Synergetic combination of different imaging and spectroscopic synchrotron techniques performed in ALBA and APS (USA) has discovered new aspects about astrocytes cells of this neurodegenerative disease. Results, published in Analytical Chemistry, show significant differences between ALS and control astrocytes, including structural, chemical and macromolecular anomalies.
The ALBA Strategy Plan for the period 2017-2020 has been positively evaluated and approved by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
A study carried out in collaboration with the UAB concludes that the radon levels present at ALBA are much lower than the limit dose established by European Directive 2013/59/EURATOM. Radon is a gas emitted by the subsoil that penetrates buildings' basements. In very high concentrations it can become a considerable risk for developing lung cancer.
The Future Circular Collider (FCC) collaboration, where ALBA takes part in, has submitted its Conceptual Design Report (CDR) for publication, a four-volume document that presents the different options for a large circular collider of the future.
On 1st January 2019, the European Horizon 2020 project BEAmline for Tomography at SESAME (BEATS) was launched with the objective to design, procure, construct and commission a beamline for hard X-ray full-field tomography at the SESAME synchrotron in Jordan. The European grant is worth 6 million euros and will span a four-year period from beginning 2019 to end 2022.
Researchers from ALBA, UPC and UNSAM have studied the chemical state of cobalt in three different cobalt-based catalysts during the ethanol steam reforming (ESR) reaction. Complementary analyses have been carried out with synchrotron light at CLÆSS and CIRCE beamlines. Cobalt-based catalysts are a promising alternative for hydrogen production, which could be used in vehicles or industrial applications in the future.
ALBA has been granted with ERDF funds for improving the data parallel processing capabilities of the high-performance server cluster giving service to ALBA beamline users, both in standard (based on CPUs) and graphical (GPUs) capabilities.
Last August, a major upgrade of the Booster 500MHz Radio Frequency (RF) Transmitter of ALBA was done: the IOT amplifier of the Booster based on vacuum tube technology was replaced by a Solid State Power Amplifier of 50kW (SSPA). The designer and provider of this equipment is BTesa, a Spanish Telecommunications company located in Madrid. This company has wide experience in Broadcast and Accelerators Technology. This project has been co-funded with ERFD funds.
On Wednesday 28th November, ALBA hosted one participatory workshop of the EU funded project RI-PATHS for exploring inputs and impressions about how to measure the socio-economic impact of scientific facilities like ALBA. The workshop was conducted by the European Future Innovation System (EFIS) Centre, coordinator of the project, and Fraunhofer ISI, and counted with the participation of Massimo Florio, professor of Public Economics at the University of Milan and leading expert on cost-benefit analysis.
Shamila Imtiaz and Sidra Ibadat happily describe their experience during their research internship at ALBA within the framework of the Open Sesame European project.
Together with Francesc Xavier Grau and Marta Felip, she could visit the ALBA Synchrotron facility and commented with its director, Caterina Biscari, the achieved goals and the future plans.
Members of the NANBIOSIS Coordination Committee have visited the ALBA Synchrotron and its representatives to exchange common research lines, points of view on their complementarity and discuss the collaboration possibilities of the facilities, both recognized as Unique Scientific Technical Infrastructure (ICTS) by the Spanish Government.
On 12th and 13th November, the League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources (LEAPS) has celebrated the first Plenary Meeting, where 13 pilot research projects have been presented by the spokespersons of the different collaborations, three of which were ALBA staff members.
The infrared beamline MIRAS at ALBA Synchrotron organized a 2-day hands-on Workshop on Infrared Microspectroscopy the last 1st and 2nd October 2018 where 40 scientists from different research centers had the opportunity to know deeply about this technique by the hand of MIRAS’s team.
From November 12-14th, the ALBA Synchrotron hosts the Joint ARIES Workshop on Electron and Hadron Synchrotrons, focused on Next Generation Beam Position Acquisition and Feedback Systems. The workshop is a common project between Work Packages WP8.3 and WP8.4 of the ADA-ARIES EU funded programme and its organization is shared between ALBA and CERN.
The ALBA Synchrotron together with the University of Barcelona (UB) have submitted a grant proposal to the Industrial Doctorates Plan of the Catalan Government for hiring one researcher student to be devoted to an Industrial project while performing PhD studies.
