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In th of 2016 Carlos Abellan showed us his research about quantum number generators and the Bell Inequalities.

The talk was titled “Random number generation in recent loophole-free Bell tests”.

In this talk we discovered  the three independent experiments reporting violations of Bell’s theorem free of the experimental limitations in previous experiments. All experiments required random number generators with unprecedented quality and timing requirements. Carlos and his collaborators developed random number generators capable of producing random digits with a guessing probability bound not exceeding 0.001% with a freshness time (time from spontaneous emission events happening in a semiconductor laser cavity to use in the experiments) smaller than 36 nanoseconds.

Thanks Carlos for this talk!

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ICONS has launched its new initiative devoted to photography. It is probably one of the disciplines where people experience basic concepts in optics, like depth of field, focusing, influence of pupil diameter, image formation, etc. Fortunately, here among us some dedicate to photography in a professional level parallel to their scientific careers, or some are very experienced hobbist. With their help, ICONS is designing a set of Photography talks, to introduce us to the world of photography. The first one was Kutlu Kutluer, who gave a meaninful talk introducing basic elements in photography, rules of thumb when capturing a moment, different types of photography, among others.

The idea is to introduce further ideas on scientific photography, or “geek” photography, or any other contribution that might arise within the ICFOnians. And to bring close together all those passioned about photos, ICONS has pioneered the ICFO Photo club that will propose activities like outdoors photoshooting, travels, photo contests, and visit to photo exhibitions.

We hope that all that enjoy photography will benefit from this initiative! See you soon in the following photography talks.

Written by: Paola M.
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Last friday 20th of November we had around 120 students visiting ICFO from different institutions which shared small projects related with optics and photonics among them and among ICFOnians. The initiative was organized by the Outreach department at ICFO, under the name of “Young Photonics Congress”.

To present their projects, they brought posters and explained to the interested audience all the making process and the science behind. They had the chance to share knowledge with students from different institutions, high school teachers and the ICFO community.

Some of the ICONS members attended to the poster session to learn about the projects, and to ask the students relevant questions that could lead them to deepen into the understanding of the studied phenomena. I found myself particularly interested in a project of eye movement detection. I was catched by a very well structured poster and a nice explanation of the built device and the software used (open source).

By: Paola M.
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Last friday 13th of November we celebrated the International Food Festival 2015. We had the participation of around 140 Icfonians! That’s quite a number!

9 teams formed to offer traditional dishes of India, China, Poland, Germany, South Italy, Catalunya, Mediterranean, Latin and even from outer Space ;)! The cooking level was very high. I

witnessed the careful preparation of dishes in “real time” and trying to use as efficient as possible the 2 hours that they had for cooking.  The resources were limited: the cooking teams had to work strictly with their hands in lack of electricity (no food processors, neither electric knifes, nor mixers!) , and with fire from the barbecues. But they were all succesful in the preparation and presentation of their dishes.

Participants had the chance to taste flavours from around the world and decide which type of cuisine surprised them the most.

After a hectic food taste, the participants decided the winners like this:

3rd — Latin team

2nd — Chinese team

1st — Indian team

Congratulations to all of them!

Special thanks to all the teams, the participants, and all the people that collaborated us to organize this event. We hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did!

Written by: Paola M.
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