8 tutorials for users will be held on February 6:

Social Media: a new challenge for communicating science ?
MX-BAG Meeting
XRF Analysis with PyMca
X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy: tutorials, data analysis and hands-on practicals
Coherence reconstruction Software
Volume image analysis of tomographic data
Overview of SAXS/WAXS Data reduction and analysis using WiSAXS
Nuclear resonance application including hands-on practicals
 

PROGRAMME

Organisation of the tutorials:

Participants may sign up to only one tutorial and the number of participants for some tutorials is limited. You are expected to attend for the full duration of the tutorial you sign up for, so please select carefully the tutorial you wish to attend, register your participation via the registration form and do not forget to modify your registration form if you cannot attend to give the possibility to other scientists to register. Please note that, to ensure sufficient space for external participants, ESRF staff will not be able to register for tutorials until after the registration deadline (providing there are places left for the desired tutorial).
 

Social media: a new challenge for communicating Science?

Organiser: Delphine Chenevier, ESRF, contact
Monday 6 February: 10h00 - 11h30

Scope

Millions of people all over the world are constantly sharing an extremely wide range of contents simultaneously: 500 million messages are posted on Twitter every day. Social media is no longer a monitoring tool but has become an important source of information for millions of people.

Even scientists are no strangers to this trend. Social media has enabled them to communicate their research quickly and efficiently to every corner of the world. Research institutes have recruited social media community managers. Universities have created new courses about “social media for scientists”. Scientists themselves are sometimes embracing roles that were conventionally taken on by trained science communicators.

Social media is a powerful tool that is changing the way scientists are engaging with one another and with a general audience. But how can we efficiently use these tools that are in constant evolution? Why and how can we take advantage of this technology? How is the ESRF dealing with these new channels for communicating Science?

 

MX-BAG Meeting

Organisers: Gordon Leonard, Deborah Davison, ESRF, contact
Monday 6 February: 8h30 - 18h30

Scope

A meeting of ESRF BAG Responsibles (by invitation only) that includes presentation of current and future ESRF facilities for Structural Biology - including cryo-EM, visits to current end-stations and a round table discussion concerning the future of Structural Biology Facilities at ESRF.

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XRF Analysis with PyMca

Organiser: Armando Sole, ESRF, contact
Monday 6 February: 9h00 - 18h30

Scope

The aim of this tutorial is to train the attendants on the use of PyMca for X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis (XRF) and for Imaging. The tutorial goes from XRF basics to full quantitative analysis.
The participants will learn to calibrate spectra, to identify peaks, to model experimental setups, to perform quantitative analysis and to process large sets of data. The imaging capabilities of the program and the possibilities offered in other fields than XRF, like mapping experiments using x-ray absorption spectroscopy or combining XRF and Powder Diffraction, will also be presented.

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X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy: tutorials, data analysis and hands on practicals

Organiser: Sakura Pascarelli, ESRF, contact

Morning session (9h00 - 12h30): Introduction to XAS and EXAFS (all participants)
Afternoon session (14h00 - 18h00): Parallel sessions

The slides of the tutorials are now available:

EXAFS Tutorials Part I
EXAFS Tutorials Part II
EXAFS Tutorials Part III

Scope

Introduction to XAS and EXAFS

This tutorial provides a very general introduction to the fundamentals of X-ray absorption spectroscopy. The origin of the Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) will be explained first using hand waving arguments. A simple theoretical description of this quantum mechanical phenomenom will then be given and the EXAFS equation will be derived in a more formal manner starting from Fermi's golden rule for the transition probability. A simple introduction to XAS data analysis will be given: extraction of quantitative values for local structural parameters (near neighbor distances, coordination numbers, and atomic species) from the EXAFS and information on formal valence and coordination chemistry from the XANES. Finally, a few samples of applications will be given, starting from major historical EXAFS breadthroughs to a selection of recent results at the ESRF.

Parallel sessions

  • EXAFS data analysis (maximum of 8 participants)

The basic steps of EXAFS data analysis will be shown "hands-on", starting with the extraction of the EXAFS signal from the measured absorption spectrum to the quantitative fitting of the first coordination shells. We will use the Athena and Artemis software packages. The tutorial will be split into two sessions: a common session, where we all analyze the same data set together, and individual sessions where each participant will be able to do data  analysis exercises with available data or with their own data.

  • FDMNES theory and applications (maximum of 8 participants)

FDMNES performs calculations of XANES, DAFS, XRD and XRS using fully relativistic monoelectronic calculations (DFT - LSDA). It uses the Finite Difference Method (FDM) to solve the Schroedinger equation, and the shape of the potential is free (non- Muffin tin approximation). This 3 hour-tutorial will introduce the theoretical frameword of the FDMNES approach, and will provide an opportunity for hands-on practice of data analysis.

