Life on board ESS

Follow the ESS @ ECNS blog

roger.eriksson@esss.se — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 22:00:00 +0100

ESS will be present at the 5th European Conference on Neutron Scattering in Prague, Czech Republic. There will be an exhibition stand with information about the next generation neutron source and, of course, several participants for the seminars.

On Friday and Saturday ESS is hosting a Satellite Meeting to the ECNS Conference where future ESS users will meet to give their input into the project.

The participants from ESS will report from the conference on the ESS@ECNS blog. You can follow that blog on "http://essatecns.wordpress.com" .

The theme for the ESS participation is Get Involved.

Supercool science!

webmaster@karlmcfaul.com — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:34:20 +0100

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

Japan: Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant explosion

artist@karlmcfaul.com — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 07:40:15 +0100

Karinh Eurenius is a post-doc at the University of Tokyo. She went there with her husband Jonas a year and a half ago. Before going to Tokyo, Karinh did her doctorate at Chalmers University in Gothenburg as a member of the neutron scattering groups there. She was a regular attendee at the Swedish Neutron Scattering Society meetings and had a strong interest in ESS. Mats Lindroos and I spent an evening with them in Tokyo last year and enjoyed an unusual meal together with Kirin beer to wash it all down.

We thank her and her husband for their ready willingness to share their very affecting story of their experience of the earthquake, and we wish these two brave young people all the best as they pick up their lives again in Tokyo:

It all started on the 11th of March. We got up really early and walked together to the metro, which we never do; I like to walk to Tokyo University, which is north from Tsukiji where we live and since my husband Jonas works in a suit it tends to get way too hot, so he's always taking the underground. That Friday, it felt like we had to be together a bit extra, since we were expecting a visit from a good friend from Sweden in our tiny apartment.

I went to my boss straight away when I got to work, since he's normally in early in the morning. I had received declaration papers which needed to be ready and signed by the 15th, so it was important to get it done as soon as possible. Since we’ve been here for a while I know that papers + Japan always = a whole lot of hassle and time. I was advised to go back down to my ward office and sort it out directly: I was therefore contemplating taking my computer with me and work from home during the day. Due to prior plans I decided it'd be more practical to go back to university and finally pick up our visitor from Ueno at the end of the day, which is just next to Hongo campus. That was frankly bloody lucky.

All went perfectly fine and I just said goodbye to my lunch date Margareta and made it around the corner, when the ground started shaking/rocking back and forth; it was like being on a ferry when there's a storm. I was just underneath a set of electricity wires and the poles were moving almost 40 cm from side to side. The cars looked like they were in an RnB video, where pressurized air is let in and out, while this was swaying them from side to side. All of a sudden I was swiftly dragged into a small parking lot by an old couple, who of course had seen me standing there completely frozen under the wires. They probably decided they'd better save the stupid foreigner, who didn't understand it wasn’t entirely brilliant to stand there. The lady quickly dragged me down on my knees and showed me I had to put my handbag on my head and hold on to her and her husband, who in their turn held on to their neighbour. Alarms, which sounded like the flight alarms you'd hear in a movie, started going off and many of us, still on our hands and knees, lost balance.

At that point I remembered that Jonas had read to me that if the quake was quite big, then it'd be hard to keep your balance if you were standing straight up; I became really scared. At the same time, I was thinking: 'OK, so I'm supposed to sit here on a parking lot, with a bunch of old people, in a country where it's impossible to understand what they are saying, with a handbag on my head, in addition being my favourite handbag I got from Mum which I haven't even had the time to tell her + without Jonas, who's at work on the 44th floor in Mori Tower, which is probably moving several meters in each direction, and he'll probably fall and hit his toe again; that's just brilliant'. Things started to fall from the balconies around us and I tried to get my phone out to call Jonas and tell him about this really absurd situation, when it hit me full frontal what was happening. I just became completely cold from the inside. Up until then it’d been as when you are diving or snorkeling the first time: you see the underwater world like it’s on TV. I remember starting to shake so much I couldn’t get any of the numbers right on my display and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. At the same time as I was repeating to myself ‘Mori tower is one of the best built skyscrapers in the world; it’s designed to take a 9 on the Richter scale; there are stairs he can climb down if the elevators aren’t running; I have seen they have fire extinguishers everywhere; Japanese people are calm and methodical and have protocols for everything..’

