NEWS AND EVENTS 2007
 16/11/2007
Two journal cover articles in one month!
(and another inside!)
This month, two publications which used results from work on SRS Station 9.8 were featured on the cover of Royal Society of Chemistry Journals (Dalton Transactions and New Journal of Chemistry). Arising from longstanding collaborations between the Station Scientist, John Warren, and Sofia Pascu (University of Oxford) and Scott Dalgarno (Heriot-Watt University), both papers reported on novel chemical structures solved using data obtained from tiny crystals that would be impossible on conventional sources. In the second, researchers from Edinburgh and Columbia, USA describe the packing of self-assembled molecular systems which form some of the most extensive nanotubular arrays fabricated to date.
…read
more »
A third paper, published in the same issue of Dalton Transactions, featured work completed on copper (II) complexes using SRS Station 7.1 by a team from the University of Hull and the Katholieke Universiteit of Leuven which included SRS Station Scientist Steven Fiddy. Macrocyclic compounds (molecules containing a ring of seven, fifteen, or any arbitrarily large number of atoms) such as this have a potential role in anti-HIV activity.
…read
more »
05/11/2007
Talk by C. David Garner ~ 31st October
(Professor of Biological Inorganic Chemistry at Nottingham University)
 The Structure and Function of the Catalytic Centres of the Molybdenum and
Tungsten Oxotransferase Enzymes
Molybdenum and tungsten are the only 4d and 5d elements that are essential for life.
Molybdenum enzymes are present in all living systems and occur in bacteria, plants,
animals, and humans. Molybdenum (like iron) is essential for both routes to fixed nitrogen,
via the nitrogenases and the assimilatory nitrate reductases. Some tungsten enzymes have
been identified, including examples in thermophilic bacteria that live in volcanic vents at >100°C on the sea bed.
This lecture considers the nature of the catalytic centres of the enzymes that involve
molybdenum or tungsten and catalyse the transfer of an oxygen atom to (e.g. sulfite to
sulfate; an aldehyde to a carboxylic
18/09/2007
Allocation Period 50
Applications are now invited for SRS beam-time in AP50 (April
2008 - December 2008)
CLOSING DATE - 1st November 2007
14/09/2007
Daresbury Mini Science Festival
Sunday 7th October 2007 10:00 - 16:00
STFC Daresbury Laboratory is once again hosting the DL and NW British Association mini-science festival.
The day will include lectures, drop-ins and workshops.
For further information
contact:
Alison Hannah (a.m.hannah@dl.ac.uk) or Alan Brown (a.brown@dl.ac.uk).
tel: 01925 603708
All Welcome. Booking not necessary.
Further details will be available nearer the time.
14/09/2007
 User Information and Discussion Meeting on the ESRF Upgrade Programme
24th October - ESRF Auditorium, ESRF, Grenoble, France
Then ESRF Upgrade Programme will enhance the ESRF beamlines and facilities to meet the challenges of science for the coming ten to twenty years. The meeting will:
- Inform Community on project status, the new science and technology
- Gather feedback, validate ideas, directions and perspectives
- An indication of priorities (areas, directions)
more information »
04/09/2007
The STFC Seeks Input from SRS Users
 The STFC is carrying out a project to investigate the Economic Impact of the SRS at Daresbury Laboratory over its lifetime. We are currently seeking input from users who have carried out research using the SRS at Daresbury Laboratory between 1981 and the present day.
A questionnaire has been designed to obtain input from past or current users of the SRS. The questionnaire can be filled out electronically and returned via e-mail or can be completed by hand and posted. Contact details are contained in the questionnaire. Further details on the study can also be found in the introduction to the questionnaire.
STFC staff members will be showing a poster on the Economic Impact of the SRS at the SR Users Meeting at DLS in September and will be on hand to discuss the project further. Attendees to the meeting will also be given paper copies of the questionnaire in their meeting welcome packs.
download questionnaire word document »
If you require any additional information please do not hesitate to contact -
Claire Dougan
Knowledge Exchange Manager
Science and Technology Facilities Council
Daresbury Science & Innovation Campus
Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington
Cheshire, WA4 4AD
Tel: 01925 603475
E-mail: C.Dougan@rl.ac.uk
30/08/2007
EU Funding for Scientific Exchange Visits
As in previous years, an opportunity exists for partial funding to support scientific exchange visits between institutions within the EU and associated counties. The aim of the initiative is to encourage academic participation at synchrotron and FEL facilities and to help develop the careers of facility scientists.
