News and Events, Announcements, Publications, Jobs, new openings
News and Events
Jeff Penfold awarded the 2013 Rideal Lectureship
The Society of Chemical Industry and the Royal Society of Chemistry have jointly awarded their 2013 Rideal Lectureship to Professor Jeff Penfold of the STFC ISIS Pulsed Neutron & Muon Source and Oxford University. The Rideal Lectureship commemerates the great English physical chemist, Sir Eric Rideal FRS, whose work had such impact on the fields of electrochemistry, chemical kinetics, catalysis, electrophoresis, colloids and surface chemistry.
Jeff’s work has been highlighted because of his major scientific contributions to surfactant, colloid and interface science. He and John Hayter were the first people to formulate a strategy and the necessary analytical methods for the quantitative interpretation of neutron small angle scattering data from micellar solutions (indeed these methods are still the main ones used today). Second, with colleagues at Unilever plc, Jeff has pioneered the development of shear-flow methods in conjunction with small angle scattering. And thirdly, Jeff has played a major role in both the instrumental and methodological development of neutron reflectometry, now widely used for studying interfaces of all kinds.
18 March 2013
New Versions of FibreFix
FibreFix is a well-established software package for the processing of fibre diffraction (and similarly oriented) data. It provides a platform integrating several programs. Two new versions of the package have just been released, one for Windows 7 and higher operating systems (fixing a legacy issue with Microsoft .NET Framework 1 in the original XP version), and another coded in Java (which it is hoped will facilitate future integration into ImageJ).
To download the new versions, please visit the Software page.
05 March 2013
Calling all Biological Solution Small-Angle Scatterers
During the SAS2012 meeting in Sydney, a well-attended panel discussion was held to discuss two related matters:
(1) publication guidelines for solution studies of biological macromolecules that use small-angle scattering to propose a 3D molecular model, either atomistic or a shape model, and
(2) the work of the Protein Data Bank Small-Angle Scattering Task Force (PDB-SAStf) that has been charged with considering whether solution scattering-based bio-molecular models should be archived.
At the panel discussion, it was agreed that a web page would be established to enable submissions from the community on these issues for consideration in the further development and communication of the guidelines.
The PDB-SAStf home page (http://sas.wwpdb.org/) now includes a link (SAS2012 Report) to a summary of the panel discussion, including the presentations made, as well as a link to what will become the discussion archive (Discussion List Archive) and where instructions on how to make a submission may be found.
Interested members of the small-angle scattering community are encouraged to review the current state of the draft guidelines and to contribute comments.
As the community of structural biologists using small-angle solution scattering continues to expand, community engagement in guiding publication practices will ensure that results can be evaluated by reviewers and readers alike and promote confidence in the valuable contributions these studies can make.
4 February 2013
Otto Glatter awarded the 2012 Guinier Prize
The 2012 Guinier Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Small-Angle Scattering is awarded to Professor Otto Glatter of the University of Graz, Austria: for his dedicated development, application, propagation and dissemination of small-angle X-ray, light and neutron scattering methods over more than 40 years; for his pioneering work on the development of the indirect Fourier Transform method and its application to solve practical problems in real materials across many fields, especially in polymer science, soft matter and nanoparticle systems, and its extension to concentrated systems; and for his universally recognized service in building up the international small-angle scattering community through teaching and training, software development and publication, development of instrumentation, and the writing of a widely used teaching text.
22 October 2012
The aim of this workshop is to work on specific matters important to the canSAS community as decided in previous conference calls. The three main themes are: data format, standardisation and development of this portal.
Report in Neutron News
Report in Synchrotron Radiation News
28-31 July 2012
Oxford researcher scoops top neutron prize for ISIS research
Dr Sylvia McLain of the University of Oxford has been awarded the prestigious B.T.M. Willis Prize for neutron scattering in recognition of her studies of a wide range of biological molecules and their interactions at the atomic and molecular level in the presence of water.
13 June 2012
Announcements
A new release of the popular ATSAS program suite has just been announced. ATSAS 2.5 is free for download for academic users from http://www.embl-hamburg.de/biosaxs/download.html
13 November 2012
The 15th International Small-Angle Scattering conference (SAS-2012, 18 - 23 November 2012) was held in the beautiful city of Sydney, Australia. The Proceedings are now freely available for download at the following address:
http://www.sas2012.com/Program.htm
The complete reference is:
Proceedings of the 15th International Small-Angle Scattering Conference, Sydney, Australia, 18-23 November 2012, editors Duncan J. McGillivray, Jill Trewhella, Elliot P. Gilbert and Tracey L. Hanley, ANSTO, ISBN 1 921268 15 8 (2012).
SAS-2015 will be held in Berlin, Germany. SAS-2018 will be held in Traverse City, Michigan, USA.
International Year of Crystallography 2014
On 3 July 2012 the 66th General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution to make 2014 the International Year of Crystallography (IYCr 2014), marking 100 years since the award of the Nobel Prize to Max von Laue. Small-angle scatterers around the world are encouraged to promote the contribution of their technique to the determination of (macro-)molecular level structure.
Publications
UK scientists produce world’s first magnetic soap
Bristol University team dissolve iron in liquid surfactant to create a soap that can be controlled by magnets. The discovery, published in Angewandte Chemie, could be used to create cleaning products that can be removed after application and used in the recovery of oil spills at sea.
26 January 2012
Australian Synchrotron answers century old scientific question
Researchers at Monash University have used x-ray beams created by the Australian Synchrotron (AS) to discover how enzymes work to dissolve blood clots and clean up damaged tissue in the body - a finding that could ultimately lead to a reduction in the number of heart disease-related deaths occurring each year as a result of blood clots.
9 March 2012
Jobs, new openings
Available employment opportunities within the scattering community and at light sources. This site also has a compilation of opportunities in small-angle scattering.