Technology Facilities Council Research Articles

Peer Review Statement

All papers published in this volume have been reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing.• Type of peer review: Single Anonymous• Conference submission management system: Morressier• Number of submissions received: 63• Number of submissions sent for review: 62• Number of submissions accepted: 61• Acceptance Rate (Submissions Accepted / Submissions Received × 100): 96.8• Average number of reviews per paper: 1.02• Total number of reviewers involved: 32• Contact person for queries: Name: Francis Pratt Email: francis.pratt@stfc.ac.uk Affiliation: Science and Technology Facilities Council - ISIS Muons

Automated Bonding Analysis with Crystal Orbital Hamilton Populations.

Invited for this month's cover are researchers from Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing) in Germany, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Université catholique de Louvain, University of Oregon, Science & Technology Facilities Council, RWTH Aachen University, Hoffmann Institute of Advanced Materials, and Dartmouth College. The cover picture shows a workflow for automatic bonding analysis with Python tools (green python). The bonding analysis itself is performed with the program LOBSTER (red lobster). The starting point is a crystal structure, and the results are automatic assessments of the bonding situation based on Crystal Orbital Hamilton Populations (COHP), including automatic plots and text outputs. Coordination environments and charges are also assessed. More information can be found in the Research Article by J. George, G. Hautier, and co-workers.

Feasibility and reliability of measuring muscle stiffness in Parkinson's Disease using MyotonPRO device in a clinical setting in Ghana.

To examine the feasibility and within-session reliability of Myoton technology to measure muscle stiffness objectively in people with Parkinson's disease in an outpatient setting. An exploratory quantitative study design was used. The study was conducted in the outpatient physiotherapy department of a Teaching Hospital in Ghana. Participants were recruited from three sites. Thirty adults with Parkinson's disease over 18 years with increased tone (muscle stiffness) and at Hoehn and Yahr Stages I-III were studied. Persons with severe comorbidities were excluded. There was no intervention before testing. The MyotonPRO device measured the mechanical properties of the biceps brachii, flexor carpi radialis and tibialis anterior muscles in a relaxed supine position. The probe applied mechanical impulses to the skin, eliciting tissue oscillations. The muscles' three parameters (stiffness, non-neural tone and elasticity) were recorded bilaterally. The reliability of two sets (of 5 impulses) of Myoton data on all three muscles was examined. All 30 participants (66.3±8.9 years) were recruited and tested within eight weeks. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC 3,2) were above 0.92 for biceps brachii and tibialis anterior and above 0.86 for flexor carpi radialis. The MyotonPRO was reliable for measuring two sets of data within the same session, indicating that only one set of measurements is needed. The technique is feasible and easy to use in a clinical setting in Ghana, with the potential to assess the effect of medical and physiotherapy interventions on muscles in people with Parkinson's disease. M.S discloses a grant from the Science and Technology Facilities Council Impact Acceleration Account at the University of Southampton to support this collaborative research (no personal finance received). All other authors, M.W.A, P.E.M, C.O.Y, B.E.A.S, S.A.-B, and A.A have no financial disclosure.

Development of data correction for the 1M Large Pixel Detector at the EuXFEL

We present the development of a gain correction process for the Large Pixel Detector (LPD) developed by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) for the Femtosecond X-Ray Experiment (FXE) instrument based at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (EuXFEL). LPD operates at 4.5 MHz as necessitated by EuXFEL's pulse timing structure and has a large dynamic range capturing a maximum of 105 photons/pixel @ 12 keV. Experiments at FXE require highly accurate measurements of relative changes in X-ray scattering intensity on the MHz timescale making a correction bringing LPD pixel outputs in line against a common axis essential to understanding experimental results. To facilitate the operational needs of LPD at FXE more than 1.5 billion correction coefficients are required, with corrections generated on a per pixel, per memory cell and per gain stage basis. By comparing output LPD signals to an independent reference diode a linear gain correction has been developed and applied to LPD data. Improvements in image quality have been quantified using the standard deviation in the measured intensity per pixel for a given radius from the beam centre. Improvements to detector uniformity of up to 30.0% are demonstrated in the medium gain stage and 15.9% in the high gain stage. This paper presents an in-depth view of the gain correction development process and further results.