Mycoplasma genitalium is a sexually transmitted bacterium responsible for several genitourinary disorders. An estimated 1% of the adult population is infected with this bacterium. Using XALOC beamline at the ALBA Synchrotron it has been defined the structure of the protein involved in the pathogen’s adhesion process. The discovery opens the door to defining new therapeutic strategies to fight this pathogen which is becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics.
A research group from the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (IATA-CSIC) in Valencia is using scattering techniques at the ALBA Synchrotron to develop new packaging systems made of biopolymers, an environmentally friendly solution for the food industry.
The Science magazine highlighted in the section “Research in other journals” the article recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) by researchers from the ICN2 Supramolecular Nanochemistry and Materials Group. The article reports about zigzag linkers for transversal design in reticular chemistry. During the experiments, measurements were performed in the ALBA Synchrotron, at the XALOC beamline.
Thanks to the CALIPSOplus European project, Samtack company is analysing at ALBA nanoparticles contained in a new food packaging system that will prevent food oxidation and extend its lifetime.
Last Friday 5th October, the 2nd ALBA Early Stage Researcher Day was celebrated, where several projects were presented in areas such as experimental studies as well as accelerators development.
Articles and reports introducing ALBA used to start with the sentence “ALBA is a 3GeV Synchrotron Light Source…”. This sentence is obviously not untrue, but often scientists feel compelled to provide certain parameters as accurate as possible. This is the case of the beam energy in the ALBA storage ring. The machine was designed to work at 3 GeV, but… is it exactly running at 3 GeV?
The Second Call of the COUFND Marie Skłodowska-Curie DOCtoral training programme in Functional Advanced Materials (DOC-FAM) is open until 30th November. In this call, a total of 12 fellowships are available to Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs) in order to conduct a PhD in one of the research centers involved in the programme, for a total of 36 months.
A research team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is developing a new vaccine concept to protect farmed fish from the main viral diseases affecting them. The alternative proposed by them is an orally administered nanoparticle, which would be more practical, cheaper and less stressful for the animals than conventional injected vaccines. The team has already verified that these nanoparticles stimulate an immune response. Now they analyze, with the synchrotron light in ALBA, what exactly happens inside the cells at molecular level.
On the 2nd of October, ALBA has held its Rector Council meeting counting with the presence of the Minister of Science Pedro Duque, the General Secretary of Scientific Policy Rafael Rodrigo, the Secretary of Universities and Research Francesc Xavier Grau, the General Director of Research Joan Gómez-Pallarés and the UAB Rector, Margarida Arboix. They could visit the accelerators tunnel and some of the beamlines accompanied by the director, Caterina Biscari, and other members of the management.
The ALBA Synchrotron has published its annual report. This document covers the most remarkable activities of 2017, a selection of scientific highlights, technology reviews and facts & figures of the facility last year.
An international team of researchers from IMDEA Nanociencia and Complutense and Autónoma universities in Madrid, the Institut Néel in Grenoble and the ALBA Synchrotron in Barcelona has elucidated a new property of Graphene/Ferromagnetic interfaces: the existence of a sizable magnetic unidirectional interaction, technically a Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya Interaction of Rashba origin, which is responsible for establishing a chiral character to magnetic domain wall structures.
Researchers have explored the phase diagram of zinc under high pressure and high temperature conditions, finding evidence of a change in its structural behaviour at 10 GPa. Experiments profited from the brightness of synchrotron light at ALBA and Diamond. These results can help to understand the processes and phenomena happening in the Earth’s interior.
Researchers from the Institute of Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC) are investigating damage on skin and hair caused by ultraviolet sunlight. They have profited from the ALBA Synchrotron technology to see with high resolution and accurate detail the changes occurring at molecular level, not only at the surface of skin and hair, but also in their inner layers. The samples were previously treated with resveratrol, well-known antioxidant, to evaluate how effective is to develop new and better photoprotective treatments.
On 19 and 20 July, the ALBA Synchrotron is hosting the 102nd Plenary ECFA meeting, with the participation of 70 researchers, including Dr. Fabiola Gianotti, CERN's Director-General.
Till 21st December 2018, small and medium companies can ask for funded beamtime in different European light sources.
