Cold DNA

Posted on

Here we have another breakthrough in our understanding of the DNA molecule. And this time it comes from people we particularly like. Physicist at Basel University have been able to study the dynamics of DNA at low temperatures using atomic force microscopy: cryo-force spectroscopy. With this technique it is possible to measure the bare underlying forces and interactions that join the molecule together. Their findings have been published in Nature Communications

Prof. Enrst Meyer, together with researchers from Germany and Madrid contacted us to make this picture that illustrates the process of stretching while detaching the DNA molecule from a gold surface.

Nucleation of pseudo hard-spheres

Posted on

I would love to be intelligent enough to say something smart about the research of Eva González Noya, but I can’t. I know it has to do with the simulation of nucleation processes… and that’s all I have.

What I know instead is that she always gets the cover. And this time was not different.

Momentum

Posted on

A year ago I started working on this short film. I was wondering, what if people had superpowers, but still had to be somehow tied to the laws of physics? What if they were able to do amazing things, but still energy or momentum had to be conserved. That’s how Momentum was born: a story of a huge misunderstanding.

Hope you like it!

Single-Molecules remember!

Posted on

Our story with Basel University and in particular with Prof. Thomas Jung, goes back a long way. They are not only really nice people. They always come to me with amazingly beautiful pieces of research.

This time, Prof. Jung, together with Aisha Ahsan, have reported a new method that allows to change the physical state of just a few atoms or molecules within a network. Their efforts are focused in the manipulation of tiny molecules. The smaller the better. Why? Because this systems are perfect candidates for data storage. And the smaller the bits (molecules), the less energy it will take to modify them.


We did this picture to illustrate their research and also an animation that appeared in the video abstract of the paper.

You can read more here.

Bioinformática con Ñ

Posted on

5 years ago now, several Spanish researchers, got together to write a book describing the principles of bioinformatics. Alberto Pascual-García and Álvaro Sebastián asked us to give a hand in this free, collaborative project by designing the cover of the book. And this is what we did, in the early days of Scixel.

Oldies

Posted on

We are huge Tintin fans. There is just one thing we love more than Tintin covers, which is apocryphal Tintin covers. So we did our own six or seven years ago.

Internet out of thin air

Posted on

We’ve already talked about the “quantum internet” in several occasions. The Netherlands is making a huge effort in this field. But this new update comes from Barcelona (Spain). Nicolas Maring etal. (ICFO) has transferred quantum information between a solid crystal and a cloud of cold atomic gas. The result was published in Nature in November 2017.
The transference of qubits between nodes is of key importance in the construction of the so called “quantum internet”. This nodes can be made out of different types of matter so they can perform different functions. While we now know how to transfer information between similar systems, it was not straightforward how to do that using radically different matter configurations.

 

Cool, man!

Posted on

[Sorry for the bad joke]

One of the issues of nanocircuits is heat dissipation. As in the macro world, at the nanoscale, it is imperative to find a way to cool circuits. Thanks to a collaboration between the University of Michigan and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, has been proved that a particular arrangement of molecules in nanocircuits, achieves and optimizes molecular termoelectric refrigeration.

This result has been published in Nature Nanotecnology.

Hammering viruses

Posted on

Prof. Pedro de Pablo (Nanoforces Lab) has been using atomic force microscopy to break viruses for a while. Apart from the obvious pleasure that breaking things produces, their main focus is to study the stability of viruses. Viruses infect cells by releasing their highly packed genetic material. So the understanding of the stability of the viruses capsides will offer new venues for the development of novel antiviral strategies [article].