The McStas and VITESS teams are happy to announce the joint
*** McStas / VITESS user training workshop 2010 ***
To take place at Backafallsbyn in the Swedish island of Ven, May 17th-21st.
The workshop is a school in order to train technical staff and instrument scientists in using Monte-Carlo code to design better neutron devices and instruments. The programme is split into sessions dedicated to different parts (optics, sample environment, detectors, ...). If you work in one of these areas, and feel like simulating it, then this school is for you, especially if you've never done so before.
Posted by: Christian Vettier in workshop, tennessee, simulation, science, Scandinavia, research, neutron scattering, McStas, knoxville, it, ill, icns, ess scandinavia, energy, conference on
May 27, 2009
Scandinavia was highly represented at the ICNS meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee. Scandinavian scientists gave three invited talks and several (8) oral contributions, not counting many posters. In total, 30 contributions were presented by scientists affiliated in Scandinavia, which is a very large number compared to other countries, but reflects the expertise and experience of Scandinavia in the field of neutron research. Moreover, a parallel one-day workshop on neutron instrument simulation was organised by McStas experts from Copenhagen and Risø (and ILL!) where neutron scientists could get some training in instrument modeling.
This does not come as a surprise since the neutron community in Scandinavia has developed neutron science for decades through the research carried out at the facilities for neutron scattering in Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
- In Denmark, Risø National Laboratory (now Risø DTU) has an outstanding international reputation in neutron diffraction and neutron scattering research and has been developed over the years thanks to their reactor-based neutron facility. Risø has had a seminal role in neutron methods and has had an impact on all neutron instruments. All the expertise acquired there has been passed on to other neutron centres in the world, in particular SINQ at PSI, Switzerland, where Danish scientists are operating several instruments.
- In Sweden, scientists are using neutron scattering methods in soft condensed matter, in physics and chemistry in engineering sciences; they work at the ILL, Grenoble, at ISIS in UK, at PSI in Switzerland, but also in Germany. In Sweden, experiments were performed at the Swedish research reactor R2 in Studsvik. The NFL - Studsvik Neutron Research Laboratory was a leading institute for neutron sciences. As a company, Studsvik operates not only in Sweden, but also in UK, Germany or USA and has a further company segment for Global Services.
- In Norway, the research reactor JEEP II at Kjeller (Institute for Energy Technology, IFE, near Oslo) is a national resource for material physics research and neutron irradiation technology. The availability of this multi-purpose reactor is kept very high to content the many user-groups.
All these centres have joined forces to develop modeling tools to optimise various neutron instruments, which explains why the Copenhagen / Roskilde group is acquired such high repute in neutron instrument modeling and virtual experiments run on computers.
As a complement to the international organisation now being built up by ESS Scandinavia for designing and developing the accelerator driven, next generation neutron source in Sweden; the 273 neutron users in Scandinavia will provide us with a solid base of supporting expertise right in the neighbourhoods of Lund!
Neutron scattering does not only enable important research to be carried out, which helps us to understand materials and life a bit more, but also brings people to nice countries. Being part of the ESS Scandinavia team, I'm based at ILL in Grenoble, the capital of the French Alps. I'm preparing for the future, working with world-class leading scientists from all over Europe in the fields of materials science and neutron instrumentation.
Today was an "Analyzing data day" at ILL. Numbercrunching you might say. Digging too much into data made my senses continue analysing even on my way home to our place in the outskirts of Grenoble. I, as always, had first to face the stochastic motions - the origin of quasielastic scattering for a neutron freak - in French traffic. By this I mean a more or less "amorphous" behaviour in car-driving here, where red lights and parking spots appear to serve only as guides for strangers like me. However, the opposite (the ordered structure) exists as well - here in France you need to fill in loads of papers and they may even ask you about your shoe size if you, for example, are about to buy a radio. These are just some of my observations of everyday life in France - and I like to make the comparison to Sweden, where you probably can buy a castle without signing a single paper and without telling the seller who you are.
Passing by the grocery store on my way home, I purchased the essentials for this weekend's activity, walking. My skis were stolen a few weeks ago, but the scenery is nevertheless magnificent on foot! So what did I buy? - Baguettes, cheese, wine and yoghurt of course!!! I'm still amazed about the thousands of different kinds of yoghurt you find here!. But then again a foreigner in Sweden would marvel at the hundreds of different kinds of milk we seem to need to survive. Does anyone know what "långfil" is for example...