Experience with Rucio in the wider HEP community

Managing the data of scientific projects is an increasingly complicated challenge, which was historically met by developing experiment-specific solutions. However, the ever-growing data rates and requirements of even small experiments make this approach very difficult, if not prohibitive. In recent years, the scientific data management system Rucio has evolved into a successful open-source project that is now being used by many scientific communities and organisations. Rucio is incorporating the contributions and expertise of many scientific projects and is offering common features useful to a diverse research community. This article describes the recent experiences in operating Rucio, as well as contributions to the project, by ATLAS, Belle II, CMS, ESCAPE, IGWN, LDMX, Folding@Home, and the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Effect of Anode Slippage on Cathode Cutoff Potential and Degradation Mechanisms in Ni-Rich Li-Ion Batteries

This work is supported by the Faraday Institution under grant number FIRG001. The authors are grateful to A. Jansen, S. Trask, B.J. Polzin, and A.R. Dunlop at the U.S. Department of Energy’s CAMP (Cell Analysis, Modeling, and Prototyping) Facility, Argonne National Laboratory, for producing and supplying the electrodes in this work. The authors are grateful to the Diamond Light Source for allocating beam time for the operando long-duration PXRD experiments, and to K. Kleiner, S. Day and C. Tang for their experimental support. C.X. gratefully acknowledges support from a Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Experimental Design Award from the STFC Batteries Network (ST/R006873/1).

Teamwork to tackle the food security crisis

Teamwork to tackle the food security crisis

The helical arrangement of nitrilase enzymes determines their substrate size

Nitrilases are commercially important biocatalysts found in diverse taxa that catalyse the hydrolysis of nitriles to amides and acids. In vitro they form rings, terminating spirals or long filaments that seem to be necessary for activity. In vivo, NIT1 assemblies have been observed in Arabidopsis. Substrate size is correlated with the helical twist of nitrilase filaments and can be altered by changing a single residue by site‐directed mutagenesis or by mixing with an excess of enzyme in a different helical conformation. We have determined the first close‐to‐atomic resolution structure of an active nitrilase by cryo‐EM and identified substrate‐specifying residues for site saturation directed evolution. In silico docking of the substrate, β‐L‐cyanoalanine, into the binding pocket led to the identification of a loop that limits the maximum length of a bound substrate and shifts position as a function of helical twist. We propose that the overall size of the binding pocket is specified by this loop, while binding pocket residues alter selectivity for different functional groups. We propose that this mechanism allows nitrilases to rapidly neofunctionalise according to cellular requirements.Support or Funding InformationWe acknowledge Diamond for access and support of the Cryo‐EM facilities at the UK national electron bio‐imaging centre (eBIC), (proposal EM20975‐1), funded by the Wellcome Trust, MRC, and BBSRC. Y. Qayiya, N. Arendse, M. Jaffer, B. Weber, and S. Neumann for technical assistance. This work was funded by the South Africa/Germany Cooperation in Science and Technology Joint Research Grant, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (PI 424/1, PI 424/3), Research Career Advancement Fellowship from the National Research Foundation of South Africa (92556) and GCRF‐START (UK Science and Technology Facilities Council grant ref. ST/R002754/1).

INSTITUT LAUE-LANGEVIN (ILL) AS A FORM OF SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION

The integration of states in the field of education has given rise to the expansion of various forms of cooperation in this area. The subject of the study is one of the large-scale scientific projects called "megasience" — Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), based in Grenoble, France. Such international research centers are designed to achieve breakthrough discoveries, like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe, the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States, and neutron research through the research reactor complex PIK, under construction in Russia. Large research infrastructures are an important phenomenon of public life. In France, megasience installations are officially called "very large research infrastructures", briefly TGIR, in Australia — "landmark research infrastructures".The Institut Laue-Langevin is established as a national legal entity and is managed by three partner countries: France through the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS); Germany through the Jülich Research Centre (FZJ) and the United Kingdom through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).This form of cooperation between countries, integration of states in the field of education has a number of positive aspects and can be used in Russia to find the most effective model for organizing mega-science projects. Thus, ILL make ot possible to use different sources of funding-funds from both the state and private research and grants, as well as European projects. The ILL provides for the possibility of diverse cooperation and participation of various states, the involvement of scientists and individuals, including non-European countries, open membership. The positive features are also the ease of management and reorientation of ILL, flexibility, as well as the ease of cooperation with various institutions of both national and European and international level.