It felt like an eternity sitting there, even if it was just a couple of minutes. When the ground finally was calmer, all kinds of sirens started going off and people were calling out loudly for each other. I again tried my [...]

The magic of the ballet world

lali.tchelidze@esss.se — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 12:31:46 +0100

"The world may be small, but the magic of the ballet world is infinite and embraces everyone who wants to be part of the world dance. It is about passion, love, trust and loyalty to your Terpsichore."

It is the evening of March 6th, and I am getting ready to become a part of this magic world myself, once again. This time though, it is slightly different. Instead of going to the opera house, I am going to “Lund Kino”, where the live broadcast of Don Quixote from Moscow Bolshoi theater is shown. Don Quixote is a stunning production, based on the epic masterpiece by Miguel de Cervantes, originally created for the Bolshoi by Marius Petipa in 1869 and I am very excited to get to see it, together with few of my colleagues and friends from ESS.

I arrive at the cinema, partially dressed up for an opera and partially for a cinema. The performance starts with several short gaps, but it is soon improves and we get a nice, high-definition quality of image and surround sound.

Watching a ballet on a screen is different than live ballet on a stage. At the end of the acts we want to clap, but it feels a bit strange to clap to the screen. However, some of the incredible acts completely capture me, and for some time I am a part of it, I am a part of the magic world of music and beauty. I forget that I’m not in a real opera, that I am not watching the real dancers and I clap. I want to get all the excitement out of myself and praise the talented dancers, whose performance is just astonishing.

The performance lasts for three hours (including two half hour breaks), although I can keep watching endlessly. But the wonderful evening is over. We are very happy and pleased with the ballet. Time to catch a bus now. This time of a day we get only one every 30 minutes...

The ESS song: Stories From The Sound

webmaster@karlmcfaul.com — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 08:22:49 +0100

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!

Neutrons in the jigsaw puzzle

artist@karlmcfaul.com — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 09:40:30 +0100

The 17th talk in the ESS/Lund university seminar series took place on Friday 25th February. Cameron Neylon from ISIS was the speaker and his topic was "Neutron Scattering and Reflection: The tools you need for the structural biology problems you can't solve". He gave a rather unusual and well-received talk, using as his device the jigsaw puzzle which sent the message that solving the complexities of tricky biological problems requires piecing together the evidence from whichever source you can find, neutron scattering being one crucial input.

What was revealing about this talk was the audience it attracted since it was held in the Oncology Department of the university hospital. Around 50 people turned up, and the discussion wax rather extensive, which shows that there really is an untapped scientific community wanting to know what neutron scattering can do for their research topics.

Pictured here back in the ESS offices are three members of the ESS science team, Pascale Deen, Sofie Botegård and Hanna Wacklin who are introducing Cameron to the Swedish tradition of fika. More about fika, and other Swedish traditions, in a later blog...

ESS at the volleyball match

artist@karlmcfaul.com — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 09:22:11 +0100

ESS were invited to host the final volleyball match of the season in the Swedish Elite league between Lund and Vingåker which involved us choosing the best player on either side. It was a bit of a needle match which brought a really competitive edge to the game. Lund emerged as winners by 3 sets to 1. The best player on the Lund side, as judged by the eight ESS supporters there, was Patrik Ossowski. Patrik (and his collaborators) were awarded two days beamtime on the new ESS high intensity Reflectometer for their research on colloidal suspensions in food products. As the instrument will not be delivering beam until 2019 he was given a sports bag as consolation.

There was still time to head off to the local hostelry to catch the second half of the rugby match between England and France. I won't say who won. But I will say that there was much more action at the volleyball match.

