The use coordination on a EU trip: promoting European light sources
© HZB / J. Politt
Synchrotrons are outstanding tools for studying materials, cells and even cultural assets. Yet, many researchers in Eastern Europe are unaware that they are entitled to use them. The EU project Calipsoplus supports potential users from these countries.
In October 2017, Beatrix Seidlhofer and Antje Vollmer from the User Coordination department packed their bags and headed off. Nothing unusual for these two, who are often away on some business or other. Most trips take them to Western, Northern or Southern Europe, but this time they were off to Romania. The country joined the EU ten years ago, but is still one of the poorest Member States of Europe. The gross domestic product of Romania is only 8,600 euros per capita, compared with Germany’s 38,000 euros per capita.
“Education and research could pave a way to a better future. That was our very purpose for going there. We wanted to let our Romanian colleagues know what opportunities they have to use the European light sources, and that they can receive subsidies for conducting their experiments there,” Beatrix Seidlhofer says.
This subsidisation is offered through the EU project CALIPSPOplus. It is aimed at promoting the international exchange of scientists and transnational access to the light sources in Europe. The EU has set up a budget of ten million euros for this. The subsidies not only help to cover the instrument costs on business trips. A special twinning programme is also set up so that Eastern European researchers can be supervised and instructed by experienced experts at the light sources. “These are great opportunities which we want to actively promote in the new EU States,” says Head of User Coordination Dr. Antje Vollmer. She coordinates the HZB-run twinning programme in the scope of CALIPSOplus.
And so the two HZB colleagues travelled to Romania to advertise the European light sources to researchers at two universities and two institutes. They talked with them about their work and what kind of instrument time they wished for. “Research in Romania is very up to date and innovative. There are several groups researching solar cells, for example. And we learned of interesting projects in microbiology, magnetism and even bionics,” Seidlhofer recounts. “But almost nobody was aware that measuring time at BESSY II and other light sources in Europe is free for universities.” This news naturally went down very well, and some researchers even wished to apply for instrument time on the spot.
In the university city Timişoara in the west of the country, Beatrix Seidlhofer, who incidentally speaks Romanian very well, held a lecture for high-school graduates. “In Romania, ever fewer school-leavers are opting for the natural sciences. So, I was asked to talk with school graduates at the university to get them interested in physics.” At the end of the lecture, the students not only asked many questions; they even gave a standing ovation.
Five days later, their round trip was over. The resonance of their tour is still being felt not only in Romania, but also in Berlin. “The first visit within the CALIPSOplus twinning programme showed us how important it is to make personal contacts. There are many talented people in the new EU Member States, all brimming with ideas and building sophisticated instruments on a small budget,” says Beatrix Seidlhofer. They intend to continue their tour in 2018 as well. Next stops: Bulgaria, Hungary and Portugal.
- BESSY II: Phosphorous chains – a 1D material with 1D electronic propertiesFor the first time, a team at BESSY II has succeeded in demonstrating the one-dimensional electronic properties of a material through a highly refined experimental process. The samples consisted of short chains of phosphorus atoms that self-organise at specific angles on a silver substrate. Through sophisticated analysis, the team was able to disentangle the contributions of these differently aligned chains. This revealed that the electronic properties of each chain are indeed one-dimensional. Calculations predict an exciting phase transition to be expected as soon as these chains are more closely packed. While material consisting of individual chains with longer distances is semiconducting, a very dense chain structure would be metallic.
- Did marine life in the palaeocene use a compass?Some ancient marine organisms produced mysterious magnetic particles of unusually large size, which can now be found as fossils in marine sediments. An international team has succeeded in mapping the magnetic domains on one of such ‘giant magnetofossils’ using a sophisticated method at the Diamond X-ray source. Their analysis shows that these particles could have allowed these organisms to sense tiny variations in both the direction and intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field, enabling them to geolocate themselves and navigate across the ocean. The method offers a powerful tool for magnetically testing whether putative biological iron oxide particles in Mars samples have a biogenic origin.
- What vibrating molecules might reveal about cell biologyInfrared vibrational spectroscopy at BESSY II can be used to create high-resolution maps of molecules inside live cells and cell organelles in native aqueous environment, according to a new study by a team from HZB and Humboldt University in Berlin. Nano-IR spectroscopy with s-SNOM at the IRIS beamline is now suitable for examining tiny biological samples in liquid medium in the nanometre range and generating infrared images of molecular vibrations with nanometre resolution. It is even possible to obtain 3D information. To test the method, the team grew fibroblasts on a highly transparent SiC membrane and examined them in vivo. This method will provide new insights into cell biology.