Latest-News – Page 121 – Lightsources.org

Tungsten accumulation in bone raises health concerns

2018/04/172018/04/19

McGill University scientists have identified exposure to tungsten as problematic after they determined how and where high levels of the metal accumulate and remain in bone.

“Our research provides further evidence against the long-standing perception that tungsten is inert and non-toxic,” said Cassidy VanderSchee, a PhD student and a member of a McGill research group headed by chemistry professor Scott Bohle.

Tungsten is a hard metal with a high melting point and, when combined with other metals and used as an alloy, it’s also very flexible.

Because of these properties and under the assumption that tungsten is non-toxic, it has been tested for use in medical implants, including arterial stents and hip replacements, in radiation shields to protect tissue during radiation therapy, and in some drugs. Tungsten is found in ammunition as well as in tools used for machining and cutting other metals.

Tungsten also occurs naturally in groundwater where deposits of the mineral are found. Exposure to high levels of tungsten in drinking water in Fallon, Nevada, was investigated for a possible link with childhood leukemia in the early 2000s. This investigation lead scientists to question the long-held belief that exposure to tungsten is safe and prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. to nominate tungsten for toxicology and carcinogenesis studies.

Image: Cassidy VenderSchee

Solution to plastic pollution on the horizon

2018/04/162018/04/18

Engineering a unique plastic-degrading enzyme

The inner workings of a recently discovered bacterium with a fascinating ability to use plastic as an energy source have been recently revealed in PNAS. The world’s unique Long-Wavelength Macromolecular Crystallography (MX) beamline here at Diamond Light Source was used to successfully solve the structure of the bacterial enzyme responsible for chopping up the plastic. This newly evolved enzyme could be the key to tackling the worldwide problem of plastic waste.

Plastic pollution is a global threat that desperately needs addressing. Plastics are rarely biodegradable and they can remain in the environment for centuries. One of the most abundant plastics that contributes hugely to this dire situation is poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET).

PET is used largely in textiles, where it is commonly referred to as polyester, but it is also used as packaging for liquids and foodstuffs. In fact, PET’s excellent water-repellent properties led to it being the plastic of choice for soft drink bottles. However, once plastic bottles are discarded in the environment the water resistance of PET means that they are highly resistant to natural biodegradation. PET bottles can linger for hundreds of years and plastic waste like this will accumulate over time unless a solution is found to degrade them.

A recent breakthrough came in the discovery of a unique bacterium, Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6, which was found feeding on waste from an industrial PET recycling facility. PET has only been widely used since the 1970s, so the bacterium had evolved at breakneck speed to be able to take advantage of the new food source.

The bacterium had the amazing ability to degrade PET and use it to provide carbon for energy. Central to this ability was the production of a PET-digesting enzyme, known as PETase.

Success in clinical trials driving a shift in the treatment of blood cancers

2018/04/132018/04/23

The Australian Synchrotron is proud to be growing Australia’s capacity for innovative drug development, facilitating the advance of world-class disease and drug research through to local drug trials. Recent success in clinical trials of Venetoclax, the chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) drug developed by researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and two international pharmaceutical companies is driving a major shift in the treatment of a range of blood cancers, according to a media information from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

Scientists use machine learning to speed discovery of metallic glass

2018/04/132018/04/16

In a new report, they combine artificial intelligence and accelerated experiments to discover potential alternatives to steel in a fraction of the time.

Blend two or three metals together and you get an alloy that usually looks and acts like a metal, with its atoms arranged in rigid geometric patterns.

But once in a while, under just the right conditions, you get something entirely new: a futuristic alloy called metallic glass that’s amorphous, with its atoms arranged every which way, much like the atoms of the glass in a window. Its glassy nature makes it stronger and lighter than today’s best steel, plus it stands up better to corrosion and wear.

Even though metallic glass shows a lot of promise as a protective coating and alternative to steel, only a few thousand of the millions of possible combinations of ingredients have been evaluated over the past 50 years, and only a handful developed to the point that they may become useful.

Now a group led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Northwestern University has reported a shortcut for discovering and improving metallic glass – and, by extension, other elusive materials – at a fraction of the time and cost.

>Read more on the SLAC website

Image: Fang Ren, who developed algorithms to analyze data on the fly while a postdoctoral scholar at SLAC, at a Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource beamline where the system has been put to use.
Credit: Dawn Harmer/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Gold protein clusters could be used as environmental and health detectors

2018/04/112018/04/12

Peng Zhang and his collaborators study remarkable, tiny self-assembling clusters of gold and protein that glow a bold red. And they’re useful: protein-gold nanoclusters could be used to detect harmful metals in water or to identify cancer cells in the body.
“These structures are very exciting but are very, very hard to study. We tried many different tools, but none worked,” says Zhang, a Dalhousie University professor.