Both sides now...

artist@karlmcfaul.com — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:37:45 +0100

I'm flying from Stockholm to Copenhagen, back home after a day in the lovely capital city. A day of sunshine with the city and surrounding fields covered in fresh clean new snow. As we flew south the cloud cover began to increase and there was a rather spectacular wave pattern of the clouds. Almost perfect straight separated by clear sky of seemingly equal width. Why do the cloud align like this ? What are the forces that cause this coherence ? We see such patterns in sand and the same wave patterns exist in crystals, invisible to the naked eye of course. But clearly visible to neutrons which are able to observe such coherence in the atoms which make up the ordered crystals. They are called phonons since these waves have velocities similar to sound waves. There are also waves of magnetism in magnetic materials and these waves are called magnons. Again neutrons can observe them. But we are comparing waves in crystals which repeat every few Ångströms (one hundred millionth of a centimetre) with waves in sand of perhaps ten centimetres, and waves in the clouds of perhaps one kilometre. The underlying physics must be the same, but the forces are not. A ten trillion range in length scale ! These kind of phenomena are all around us. Must switch off, we're about to land.

McStas 1.12b released

pkwi@risoe.dtu.dk — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0100

The McStas developer team is happy to report that the 1.12b release of our software is finally out.

You can get the installer packages from our download page

McStas 1.12b is mostly a bugfix release, but some new components and example instruments have been included. McStas 1.12b will be the VERY last release in the 1.x series.

Part of the reason for McStas 1.12b and its late arrival is our delay in releasing the next major version, McStas 2.0.

McStas 2.0 will be released late 2010 / early 2011 and will introduce new features that could break ceartain backward compatibility, hence we move from the 1.x series. We are also considering a replacement of the GUI and plotting tools for McStas 2.0.

For a complete list of changes in McStas 1.12b, see our CHANGES document.

The new relase was tested on these platforms:

Mac OS 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard (but should work on 10.4 and 10.3 also). Both 32 and 64 bit, Intel and PPC systems are supported.
Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Karmic Koala and 10.04 Lucid Lynx, 32 and 64 bit .deb's are provided. Note: Do not expect these debs to work on earlier releases or other distributions, e.g. Debian
Windows XP, Vista and 7, 32 and 64 bit. We only provide 32bit executables, but they are tested to run OK on 64 bit
On other systems, feel free to try our source distributions

Virtually fun?

pkwi@risoe.dtu.dk — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:00:00 +0100

As you may know, the 2010 McStas/VITESS user training workshop has been taking place at Backafallsbyn, Ven this week.

The workshop was generously sponsored by ESS Scandinavia, NMI3 and Risø DTU

The participants have been very busy working with and learning to use McStas and VITESS

Enjoying local nature

And also visitied remains of Scandinavia's first ever large scale research facility, Thyco Brahe's observatory.

Even the weather was decent most of the days

- And it seemed that everyone not only virtually, but really learned something and had a lot of fun! :)

YES 2 ESS !

artist@karlmcfaul.com — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:39:47 +0100

Tomorrow is the friendly race around Lund called Lundaloppet. For the non-Swedes, this word has the same root as "Loppa" or "Loppis" meaning a flea market (fleas also jump around the place). A number of healthy superfit athletes from the ESS Secretariat at Stora Algatan will be wearing the ESS colours at Lundaloppet. I myself have decided, this year, not to compete. If you wish to cheer for these worthy people tomorrow we will gather at the LU tent on the sports field behind Bollhuset (Trollebergsvägen 26) at about 14:00. Then we will warm up together and start our run at 15:00! Please show solidarity with our team by bringing umbrellas (and bananas). Come in your hundreds to cheer!

A surrealistic world of ASH, ESS and a stranded scientist near volcano land

webmaster@karlmcfaul.com — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:00:00 +0100

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".

New Materials = New Tools = New Networks = New Innovations

webmaster@karlmcfaul.com — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 22:00:00 +0100

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 [...]

SAXS:y bones

webmaster@karlmcfaul.com — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0100

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.