The IA-SFS (Integrating Activity on Synchrotron and Free Electron Laser Science) project administers the programme in this area and further details, including an application web form, can be found at the IA-SFS website: www.elettra.trieste.it/I3/index.php?n=Main.N3FourthCall
The key points to note are that:
- the host and home institutions must be in different countries, but both within the Member States or in one of the Associated Countries (Croatia, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Turkey)
- the visit should be for between 4 weeks and 4 months
- the proposed exchange must take place between March 1st, 2008 - February 28th, 2009.
- the deadline for applications is September 30th, 2007
Please also note that the SRS itself will not host exchanges in this period.
If you have any questions not answered by the website please let me know.
Steve Bennett
email s.l.bennett@dl.ac.uk
(IA-SFS Project Manager)
24/07/2007
Synchrotron Radiation User Meeting 2007
13-14 September at Diamond Light Source, Chilton, Oxfordshire
…more »
23/07/2007
Computational biology meets with atomic resolution structural
biology
Obtaining dynamical information from static crystal structures to reveal
an essential step in protein self-aggregation
Mutations of the enzyme Cu-Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD1) are implicated
in motor neuron disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In research published
in PNAS, we have used the atomic resolution structure of SOD1 to address the
molecular dynamics of the functional dimer and how the experimentally observed
self-aggregations of metal-depleted mutant protein may arise. The results have
implications for the role of de-metallated wild-type SOD1 in sporadic cases
of ALS, for which the molecular cause still remains undiscovered. This work
reports a collaboration between the Molecule Biophysics Group and STFC's Computational
Science and Engineering Department and used the HPCx at Daresbury.
Molecular
dynamics using atomic resolution structure reveal structural fluctuations
that may lead to polymerization of human Cu–Zn
superoxide dismutase …read
more »
Strange, R.W., Yong, C., Smith, W., Hasnain, S.S. PNAS 104(24), 10040-10044
(2007).
06/06/2007
Award Scooping Friendly Bacteria
Vicky Coker and colleagues have been awarded the Certificate
of Merit for their presentation entitled Solid-state biotechnology: nano-spinel
synthesis by Fe(III)-reducing bacteria, which was judged outstanding for material
content and for manner of presentation given before the Division of Environmental
Chemistry at the 233rd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Division,
March 2007 in Chicago, IL.
Vicky has been a CASE student at the SRS Daresbury Laboratory in the Magnetic
Spectroscopy Group of Prof. Gerrit van der Laan, and started in 2007 as postdoc
with Profs. Jon Lloyd and Richard Pattrick in the School of Earth, Atmospheric
and Environmental Sciences (http://www.seaes.manchester.ac.uk/)
at the University of Manchester.
…read
more »
06/06/2007
Laser and SRS Synchronised
On 15th May the NWSF-funded laser system was successfully
synchronised to the SRS in single-bunch mode for the first time. During this
initial work on station 6.1 we
were able to synchronise the pulse picked output of the Ti-sapphire laser oscillator
with the 3.123 MHz SR pulses, establishing a timing jitter of less than 20
picoseconds. This is an important step in the development of techniques for
the extremely fast time resolved studies which will be at the heart of 4GLS.
…read
more »
17/05/2007
How can a flexible approach be useful for
hydrogen storage?
 A recent 'hot paper' in Chemical Communications describes the crystal structures
of a new family of Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) solved using the small molecule
crystallography (SMX) facilities on the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS)
at Daresbury Laboratory. Previously, MOFs have been formed predominantly with
rigid organic ligands but this paper demonstrates the use of flexible ligands
which are directly responsible for their remarkable gas sorption properties.
…read more »
Link to the paper at RSC Publishing
http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/cc/News/B618796J_Brammer_28032007.asp
 09/05/2007
New President of the
European Crystallographic Association
Prof
John R Helliwell, Joint Appointee with SRD based at
CCLRC Daresbury, also Professor of Structural Chemistry at The University
of Manchester, has been elected President of the European Crystallographic
Association (the ECA) for 3 years. In the photograph Prof Helliwell (right)
is pictured with Prof Dr-Ing Hartmut Fuess, Darmstadt University of Technology,
Germany, the outgoing President.
www.ecanews.org/
12/04/2007
New Horizons for Small Molecule X-ray Crystallography
Small molecule X-ray crystallography (SMX), the study
of a tiny single crystal using X-ray
diffraction, is often said to fail in its ability to accurately mirror
chemical processes and that single crystal analysis allows for only a snapshot
of a chemical process at either the beginning stage or after a chemical
modification has taken place. These modifications normally come in the form
of different crystals formed at different stages of a chemical reaction
and often do not give a true representation of the overall system.
