By decorating colloids and nanoparticles with various biomolecules, one can introduce highly selective key-lock interactions between them. This leads to a new class of systems and problems in soft condensed matter physics. In my talk, I will review a number of theoretical possibilities and recent experimental achievements in this new field. First, I will discuss DNA-mediated self-assembly of nanostructures and nanoclusters. The specificity and tunability of the interactions result in a remarkable morphological diversity of in such systems. In some of the proposed schemes, DNA can be used to essentially "program" the self-assembly of a desired structure. The colloids with type-dependent interactions can also be used for experimental realization of one of the simplest self-replicating system. Its study may shed some light onto such important problems as prebiotic evolution and origin of life. Finally, I will discuss how cooperative key-lock binding can be also utilized to dramatically enhance cell specificity of drug delivery, e.g. for cancer treatment.

High-temperature superconductivity was discovered in 1986 by Bendorz and Muller in La2-xBaxCuO4 (LBCO). Shortly after, a sharp anomaly in superconducting transition temperature Tc(x) at x = 1/8 was observed, and is now known to be indicative of the existence of stripe order and of its strong interplay with superconductivity. Recently, a state of two-dimensional fluctuating superconductivity was discovered in the anisotropic transport measurement of 1/8 doped LBCO single crystals.1 Some have argued that this state is associated with a dynamical layer decoupling under a set of special circumstances, the superconducting condensate, like the magnetic order, can occur at a non-zero wave-vector corresponding to a spatial period double that of the charge order.2 In this talk, I will describe the original transport and magnetization studies leading to the observation of this state, as well as most recent experimental results. 1) Q. Li, et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 067001 (2007) 2) E. Berg, et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 127003 (2007)

Often visualization is equated to the production of nice images alone. This way, we forget that visualization exploits our perceptual capabilities to help solve open ended and ill posed problems. If we want to solve such problems, we should combine visualization with data management and data analysis putting them at the very center of the discovery cycle. During this talk, backed by real life experiences at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, we will explore how visualization could help our understanding, not only of physical reality, but also of abstract spaces that could not even be imagined, but that bring us vital information for our research. Then a quick survey of advances in graphical rendering will suggests us what we could ask to our visualization tools. Last, we will analyze an unexpected discovery tool that scientific data management provides us. *About the speaker:* Ing. Mario Valle works since 2003 in the Data Analysis and Visualization Group of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre helping the center's users for their visualization needs, especially in the Chemistry and Molecular Dynamics areas. But his interest for visualization started early, when he was with Advanced Visual Systems (AVS) defining and implementing advanced visualization projects for the company customers. Prior to visualization work, Mario Valle was with Digital Equipment (DEC) for eight years working in the software engineering consulting area. Besides working on visualization projects, Mario Valle teaches various courses on visualization and visual communication, at the CINECA Summer Schools in Bologna (Italy) and ETH Zürich. Ing. Mario Valle holds an Electronic Engineering Degree from Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza", is author of various publications and is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and American Chemical Society. Further details are available on _http://www.cscs.ch/~mvalle_

We study the full, nonlinear dynamics of spin and charge in the spin-Calogero model, by constructing a collective, i.e. hydrodynamic, description of the model. The latter is an integrable 1-D model of quantum spin-1/2 particles interacting through inverse-square interaction and exchange. We construct the collective Hamiltonian in a semi-classical regime where gradient corrections to the exact hydrodynamic formulation of the theory may be neglected. In this approximation, the equations of motion can be decoupled and written as to a set of independent Riemann-Hopf (or inviscid Burgers') equations for the dressed Fermi momenta. We study the dynamics of some non-equilibrium spin-charge configurations for times smaller than the time-scale of the gradient catastrophe and we find an interesting interplay between spin and charge degrees of freedom. We also consider the limit of large coupling parameter and show that the resulting hydrodynamics for the spin sector describes the so-called Haldane-Shastry model. Finally, we show how this hydrodynamic description allows for the calculation of correlation functions that cannot be considered with conventional bosonization, such as the Emptiness Formation Probability. (http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.3762, http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.2652)

Pressure induces profound changes in materials, adding a new dimension to applications in energy-related, planetary, electronic, magnetic, optical, superhard, and nano- materials, and contributing to our fundamental understanding of condensed-matter physics and chemistry. Recent concurrent breakthroughs in high pressure technology and national and international user facilities have dramatically increased our ability to probe samples over a wide pressure-temperature spectrum using a variety of in situ techniques. New phenomena observed under compression can also provide guidance for practical applications. For example, the discovery of novel molecular compounds at high pressure in simple hydrogen-containing systems (e.g. H2-H2O and H2-CH4) opens a new frontier in hydrogen storage for mobile applications and may also give insight into understanding the most abundant molecular species in the Universe. The high pressure chemistry-even for many of the most basic systems-has been largely unexplored, and studies into their behavior under high pressure has led to exciting and often unexpected discoveries.

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