The seemingly mundane little droplets of liquid we put into the X-ray beam are rare bits and pieces of the machinery of life, painstakingly separated and purified from Nature’s unimaginably complex brew. Suspended delicately in solution, biological molecules are fussy, sensitive, and sometimes barely present at all. Researchers play a game of roulette when they try to concentrate samples enough to get useful X-ray scattering signals: not enough concentration and the signal is too weak, too much concentration and the molecules may crash out of solution becoming irretrievably lost.

They are joined by their theory collaborator Igor I. Potemkin (Lomonosov Moscow State University) and former Papadakis postdoc Jianqi Zhang who is now at the National Center of Nanoscience and Technology in Beijing, as well as current postdoc Anatoly Berezkin (TUM).

The CHESS-U project has many facets. The CESR accelerator gets upgraded with multi-bend achromat magnet technology, converts to running only a single particle beam, and enhances the energy from 5.3 to 6.0 GeV and 200 milliAmperes. With a single type of charged particle in the machine, half of the x-ray beamlines will be turned around and rebuilt to handle the heat load, and deliver the much higher photon flux, of individually tunable undulator sources. Overall, the laboratory is being optimized to deliver ultra-high-flux, high energy x-ray beams for future experiments.

Carbon-fibre-reinforced-carbon (aka “carbon-carbon” or “C/C”) is a leading, tough, low-density material that has been extensively used for these applications. Despite its many advantages, C/C does suffer from being susceptible to oxidization, and must therefore be coated with some protective layer prior to use. The residual and thermally-induced strains between C/C and its protective coatings must be understood in order to engineer safer, lighter vehicles.

Trifluoromethyl (CF3) substituents profoundly influence properties of organic molecules and transition metal complexes. Medicinal chemists have recognized the value of the CF3 group for advantageous drug properties including increased physiological longevity, facile blood−brain barrier penetration, and enhanced protein−substrate binding affinities. Consequently, developing reactions that install CF3 on organic frameworks is a major research goal.

The Xraise team has been working with teachers throughout the region to leverage engineering design challenges as a way to allow young students to test their developing scientific knowledge and apply it to practical problems. Engineering-based projects have been shown to enhance student understanding of science and, for many, their interest in science. With help from Xraise, teachers are discovering that engineering provides elementary students with a real-world context for learning science.

The answer to this dilemma is the Oculus Prime Surveillance Vehicle. Equipped with a Sony video camera, a microphone, bright head lamp and an IR camera, Oculus can travel the tunnel using WiFi controls and a web browser. Is some device misbehaving in the tunnel? Oculus can take a look and also listen to be sure there is no unusual noise like electrical arcing, or smoke and no cooling water on the floor. If everything looks and sounds OK, then tunnel access to the device can be scheduled at a convenient time.

Throughout the years, we have developed five different types of VBPMs. These VBPMs are schematically shown in Figure 1 with images created by these devices. All VBPMs provide position information with submicron precision, in addition to visual information about the X-ray cross-sectional shape. The data delivered from the VBPMs are normally updated in each second. This frequency of data delivery is appropriate for the position feedback system and our signal-archiving timing intervals.

Students will have a day and a half of lectures and hands-on software tutorials on the basics of BioSAXS data collection and processing from expert practitioners in the field. This will be followed by real data collection on MacCHESS beamlines (F1 and G1 stations).

And, the tiny beam has to hit the tiny crystal. The location of the beam can be well determined and doesn't change, but how do we know where the crystal is?