Life on board ESS

Today it's the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in Leiden. In order to celebrate this, a phenomenal tutorial web site on superconductivity has been produced in a collaboration between The Institut de Physique du CNRS; The Société Française de Physique et sa section Paris-Sud; TheRéseau thématique de recherche avancée « Triangle de la Physique.

Please visit: http://www.superconductivity.eu

Despite its chilly nature, superconductivity is a hot topic at ESS. Superconducting materials can carry large amounts of electric current without loss but so far only at rather impractical low temperatures. Neutron diffraction has been at the forefront of research into superconductivity, paving the way for new materials that are superconducting at normal temperatures. With green-energy production, it is crucial to use energy efficiently. One route to minimising energy loss is by using materials that conduct electricity without resistance. Superconductors can play a key role for power transmission in a sustainable society.

Read more about "The Superconducting City" in the ESS publication:
Neutrons for Science

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Enjoy this YouTube video with the ESS song, "Stories From The Sound", performed live by The Neutronics at the ESS, E.ON and Lund Energi world premiere presenting the unique ESS energy concept.

An act of true inspiration lead me to compose this song with music and lyrics celebrating the beautiful life around arts & science in the Øresund region in general and the fascinating work at the European Spallation Source in specific. During my travels to different cities and work places involved in this job, I get to meet so many fantastic, competent and kind people from all around the world who gathers here in the Øresund, working to create a place for openness, innovation and a sustainable way of life.

The song describes a little adventure around the mystery we're all so excited to build, operate, explore new things and do science with. It elaborates on our five senses, how research and innovation is driven by curiosity and the mix of different cultures. I've also managed to fit in the capital cities of all the sixteen partner countries involved in the fantastic ESS project.

I would like to thank my director Colin Carlile at ESS, the ESS energy team together with Lund Energi and Richard Bengtsson from E.ON who all paved the way for this musical piece and performance. I would also like to thank the great musicians Alexadra Hamnede, Sebastian Lilja, Peter Andrén and Marcus Liliequist for our magic team spirit and professional concentration, performing a completely new composition on such a short notice. And last but not least, I would like to thank all my colleagues at the multidisciplinary workplace of ESS for the creative spirit you fill my workdays with!

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This week ESS had to cancel the third Steering Committee Meeting in Bilbao, Spain, due to the ash cloud over Europe. I think it was a wise decision by the ESS management.

Staff at ESS were of course a bit disappointed seeing all their work and preparations for this meeting litterally going up in smoke. But luckily we stand quite prepared with a load of black humour for situations like this. Something which have actually helped us to cope every now and then in critical situations that sometimes occur in a complex project like the ESS.

There are of course many people who have got into serious trouble due to the ash cloud. Not the least people in Iceland who are already suffering from the financial collapse. I think about you and wish you all the best in your struggle to fix the Icelandic economy. A positive effect in all this could be though that Iceland have probably never got as much international publicity and PR before. So in the long run, an exotic volcano might help tourism and make it easier to open new doors to do business in the future.

For those who like to cheer things up a bit in all this mess, there is a lot of humour on the volcanic subject flourishing around the web:

United Kingdom: "Dear Iceland, we asked for cash, not ash!".

Iceland: "Sorry for the flight delays, Europe. We were aiming for London, but it's hard to be accurate when firing a volcano".

Or this one:

"The last wish of the Icelandic economy was to have its ashes scattered over Europe...".

Locally, here in my mailbox, the news just reached me that our friend, ProfESSor John Larese who gave a speech at the ESS / Lund University seminar series last week, is still in Sweden unable to get home because of the ash cloud. Live and direct from Uppsala (apparently there's a second university town in Sweden after Lund?) John sent me a short reflection on his current situation. He seems to be contemplating over geology stuff, perhaps trying to find some secret code to send as a morse signal to his science colleagues back home across the Atlantic:

"Im sitting in my hotel room in Uppsala, Sweden reflecting on the past few days and how premonitory my lecture at Lund University was. I opened my lecture about Spallation Neutron Souces and Nanomaterials with the Great Smokey Mountains as a backdrop on my title page but little did I think that this Chemistry profESSor from TennESSee, the VOLunteer University was going to fall victim to the Nano silica ash originating from the Smokey Icelandic VOLcano eruption. While some confusion still exists it appears that I still have a few days to ponder if the VOLcano will stop SPALLing out any more Nanosilica ash and this citizen of the VOLunteer state can return home. In the future I'll stick to VOLunteering to scatter neutrons closer to TennESSee and not dodging VOLcanic ash!"

Dear John, I hope you make it back to the US and Tennessee soon and don't suffer too much from “jet lash”. Otherwise you could always settle down in Lund and build a spectrometer or two. We will need them to analyse the huge (but so remarkably invisible) particle clouds that keeps the Europeans from levitating nowadays.

By the way, Johnny cASH was born in Kingsland, ArkanSAS - But he actually died in nASHville TennESSee.. ashESS to ashESS.. I think I need to cough..

End of story.

Oh, one more: "Waiter, there's volcanic ash in my soup. I know, it's a no-fly zone".

