Picture of ALBA wins the contest
Photographer Sergio Ruiz wins the Technology and Science Prize of the #IDL2019 Photo Contest with a picture at ALBA in Barcelona (Spain).
“I’ve always been interested in science and I do respect very much the job of scientists, so when I was asked to take pictures at the ALBA Synchrotron for a magazine cover, I felt so honoured to visit the facility”. Sergio Ruiz (1976, Barcelona) noted, remembering the excitement he felt when entering for the first time at the experimental hall of ALBA, the synchrotron light source facility of Spain. “I could not stop looking at the different instruments and laboratories; I was like a child in Disneyland!”
Sergio Ruiz has been a professional photographer for more than 20 years, and works as a freelancer in the Barcelona region for magazines, publishers and companies. He also teaches photography in different institutions of his home town Mataró. He has been awarded the Technology and Science Prize for the International Day of Light Photo Contest 2019. The prize was supported and sponsored by Lightsources.org, an international collaboration of science communicators working in light source science facilities.
Catching the atmosphere at a beamline
The winning picture shows the scientist Carlos Escudero working at the CIRCE beamline, a laboratory that uses synchrotron light to perform studies in the field of nanotechnology, materials science and chemistry.
“[Sergio] was very agile in capturing the complexity and beauty of our job. Performing an experiment can be very hard – preparing samples, working on night shifts, etc. – but also very rewarding. Furthermore, before the scientists can do an experiment, there is a huge effort that involves a lot of people. Thanks to all ALBA staff we are able to make our small contribution to the progress of the society,” describes Carlos.
“What I wanted to communicate with this picture is that science is nothing without scientists. The human presence is always necessary for having good scientific results. It’s my modest way to highlight the excellent role that scientists have in our life”, says photographer Sergio Ruiz (picture left). “I consider myself an unfulfilled scientist with the luck of dedicating myself to photograph these wonderful machines and these incredible scientists,” he continues.
The picture was taken, during a shutdown week a few summers ago. “When we have experiments we are not very available for this type of activity, as we need to take maximum profit of the beamtime. On this occasion, we were able to spend around one hour working to find the right image,” says Carlos.
“Obtaining this picture implied facing three challenges. First of all, defining the frame. In a large scientific facility, all of the equipment, cables and objects can generate a certain visual chaos. Defining carefully what to include and what to dismiss from the picture is not an easy task. The second problem was finding the appropriate lighting conditions. Many of the instruments are shiny and flashy, so you need to control light in order to get the right proportion between the elements appearing in the picture. And finally the last difficulty was time, as I had a limited amount of time with the scientist,” says Sergio Ruiz.
The result is a stunning picture which effectively summarises the perfect communion between the scientist and the machine/instrumentation. The selection panel at SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics and also organiser of the photo contest were delighted about the amount of science and technology related images in this year edition. All in all more than 1300 images were submitted in the three months following the 16th May (International Day of Light). Sergio Ruiz is very pleased with the award and assures that, “it will encourage him to specialize in taking pictures of scientific facilities”.
INTERESTING TO KNOW:
Technical details about the picture: Reflex camera, wide-angle lens, 1 source of light placed rear-lit to generate the texture appearing in the picture.
CIRCE Beamline: scientists work here with soft X-rays that can be used in two different end-stations. One is devoted to photoemission electron microscopy and we study thin films, surfaces, interfaces and magnetic properties of nanomaterials. The other end-station is for near ambient pressure photoemission spectroscopy, a technique that allows studying the chemical composition and oxidation state of the elements present at the materials surface under different gas environments. This technique is especially interesting for catalysis and other energy-related applications.
The SPIE International Day of Light Photo Contest is an annual event that provides imagery to support the celebration of IDL. The contest kicks off each year on IDL, 16 May, and runs for three months, giving professional and amateur photographers alike the opportunity to show how light impacts cultural, economic, and political aspects of our global society. In 2019, for the first time, Lightsources.org sponsored a new category: technology and science, with a prize worth USD 750.
Want to know more about the next photo competition, the International Day of Light or #LightSourceScience in general? Check out http://www.lightsources.org one platform for news, events and careers, also on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Welcome back users!
This month marks the official start of user operation at CHESS and all three partner programs: The NSF funded CHEXS, as well as MacCHESS supported by NIH and NYSTAR, and the Materials Solutions Network at CHESS, or MSN-C, funded by the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), all welcomed users to new hutches and beamlines.
Louise Debefve stands outside a hutch on the experimental floor of the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, CHESS. She is preparing the experimental equipment for some of the first data to be collected at CHESS since the completion of the CHESS-U upgrade. The platinum samples that she is about to study at the new beamlines will provide insights into the catalytic function of the element, enabling for example the generation of cleaner energy powering everything from cars to laptops.