“These structures are very exciting but are very, very hard to study. We tried many different tools, but none worked,” says Zhang, a Dalhousie University professor.

Image: The protein-gold structure. The protein, which both builds and holds in place the gold cluster, is shown in grey.

Shedding new light on laser additive manufacturing

2018/04/102018/04/23

Additive manufacturing (AM, also known as 3D printing) allows us to create incredibly complex shapes, which would not be possible using traditional manufacturing techniques. However, objects created using AM have different properties from traditional manufacturing routes, which is sometimes a disadvantage.

Laser additive manufacturing (LAM) uses a laser to fuse together metallic, ceramic or other powders into complex 3D shapes, layer by layer. The cooling rates are extremely rapid, and since they are unlike conventional processes we don’t know the optimal conditions to obtain the best properties, delaying the uptake of LAM in the production of safety-critical engineering structures, such as turbine blades, energy storage and biomedical devices. We need a method to see inside the process of LAM to better understand and optimise the laser-matter interaction and powder consolidation mechanisms.

Based in the Research Complex at Harwell, a team of researchers have worked with scientists at I12, the Joint Engineering Environment Processing (JEEP) beamline and the Central Laser Facility to build a laser additive manufacturing machine which operates on a beamline, allowing you to see into the heart of the process, revealing the underlying physical phenomena during LAM.

Picture: The Additive Manufacturing Team from the Research Complex at Harwell on the Joint Engineering Environment Processing (JEEP, I12) beamline. The Laser Additive Manufacturing Process Replicator (or LAMPR) on the right is used to reveal the underlying physical phenomena during LAM.

New Diamond SESAME Rutherford training programme underway

2018/04/102018/04/12

First four fellows welcomed to new training programme

Diamond has welcomed the first four fellows on the newly created Diamond SESAME Rutherford Fellowship Training Programme. The result of a £1.5 million grant from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), Diamond will use the funding to expand its training and development support of SESAME, a unique Middle East project.

Up to 25 delegates will benefit from training in areas of science and engineering associated with the construction and operation of SESAME (Synchrotron light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) in Jordan. The Middle East’s first major international research centre, the SESAME light source involves members from Cyprus, Egypt, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey.

Andrew Harrison, CEO of Diamond, explains, “SESAME represents a unique project for the Middle East region because of the excellent opportunity to stimulate and support scientific and technical activity, training and engagement in the region. Because SESAME focuses on areas of local importance – such as water supply, energy, health and the environment – we are keen to nurture new talent and share our skills. This significant grant will enable us to build stronger links.”

Image: Fellows, Mentors and Programme Support
Credit: Diamond Light Source

Sending electrons on a rollercoaster ride

2018/04/092018/04/26

A first-of-its-kind x-ray instrument for frontier research with high-brightness x-rays is now in operation at Argonne National Laboratory. The new device utilizes a unique superconducting technology that speeds electrons on a path much like that of a rollercoaster.

The insertion device (ID), called a Helical Superconducting Undulator (HSCU), was designed at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory. The device has three primary advantages over other types of IDs for producing high-brightness x-rays: (1) it generates a stronger magnetic field than other IDs; (2) it allows researchers to select a single energy from the x-ray beam without using any x-ray optics; and (3) it produces an x-ray beam with circular polarization. Argonne developed the helical undulator with $2 million in funding from the DOE Office of Science.

>Read more on the Advanced Photon Source website

Image: Matthew Kasa and Susan Bettenhausen of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) Accelerator Division Magnetic Devices Group put the finishing touches on installation of the Helical Superconducting Undulator in Sector 7 of the APS storage ring.

Unravelling the great vision of flies

2018/04/092018/04/13

Fruit flies have a much better vision than what was previously believed in the scientific community.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield (UK), the University of Oulu (Finland), Max IV (Sweden) and University of Szeged (Hungary) are on ID16B trying to find out what happens in the photoreceptors in these insects’ eyes.

“It had always been claimed that fly’s eyesight was very basic, but I couldn’t believe that after so many centuries of evolution this was still the case”, explains Mikko Juusola, head of the Centre for Cognition in Small Brains at Sheffield University. So he started studying vision in fruit flies a decade ago and last year himself and his team debunked previous hypothesis: they proved that insects have a much better vision and can see in far greater detail than previously thought.

Insects’ compound eyes typically consist of thousands of tiny lens-capped ‘eye-units’, which together should capture a low-resolution pixelated image of the surrounding world. In contrast, the human eye has a single large lens, and the retinal photoreceptor array underneath it is densely-packed, which allows the eye to capture high-resolution images. This is why it was believed that insects did not have a good eyesight. Until Juusola came in the picture.

