Category Archives: Cover

News on Parkinson

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It is reassuring to know that there are people working so we don’t have smallpox or polio. At Rosario Moratalla’s lab they are trying to crack Parkinson’s disease. In one of their latter works, directed by Dr. Patricia García-Sanz and Prof. Rosario Moratalla, they explore how certain mutations in the GBA1 gene, increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

Actually they show a possible connection between the loss of β-glucocerebrosidase-1 function, cholesterol accumulation, and the disruption of cellular homeostasis in GBA1-PD. This work has appeared in the cover of Movement Disorders Journal.

We made this picture showing the effect of the mutation with the close supervision of Dr. Patricia García-Sanz.

“Theory of 2D crystals: graphene and beyond”

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2D crystals seem to be here to stay. And it was time to make a review on the essential aspects of graphene and the new families of semiconducting 2D materials. Prof. Francisco Guinea (IMDEA Nanociencia) et al present minimal theoretical models for various materials. And also present some of the exciting new possibilities offered by 2D crystals.

This work deserved the cover of Chemical Society Reviews.

Quantum boxes

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Do you remember the famous quantum corrals? (see figure below)

The Well (Quantum Corral) (2009) by Julian Voss-Andreae. Created using the 1993 experimental data by Lutz et al., the gilded sculpture was pictured in a 2009 review of the art exhibition

Well, lets say that Prof. Thomas A. Jung and co-workers have gone way further than that. During 2016, they presented a quantum breadboard, composed of a 2D metalorganic network creating surface state derived quantum well states in the pores. Scanning probe microscopy manipulation of Xe atoms was used to configure the Xe population of the pores, which affects the quantum state of the 2D array or breadboard.

On Piezoelectric Layered Materials

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A new addition to the nanoscopic world: the piezoelectric effect. Prof. M. Lanza et al. have studied the ability of layered MoS2 to produce electric currents under the pressure of a conductive atomic force microscope. This would allow the fabrication of self-powered devices.

This research has been published in Nanoscale Journal and its been awarded with the front cover.

A new 2D exotic solid phase

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Dr. Eva G. Noya et al have studied the phase diagram of a two-dimensional system of disk particles with three patches distributed symmetrically along the particle equator (read more). Due to the geometry of the particles, this system shows a rich phase diagram that goes from a nearly empty honey-comb lattice (at low temperatures),to an almost filled lattice at high temperatures.

Their work, along with our picture, made it to the cover of Soft Matter.

Hybrid Nanoscopy of Hybrid Nanomaterials

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Dr. Cristina Flors research group (IMDEA Nanoscience) is exploring the combination of complementary techniques to characterize materials at the nanoscale. This is a key step to the design and fabrication of new materials with improved properties and diverse functions. The combination of atomic force microscopy and super-resolution fluorescence imaging is investigated as a useful tool to characterize hybrid luminescent materials, specifically amyloid-like fibers functionalized with quantum dots.

2016 Scixel’s Overview

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Finally we’ve found some time to produce our 2016 demoreel. It’s been a great year. We’ve worked with a lot of new people in Spain and abroad. Lots of amazing projects both artistically and scientifically. These are some of them:

This is a way of both showing off about the people we’ve worked with and expressing some gratitude. It is difficult not to feel lucky.