Life on board ESS

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

Comment (0)

Scandinavia was highly represented at the ICNS meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee. Scandinavian scientists gave three invited talks and several (8) oral contributions, not counting many posters. In total, 30 contributions were presented by scientists affiliated in Scandinavia, which is a very large number compared to other countries, but reflects the expertise and experience of Scandinavia in the field of neutron research. Moreover, a parallel one-day workshop on neutron instrument simulation was organised by McStas experts from Copenhagen and Risø (and ILL!) where neutron scientists could get some training in instrument modeling.

This does not come as a surprise since the neutron community in Scandinavia has developed neutron science for decades through the research carried out at the facilities for neutron scattering in Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

• In Denmark, Risø National Laboratory (now Risø DTU) has an outstanding international reputation in neutron diffraction and neutron scattering research and has been developed over the years thanks to their reactor-based neutron facility. Risø has had a seminal role in neutron methods and has had an impact on all neutron instruments. All the expertise acquired there has been passed on to other neutron centres in the world, in particular SINQ at PSI, Switzerland, where Danish scientists are operating several instruments.
• In Sweden, scientists are using neutron scattering methods in soft condensed matter, in physics and chemistry in engineering sciences; they work at the ILL, Grenoble, at ISIS in UK, at PSI in Switzerland, but also in Germany. In Sweden, experiments were performed at the Swedish research reactor R2 in Studsvik. The NFL - Studsvik Neutron Research Laboratory was a leading institute for neutron sciences. As a company, Studsvik operates not only in Sweden, but also in UK, Germany or USA and has a further company segment for Global Services.
• In Norway, the research reactor JEEP II at Kjeller (Institute for Energy Technology, IFE, near Oslo) is a national resource for material physics research and neutron irradiation technology. The availability of this multi-purpose reactor is kept very high to content the many user-groups.

All these centres have joined forces to develop modeling tools to optimise various neutron instruments, which explains why the Copenhagen / Roskilde group is acquired such high repute in neutron instrument modeling and virtual experiments run on computers.

As a complement to the international organisation now being built up by ESS Scandinavia for designing and developing the accelerator driven, next generation neutron source in Sweden; the 273 neutron users in Scandinavia will provide us with a solid base of supporting expertise right in the neighbourhoods of Lund!

Comment (0)

Here we all are in Knoxville, 28 brave souls from Scandinavia - 7 from the ESSS Secretariat - who have run the gauntlet of swine flu and the possible end of civilisation as we know it, to attend the International Conference on Neutron Scattering in Tennessee.

With our specially designed shirts (thanks Karl !) we are quite a visible presence here, demonstrating the very solid scientific strength which Scandinavia has in neutron scattering. When we get a delegate list we can see whether in fact we are the largest delegation. Neither has the weather been kind to the organisers, with tornado warnings on Sunday, but we were thoughtfully supplied with umbrellas in our delegate pack, a nice practical touch - just like the delegates to the Bilbao meeting a few weeks ago were. There was lots of reminiscing about the warm sunny weather which we had left behind us in Lund but we have been warmly welcomed here.

Last night the whole Scandinavian team all went out to dinner together at Calhouns waterfront restaurant, an inspired choice of Sofie, Therèse and Johan, since the heavens opened up especially for us and it was quite dramatic over the Tennessee river. Waterfront was therefore the word. We had a really lovely evening with the friendliest waiter and waitress you could imagine. Such enthusiasm and involvement with the (admittedly good-looking!) Scandianvians.

Interestingly, a senior local fellow had earlier asked me how things were doing at ILL. I told him that they had said goodbye to that old guy who used to be there about three years ago and had replaced him with a (somewhat !) younger version (news can travel slowly sometimes...) and that now I was in Sweden. "Oh", he replied with a glazed look in his eye, "the weather must be really bad there."  As he said this I glanced out of the window - there was a torrential rainstorm outside, with cars being washed down the street in front of my eyes (no, no... I made that last bit up!). But it is really interesting how we as humankind comfort ourselves with preconceived ideas. I resisted saying (as I admit I sometimes do) that the Polar bears have migrated north for the summer now and the streets of Lund are safe for a few weeks. Let us hope that the imminent decision on the siting of ESS will be made objectively, setting aside preconceived ideas which all of us carry around with us. I feel confident that that is in fact happening.

Comment (1)

A new release of McStas (v. 1.12a) was released on april 3rd 2009, freely downloadable from http://www.mcstas.org/download .

McStas is a world-known, open-source, collaborative software for simulation of neutron scattering instruments and experiments.

Since 1998 McStas has been hosted at Risø DTU (previously known as Risø) near Roskilde in Denmark, for many years in collaboration with ILL in Grenoble and now also in partnership with NBI, University of Copenhagen.

Since its birth, McStas has been used in major neutron instrumentation efforts, including

• FRM-II reactor in Munich, Germany
• OPAL at ANSTO near Sydney, Australia
• The ISIS second target station (TS2) project in Chilton, UK
• SNS at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA
• J-PARC in Tokai, Japan

- But also in big renewal programs like the ILL Millenium Program plus all kinds of other instrumentation projects at the PSI, LLB, HMI, FZJ, and other neutron sources.

Being an open-source (Gnu Public License) software, McStas allows its users do develop their own models in the framework of the package - and to contribute them back to the project. By this combined effort of the McStas team and the McStas users, we now have ~ 100 components in one, comprehensive package.

McStas includes models of neutron sources, beam optics, detectors and also sophisticated models of many of the samples typically studied at neutron scattering instruments. Having models of both neutrons, instrument and sample allows to perform Virtual Experiments, an area where McStas is indisputedly the strongest solution in the market.

Virtual experiments makes McStas very useful for teaching and training purposes, a neutron scattering course has been given at University of Copenhagen every year since 2005. The students learn about the theory of neutron scattering, build op their own virtual instruments and perform experiments - and finally take a trip to e.g. PSI in Switzerland to also scatter real world neutrons.

McStas was originally born in the Øresund region - but has become a common project and an essential tool for neutron scatterers on the entire globe.

If you feel like trying our software, we recommend our Ubuntu live-dvd  - to be run without installation - directly from your DVD drive!

Comment (0)