Image: Marko Huttula (University of Oulu, Finland), Jussi-Petteri Suuronen (ESRF) and Mikko Juusola (University of Sheffield, UK) on ESRF’s ID16B beamline. Credit: ©ESRF/C.Argoud

Inscuteable: No longer inscrutable

2018/04/09

The structure and function of a controller of stem cell division

An important complex forming the core of the cell division apparatus in stem cells has been imaged using the Macromolecular Crystallography beamlines, I04 and I04-1 at Diamond Light Source. As recently reported in Nature Communications, the spindle orientation protein known as LGN bound to an adapter protein known as Inscuteable in a tetrameric arrangement, which drove asymmetric stem cell division.

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that have the capacity to differentiate into specialised cells. In a developing embryo, stem cells are the foundation of all other cells, whereas in adults, they can aid repair by replenishing lost tissue. To ensure a physiological balance between differentiated and undifferentiated cells, stem cells undergo asymmetric division to give rise to an identical daughter stem cell and a differentiated cell.

Asymmetric division occurs when there is an unequal segregation of cellular contents. For this to occur, the line of division of the cell (known as the axis) must be carefully positioned. The stem cells use polarity proteins, such as Par3, to determine the location of this axis, and then proteins such as LGN and Inscuteable (Insc) help to align the mitotic spindle to the axis of polarity.

Despite the importance of such a process, little is known about the interactions between the proteins. Dr Marina Mapelli, Group Leader at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan and Dr Simone Culurgioni, Post-Doctoral Research Associate here at Diamond, along with scientists from the Italian Institute of Technology, plus the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Grenoble set out to solve the crystal structure of LGN bound to Insc. They saw that the proteins were intertwined in a fascinating tetrameric arrangement and found that Insc alone had impressive anti-proliferative properties.

Figure : On the left, a stem cell orienting (movement highlighted by the red arrow) its mitotic spindle (in green) in order to partition its cellular components (in pink and yellow) unequally in the two daughter cells; one is retaining the stem state (in pink) and the other one is committed to differentiate (in yellow). On the right, the structure of Insc:LGN complex governing this asymmetric cell division process. Insc:LGN complex assembles in highly stable intertwinned tetrameric structure (Insc in blue and purple, LGN in yellow and orange respectively
Entire image here.

Serial crystallography develops by leaps and bounds at the ESRF

2018/04/062018/04/13

Serial crystallography is a new way of studying macromolecular structures using synchrotron and X-FEL sources around the world.

The Structural Biology group at the ESRF is continuously developing new methods to advance the field. Two articles describing advances made are published today in Acta Crystallographica Section D.

“On the Structural Biology Group beamlines one of the ultimate aims is that users can define protocols for experiments, click ‘go’ and let the experiments run by themselves”, explains Gordon Leonard, head of the Structural Biology group at the ESRF. With this idea in mind and to get as much information as possible from the samples available, the team has already adopted serial crystallography, a technique which involves taking diffraction data from many, sometimes hundreds or thousands, of crystals in order to assemble a complete dataset, piece by piece. Indeed, the members of the group are constantly developing new ways to improve the method through collaboration involving scientists from the ESRF, DESY, the Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging, the European X-FEL and the University of Hamburg.

Image: Daniele de Sanctis on the ID29 beamline.
Credit: S. Candé.

Climate change and its effects on Rocky Mountain alpine lakes

2018/04/052018/04/09

Alpine lakes in the Rocky Mountains are important biological hot spots of that ecosystem. These lakes do not have enough nutrients to support large amounts of aquatic life because of the cold climate in the surrounding watershed. Rather, the lakes are home to oligotrophs, organisms that grow slowly and can survive in harsh aquatic environments. The lakes also host a variety of cold-water fish, such as trout, that are preyed upon by birds, including osprey and bald eagles.

Researchers from University of Wyoming, U.S. Geological Survey, and the Canadian Light Source conducted experiments at the CLS on the fine dust that is deposited to the Rocky Mountains to learn more about how the alpine lakes could be affected by climate change. They looked specifically at phosphorus in dust and how it is made available to the organisms in the cold lakes and streams, because phosphorus is one of the major limiting nutrients, and its availability could affect the functions and properties of alpine lake ecosystems.

Combining X-ray techniques for powerful insights into hyperaccumulator plants

2018/04/042018/04/12

The complementary power of combining multiple X-ray techniques to understand the unusual properties of hyperaccumulator plants has been highlighted in a new cover article just published in New Phytologist.

X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XFM) at the Australian Synchrotron has been used by a consortium of international researchers led by Dr Antony van der Ent of the Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation at The University of Queensland, in association with A/Prof Peter Kopittke of the School of Agriculture and Food Science also at The University of Queensland.

