The case for biophysics super-groups in physics departments.

Increasing numbers of physicists engage in research activities that address biological questions from physics perspectives or strive to develop physics insights from active biological processes. The on-going development and success of such activities morph our ways of thinking about what it is to 'do biophysics' and add to our understanding of the physics of life. Many scientists in this research and teaching landscape are homed in physics departments. A challenge for a hosting department is how to group, name and structure such biophysicists to best add value to their emerging research and teaching but also to the portfolio of the whole department. Here we discuss these issues and speculate on strategies.

The European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics. Policy Statement No. 7.1: The roles, responsibilities and status of the medical physicist including the criteria for the staffing levels in a Medical Physics Department approved by EFOMP Council on 5th February 2016.

This EFOMP Policy Statement is an amalgamation and an update of the EFOMP Policy Statements No. 2, 4 and 7. It presents guidelines for the roles, responsibilities and status of the medical physicist together with recommended minimum staffing levels. These recommendations take into account the ever-increasing demands for competence, patient safety, specialisation and cost effectiveness of modern healthcare services, the requirements of the European Union Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom laying down the basic safety standards for protection against the dangers arising from exposure to ionising radiation, the European Commission's Radiation Protection Report No. 174: "Guidelines on medical physics expert", as well as the relevant publications of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The provided recommendations on minimum staffing levels are in very good agreement with those provided by both the European Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

A perspective: Robert B Laughlin.

Despite their cultural differences, physics and biology are destined to interact with each other more in the future. The reason is that modern physics is fundamentally about codification of emergent law, and life is the greatest of all emergent phenomena.

Research at the interface of physics and biology: bridging the two fields.

I firmly believe that interaction between physics and biology is not only natural, but inevitable. Kamal Shukla provides a personal perspective on working at the interface between the physical and biological sciences.

Perspectives in biological physics: the nDDB project for a neutron Dynamics Data Bank for biological macromolecules.

Neutron spectroscopy provides experimental data on time-dependent trajectories, which can be directly compared to molecular dynamics simulations. Its importance in helping us to understand biological macromolecules at a molecular level is demonstrated by the results of a literature survey over the last two to three decades. Around 300 articles in refereed journals relate to neutron scattering studies of biological macromolecular dynamics, and the results of the survey are presented here. The scope of the publications ranges from the general physics of protein and solvent dynamics, to the biologically relevant dynamics-function relationships in live cells. As a result of the survey we are currently setting up a neutron Dynamics Data Bank (nDDB) with the aim to make the neutron data on biological systems widely available. This will benefit, in particular, the MD simulation community to validate and improve their force fields. The aim of the database is to expose and give easy access to a body of experimental data to the scientific community. The database will be populated with as much of the existing data as possible. In the future it will give value, as part of a bigger whole, to high throughput data, as well as more detailed studies. A range and volume of experimental data will be of interest in determining how quantitatively MD simulations can reproduce trends across a range of systems and to what extent such trends may depend on sample preparation and data reduction and analysis methods. In this context, we strongly encourage researchers in the field to deposit their data in the nDDB.

Análisis de la influencia del grado de hidratación de la epidermis en el comportamiento biomecánico de la piel in vivo / Analysis of the influence of hydration of the epidermis on the bio-mechanical behaviour of in vivo skin

El comportamiento biomecánico de la piel humana in vivo es un indicador importante de una buena condición cutánea en lo que es su organización funcional. Los tejidos subyacentes también contribuyen a estas propiedades, lo que imposibilita una evaluación estrictamente biomecánica de este comportamiento. Ocurre además, que los sistemas tecnológicos corrientemente utilizados para este tipo de evaluación in vivo, no permiten obtener la medida directa de las características biofísicas del órgano, ya que no es posible cuantificar la contribución relativa de cada tejido para este comportamiento. Las variables y los parámetros obtenidos deben ser, sobre todo, considerados como "descriptores" mecánicos, lo que enfatiza el cuidado especial que hay que tener al interpretar su variación. También por este motivo una de las preguntas fundamentales en relación a la contribución relativa de la epidermis a este comportamiento, sigue aun mal esclarecida. El presente protocolo fue elaborado en este complejo marco para responder, en especial, a esta última cuestión a través de dos diferentes tratamientos tópicos susceptibles de modificar el equilibrio hídrico de la epidermis de voluntarios sanos (agua corriente y una solución al 10 por ciento de glicerina), registrándose la respectiva respuesta biológica. Los resultados obtenidos sugieren que el comportamiento biomecánico de la piel in vivo puede ser modificado y eventualmente modulado a través de intervenciones tópicas, proponiendo que la epidermis influencia de hecho el comportamiento biomecánico global de toda la piel (AU)