Can we study the very early biological response of the living matter and use this knowledge to design more efficient radiotherapy treatments? Contrary to popular belief, when tumoral tissue is irradiated […]
Biology • Biomedicine • Genetics • Medicine • Pharmacy
Patients suffering from rare diseases (defined by the European as those affecting less than 5 in 10000 people) have traditionally been overlooked by pharmaceutical companies. They are usually looking for the next blockbuster drug, so the lack of a large patient pool means they may not generate the revenue needed to justify the R&D financial […]
Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), are strips of graphene with ultra-thin width (<50 nm). Graphene ribbons were introduced as a theoretical model by Mitsutaka Fujita and coauthors to examine the edge and nanoscale size effect in graphene. GNRs are very interesting structures, partly due to their attractive electronic properties. Those properties vary dramatically with changes in the […]
Beginning in 1928, Felix Bloch, an assistant to Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig, began to make some realistic assumptions in an attempt to formulate a more complete quantum mechanics of electrical conductivity. First, because he wanted to assign a definite momentum and energy to each of the electrons, but not a definite position or a time […]
Common glass, used in windows or bottles, for example, is made by heating a mixture of calcium oxide (lime), sodium carbonate (soda), and silicon (IV) oxide (sand), resulting in a calcium silicate. This silicate is not a crystal but a solid in which atoms are random and have no long-range orderd pattern. These kind of […]
Think about a laboratory animal. Have you drawn a mouse in your mind? Perhaps a monkey? I would bet that you had not thought about fish and even less about fish larvae. But, indeed, they are potential animal models for drug discovery, especially the Danio rerio species, better known as zebrafish . As you can […]
When we approximate two superconducting materials at low temperature, so that they are only separated by a very thin layer (less than 10 nanometres thick) of an insulating material, some new and very interesting electrical effects can be observed. If normal conducting metals are separated by such a barrier in that conditions it is possible […]
Amputees are people that have had a limb removed by trauma, medical illness, or surgery. In this latter case, it is used to control pain or a disease process in the affected limb, such as malignancy or gangrene. Nevertheless, most new amputations occur due to complications of the vascular system, especially from diabetes. It is […]