It’s been quite a while since our last reel, so here it is. I have to say that I’ve been busy (thanks to you all), so I guess these delays are good news after all. This summary of the last couple of years makes symbolizes 12 years of Scixel, which is also kind of special.
Category Archives: outreach
La saga de la Tercera Hija (Canto V)
The Third Daughter saga is this project of ours in which we try to tell the story of the Earth as if it was a myth: with the poetry of myths and the beauty of science. This project was put on hold due to my commitments with my real job. But now I’m trying to find time to finish it. Hope you like it!
In this chapter we tell the story of the birth of Wâljei.
La Saga de la Tercera Hija
What if we told the history of the Earth as a creation myth? This is La Saga de la Tercera Hija, which sadly does not have an English version yet. A very personal project that I’ve enjoyed making during the last couple of years. Hope you enjoy it too. Download it here!
A strange couple of years…
It’s been a strange couple of years with worldwide issues that have affected us all. But here at Scixel, we can be nothing but grateful. First of all, the pandemic didn’t affect us in a serious way, neither us nor our families. Second, our clients continued with their usual hard work from home. And that deserves a huge ovation for the scientists all over the world. Their effort did not only kept us on business, but in better shape than ever. And finally, we kept working with Filmociencia and started working with Patricia Bondia, and that alone is something to be grateful for.
Here I leave you with a short summary of our work during the last two years. And as always, thank you all for making Scixel possible.
The Saga goes on!
The Saga of the Third Daughter has reached its fourth chapter: The Battle of the Giants in which the origin of the oceans is told. In the following months, life will appear and it will establish the principles of a huge disaster. But that is yet to come.
The Third Daughter
We’ve started a new project called The Saga of the Third Daughter, a series of videos telling the story of the Great Oxidation Event. Interestingly, or so we think, these videos are not designed to be part of an outreach project. We wanted to tell this story as if it was a classic creation myth.
Sadly, for the moment, the videos will be only in Spanish, although an English voice over would be an option in the future.
Here we present the first Book, hope you like it!
You can check the following releases here. Also, in the website we “translate” the poetry of the tale and explain the real story in which the saga is base.
Topographic reconstruction
With today’s free tools and open information (satellite images, topography, etc) it is pretty straightforward to reconstruct real places and to present geographical information. Just an example:
Vision evolution
This is an old side project we started three years ago and it is finally released… or recover… I’m not sure.
It is an explanation of how the eye evolved from very primitive and simple structures to the magnificent piece of machinery that it is today. And how it evolved independently in different species.
Finally, I have to thank Natalia Ruiz Zelmanovitch for the voice over, and Javier Trapiella and Montse Daura for their ideas and advices. Hope you like it!
Living electric wires
Materials scientists have for decades fantasized about using DNA as a structural element in electronic circuits. And for decades, the electrical properties of DNA have remain a mystery. Hundreds of different, controversial results have appeared in the literature… That ends today!
Researchers from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Michigan, Cyprus, Seville and Madrid, have reported the observation of “very high currents of tens of nanoamperes” through the backbone of DNA molecules. And what it is more interesting, this conduction occurs through great distances.
This observation has required the development of several techniques: a way to “grow” DNA attached to a gold nanoparticle and a way to trap this DNA using non uniform electric fields. In fact, these techniques are important on their own and whey could be the base for the development of a novel electronic bio sensor, highly sensitive to specific sequences of DNA of RNA.
We made this picture for Prof. Juan Carlos Cuevas (UAM) to illustrate these results published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Strong coupling over large distances
It seems that quantum technologies never sleep. Researchers are bringing new improvements and solving impossible challenges every day. In this case the good news came from our friends at Basel University. Together with the University of Hanover they’ve came up with a way to produce a strong coupling between two quantum systems over a distance.
Strong coupling between quantum systems is essential for quantum technologies to work, for instance to create quantum networks. Until now, for two systems to be strongly coupled, they both needed to be really close and in highly controlled environments where they could interact via electrostatic or magnetostatic forces.
For the first time, a team of physicist led by Prof. Philipp Treutlein, form the Department of Physics at Basel University, has succeeded in the creation of a strong coupling between two systems at large distances and at room temperature. In particular, they’ve used laser light to couple the motion of the spin of atoms over 1 meter [read more].
We made this picture for them to illustrate the process. This research has been published in Science.