Dear Group, We have Alex Eisfeld visiting us until Thursday, Jan 17. For those who joined the group recently, Alex is a group leader at Max Planck Institute in Dresden. Here is his website http://www.pks.mpg.de/~eisfeld/ .He was staying with our group for about a year and left back to Germany last April. I would strongly suggest new students to talk with Alex. *He will give a group talk on Wednesday, Jan 16, at 4pm in M217* The title of the talk: *Dynamics of a nano-scale rotor driven by single-electron tunneling* *Abstract:* We investigate theoretically the dynamics and the charge transport properties of a rod-shaped nano-scale rotor, which is driven by a similar mechanism as the nanomechanical single-electron transistor (NEMSET). We show that a static electric potential gradient can lead to self-excitation of oscillatory or continuous rotational motion. We identify the relevant parameters of the device and study the dependence of the dynamics on these parameters. We discuss how the dynamics are related to the measured current through the device. Notably, in the oscillatory regime we find a negative differential conductance. The current-voltage characteristics can be used to infer details of the sur- rounding environment which is responsible for damping. ******************************************** Semion K. Saikin, PhD Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Harvard University 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 email: saykin(a)fas.harvard.edu phone: (619)212-6649 ********************************************