Achievements of Hinode in the first eleven years

Abstract Hinode is Japan’s third solar mission following Hinotori (1981–1982) and Yohkoh (1991–2001): it was launched on 2006 September 22 and is in operation currently. Hinode carries three instruments: the Solar Optical Telescope, the X-Ray Telescope, and the EUV Imaging Spectrometer. These instruments were built under international collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, and its operation has been contributed to by the European Space Agency and the Norwegian Space Center. After describing the satellite operations and giving a performance evaluation of the three instruments, reviews are presented on major scientific discoveries by Hinode in the first eleven years (one solar cycle long) of its operation. This review article concludes with future prospects for solar physics research based on the achievements of Hinode.

Prototype 1 MeV X -band linac for aviation cargo inspection

Aviation cargo unit load device (ULD) containers are typically much smaller than standard shipping containers, with a volume of around 1 m3. Standard 3-6 MeV x-ray screening linacs have too much energy to obtain sufficient contrast when inspecting ULDs, hence a lower 1 MeV linac is required. In order to obtain a small physical footprint, which can be adapted to mobile platform applications, a compact design is required, hence X-band radio-frequency technology is the ideal solution. A prototype 1.45 MeV linac cavity optimized for this application has been designed by Lancaster University and Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), manufactured by Comeb (Italy) and tested at Daresbury Laboratory using an e2v magnetron, modulator, and electron gun. The cavity is a bi-periodic π/2 structure, with beam-pipe aperture coupling to simplify the manufacture at the expense of shunt impedance, while keeping the transverse size as small as possible. The design, manufacture, and testing of this linac structure is presented. In order to optimize the image it is necessary to be able to modify the energy of the linac. It can be changed by altering the rf power from the magnetron but this also varies the magnetron frequency. By varying the beam current from 0-70 mA the beam energy varied from 1.45 to 1.2 MeV. This allows fast energy variation by altering the focus electrode bias voltage on the electron gun while keeping the dose rate constant by varying the repetition frequency. Varying the beam energy by varying the rf power and by varying the beam current are both studied experimentally. The momentum spread on the electron beam was between 1% and 5% depending on the beam current of 0-70 mA

Living in Space and Young Innovators Programme

SMASHfestUK with: Middlesex University, The Refinery, Deptford Green School, Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College Sixth Form, Christ the King Sixth Form, AstroCymru, Monster Paw Games, Little Inventors, University of Greenwich, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Royal Academy of Engineering, UK Space Agency

Connecting the large- and the small-scale magnetic fields of solar-like stars

A key question in understanding the observed magnetic field topologies of cool stars is the link between the small- and the large-scale magnetic field and the influence of the stellar parameters on the magnetic field topology. We examine various simulated stars to connect the small-scale with the observable large-scale field. The highly resolved 3D simulations we used couple a flux transport model with a non-potential coronal model using a magnetofrictional technique. The surface magnetic field of these simulations is decomposed into spherical harmonics which enables us to analyse the magnetic field topologies on a wide range of length scales and to filter the large-scale magnetic field for a direct comparison with the observations. We show that the large-scale field of the self-consistent simulations fits the observed solar-like stars and is mainly set up by the global dipolar field and the large-scale properties of the flux pattern, e.g. the averaged latitudinal position of the emerging small-scale field and its global polarity pattern. The stellar parameters flux emergence rate, differential rotation and meridional flow affect the large-scale magnetic field topology. An increased flux emergence rate increases the magnetic flux in all field components and an increased differential rotation increases the toroidal field fraction by decreasing the poloidal field. The meridional flow affects the distribution of the magnetic energy across the spherical harmonic modes.

On the Brγ line emission of the Herbig Ae/Be star MWC 120

We acknowledge support from a Science and Technology Facilities Council Rutherford Fellowship (ST/J004030/1), Rutherford Grant (ST/K003445/1) and European Research Council Starting Grant (Grant Agreement No. 639889).