Happy Pi-day everyone!

webmaster@esss.se — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 11:57:40 +0100

Today is π day (2010.03.14) of course and this was also the birthday of Albert Einstein, 131 years ago. And, as if that was not enough reason to celebrate this day, sixteen years ago, this day marked the release of the Linux Kernel version 1.0.0.! Have a very happy pi-day everyone!

Oh, and remember; 3.14% of all sailors are pi-rates…

McStas / VITESS user training workshop 2010

pkwi@risoe.dtu.dk — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:00:00 +0100

The McStas and VITESS teams are happy to announce the joint

*** McStas / VITESS user training workshop 2010 ***

To take place at Backafallsbyn in the Swedish island of Ven, May 17th-21st.

The workshop is a school in order to train technical staff and instrument scientists in using Monte-Carlo code to design better neutron devices and instruments. The programme is split into sessions dedicated to different parts (optics, sample environment, detectors, ...). If you work in one of these areas, and feel like simulating it, then this school is for you, especially if you've never done so before.

Sponsorship / Participation / Cost

Generous support from our sponsors
ESS Scandinavia
NMI3 / FP7
Risø DTU
has made it possible to offer sponsored lodging and participation for up to 25 people. It should be noted that particpants from the EU will have preference, since EU sponsors part of the workshop. The 5 supplementary seats with full registration fee required are fully open. If more than 25 people show an interest, a fee will be announced for further participation, that is the first 25 registrations will be free, the up-to-5 following will require accommodation charge (about 600 euros for the entire school).

We would like all participants to attend, as far as possible, the entire school.

All participants must arrange and pay their own transport to Copenhagen Airport. We will arrange joint transportation from CPH to the Island of Ven.

Further information

Please refer to http://www.essworkshop.org for further information and registration.

Best regards,

Emmanuel Farhi (ILL)
Peter Willendrup (Risø DTU)
Erik Knudsen (Risø DTU)
Klaus Lieutentant (IFE/Kjeller)
Uwe Filges (PSI)
Linda Udby (University of Copenhagen)

Pictures from ESS Industry Day

webmaster@karlmcfaul.com — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:00:00 +0100

The ESS Industry Day took place at the Royal Library in Copenhagen, Denmark on the 19th of February 2010. More than 400 representatives from European business and industry took part and gained information about how to get involved in the construction of the ESS (Photos by Wojciech Zajac and Johan Långberg).

A visit down the Malmö City Tunnel

webmaster@karlmcfaul.com — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:00:00 +0100

I gave a presentation to NCC about ESS the other day. NCC is one of the leading construction and property development companies in the Nordic region.

After lunch I had the pleasure of joining the NCC crew on a guided tour down the Malmö City Tunnel.

The City Tunnel project is a project where almost everything happens in large numbers. This includes the amount of concrete used – in total about 400,000 m3 along the 17 kilometres of railway path with a 6 kilometre long tunnel running under the city of Malmö.

We went some 25 meters below ground to visit a 250 meters long and 14.5 meters wide railway platform beneath the really centre of Malmö called Triangeln. This train station will become the second largest in Sweden when it comes to the amount of daily passing travellers.

One of Citytunneln’s objectives is for the finished connection, improving the infrastructure between Copenhagen, Malmö and Lund, is to contribute to an environmentally-harmonised transport system and a long-term sustainable society. This will be achieved primarily by giving a greater number of people the opportunity to use public transport instead of using cars.

Personally, I got an arty vibe while walking around the industrial environment of the underground chambers. I took a couple of pictures that you can watch here below.

The Malmö City Tunnel is actually a big art project since it will become decorated with huge installations by several contemporary artists. One example is in the underground station area, Malmö C Nedre: Travellers will be met by moving images from around the world. Tania Ruiz Gutiérrez’s video artwork ‘Itineracy’ projects pictures on the station walls giving the impression of train windows. Video sequences have been filmed at a large number of sites throughout the world. ‘Itineracy’ is formulated so that it is unlikely that travellers will encounter the same images more than once.