Using synchrotron light, researchers from CIC bioGUNE have solved the structure of RavN, a protein that Legionella pneumophila uses for stealing functions and resources of the host cell.
The first call for this program has been closed offering 10 MSCA COFUND predoctoral grants: 5 of them at the ICMAB-CSIC, 2 at the IREC and 3 at the ALBA Synchrotron. The next call for the program will offer 12 fellowships to do the PhD in these centers and also at ICN2 and IMB-CNM-CSIC.
The structure of cholesterol crystals in atherosclerotic plaques was determined, providing insight on the cellular crystal cholesterol growth mechanisms.
The Nobel Laureate in Physics for his role in the detection of gravitational waves has visited today the facility.
Registration for Misión ALBA opens today. This educational project will begin next academic year and a maximum of 250 primary school groups of 5th and 6th grade from all over Spain will be able to participate.
A team of researchers from Materials Science Institute of Madrid (CSIC), University of Barcelona and ALBA Synchrotron reported on magnetization ratchet effect observed for the first time in cylindrical magnetic nanowires (magnetic cylinders with diameters of 120nm and lengths of over 20µm). These nanowires are considered as building blocks for future 3D (vertical) electronic and information storage devices as well as for applications in biological sensing and medicine. The experiments have been carried out at the CIRCE beamline of the ALBA Synchrotron. The results are published in ACS Nano.
The event, held on 19-20 June 2018 in Trieste (Italy), was useful for reviewing the work done as well as programming next tasks of this European project. ALBA will be hosting its 1st Annual meeting on December 2018.
The 1st June, the Industrial office organised a workshop addressed to companies from the metallurgy and surfaces treatment sectors. More than 50 participants had the opportunity to see the applications of the synchrotron techniques on this sector as well as the visit to ALBA's facilities.
An international team of researchers has been able to probe the insulator-conductor phase transition of materials at the nanoscale resolution. This is one of the first results of MaReS endstation of BOREAS beamline.
A research team from the Autonomous University of Barcelona works to develop new methods based on reusing vegetal waste to remove toxic metals from wastewaters. They have performed an experiment in ALBA Synchrotron in order to understand how pine biomass captures heavy metals present in polluted water.
An international team of researchers has restudied the hydration of alite, the main component of ubiquitous Portland cement. Using a multitechnique approach including synchrotron Pair Distribution Function analysis, they have been able to show that C-S-H gel is composed of defective clinotobermorite nanoparticles within a monolayer calcium hydroxide soup. The results are published today in Scientific Reports.
Researchers from the physics department of the Università "La Sapienza" in Rome, Centro S3 of Modena and ALBA, have demonstrated that magnetic coupling of metal-organic molecules to a magnetic substrate mediated by a graphene layer can be tuned in strength and direction by choosing the symmetry of the molecular orbitals that is largely preserved thanks to the graphene layer. The results have been published in the journal Nano Letters.
Today we celebrate the International Day of Light, a global initiative that aims to improve the public understanding of how light and light-based technologies touch the daily lives of everybody, and are central to the future development of the global society.
Researchers from ICMAB-CSIC and ALBA have analyzed the microscopic origin of the so-called "magnetic proximity effect" occurring at the interface between a magnetic material (CoFe2O4) and a nonmagnetic metal (Pt), which may induce a magnetic moment in the latter. The results are published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
The ALBA Open Day, held last Saturday 5 May, received 2,321 visitors who could discover how this scientific facility works and what its main applications are.
Till 31st May 2018, university students interested in doing an internship in the ALBA Synchrotron can submit a proposal.
Researchers from Materials Science Institute of Seville (CSIC) and the ALBA Synchrotron have characterized the water condensation mechanisms on titanium dioxide photoactive nanotubes’ surfaces after UV-irradiation. Thanks to this method, the material-water interaction can be controlled, changing its properties and enabling to convert the nanotubes in either hydrophilic or hydrophobic surfaces depending on the objective. This specific feature is interesting for architecture and transport areas, to develop antifogging or antifreezing surfaces.
Director Jean-David Malo, DG Research and Innovation of the European Commission, received the strategy today at the Bulgarian Presidency Flagship Conference on Research Infrastructures.
When reducing materials at the nanoscale, they typically lose some of their properties. The experiments have been carried out at the CIRCE beamline of the ALBA Synchrotron.