Redetection of the Ionospheric Signature of Saturn's “Ring Rain”

AbstractIn April 2011 Saturn's midlatitude ionospheric emissions were detected, exhibiting anomalous (nonsolar) latitudinal variations consistent with the transport of water from specific locations in Saturn's rings, known as “ring rain”. These products, transported to the planet along the magnetic field, may help to explain the unusual pattern of peaks and troughs in electron densities discovered in Saturn's ionosphere by spacecraft flybys. In the present study, we analyzed emissions recorded on 23 April 2013, showing for the first time since the original detection that Saturn's midlatitude emissions are indeed heavily modified. Although the 2013 emissions are dimmer by almost a factor of 3.7, the latitudinal contrast is greater and uncertainties are lower. Increased intensities were found near planetocentric latitudes of 43°, 51°, and 63°, previously identified with sources at the inner edge of the B ring, A ring, and the orbit of Enceladus and associated E ring.

Energy-resolved neutron tomography of an unconventional cultured pearl at a pulsed spallation source using a microchannel plate camera

A non-destructive neutron analysis technique performed at the IMAT beamline of the STFC (Science and Technology Facility Council), UK, is presented. In this experiment, neutrons of different energy have been exploited to obtain a tomographic reconstruction of a biomineralic sample, more specifically a cultured pearl, by using a time-resolving pixel camera, the MicroChannel Plate (MCP) detector, utilizing an array of 2×2 Timepix readout chips. The MCP camera is capable of energy-resolved two-dimensional mapping of neutron transmission with a spatial resolution of ~55μm. By using a Simultaneous Iterative Reconstruction Technique (SIRT), virtual sections of the internal part of the sample have been created, thus revealing several features inside its bulk. The crystallographic phase map via Bragg edge analysis, showing a phase fraction distribution on the entire specimen, has been generated as well. Finally, 3D volume rendering of the pearl is presented.

Agilent buys into Raman spectroscopy

Agilent Technologies has entered the Raman spectroscopy market with the acquisition of the British firm Cobalt Light Systems for about $52 million. Based in Oxfordshire, England, Cobalt was formed in 2008 as a spin-off from the U.K. Science & Technology Facilities Council. Today it has 52 employees and claims as customers 20 of the 25 largest drug companies and more than 75 airports across Europe and Asia. Cobalt’s products are benchtop and portable Raman spectrometers that allow identification of chemicals and materials without opening containers. Applications include materials identification in pharmaceutical quality control and screening of containers for explosives in airport security checks. Conventional spectroscopy is poor at detecting materials through sealed, nontransparent containers. With the acquisition, Agilent gets Cobalt’s spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) technology. Invented by a group at the Science & Technology Facilities Council that included Cobalt’s chief scientific officer,...

Earth science at the UK's deepest laboratory

Deep below the coast of North Yorkshire, UK, scientists are conducting world-class research into elusive dark matter and life on other planets, and are using the products of exploding stars to combat climate change and revolutionize how we monitor the storage of CO2 emitted from industry. Boulby Underground Laboratory is hosted within Boulby Mine, the deepest active mine in the UK. Funded by the UK government through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the laboratory sits within a tunnel hewn from halite at a depth of 1100 m. Originally built for research into particle and astrophysics, recent years have seen a move unprecedented among similar facilities around the world—a significant expansion of research into a wide variety of other scientific fields. Today, Earth science research at Boulby includes Muon tomography for monitoring deep carbon sequestration, ultra-low-background gamma spectroscopy, studies of life in extreme environments, and developing Mars rover equipment to analyse Martian geology.

How do we know what is ‘inside the atom’?—Simulating scattering experiments in the classroom

The idea of the indivisible atom, held since the time of the ancient Greeks, was smashed just over 100 years ago. Ernest Rutherford and his team of scientists in the UK used scattering experiments to discover that atoms have a very dense and extremely small central nucleus that contains more than 99.9% of the mass of an atom and is ten thousand times smaller than an atom. Then just over 50 years ago three physicists in America: Jerome Friedman, Henry Kendall and Richard Taylor carried out scattering experiments in California, that revealed the internal structure of nucleons—later called quarks. This workshop, developed by the Public Engagement team at the Science and Technology Facilities Council, takes secondary school students through these historic discoveries and the present day scattering experiments still changing the world of science.

Molecular gas on large circumgalactic scales at z = 3.47

This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2012.1.00423.S. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada) and NSC and ASIAA (Taiwan) and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. RM acknowledges support from the ERC Advanced Grant 695671 ‘QUENCH’. RM, SC and FB acknowledge support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no. 306476.