Information Technology/Large-Scale Data Handling

The experience of light source users has been transformed in recent years by large increases in flux and brightness, revolutionary new optics and detectors, and automation and advanced sample environments. Beamlines are producing data at rates and volumes that challenge the capabilities of even the most experienced user groups. Meanwhile, the community of synchrotron users continues to grow in size and diversity: researchers come from physics, material science, energy and battery research, geology, biology, chemistry, art history, and more. Almost every natural science domain is being advanced through the techniques employed at these facilities, but a significant fraction of these researchers are first-time or infrequent users of a particular beamline. The combination of an expanding base of new users and increased beamline capabilities is leading to an increase in the amount of “dark data” that is not analyzed fully (or, in some cases, at all).     

The High Data Rate Processing and Analysis Initiative of the Helmholtz Association in Germany

The Helmholtz Association is the largest scientific organization in Germany. It operates all major German research infrastructures involved in research with photons, neutrons, and ions. These are DESY in Hamburg; the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT); the Research Centre Jülich (FZJ); the Helmholtz Centres in Geesthacht (HZG), Berlin (HZB), and Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR); and the GSI Centre for research with heavy ions in Darmstadt. In common, all these centers are facing similar challenges related to dramatically increasing data rates and volumes generated with more and more powerful radiation sources together with larger and faster detectors. On the other hand, each center has its own specific portfolio of long-lasting technical expertise in areas like data analysis, information technology, or hardware development. Therefore, it was obvious to address the challenges by acting in concert. This was the main motivation in 2010 for the launch of a joint project among the partners called the “High Data Rate Processing and Analysis Initiative (HDRI).” The initiative is organized into three basic work packages: “Data Management,” “Real-time Data Processing,” and “Data Analysis, Modelling, and Simulation.” The aim is to carry out the development of methods, hardware components, and software for data acquisition, real-time and offline analysis, documentation and archiving, and for remote access to data. The solutions are finally meant to be integrated at the various experimental stations and thus have to be versatile and flexible to cope with the heterogeneous requirements of the different experiments. The claim to create standard solutions makes it mandatory to closely collaborate with large international activities in the field of data handling, like the European PaNdata project (see article in this issue), but also with vendors of detectors, data evaluation software, etc., as well as with corresponding standardization bodies.     

Discovering and “rediscovering” the W boson

One of the first publications by the ATLAS collaboration using data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN dealt with the measurement of the production cross section of the W boson. The collaboration “rediscovered” the W in order to, among other things, check whether the detector and analysis methods were working well. Originally, the discovery of the W had been announced in 1983 by the CERN management, referring mainly to work done by its UA1 collaboration. In both the discovery and the “rediscovery”, the convergence of two distinct sets of criteria of data selection was an important concern of the researchers. In 1983, this concern figured prominently in the published paper whereas in 2010 it was mainly dealt with inside the collaboration.     

The elemental composition of Stradivari's musical instruments: new results through non‐invasive EDXRF analysis

During recent decades, many researchers have tried to understand the main influences on the extraordinary sound and beauty of the masterpieces made by the ancient violin makers. This is still a challenge for many others today. Mainly because of a lack of written historical documents, the rediscovery of some of the ancient violin‐making processes was made possible thanks to scientific analyses performed on their materials by means of diagnostic techniques. However, understanding which substances were adopted is a very hard task, because the analyses are influenced by many factors: for example, alterations, wear, retouches, and the heterogeneity of materials. This paper presents some new EDXRF results collected on eight‐stringed musical instruments made by Antonio Stradivari between 1669 and 1734 (“Clisbee” 1669, “Hellier” 1679, “Ford‐Rougemont” 1703, “Joachim‐Ma” 1714, “Russian Federation” viola 1715, “Cremonese” 1715, “Vesuvius” 1727, and “Scotland” 1734) and now preserved at the Museo del Violino in Cremona. A brief comparison with a modern violin made by Simone Ferdinando Sacconi (“Hellier copy” 1941), one of the most eminent violin makers of the 20th century and one of the greatest experts on Stradivari's work, is also provided. This represents the first comparative analysis of a wide number of ancient musical instruments made by the same violin maker over an extended period. A non‐destructive and non‐invasive approach was followed to (a) understand the elemental composition differences between the best conserved and most worn‐out surfaces; (b) check if there are elemental similarities among the finishing materials of violins made in different years by the same violin maker; (c) give new suggestions about the materials used. To distinguish the best conserved areas from the worn‐out ones, a preliminary investigation by UV‐induced fluorescence photography was performed. In addition, stereomicroscopic observations and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analyses were performed on selected areas to validate the hypotheses. The results, in some cases comparable with previous research on Stradivari instruments, have increased the pool of information about materials and treatments adopted in the Stradivari workshop.     

