Booster-ring

By James Dacey

Phew, they certainly don’t believe in wasting any time here at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF).

Day one of my synchrotron sojourn involved a medley of information from key staff, a whistle-stop tour of the 844m storage ring, an afternoon excursion to one of the most intense neutron sources on the planet…

… finished off by dinner with the ESRF scientists.

I think this sense of urgency must be fuelled by the annual turnover of over 6000 scientists who travel from across the 12 member countries (and beyond) to use the facility.

Many of these scientists are PhD students from wide-ranging disciplines, including biology, chemistry and the earth sciences, who come along with thier pre-prepped samples and probe them with this brilliant light source to hopefully reveal some interesting things.

Passing through the central coffee square, you certainly get the impression that this is a lively, creative environment for young researchers to come and share ideas with peers from across Europe.

In the morning I also managed to catch up with Harald Reichert, the new head of research at the ESRF, who compared the facility to a Swiss army knife. “We serve almost every branch of science, all you need is a good idea,” he told me.

After scurrying along the beamlines (I’ll be spending more time there today), I then spent the afternoon at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), which neighbours the ESRF.

A neutron source, the ILL was founded over 40 years ago as the first large research collaboration between France and Germany after World War II, and in many ways it sees itself as the older, wiser brother of the ESRF.

And time on the neutron beam seems to be equally as precious as time with the ESRF X-rays; the head of science, Andrew Harrison, told of how he used to try and sleep amongst the machinery back in his student days.

I saw some pretty cool experiments including a group who were using the neutron beam to look at how different types of molecule react at a surface of water. “Across nature, surfaces are being created then destroyed again,” said the group leader.

To test a surface under stable conditions, they had created a water fountain whose flat surface was perfectly renewed every second – you really couldn’t tell anything was changing!

Buzzing around Grenoble

By James Dacey

I’ve come to France this week to acquaint myself with one of the world’s “big 3” synchrotrons — the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble.

The serious science starts today but j’adore my European getaways so I arrived a day early for a bit of exploring.

Doing the classic tourist thing I headed to the highest point, in this case — via a cable car — to La Bastille, a series of fortifications dating back to the middle ages.

There were some fantastic views of the city sprawling out along the flood plain of the Isere.

Unfortunately, Mont Blanc to the east was covered in cloud, but I got some great shots looking down at the ESRF – aka “the giant polo” (below).

One other wonderfully French feature was “apiview” – a viewing slot fronted by a tank of bees (above).

The idea is to gain an original view of Grenoble and its surroundings by looking out “as if one were a bee” – it is part of a local project to combine art with science.

Right, I’m of now to interview Harold Reichert, the director of research here at the facility.

The giant polo

Map of physics in 1997…

By Michael Banks

Producing maps of science seem to be a popular pastime for researchers these days.

Only last month we reported a map made by using over a billion so-called “click-throughs” – produced when going from a web portal like Elseiver’s Science Direct to the full text of a paper or to the abstract on the journal’s website.

Now physicists have made a map using the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS) codes produced by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).

PACS codes contain four numbers and two letters, which are used to classify papers according to the research they contain. Each paper usually includes two or three PACS numbers listed just after the abstract.

The first two numbers of a PACS code denote the subject area, which are grouped in tens. For example, 20-29 is nuclear physics and 30-39 is atomic and molecular physics while 60-69 is condensed matter: structure, mechanical and thermal properties.

Then within nuclear physics, say, there are up to 10 subfields such as nuclear structure (21) and nuclear astrophysics (26). These subfields are also split in tens, so nuclear structure runs from 21.10 (properties of nuclei; nuclear energy levels) to 21.90 (other topics in nuclear structure).

..and in 2006…click here to enlarge

Bear with me a little longer, nearly there. Next is where the letters come in. Within, say, 21.10 there are then a list of topics, such as 21.10.Tg (lifetimes, widths) or 21.10.Dr (binding energies and masses).

Taking papers from the last two decades in the AIP’s database, Mark Herrera from the University of Maryland, David Roberts from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Natali Gulbachce from the Northeastern University in Boston, have created a map using the links between different PACS numbers.

For example, when a paper quotes two PACS codes, these topics are then linked. Running all this data through an algorithm then sorts and finds clusters of nodes and groups them.

The above images show the full maps from 1997 and 2006 with subfields of a subject area shown (that is the first two numbers in a PACS code). The nodes represent the subject area, and its size is proportional to the amount of single PACS codes it contains. The thickness of the links indicates how many papers have PACS codes corresponding to both nodes.

According to the researchers, the map lets you see how areas shrink and grow and how they merge with one another.

For example, in 1997 crystallography (61) was one central node, but in 2006 it had split into five (as deduced by the algorithm). Even though each one is strongly linked with the others, the algorithm didn’t deem it one single node, which may indicate five separate fields emerging within this area.

Coup d’etat in physics?

By James Dacey

Even its fiercest critics will struggle to argue that open-access publishing has not brought about a revolution in the way scientists engage with the latest research findings.

Driving the reformation in physics and maths is the arXiv preprint server, which was pioneered by Paul Ginsparg at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and is currently hosted by Cornell University.

Now the revolution continues apace as a new innovation will enable frontline physics to be winged straight into the palms of researchers.

ArXiview is a new iPhone application billed as “a very easy way to surf the last few weeks of arXiv postings.”

This new innovation was designed by Dave Bacon, a theoretical physicist at the University of Washington, during a recent spell between jobs.

I ran a quick search of the Apple store website and found a couple of rival arXiv app’s but this seems to be the first to enable users to order results by date.

It remains to be seen whether arXiview will be a bit hit amongst physicists but I can already picture a handful of the uber keen ones wowing their colleagues at conferences as they reel off the days latest findings.

Thankfully, long gone are the days where findings took months, years even, to see the light of day. But let’s just hope this mania for faster, round-the-clock access to physics doesn’t start to chip away at the rigour and depth of the subject.

So what next in the research revolution – Stephen Hawkings tweeting about his favourite formulae?

Earthquake shockwaves (credit: IREA-CNR)

By Michael Banks

Researchers have released the first satellite images showing the effect of the L’Aquila earthquake that struck central Italy earlier this month.

Measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, the earthquake killed over 290 people with an epicentre only a few kilometres away from the Gran Sasso National Laboratory located between L’Aquila and Teramo, which is best known for studying the properties of neutrinos and searching for dark matter.

Scientists at the Instituto per il Rilevamento Elettromagnetico dell’ Ambiente in Napoli have now started analysing data taken from the Environmental Satellite (Enivsat) operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Launched in 2001, Enivsat carries ten instruments for Earth observation, which can measure, for example, sea surface temperatures and the amount of sunlight transmitted, reflected and scattered by the Earth’s atmosphere.

Enivsat’s on board radar can detect changes in the Earth’s surface with millimetre accuracy. Data taken just after the earthquake on 6 April and compared to an image made a few months before show a set of nine fringes originating a few kilometres from L’Aquila.

Each fringe on this ‘interferogram’ represents a ground movement of 2.8 cm, meaning the ground moved by 25 cm at the centre of the earthquake a few kilometres from L’Aquila.

The results from Envisat have also been confirmed by the movement of five GPS receivers located around the affected area that were moved as a result of the earthquake.

ESA is also making the satellite’s data taken in the L’Aquila region freely available for scientists to analyse, which is available to download here.