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A very passionate talk on "Neutrons, Nanomaterials and Molecular Adsorption" was given this Thursday by Mr. John Z. Larese from University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The audience attending the ESS & Lund University seminar series on "New Science with Max IV and ESS" was introduced to the meaning and mysteries of "surface science".

In a more profound framing of his presentation John started by touching upon some factors which attracts researchers and scientists to settle down, work and live at certain places. It became obvious that beautiful nature combined with dynamic city and campus environments, offering opportunities to do top class research with state-of-the-art technology, were central things. But for a large scale research facility (like the ESS) to become successful, it is important not only to be able to provide instruments with higher resolution and faster speed of data management - the area surrounding the facility must have laboratories and gear for synthesising, characterising and preparation of samples nearby. There must be labs on spot where the researcher can error detect their samples quickly in case something goes wrong with the sample. With valuable and expensive beam time running, it can be devastating to your project if one have to travel long distances in order to optimise research samples and assemble data. Considering these requirements, there is no doubt that the location of the European Spallation Source on the site just north of Lund, will make ESS an integrated part of the Øresund region [map] thus making it possible to benefit from an urban environment which is currently building up one of the worlds most excellent infrastructures for science and research.

On the more hardcore level of John's presentation we became acquaintanced with MgO (Magnesium Oxide), ZnO (Zinc Oxide) and how to carry out basic science experiments producing nanoparticles by burning the substance and then analysing with neutron spectrometry.

Neutron scattering techniques like diffraction, inelastic neutron scattering and spectroscopy, are ideally suited to investigate the structure and dynamics of molecules at the interface of nanoscale materials. John has actually been doing experiments with our own ESS director Colin Carlile during the nineties at the ISIS neutron source using the IRIS spectrometer which Colin spent his life on building (before he spent his life building the ESS AB).

Through synthetic production and characterization of nanometer scale materials like Mgo and ZnO we can create tiny elements of materials which exhibit physical and chemical properties that are dramatically different from ordinary matter.

ZnO can form nanosized tetrapods which can be used for optoelectronics - Sensors combining both light and electricity for fine measurments in technological devices.

High power neutron tools with novel instrumentation will spawn a new generation of science that will dramatically impact the world’s energy and technological future. Investing in this technology and research is of high relevance to the energy challenges we see today. John tells us that it has already made us re-discover solar energy and fuel cells paving the way for a sustainable society.

By combining material synthesis, neutron scattering and modeling theory we can develop accurate potential energy surfaces and predict new routes for developing new materials; understand what factors are important in surface mediation of chemical reactions; synthesise novel materials to address fundamental questions in gas separation, sequestration and storage, catalysis, sensors, energy storage and energy conversion.

Innovation and technological improvements in society is of course the crucial outcome for public investments in big science facilities. In order for a researcher to make new discoveries and innovate, John Larese pointed out the importance of being at the right place at the right time and having the ability to be receptive to the world around you. He also displayed a map of a research program that the SNS and HFIR facilities in the USA runs together with ILL in France and ISIS in the UK.

I think of the ten years I've been working at universities myself: We now live in a digitalised knowledge society with a globalised competition for resources and competences between universities, laboratories and research facilities. Sometimes, barriers of fear and bad campaigning appears on the agenda of competing institutions, countries and organisations with seemingly different interests. But in order to develop science and society on an international level, we rather need to look at the things connecting us which can make us stronger together. John Larese talked about the importance of getting facilities and organisations to talk to each other and help professionals to network, collaborate and build international societies within their fields of interest. When institutions and people choose a more social strategy, creating win-win situations, it becomes easier to expand our universe of arts and science and provide new generations with a greater possibility to find the right place at the right time and become innovative. It is in the mix between different schools, cultures, minds and DNA, where new things evolve. Living in the international environment of Lund, being able to listen to speeches by prominent researchers and meet with interesting people from all around the world, is certainly a time and place which makes me creative!

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I'm attending a seminar co-arranged by the ESS and Lund University where Henrik Birkedal is giving a talk on Biological and Bioinspired Materials - or, "From Biology to Materials". The presentation deals specifically with the study of bone materials in the body.

What Henrik as a researcher wants to investigate is the link between structure and dynamics, how structure works in action. Complex materials, like bone structure in the human body, is a hierarchical structure. By studying how bone development takes place, how the bone fibres grows, we can find solutions to medical problems. For example osteoporosis. About 40% of all women above 50 gets osteoporosis, and all women above 80 suffer from osteoporosis. Men are also developing osteoporosis.

Henrik and his team of researchers are using an experimental method called SAXS for studying bone material. SAXS gives high precision with very small x-ray beams making it possible to map very small structures in the bone tissue sample (down to ~62 um beam size).

The resolution of the intrument is important for the amount of detailed data being generated. But still it's good to combine synchrotron x-ray beams (which gives higher resolution) and regular nano sourcing techniques since they produce different precicion at different length scales of what needs to be studied in the material - and it provides the researcher with more data to do a more precise analysis.

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