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Alvaro Blanco |
COLLOQUIA
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07 June 2013, 12:00 h. Salón de Actos
Point‐of‐care nanobiosensors for global health diagnostics: challenges and opportunities
Laura M. Lechuga
Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2) CSIC and CIBER-BBN |
Current diagnostics techniques are based on time‐consuming, expensive, and specialized techniques performed by trained technicians at laboratory level. On‐going changes in medical care are demanding novel diagnostic tools for quick, accurate, reliable and cost‐effective diagnosis that will enable more timely and efficacious medical intervention. It is clear that the application of a portable, easy‐to‐use and highly sensitive point‐of‐care (POC) platform for real‐time diagnosis could offer significant advantages over current methods.
Last advances in genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics have accelerated the unravelling of disease biomarkers and pathogenesis, while the emerging field of Nanomedicine has improved the diagnostic nanodevices and assays, opening the route to accurate and sensitive tests at the point‐of‐care. However, although remarkable progress towards POC systems appears continuously in the scientific literature, few complete working prototypes have emerged due to the several technical challenges to be overcome.
The dream of having a device in the palm of our hand able to deliver an instant diagnostics of our health status could become a reality soon thanks to the last advances in nanomedicine, nanobiosensors and lab‐on‐a‐chip which promise to surpass the existing challenges. Advantages as miniaturization, sensitivities clinically relevant, robustness, reliability, potential for multiplexing and mass production at low cost can be offered by these nanodevices. In this Colloquia, we will focus on the state‐ of‐the‐art in POC devices and in the emerging nanotechnologies that promise to address all the challenges, opening the door to a global health access. |
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24 May 2013, 12:00 h. Salón de Actos
Flat optics by engineering with Huygens, Fermat, Bragg and Fresnel laws
Zeno Gaburro
Univesity of Trento & SEAS Harvard University |
Reflection and refraction are fundamental phenomena in classical optics.
Their laws have been investigated since early times of optics, and so we are
now accustomed to take these laws for granted. It is therefore a very
instructive and very challenging opportunity for us to try to refresh a
basic question, one a scientist should always have in his mind: "have I
understood?". As for myself, I am afraid I have to admit I have not. I have
been forced to revisit my understanding - or, better yet, my
misunderstanding - by so-called "metamaterials". In these systems, atoms are
replaced by tiny circuits, as basic building blocks. This tricky
substitution leads to surprising optical properties and to generalized
classical laws [1], and hopefully opens the way to intriguing applications,
including vortex beam generators [2], ultra-flat lenses [3] and polarizing
devices [4]
[1] N. Yu et al., Science 334, 333 (2011).
[2] P. Genevet et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 013101 (2012).
[3] F. Aieta et al., Nano Lett. 12, 4932 (2012).
[4] N. Yu et al., Nano Lett. 12, 6328 (2012). |
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26 April 2013, 12:00 h. Salón de Actos
Supramolecular assembly
on single-crystal metal surfaces
Supramolecular assembly on single-crystal metal surfaces
Institute of Computational and Theoretical Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University |
The supramolecular assembly of organic molecules on metal surfaces allows improving the design of molecular electronic and spintronic devices, catalytic chemical reactions and molecular machines.
Supramolecular assembly refers to complexes of molecules linked by non-covalent bonds through self-assembly into spheres, rods or sheets. Forming such structures as a monolayer on a flat solid surface allows controlling their periodic ordering and permits probing one molecule at a time using scanning probe microscopies, such as scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS).
To gain insight into such supramolecular systems, starting from experimental data, we have calculated total energies while optimizing the adsorption configuration, using density functional theory (DFT). We also performed molecular dynamics (MD) in some instances.
We will illustrate different phenomena of interest with several large organic molecules deposited on single-crystal copper surfaces.
Acknowledgment: This work was supported in part by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council, the CityU Centre for Applied Computing and Interactive Media, and the High Performance Cluster Computing Centre, Hong Kong Baptist University, which receives funding from the Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee of the HKSAR and Hong Kong Baptist University.
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04 February 2013, 12:00 h. Salón de Actos
Semiconductor-based architectures for quantum bits: the first steps
Belita Koiller
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro |
The rush towards an operational quantum computer has led to ingenuous
proposals in many different physical systems. Among those,
semiconductor-based architectures are attractive from the perspectives
of scalability and, particularly for Si, using resources associated
with existing Si technology infrastructure. Elementary operations
required for quantum computing will be discussed. Progress in
semiconductor spin and charge qubits will be reported, illustrating
the potential as well as the tremendous challenges posed by this
endeavor. |
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29 January 2013, 12:00 h. Salón de Actos
Premios Nobel de Fisica 2012:
El Inicio de la Revolución del Control Cuántico Individualizado
Miguel Ángel Martín-Delgado
Facultad de Ciencias Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid |
Los galardonados con el premio Nobel son los físicos Serge Haroche (francés) y David Wineland (americano), "por sus innovadores métodos experimentales
que permiten la medición y manipulación de sistemas cuánticos individuales."
Sus métodos son complementarios: Wineland atrapa iones en una trampa lineal usando campos eléctricos y con fotones externos de luz láser los puede manipular; Haroche por el contrario, atrapa fotones de luz en una cavidad y emplea átomos externos para medirlos sin destruirlos. Principios fundamentales de la mecánica cuántica y de la información cuántica son accesibles con estos métodos. Haroche produce los llamados gatos de Schrödinger y estudia la descoherencia sobre ellos. Wineland construye puertas lógicas cuánticas elementales. Además, existen aplicaciones tecnológicas como la construcción de los relojes más precisos que los actuales relojes atómicos. Esta revolución abre las puertas para la nueva era de los ordenadores cuánticos.
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