Category: Uncategorized

Blog recommendation: Skulls in the Stars

Every year I am getting more interested in the history of optics, particularly during the XIXth century and first half of XXth century. The blog Skulls in the Stars  by Gregory J. Gbur contains really interesting posts about the history of optics during this period, with very rich and enriching explanations  than are not found…

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Nature (the Journal) and chirality

I am concerned by the way the leading journal Nature deals with the subject of chirality and its relation with optics. I would say that this journal is becoming notorious for publishing papers containing  confusing (and sometimes wrong) statements about chirality. Unfortunately this is not new. In 2013/2014 I sent to Nature Photonics a short…

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On the Ramon y Cajal failure

Currently, the Ramon y Cajal program is almost the only “official” way to get into a sort of tenured-track position in Spain. The “Ramon y Cajal” 5-year contracts are funded by the Spanish Government and are addressed to professional researchers in possession of a PhD degree who have presented a line of research. Applicants must have obtained their PhD…

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Paul Drude Award

Last week I was in the 7th International Conference on Spectroscopic Ellipsometry celebrated this time in Berlin. This is a very nice series of conferences celebrated every 3 years (in earlier days it was every 4 years). My first participation was in Stockholm 2007 as fresh new PhD student and, later, I also participated in all the…

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Some new publications

Relation between 2D/3D chirality and the appearance of chiroptical effects in real nanostructures, Opt. Express 24, 2242-2252 (2016) Natural optical activity vs circular Bragg reflection studied by Mueller matrix ellipsometry, Thin Solid Films Reconfigurable chiroptical nanocomposites with chirality transfer from the macro- to the nanoscale, Nature materials. Structure vs. excitonic transitions in self-assembled porphyrin nanotubes…

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