T.E.M. study of Al2O3 metastable phases

Plasma spraying was employed to obtain rapidly solidified dense metastable alumina samples. They have been studied after being sprayed and in various annealed states by transmission electron microscopy and X-ray powder diffraction.

The so-called “γ” phase has been imaged by T.E.M. and exhibits a more or less ordered domain structure with quasi-periodic 1/4 <110> antiphase boundaries in the {100} planes of the defective spinel lattice.

Heating “γ” between 850 and 1050°C leads to more ordered intermediate phases. They are shown to appear through a two-dimensional antiphase periodic boundaries mechanism. Aluminum vacant sites are likely located along the antiphase planes and their concentration (Al_2.66□_0.33O₄) is consistent with the observed periodicities. The “δ” and “θ” forms are considered as variants of this structure.     

The effect of activity-based nanoscience and nanotechnology education on pre-service science teachers’ conceptual understanding

The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of activity-based nanoscience and nanotechnology education (ABNNE) on pre-service science teachers’ (PST’) conceptual understanding of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Within this context, the study was conducted according to mixed methods research with the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods. The participants were 32 PST who were determined by using criterion sampling that is one of the purposive sampling methods. ABNNE was carried out during 7 weeks as 2 h per week in special issues at physics course. Design and implementation of ABNNE were based on “Big Ideas” which was found in literature and provided guidance for teaching nanoscience and nanotechnology. All activities implemented during ABNNE were selected from literature. “Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Concept Test (NN-CT)” and “Activity-Based Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Education Assessment Form (ABNNE-AF)” were used as data collection tools in research. Findings obtained with data collection tools were discussed with coverage of literature. The findings revealed that PST conceptual understanding developed following ABNNE. Various suggestions for increasing PST conceptual understanding of nanoscience and nanotechnology were presented according to the results of the study.     

Decreased crystallinlty of hydrocellulose I during alkali-catalyzed depolymerization

When cotton hydrocellulose I is extracted with refluxing aqueous 0.6 M sodium hydrogen carbonate, alkali-catalyzed depolymerization occurs, causing a 40% loss of weight. An overall decrease in x-ray diffractive crystal-Unity of the residue has been previously reported. However, since degradation is presumed to occur preferentially in a less-ordered or “amorphous” domain of the polymer, an increase in crystallinity would have been expected. We have now shown that a diminished crystallinity index is exhibited by replicate samples, but does not occur during refluxing in the absence of alkali. Furthermore, it is not an artifact caused by drying conditions or by environmental or instrumental instability during measuring. The anomalous change in crystallinity may be accounted for by an increase in the ratio of surface area to volume of crystallites during degradation. A higher ratio would necessarily produce a decrease in crystallinity through an enhanced contribution from the disordered surface component to the scattering. Experimental evidence for this hypothesis is provided by the decrease now found in the effective lateral crystallite dimension perpendicular to the 002 plane.     

Nonlinear structural identification by the “Reverse Path” spectral method

When dealing with nonlinear dynamical systems, it is important to have efficient, accurate and reliable tools for estimating both the linear and nonlinear system parameters from measured data. An approach for nonlinear system identification widely studied in recent years is “Reverse Path”. This method is based on broad-band excitation and treats the nonlinear terms as feedback forces acting on an underlying linear system. Parameter estimation is performed in the frequency domain using conventional multiple-input–multiple-output or multiple-input–single-output techniques. This paper presents a generalized approach to apply the method of “Reverse Path” on continuous mechanical systems with multiple nonlinearities. The method requires few spectral calculations and is therefore suitable for use in iterative processes to locate and estimate structural nonlinearities. The proposed method is demonstrated in both simulations and experiments on continuous nonlinear mechanical structures. The results show that the method is effective on both simulated as well as experimental data.     