The XFM technique generates elemental maps showing where elements of interest are found within plant tissue, seedlings or individual cells.
Visually striking images (obtained at the XFM beamline) show various hyperaccumulator plants, on the cover of the April issue of New Phytologist. In the images each element is depicted in a different colour, making up a red-green-blue (RGB) image.

“Hyperaccumulator plants have the unusual ability to accumulate extreme concentrations of metals and metalloids in their living tissues,” said van der Ent.
“Hyperaccumulators are of scientific interest because whilst metals are normally toxic to plants even at low concentrations, these plants are able to accumulate large concentrations without any toxic effects,” he added

Image: X‐ray Fluorescence (XRF) elemental maps of hyperaccumulator plants. The tricolour composite images show (left to right) root cross‐section of Senecio coronatus (red, iron; green, nickel; blue, potassium); and seedlings of Alyssum murale (red, calcium; green, nickel; blue, Compton scatter).
Credit: A. van der Ent.

Scientists create “Swiss army knife” for electron beams

2018/04/032018/04/09

Pocket accelerator combines four functions in one device

DESY scientists have created a miniature particle accelerator for electrons that can perform four different functions at the push of a button. The experimental device is driven by a Terahertz radiation source and can accelerate, compress, focus and analyse electron bunches in a beam. Its active structures measure just a few millimetres across. The developers from the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) present their “Segmented Terahertz Electron Accelerator and Manipulator” (STEAM) in the journal Nature Photonics. Terahertz radiation is located between microwaves and the infrared in the electromagnetic spectrum.

One of the central features of the device is its perfect timing with the electron beam. The scientists achieve this by using the same laser pulse to generate an electron bunch and to drive the device. “To do this, we take an infrared laser pulse and split it up,” explains first author Dongfang Zhang from the group of Franz Kärtner at CFEL. “Both parts are fed into nonlinear crystals that change the laser wavelength: For the generation of an electron bunch the wavelength is shifted into the ultraviolet and directed onto a photocathode where it releases a bunch of electrons. For STEAM the wavelength is shifted into the Terahertz regime. The relative timing of the two parts of the original laser pulse only depends on the length of the path they take and can be controlled very precisely.”

This way, the scientists can control with ultra-high precision, what part of the Terahertz wave an electron bunch hits when it enters the device. Depending on the arrival time of the electron bunch, STEAM performs its different functions. “For instance, a bunch that hits the negative part of the Terahertz electric field is accelerated,” explains Zhang. “Other parts of the wave lead to focusing or defocusing of the bunch or to a compression by a factor of ten or so.” While compression means the electron bunch gets shorter in the direction of flight, focusing means it shrinks perpendicular to the direction of flight.

Image: The mini accelerator STEAM (centre) is driven by Terahertz radiation (yellow, coming from both sides). It can accelerator, compress, focus and analyse the incident electron bunches (blue).
Credit: DESY, Lucid Berlin

Discovery of the novel green fluorescent protein by NSRRC

2018/04/032018/07/12

Scientist Dr. Chun-Jung Chen and Research Assistant Mr. Yen-Chieh Huang of the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center collaborated with the researchers at the University of the Philippines – Diliman to analyze the three-dimensional structure and functional characteristics of the novel green fluorescent protein asFP504 isolated from a soft coral species, Alcyonium sp. found at the Taklong Island, Guimaras, Philippines. The results of the study were published and selected as the cover story on the Philippine Journal of Science in March, which is considered as one of the representative research results of the Southward Policy of NSRRC.

Image: Extract of the cover on the Philippine Journal of Science (2018.03)

NEXT project receives secretary’s achievement award

2018/04/032018/04/09

On Wednesday, Mar. 14, Under Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes presented the Secretary’s Achievement Award—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Project Management (PM) Award—to the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) Experimental Tools (NEXT) project management team for completing the project on schedule and under budget, and for delivering scientific instruments to NSLS-II that will benefit research for years to come.

The NEXT project team coordinated the development and construction of five new beamlines (experimental stations) at NSLS-II, a highly advanced synchrotron light source and a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. Scientists use NSLS-II’s ultra-bright light to study materials with nanoscale resolution and exquisite sensitivity. The five new beamlines developed through NEXT complement the existing beamline portfolio at NSLS-II, and offer new, unique, and cutting-edge scientific capabilities.

“These state-of-the-art beamlines support the DOE Office of Science mission to deliver scientific discoveries and major scientific tools to transform our understanding of nature and to advance the energy, economic, and national security of the United States,” said Robert Caradonna, DOE Brookhaven Site Office Federal Project Director. “This award reflects the drive and dedication of the NEXT project team that made this endeavor a huge success. It was an honor to work with such talented people on such an important a project.”

>Read more on the NSLS-II website

Image: The NEXT team celebrates the completion of the project in NSLS-II’s lobby.
Credit: NSLS II