Note: participants of this session should bring their personal laptop (Windows or Linux) but no MAC .

  • EXAFS practical on beamlines BM25 and BM20 (maximum of 4 participants per beamline)

The goal of this practical is to show the experimental requirements necessary to record X-ray absorption (EXAFS / XANES) spectra. Three aspects will receive special attention: i) Beamline optics setting and alignments, ii) sample prepartion and iii) detection / acquisition modes. After a short presentation of the beamline setup, different aspects of the EXAFS experimental set-up will be discussed. Two different types of samples will be studied which require different experimental setups: transmission and fluorescence modes.

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Coherence reconstruction sofware including hands-on practicals

Organiser: Vincent Favre Nicolin, ESRF, contact
Monday 6 February: 14h00 - 17h00

Scope

Coherent X-ray Imaging software and algorithms. Presentation and application of PyNX (http://ftp.esrf.eu/pub/scisoft/PyNX/). The tutorial will cover algorithms and examples using Coherent Diffraction Imaging, Ptychography, including discussion of maximum likelihood principles and use of multiple X-ray modes in the analysis. Examples will be given using 2D datasets recorded at ESRF. Pre-requisite to run the hands-on practical: knowledge of python and common scientific libraries - it will be possible to run the examples on Linux/MacOS laptops already configured with a GPU and pyopenCL, or using NICE computers.

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Volume image analysis of tomographic data

Organiser: Alexander Rack, contact
Monday 6 February: Lecture session:  10h00 - 12h00 and 13h30-15h00
                                 Practicals, questions and demonstrations: 15h30 - 18h30

Scope

Imaging methods using penetrating radiation provide insight into heterogeneous materials or engineering components. In combination with (micro)tomography they yield a fully three-dimensional representation of the object (micro)structure. Both computed tomography with high spatial resolution and quantitative volume image analysis have made enormous progress. In particular for materials and natural science applications the combination of high-resolution three-dimensional imaging and the subsequent image analysis exploiting the fully preserved spatial structural information yield new and exciting insights.

In this tutorial, field-tested and up-to-date methods for quantitatively analysing three-dimensional images are introduced. By selected applications  the use of volume image analysis will be outlined: it allows for determination of spatial cross-correlations between different constituents of a specimen, investigation of orientations or derivation of statistically relevant information such as object size distributions. The core part of this work consists, besides the exemple application scenarios, in the processing chain, the tools and methods used. Dedicated time will be reserved to discuss with experts on an individual basis.

Participants are welcome to bring their own data sets for preliminary tests and discussion.

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Overview of SAXS/WAXS data reduction and analysis using WiSAXS

Organiser: Alessandro Longo and Daniel Hermida (ESRF), contact
Monday 6 February: 14h00 - 16h00

Scope

The seminar will cover a brief overview of the SAXS theory to reduce and interpret SAXS data along with data modelling. The workshop will treat all the data correction aspects for online data reduction such as normalizations procedure (beam intensity fluctuations, absolute intensity, transmission) and  background subtraction.

The participants will be introduced to basic SAXS/WAXS analysis with practical tutorials using WiSAXS. WiSAXS is a new GUI suit based on python programming language that includes the pyFAI routines for the SAXS/WAXS calibration and  performs integration of SAXS/WAXS and GiXD 2D patterns.

WiSAXS can read different standard image file formats and perform  basic data treatment such as data averaging, data masking, azimuthal and radial averaging. Guinear and Porod analysis. WiSAXS can also simulate and/or fit SAXS/WAXS patterns using common models (form and structure factors). Moreover, WiSAXS contains a routine for different peak and background fitting for both SAXS-WAXS applications. WiSAXS is currently implemented at BM26-b for reduction and simple analysis of time resolved simultaneous SAXS-WAXS data and is fully compatible with other beamlines or lab sources.

The participants are requested to bring their laptop to the seminar to get familiarize with the WISAXS software that will be downloadable.

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Nuclear Resonance Applications including hands-on practicals

Organiser: Rudolf Rüffer and Aleksandr Chumakov (ESRF), contact
Monday 6 February: 9h00 - 18h00

Scope

  This hands-on tutorial will

  • give an introduction to the capabilities of the Nuclear Resonance beamline (ID18) with special emphasis to Mössbauer spectroscopy with the synchrotron Mössbauer source (SMS),
  • give an introduction to data evaluation software and
  • allow for following an experiment at the beamline. For the latter topic participants are encouraged to bring their own sample(s) for a test measurement in transmission geometry (57Fe, focused beam size about 15 mircometer in diameter).
  • Eventually, you should  be able to evaluate the taken Mössbauer spectra from your successful measurement.

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