Life on board ESS

This week ESS had to cancel the third Steering Committee Meeting in Bilbao, Spain, due to the ash cloud over Europe. I think it was a wise decision by the ESS management.

Staff at ESS were of course a bit disappointed seeing all their work and preparations for this meeting litterally going up in smoke. But luckily we stand quite prepared with a load of black humour for situations like this. Something which have actually helped us to cope every now and then in critical situations that sometimes occur in a complex project like the ESS.

There are of course many people who have got into serious trouble due to the ash cloud. Not the least people in Iceland who are already suffering from the financial collapse. I think about you and wish you all the best in your struggle to fix the Icelandic economy. A positive effect in all this could be though that Iceland have probably never got as much international publicity and PR before. So in the long run, an exotic volcano might help tourism and make it easier to open new doors to do business in the future.

For those who like to cheer things up a bit in all this mess, there is a lot of humour on the volcanic subject flourishing around the web:

United Kingdom: "Dear Iceland, we asked for cash, not ash!".

Iceland: "Sorry for the flight delays, Europe. We were aiming for London, but it's hard to be accurate when firing a volcano".

Or this one:

"The last wish of the Icelandic economy was to have its ashes scattered over Europe...".

Locally, here in my mailbox, the news just reached me that our friend, ProfESSor John Larese who gave a speech at the ESS / Lund University seminar series last week, is still in Sweden unable to get home because of the ash cloud. Live and direct from Uppsala (apparently there's a second university town in Sweden after Lund?) John sent me a short reflection on his current situation. He seems to be contemplating over geology stuff, perhaps trying to find some secret code to send as a morse signal to his science colleagues back home across the Atlantic:

"Im sitting in my hotel room in Uppsala, Sweden reflecting on the past few days and how premonitory my lecture at Lund University was. I opened my lecture about Spallation Neutron Souces and Nanomaterials with the Great Smokey Mountains as a backdrop on my title page but little did I think that this Chemistry profESSor from TennESSee, the VOLunteer University was going to fall victim to the Nano silica ash originating from the Smokey Icelandic VOLcano eruption. While some confusion still exists it appears that I still have a few days to ponder if the VOLcano will stop SPALLing out any more Nanosilica ash and this citizen of the VOLunteer state can return home. In the future I'll stick to VOLunteering to scatter neutrons closer to TennESSee and not dodging VOLcanic ash!"

Dear John, I hope you make it back to the US and Tennessee soon and don't suffer too much from “jet lash”. Otherwise you could always settle down in Lund and build a spectrometer or two. We will need them to analyse the huge (but so remarkably invisible) particle clouds that keeps the Europeans from levitating nowadays.

By the way, Johnny cASH was born in Kingsland, ArkanSAS - But he actually died in nASHville TennESSee.. ashESS to ashESS.. I think I need to cough..

End of story.

Oh, one more: "Waiter, there's volcanic ash in my soup. I know, it's a no-fly zone".

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A very passionate talk on "Neutrons, Nanomaterials and Molecular Adsorption" was given this Thursday by Mr. John Z. Larese from University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The audience attending the ESS & Lund University seminar series on "New Science with Max IV and ESS" was introduced to the meaning and mysteries of "surface science".

In a more profound framing of his presentation John started by touching upon some factors which attracts researchers and scientists to settle down, work and live at certain places. It became obvious that beautiful nature combined with dynamic city and campus environments, offering opportunities to do top class research with state-of-the-art technology, were central things. But for a large scale research facility (like the ESS) to become successful, it is important not only to be able to provide instruments with higher resolution and faster speed of data management - the area surrounding the facility must have laboratories and gear for synthesising, characterising and preparation of samples nearby. There must be labs on spot where the researcher can error detect their samples quickly in case something goes wrong with the sample. With valuable and expensive beam time running, it can be devastating to your project if one have to travel long distances in order to optimise research samples and assemble data. Considering these requirements, there is no doubt that the location of the European Spallation Source on the site just north of Lund, will make ESS an integrated part of the Øresund region [map] thus making it possible to benefit from an urban environment which is currently building up one of the worlds most excellent infrastructures for science and research.

On the more hardcore level of John's presentation we became acquaintanced with MgO (Magnesium Oxide), ZnO (Zinc Oxide) and how to carry out basic science experiments producing nanoparticles by burning the substance and then analysing with neutron spectrometry.

