Transport, mixing and reaction of solutes and particles in natural media are of central importance in many fields of science and engineering, ranging from contaminant dispersion in geophysical flows to diffusion in living cells. Transport in these intrinsically heterogeneous media is characterized by early and late solute and particle arrivals, tailed spatial distributions, and scale effects in measured parameters. These behaviors cannot be explained by available models based on Fick’s law and are called anomalous despite their ubiquity.

The origin of the heavy elements in the Universe is one of the main open questions in modern science. Beyond iron the two main mechanisms of nucleosynthesis are the slow (s) and rapid (r) neutron capture processes operating in giant stars and explosive stellar environments, respectively. Modern s-nucleosynthesis studies are based on the combination of i) stellar models, ii) observed abundances and iii) neutron capture rates measured over many years using several techniques.

Nanostructured dielectric and metallic photonic architectures can concentrate the electric field through resonances, increase the light optical path by strong diffraction and exhibit many other interesting optical phenomena that cannot be achieved with traditional lenses and mirrors. The use of these structures within actual devices will be most beneficial for enhanced light absorption in thin solar cells, photodetectors and to develop new sensors and light emitters.

Although mass spectrometry has brought about major advancements in proteomics in the last decade, protein mass spectrometers still have important limitations. One fundamental limitation is that they require sample ionization, desorption into the gas phase and fragmentation, clearly leading to protein denaturation. Since relevant protein complexes are unstable or transient, their characterization in its native state and physiological environment remains an unexplored route towards the full understanding of protein function and protein interactions.

The goal of 2D-TOPSENSE is to exploit the remarkable stretchability of two-dimensional semiconductors to fabricate optoelectronic devices where strain is used as an external knob to tune their properties.

The search of singularities in incompressible flows has become a major challenge in the area of non-linear partial differential equations and is relevant in applied mathematics, physics and engineering. The existence of such singularities would have important consequences for the understanding of turbulence. One way to make progress in this direction, is to study plausible scenarios for the singularities supported by experiments or numerical analysis. With the more sophisticated numerical tools now available, the subject has recently gained considerable momentum.

Unrepaired DNA breaks can lead to genomic instability or cell death. They occur frequently during normal cellular metabolism and are caused, for example, by the collapse or stalling of the replication fork in response to DNA damage. Proper DNA-end processing and handling are essential for the survival of the cell and prevention of carcinogenesis. Cells possess robust mechanisms to repair DNA breaks. One such DNA repair mechanism is homologous recombination where the sister chromatid is used as a template for the faithful repair of the DNA break.

The main aim of the proposed research line is to develop high-throughput highly sensitive photonic lab-a-DVD platforms for multiple parallel analysis with an extremely high degree of integration. The already existing high-throughput platforms only use the CD platform as a substrate, without any given functionality, conversely, in this research line, in the DVD platform it is proposed the integration of the following elements: (i) polymeric photonic components (high-sensitivity Mach-Zehnder interferometers, diffraction gratings and hollow prisms).

Research into neuroplasticity has expanded rapidly over the past ten years and it has revealed the remarkable capacity of environmental inputs to shape both the juvenile and adult brain. Behavioural, electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies in deaf and blind humans have provided convincing evidence that alteration of cortical organization is correlated with enhanced capabilities of the spared modalities. What is the identity of the brain systems that are modified and what are the mechanisms that mediate such changes are major unresolved issues in our understanding of brain plasticity.

Providing a sustainable supply of energy to the world s population will become a major societal problem for the 21st century. Thermoelectric materials, whose combination of thermal, electrical, and semiconducting properties, allows them to convert waste heat into electricity, are expected to play an increasingly important role in meeting the energy challenge of the future.