This meeting was organized jointly by the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the ASCR, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and the Israeli Embassy in Prague on May 30-31, 2012. It represented a unique opportunity, especially for students and young scientists, to meet highly distinguished international scholars and discuss their ideas and projects directly with the most knowledgeable experts in the fields of biological chemistry. structural biology and material sciences. The invited speakers included four current Israeli Nobel Prize Laureates in Chemistry: Ada Yonath (Weizmann Instiute, Rehovot, Nobel Prize 2009), Aaron Ciechanover (Technion, Nobel Prize 2004), Avram Hershko (Rappaport Institute. Haifa, Nobel Prize 2004) and Dan Shechtman (Technion. Nobel Prize 2011) and other extraordinary scientific personalities from the USA, Israel, Germany and the Czech Republic, accompanied by several of their inspiring and talented students. and Luděk Svoboda.
Professor Pavel Zemanek and his colleagues at the Institute of Scientific Instruments (1St) of the ASCR built a laser that moves tiny spheres of polystyrene floating in water While in science fiction programs such as "Star Trek," tractor beams are used to move massive objects, the unique research published in Nature Photonics (2013, 7, 123-127) is limited to moving microscopic particles. Changing the way the light is polarized changes the direction the spheres move. The ISI scientists also found that at certain sizes, the spheres arrange themselves into neat rows as they move, bound by the light itself. The practical applications could be diverse. The tractor beam is very selective in the properties of the particles it acts upon, so one could pick up specific particles in a mixture. For example, this laser could be used to separate white blood cells. and Luděk Svoboda.