But for now, Louise is happy to just be using the X-rays again, a familiar occurrence for the former graduate student, who spent years developing her research of catalysts through the use of X-rays at SSRL. As a postdoc at CHESS, Louise initially found herself right in the middle of the feverish construction of the upgrade, with no X-rays available for research.
>Read more on the CHESS website
Image: Louise Debefve, right, works with Chris Pollock and Ken Finkelstein at the new PIPOXS station.
The mechanism of the most commonly used antimalarial drugs unveiled
For centuries, quinoline has been an effective compound in antimalarial drugs, although no one knew its mode of action in vivo.
Today, a team led by the Weizmann Institute has discovered its mechanism in infected red blood cells in near-native conditions, by using the ESRF, Alba Synchrotron and BESSY. They publish their results in PNAS.
Malaria remains one of the biggest killers in low-income countries. Estimates of the number of deaths each year range from 450,000 to 720,000, with the majority of deaths happening in Africa. In the last two decades, the malaria parasite has evolved into drug-resistant strains. “Recently, the increasing geographical spread of the species, as well as resistant strains has concerned the scientific community, and in order to improve antimalarial drugs we need to know how they work precisely”, explains Sergey Kapishnikov, from the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark, and the Weizmann Institute, in Israel, and leader of the study.
Plasmodium parasite, when infecting a human, invades a red blood cell, where it ingests hemoglobin to grow and multiply. Hemoglobin releases then iron-containing heme molecules, which are toxic to the parasite. However, these molecules crystallise into hemozoin, a disposal product formed from the digestion of blood by the parasite that makes the molecules inert. For the parasite to survive, the rate at which the heme molecules are liberated must be slower or the same as the rate of hemozoin crystallization. Otherwise there would be an accumulation of the toxic heme within the parasite.
>Read more on the ESRF website
Image (taken from BESSY II article): The image shows details such as the vacuole of the parasites (colored in blue and green) inside an infected blood cell.
Credit: S. Kapishnikov
Two other institutes, BESSY II at HZB and ALBA Synchrotron, have participated in this research. Please find here their published articles:
> X-ray microscopy at BESSY II reveal how antimalaria-drugs might work
> The mechanism of the most commonly used antimlalarial drugs in near- native conditions unveiled
Multimodal study of ion-conducting membranes
Using multiple x-ray characterization tools, researchers showed how chemical and structural changes improve the performance of a novel ion-conducting polymer (ionomer) membrane from 3M Company.
In fuel cells (which generate clean power from hydrogen fuel) and electrolyzers (water-splitting devices that produce hydrogen fuel), positive and negative electrodes are separated by membranes composed of ion-conducting polymers (ionomers). These membranes prevent contact between the electrodes—thus avoiding catastrophic failure—while allowing selective passage of ions to complete the circuit.
Generally, such membranes are based on a class of perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) ionomers with remarkable proton conductivity and stability. Recently, however, companies such as 3M have been developing new ionomers with improved performance. In this work, researchers took a closer look at the structural and chemical properties of these materials at the nanometer scale. The resulting insights provide valuable guidance on design strategies for optimally performing ionomers.
>Read more on the Advanced Light Source website
Image: Resonant x-ray scattering (RXS) and x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) with elemental sensitivity unravel structural features and chemical factors affecting morphology and ion transport in proton-conducting membranes.
NSLS-II celebrates its 5th anniversary
In just five years, 28 beamlines came online, over 1,800 different experiments ran, and nearly 3,000 scientists conducted research at the National Synchrotron Light Source II.
On this day five years ago, the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) achieved “first light”—its first successful delivery of x-ray beams. Signaling the start of operations at NSLS-II—one of the world’s most advanced synchrotron light sources—Oct. 23, 2014 marked a new era of synchrotron science.
“It is astonishing to me how much we have accomplished in just five years,” said NSLS-II Director John Hill. “Every day when I come to work, I am proud of what we have achieved through the expertise, dedication and passion that everyone here brings to NSLS-II.”
>Read more on the NSLS-II at Brookhaven Lab website
Image: An aerial view of NSLS-II. The facility is large enough to fit Yankee Stadium inside its half-mile-long ring.
First delivery of single-bunch electron beam to the 1.5 GeV ring
The 22 October at lunchtime, the first single-bunch electron beam was delivered to the 1.5 GeV storage ring at MAX IV and put to use at the FinEstBeAMS beamline.
These are still preliminary trials and the response from FinEstBeAMS will determine the path forward.
Normally the electrons in the storage rings come in so-called multi-bunch formation. You could think of this as several locomotives with many wagons travelling around the ring. In single-bunch mode, there is only one locomotive “on the track”. The abstract of Christian Strålman’s PhD thesis On the Challenges for Time-of-Flight Electron Spectroscopy at Storage Rings gives a good overview of the topic in Swedish.