…read more »
06/03/2007
Seminar "SOLEIL : status and the high pressure macromolecular
crystallography programme"
Speaker: Professor Roger Fourme, Science Director, SOLEIL
(21
March 2007,Merrison Lecture Theatre, Daresbury Laboratory )  (S. Hasnain, R. Donovan, R. Fourme and C. Whitehouse)
19/03/2007
Allocation Period 49
Applications are now invited for SRS beam-time in AP49 (October
2007 - March 2008)
CLOSING DATE - 1st May 2007
Announcement Information »
14/03/2007
Explosion of Interest in Hot Paper
 Having been heavily cited in recent months, a paper concerning a new approach to the synthesis of porous solids has been highlighted as a 'hot paper' (as defined by Thomson ISI®'s Essential Science Indicators) on the American Chemical Society's Publications website. In the article, Tim Prior (SRS, Daresbury Laboratory) and co-workers from the University of Liverpool describe the structures of a series of novel porous materials obtained using small molecule crystallography beamlines on the Synchrotron Radiation Source.
…read
more »
07/03/2007
Outstanding problems addressed in outstanding
paper
'Cation occupancies in Mg, Co,
Ni, Zn, Al ferrite spinels: a multi-element EXAFS study'
 A paper recently published by Mike Henderson, John Charnock and Dave Plant (Manchester University) in the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter was chosen by the editors to be included in 'IOP Select', a classification reserved for papers considered to be of special novelty and/or significance. The materials reported on are 'spinels' (both natural minerals and synthetic analogues), which, though structurally simple macroscopically, can be compositionally complex with wide significance to science and everyday life.
…read
more »
 This type of research benefits from an interdisciplinary approach and demonstrates
how the synergy between mineralogy, condensed matter physics and applied chemistry
can contribute to materials science, broadly defined.
The paper 'Cation occupancies in Mg, Co, Ni, Zn,
Al ferrite spinels: a multi-element EXAFS study' can be seen online at http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0953-8984/19/7/076214/
06/03/2007
Your opportunity to help STFC meet the needs of UK science
and technology
Call for nominations to Science and Technology Facilities
Council’s scientific advisory bodies:
Closing date 21 March
The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is actively
seeking nominations of outstanding individuals to become members of the crucial
scientific advisory bodies which will help shape its programme and strategy.
The
STFC is a new research council with responsibility for providing major research
facilities for the UK science and technology community and for supporting research
into particle and nuclear physics, astronomy and space science in universities.
A key element in the success of the new council will be the quality of the
scientific and strategic advice it receives from its advisory bodies.
The call for nominations can be found here: http://www.newrc.research-councils.ac.uk/STFCadvcall.aspx
Tracy Turner
SRD Associate Director
02/03/07
"Next Generation Facility Users"
call
for proposals now live on EPSRC's web-site
This call, for which up to £4M will be made available, is to fund a balanced
portfolio of research with an element of doctoral level training at centrally
supported scientific facilities.
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/CallsForProposals/NextGenFacUsers.htm
The closing date for this is Thursday 3rd May 2007.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact Dr Craig Walker:
Associate Programme Manager (Physics)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Craig.Walker@epsrc.ac.uk
Tel (+44) 01793 444137
21/02/07
Study of atomic movement may influence design of pharmaceuticals
Chemists at the University of Liverpool have designed a
unique structure to capture the movement of atoms which may impact on future
designs of pharmaceuticals.
…University
of Liverpool Press Release »
19/02/07
Letter sent to Keith Mason CEO of STFC, by user representatives
of the synchrotron, neutron and laser communities.
…pdf »
19/02/07
4GLS: Delivery of Industrial Solutions Conference
A one day interactive conference to understand the progress
made with 4GLS technology and explore the significant industrial applications
that could be exploited with it.
Thursday May 10th 2007
Daresbury Science and Innovation
Campus
information » agenda »
registration »
pdf
brochure »
24/01/07
A Nanoscience and Surface Characterisation Centre at the
Daresbury Campus
one day workshop - 2 March 2007
As part of the ongoing development of the Daresbury Science
and Innovation Campus we are seeking to establish a ‘Centre for Nanoscience
and Surface Characterisation’ in partnership with stakeholders in both
academia and industry. As part of this process we would like to invite you
to participate in a one day scientific workshop on March 2nd at Daresbury
Laboratory.
…website
& registration » |