Neutron scattering techniques like diffraction, inelastic neutron scattering and spectroscopy, are ideally suited to investigate the structure and dynamics of molecules at the interface of nanoscale materials. John has actually been doing experiments with our own ESS director Colin Carlile during the nineties at the ISIS neutron source using the IRIS spectrometer which Colin spent his life on building (before he spent his life building the ESS AB).

Through synthetic production and characterization of nanometer scale materials like Mgo and ZnO we can create tiny elements of materials which exhibit physical and chemical properties that are dramatically different from ordinary matter.

ZnO can form nanosized tetrapods which can be used for optoelectronics - Sensors combining both light and electricity for fine measurments in technological devices.

High power neutron tools with novel instrumentation will spawn a new generation of science that will dramatically impact the world’s energy and technological future. Investing in this technology and research is of high relevance to the energy challenges we see today. John tells us that it has already made us re-discover solar energy and fuel cells paving the way for a sustainable society.

By combining material synthesis, neutron scattering and modeling theory we can develop accurate potential energy surfaces and predict new routes for developing new materials; understand what factors are important in surface mediation of chemical reactions; synthesise novel materials to address fundamental questions in gas separation, sequestration and storage, catalysis, sensors, energy storage and energy conversion.

Innovation and technological improvements in society is of course the crucial outcome for public investments in big science facilities. In order for a researcher to make new discoveries and innovate, John Larese pointed out the importance of being at the right place at the right time and having the ability to be receptive to the world around you. He also displayed a map of a research program that the SNS and HFIR facilities in the USA runs together with ILL in France and ISIS in the UK.

I think of the ten years I've been working at universities myself: We now live in a digitalised knowledge society with a globalised competition for resources and competences between universities, laboratories and research facilities. Sometimes, barriers of fear and bad campaigning appears on the agenda of competing institutions, countries and organisations with seemingly different interests. But in order to develop science and society on an international level, we rather need to look at the things connecting us which can make us stronger together. John Larese talked about the importance of getting facilities and organisations to talk to each other and help professionals to network, collaborate and build international societies within their fields of interest. When institutions and people choose a more social strategy, creating win-win situations, it becomes easier to expand our universe of arts and science and provide new generations with a greater possibility to find the right place at the right time and become innovative. It is in the mix between different schools, cultures, minds and DNA, where new things evolve. Living in the international environment of Lund, being able to listen to speeches by prominent researchers and meet with interesting people from all around the world, is certainly a time and place which makes me creative!

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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!

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Here we all are in Knoxville, 28 brave souls from Scandinavia - 7 from the ESSS Secretariat - who have run the gauntlet of swine flu and the possible end of civilisation as we know it, to attend the International Conference on Neutron Scattering in Tennessee.

With our specially designed shirts (thanks Karl !) we are quite a visible presence here, demonstrating the very solid scientific strength which Scandinavia has in neutron scattering. When we get a delegate list we can see whether in fact we are the largest delegation. Neither has the weather been kind to the organisers, with tornado warnings on Sunday, but we were thoughtfully supplied with umbrellas in our delegate pack, a nice practical touch - just like the delegates to the Bilbao meeting a few weeks ago were. There was lots of reminiscing about the warm sunny weather which we had left behind us in Lund but we have been warmly welcomed here.

Last night the whole Scandinavian team all went out to dinner together at Calhouns waterfront restaurant, an inspired choice of Sofie, Therèse and Johan, since the heavens opened up especially for us and it was quite dramatic over the Tennessee river. Waterfront was therefore the word. We had a really lovely evening with the friendliest waiter and waitress you could imagine. Such enthusiasm and involvement with the (admittedly good-looking!) Scandianvians.

Interestingly, a senior local fellow had earlier asked me how things were doing at ILL. I told him that they had said goodbye to that old guy who used to be there about three years ago and had replaced him with a (somewhat !) younger version (news can travel slowly sometimes...) and that now I was in Sweden. "Oh", he replied with a glazed look in his eye, "the weather must be really bad there."  As he said this I glanced out of the window - there was a torrential rainstorm outside, with cars being washed down the street in front of my eyes (no, no... I made that last bit up!). But it is really interesting how we as humankind comfort ourselves with preconceived ideas. I resisted saying (as I admit I sometimes do) that the Polar bears have migrated north for the summer now and the streets of Lund are safe for a few weeks. Let us hope that the imminent decision on the siting of ESS will be made objectively, setting aside preconceived ideas which all of us carry around with us. I feel confident that that is in fact happening.

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