The single-bunch mode will give the scientists access to a wider portfolio of measurement techniques in several research areas such as atmospheric chemistry, environmental science (in particular renewable energy sources), molecular reaction dynamics, cluster chemistry and physics, materials science, chemistry–chemical reactions at surfaces or in solution and photocatalysis.
>Read more on the MAX IV website
Image (extract):A screenshot of a scope measurement of the current in the ring, where you can clearly see the strong single-bunch signal. See full image here.
Suspending sample droplets with sound waves
TinyLev offers a cheap and portable way to use acoustic levitation at synchrotron beamlines.
Acoustic levitation suspends matter using acoustic radiation pressure to balance the force of gravity. It has potential applications in crystallography, spectroscopy, chemistry, and the study of organisms in microgravity. However, conventional acoustic levitation systems rely on Langevin horns, which are large and expensive pieces of equipment that are complicated to set up. TinyLev, initially developed by researchers at the University of Bristol, is a small single-axis non-resonant acoustic levitator constructed from off-the-shelf components. In work recently published in Scientific Reports, engineers at Diamond led by Dr Pete Docker used the TinyLev system to dispense and contain sample droplets in protein crystallography experiments. Their novel method facilitates efficient X-ray data acquisition in dynamic studies at room temperature.
>Read more on the Diamond Light Source website
Picture: Left: Photograph showing the TinyLev system mounted on the I24 beamline with the X-ray beam path marked with a yellow dashed arrow. Components as labelled: (A) High-magnification viewing system, (B) X-ray scatter-guard, (C) levitating drop, (D) beamstop (out of position), (E) TinyLev Transducer array, (F) backlight (retracted during data collection), (G) sample positioning stage. Right: Model of the acoustic levitation system (E) used in this work annotated with key dimensions and showing the focal point of the transducer array.
A new stable form of plutonium discovered
An international team of scientists, led by the Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), have found a new compound of plutonium with an unexpected, pentavalent oxidation state.
This new phase of plutonium is solid and stable, and may be a transient phase in radioactive waste repositories. The results are published this week in Angewandte Chemie as a Very Important Paper (VIP). Countries across the globe are making efforts to improve the safety of the nuclear waste storage in order to prevent release of radioactive nuclides to the environment. Plutonium, has been shown to be transported by groundwaters from contaminated sites for kilometres in the form of colloids, which are formed by interaction with clay, iron oxides or natural organic matter.
A team of scientists lead by HZDR studies the chemistry of actinides under environmentally relevant conditions, by synthesizing such compounds, and then studying their electronic and structural behaviour both with advanced synchrotron X-ray methods experimentally as well as theoretically. The latest paper of the international team shows how an experiment seemingly gone wrong leads to a breakthrough: the discovery of a new stable form of plutonium.
It all started when Kristina Kvashnina, physicist from HZDR and based at the ROBL beamline at the ESRF, and her team were trying to create plutonium dioxide nanoparticles using different precursors to be studied at ROBL. When they used the Pu (VI) precursor, they realized that a strange reaction took place during the formation of the plutonium dioxide nanoparticles. “Every time we create nanoparticles from the other precursors Pu(III), (IV) or (V) the reaction is very quick, but here we observed a weird phenomenon half way”, explains Kvashnina. She figured that it must be Pu (V), pentavalent plutonium, a never-observed-before form of the element, after doing a high-energy resolution fluorescence detection (HERFD) experiment at the Pu L3 edge at ROBL.
>Read more about the research at ROBL on the ESRF website
Image: The team in front of the spectrometer of ROBL. Kristina Kvashnina is the second from the right.
Researchers find what makes chocolate melt in your mouth
Scientists use X-rays to see the true nature of chocolate.
The taste of a silky piece of rich chocolate is one of life’s great pleasures, and producing a smooth mouthfeel is an aspiration of every serious chocolatier. The characteristics that truly set haute chocolate apart can be seen at the microscale thanks to recent, pivotal research performed by researchers from the University of Guelph at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) located at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory.
In a series of studies, University of Guelph researcher Fernanda Peyronel used a technique called ultra-small-angle x-ray scattering (USAXS) to investigate a property called fractal dimension, a particular feature of the geometric configuration of tiny particles of chocolate. “Basically, we’re trying to see whether these particles have a more open or a more closed structure and to correlate that to the mouthfeel experienced by consumers,” Peyronel said.
The USAXS technique allows scientists to resolve particles that range in size from a few hundred nanometers to around 10 micrometers — roughly the limit at which our taste buds can distinguish different textures. The beamline at the APS also accommodates detectors for small-angle x-ray scattering as well as large-angle x-ray scattering. These allow scientists to study their systems from less than a nanometer to around 10 micrometers.
