http://www.esrf.eu News items, Press Releases and Spotlight on Science articles. daily 1 2006-03-24T12:28:19Z http://www.esrf.eu/news/general/southafricajoins/index_html On 21st May, South Africa signed a medium-term arrangement with the ESRF at a level of 0.3% and, in doing so, became the 20th country to join the European synchrotron. South Africa’s affiliation is a major milestone in its long-standing determination to reinforce ties with the international synchrotron radiation community. And with the Republic’s well-known attraction to all that shines, the choice to join the world’s brightest light source is befitting. 2013-05-21 17:00:00 No publisher colvin 2013-05-21T15:07:23Z News Item http://www.esrf.eu/news/general/goldenslab/index_html State-of-the-art technology is commonplace at the ESRF and this rule does not just apply to instrumentation. Today, one of the seemingly most basic and fundamental ingredients of construction, and certainly the most used man-made product in the world, namely concrete, has been elevated to a new status: that of “grey gold”. 2013-05-15 17:00:00 No publisher colvin 2013-05-15T15:37:24Z News Item http://www.esrf.eu/news/spotlight/spotlight183/index_html The Verwey transition in magnetite is one of the longest unsolved problems of solid state physics, where the otherwise excellent theories fail to capture the collective nature of the first-order phase transition. A recent inelastic X-ray scattering (IXS) study revealed an anomalous broadening of specific phonon modes in a broad temperature range down to the Verwey transition at 124 K. Accompanying ab initio lattice dynamics calculations suggest the origin of this broadening to be strong phonon anharmonicity induced by electron-phonon coupling, thus indicating that the Verwey transition is a cooperative phenomenon which involves a wide spectrum of phonons coupled to the electron charge fluctuations. 2013-05-15 10:40:08 No publisher admans 2013-05-15T08:40:08Z News Item http://www.esrf.eu/news/spotlight/spotlight182/index_html FAM3B PANDER is involved in the regulation of glucose homeostasis and β cell function and FAM3C ILEI is implicated in cancer. They had both been predicted to be classical cytokines with three dimensional structures based on a 4-helix bundle. The crystal structure of FAM3B PANDER, solved by exploiting the anomalous scattering of sulphur atoms inherent to the amino acid sequence of the protein has revealed that, contrary to expectations, PANDER adopts a novel, globular β-β-α fold that is conserved throughout the FAM3 superfamily. This superfamily most likely represents a novel class of signalling molecules with a mode of action distinct to that of the well-known four-helix bundle cytokines. 2013-04-30 08:00:00 No publisher admans 2013-05-06T06:38:16Z News Item http://www.esrf.eu/news/beauty-of-science/beauty-of-nanowire The image shows the coherent X-ray diffraction pattern of an isolated, single-crystalline core-shell Ag/Au nanowire measured in Bragg condition at the ID03 beamline. 2013-04-29 08:00:00 No publisher admans 2013-05-06T07:07:45Z News Item http://www.esrf.eu/news/general/Earth-Center-Hotter/Earth-Centre-Hotter Scientists have determined the temperature near the Earth’s centre to be 6000 degrees Celsius, 1000 degrees hotter than in a previous experiment run 20 years ago. These measurements confirm geophysical models that the temperature difference between the solid core and the mantle above, must be at least 1500 degrees to explain why the Earth has a magnetic field. The scientists were even able to establish why the earlier experiment had produced a lower temperature figure. The results were published on 26 April 2013 in Science. 2013-04-25 20:00:00 No publisher habfast 2013-05-03T07:22:17Z News Item http://www.esrf.eu/news/general/trainees/index-html Every year the ESRF offers more than 100 traineeships to enthusiastic and committed students pursuing studies at or below the Masters level. Students worldwide are welcomed for periods from several weeks to several years depending on the type of training involved. 2013-04-18 15:00:00 No publisher colvin 2013-04-29T08:22:07Z News Item http://www.esrf.eu/news/spotlight/spotlight181/index_html Semi-solid casting is a promising process for the production of light-weight metallic components. However, a semi-solid melt exhibits unpredictable flow and filling dynamics when it is injected into thin-walled components. The former were studied by injecting a semi-solid Al-Ge alloy into a thin channel while recording high-resolution radiographs at fast acquisition rates of up to 1000 images/s. Single particle trajectories and rapid break-up of solid skeletons were observed in situ for the first time. 2013-04-16 08:00:00 No publisher admans 2013-04-16T15:37:22Z News Item http://www.esrf.eu/news/general/industrycollaborationsurvey/index_html In February the ESRF carried out a survey of its academic users to ask about their links with industry. Replies have confirmed what we already believed, that research carried out using synchrotron X-rays is becoming increasingly beneficial to industry. 2013-04-12 08:32:15 No publisher admans 2013-04-12T09:40:54Z News Item