Day 3 - ESS supporting Lund Climate Gathering, Klimatting ETT, bringing the voice of youth to COP15

webmaster@karlmcfaul.com — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:00:00 +0100

The weekend of November 13-15th brought together young people from around the world to meet in Lund and discuss climate change ahead of the climate summit in Copenhagen, COP15. The 300 participants at Klimatting ETT increased their knowledge by listening to lectures on, among other things, climate policy and the carbon footprint of food. The new skills were used in the three tracks that would develop proposals to be submitted to COP15, to start climate related projects and to create recommendations to improve each individual's ability to reduce their climate impact. On Sunday, a vote was held in order to bring forward the three best ideas from the weekend.

The outcome of The Climate Gathering in Lund was presented to a panel consisting of:

- Mats Helmfrid (Mayor and Chairman of the City Executive Board)
- Karin Loodberg (Head of Environmental Strategy Development)
- Håkan Samuelsson (Climate Municipalities, Coordinator)
- Thomas Björnsson (Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, Klimatnätverket)
- Dimitra Papoudimitriou (Caretakers of the Environment International, CEI, Greece)

Here are some of the youths recommendations to COP15:

Global bank, 2GDP: Introduce a global bank for Climate Action, to which all countries must pay 2 percent of GDP.
Education, practical & emotional: The young people stressed most of all the importance of education in climate and sustainability issues. Most votes received a proposal that recommended a strategic investment in education for sustainable development, ranging from nursery, primary and secondary schools to politicians, adults and seniors in the community. Formal, informal and non formal education for sustainable development are all crucial pieces in order to establish this.
Campaign project against plastic bags: "Plastic bag kills", and with the intention to promote taxes on environmentally harmful products.

In addition to these proposals came several other ideas that might become a reality. For example, how about a system equivalent to Weight Watchers points, but on greenhouse gases?

Among the many reponses from the panel were Thomas Björnsson saying that the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation should take these ideas further the Climate Action Network, CAN.

Mats Helmfrid thought the global bank, 2 GDP, was a good idea and that we can influence to make that happen.

Thomas Björnsson commented that Sweden could start - "We don't need international negotiations and agreements before we start here locally and become a role model."
(huge applause from the audience..).

A young woman in the audience asked which of the questions being put forward by the Climate Gathering, that the panel considered being the most important.

Thomas Björnsson responded: "Setting up the global bank."

Mats Helmfrid thought it was important making it legally binding. That every country must contribute. Also the USA and China.

Karin Loodberg agreed on the importance of collaboration between western world and other parts like the developing countries.

The general concern in the panel seemed to be that the COP 15 meeting in Copenhagen will have a really difficult job to achieve when it comes to commitment from all countries.

The young woman in the audience told that she, and many with her, will also participate at the COP15, perhaps not in the official meeting rooms, but out in the streets, in alternative gatherings.

From Lund, negotiations are under way right now for the proposals from KLIMATTING ETT to get a space at the EU pavilion during COP15, but many of the youngsters are already determined to go to Copenhagen and attend whatever the outcome!

Day 2 - ESS supporting Lund Climate Gathering, Klimatting ETT, bringing the voice of youth to COP15

webmaster@karlmcfaul.com — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:33:39 +0100

November 14th, during the second day of the Lund Climate Gathering, ESS attended a tree planting ceremony led by the Bishop of Lund, Antje Jackelén. There were some 150 people gathered in front of the Cathedral in Lund to enjoy this event.

"If this tree lives to be 100 years it will consume about 1 ton, 1000 kilogram, of CO2", said Antje Jackelén.

Every tree absorbs about 12 kilogram CO2 per year and produce oxygen for four humans.

The City of Lund, where the ESS will be built, have yearly tree planting programmes for people who want to become tree donors to help climate compensation.

ESS in Lund have already managed to make a first contribution in this by planting a tree on the ESS site:

ESS Scandinavia plants a tree as part of European Green Week - manifesting the first climate neutral research center