Progress on Project Bright beamlines
The complex engineering of scientific instruments is explored in this ‘behind the scenes’ look at the installation of frontends for two new beamlines at the Australian Synchrotron.
Good progress has been made on the installation of supporting infrastructure for the first of the new beamlines for the Australian Synchrotron as part of Project Br–ght.
The work is a series of complex engineering tasks that require precise planning, the expertise of applied mechanical engineering, controls engineering and supporting technicians.
Importantly, the majority of installation works could only be done during periods when the synchrotron was not operational.
Installation of the ‘frontends’ for two new beamlines, Medium Energy X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (MEX) and Biological Small Angle X-ray Scattering (BioSAX) is now complete with final commissioning tasks on schedule. Completion is expected during the coming Christmas shutdown, according to Senior Engineering Manager Brad Mountford.
The ‘frontend” is the physical conduit that carries powerful synchrotron light from the main storage ring through the shield wall that surrounds the ring.
>Read more on the Australian Synchrotron (ANSTO) website
>Discover the Project BR-GHT here
Developing more nutritious crops to feed a growing world
Using synchrotron light to analyze new varieties of peas could be faster, more environmentally friendly, and help to nourish underfed populations around the world.
With thousands of seed samples produced every growing season, Dr. Tom Warkentin needs fast, accurate and cost-effective techniques to assess the nutritional value of the pea varieties he has developed. Now, thanks to two recent studies, techniques available at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron at the University of Saskatchewan show promise for Warkentin and many other plant breeders.
“These studies arose from the question, ‘Can we use the synchrotron to measure the nutrient traits in pea seeds?,’” explained Warkentin, professor of plant science and pulse breeder in the Crop Development Centre at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Agriculture and Bioresources. “Improving the nutritional value of peas is a higher and higher priority for us in plant breeding so we wanted to look at the standard approaches we’ve been using to measure nutritional traits versus the techniques available at the CLS.”
>Read more on the Canadian Light Source website
Image: Scientists Tom Warkentin, Chithra Karunakaran, Jarvis Stobbs, and David Muir with pea samples at our IDEAS beamline.
NSLS-II scientist named DOE Office of Science Distinguished Fellow
Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have garnered two out of five “Distinguished Scientists Fellow” awards announced today by the DOE’s Office of Science.
Theoretical physicist Sally Dawson, a world-leader in calculations aimed at describing the properties of the Higgs boson, and José Rodriguez, a renowned chemist exploring and developing catalysts for energy-related reactions, will each receive $1 million in funding over three years to pursue new research objectives within their respective fields. (…)
José Rodriguez (NSLS-II)
For discoveries of the atomic basis of surface catalysis for the synthesis of sustainable fuels, and for significantly advancing in-situ methods of investigation using synchrotron light sources.”
Rodriguez will devote his funding to the development and construction of new tools for performing extremely rapid, time-resolved measurements to track the reaction mechanisms of catalytic processes as they occur under variable conditions—like those encountered during real-world reactions important to energy applications. These include processes on metal-oxide catalysts frequently used in the production of clean fuels and other “green” chemicals through hydrogenation of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, or the conversion of methane to hydrogen.
“At a microscopic level, the structure of a catalyst and the chemical environment around the active sites—where chemical bonds are broken and reformed as reactants transform into new products—change as a function of time, thus determining the reaction mechanism,” said Rodriguez. “We can learn a lot about the nature of the active sites under steady-state conditions, with no variations in temperature, pressure, and reaction rate. But to really understand the details of the reaction mechanism, we need ways to track what happens under transient or variable conditions. This funding will allow us to build new instrumentation that works with existing capabilities so we can study catalysts under variable conditions—and use what we learn to improve their performance.”
Dynamic pattern of skyrmions observed
Tiny magnetic vortices known as skyrmions form in certain magnetic materials, such as Cu2OSeO3.
These skyrmions can be controlled by low-level electrical currents – which could facilitate more energy-efficient data processing. Now a team has succeeded in developing a new technique at the VEKMAG station of BESSY II for precisely measuring these vortices and observing their three different predicted characteristic oscillation modes (Eigen modes).
Cu2OSeO3 is a material with unusual magnetic properties. Magnetic spin vortices known as skyrmions are formed within a certain temperature range when in the presence of a small external magnetic field. Currently, moderately low temperatures of around 60 Kelvin (-213 degrees Celsius) are required to stabilise their phase, but it appears possible to shift this temperature range to room temperature. The exciting thing about skyrmions is that they can be set in motion and controlled very easily, thus offering new opportunities to reduce the energy required for data processing.
>Read more on the BESSY II at HZB website
Image: The illustration demonstrates skyrmions in one of their Eigen modes (clockwise).
Credit: Yotta Kippe/HZB