Collaboration range: Effects of geographical proximity on article impact

Spatial scientometrics studies how geography influences knowledge creation. In the recent years there has been a surge in this kind of studies, due to the increase of international collaborations. Most of the work in this field has been focused on the geographical distribution of researchers, whilst few have considered how proximity between coauthors influences research quality. In this work we leverage a dataset of geolocalized articles to assess the effect of geographical distance on article impact. More precisely, the dataset, provided by the Observatory of Science and Technology (O.S.T.), consists of roughly 10⁶ scientific articles, gathering all European articles written in 2000 and 2007, spanning 9 disciplines. We evaluate under which geographical extent coauthorships have higher probability of resulting in high impact articles (“high impact” is here approximated by “being in the top 10% most cited articles of its discipline”). We also describe spatial distribution of coauthorship, delineating geographical areas where the production is proportionally higher. The distribution is evaluated both in term of km (as the crow flies), and in terms of administrative partitions (authors’ cities, regions, countries).     

Second-order phase transitions and Ehrenfest equation for strained solids

The equations describing the second-order phase transitions at the hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic pressures are considered. It is shown that the proportionality coefficient between an “effective” volume and the true one V^??=?AV is inversely proportional to the compressibility of the solid at a uniaxial pressure and has a jump at the second-order phase transition. In the case of the non-hydrostatic pressure the “effective” volume of the solid is not a continuous function of temperature and has a jump at the phase transition as well. The Ehrenfest equation is generalized to the solids with an arbitrary homogeneous elastic deformation accompanied by change of the solid volume, in particular, to the solid strained by the uniaxial, biaxial or triaxial pressure. It is shown that the sum of the derivatives of the phase transition temperature with respect to uniaxial pressures applied along axes a, b, c does not coincide with the derivative of the phase transition temperature with respect to the hydrostatic pressure.     

无机纳米发光材料研究展望:如何走出自己的舒适区?

无机纳米发光材料由于其独特的发光性质,具有广泛的应用前景。本文结合作者的科研经历,展望了无机纳米发光材料未来的发展机遇和挑战,聚焦该领域前沿“痛点”和“冷门”,探讨研究工作如何面向国家重大需求。倡议科学家应走出自己的研究舒适区,树立自己的标签性工作,共同推进无机纳米发光材料研究的可持续发展。     

Simulated migration and reaction of correlated point defects

Monte Carlo techniques are applied to defect migration in the vicinity of a fixed reaction volume. Intended to simulate “stage I_D ” annealing of correlated interstitials and vacancies in fcc metals, large reaction spheres of up to 720 atomic volume are employed, with mobile defects in the (100) split configuration symmetrically diffusing from maximum distances of more than twice the capture radius r ₀ and for a maximum of 100 jumps. This discrete approach and continuum theory are judged to be equally valid. Random walk recovery probabilities are not a smooth function of initial distance r, but fQr large reaction volumes agree with continuum theory nearly as well for r ～ r ₀ as for r > 2r ₀. Absolute agreement is improved as the “dumbbell” separation of the split defect is increased. Recovery due to an extended distribution of defects is obtained by weighting individual walks from distances < 3r ₀: the resulting composite annealing curves disallow observation of structure and compare favorably with resistivity data. The number of symmetric random walk jumps N required to reach the maximum rate of correlated recovery-the “I_D peak”-is found for a wide range of initial distributions, the best parameter estimates for Cu giving N = 50 ± 15. This value and resistivity data give N for the uncorrelated recovery peak in agreement with theory. One dimensional migration is excluded by these results.     

Macromolecular Crystallography

A recent survey in a crystallography newsletter** Crystallography Times, a monthly eNewsletter from Rigaku Corporation, Sept. 23, 2015 edition. stated, “In the good old days, researchers had to travel to the synchrotron to collect data and stay up all night at the beamline…. The synchrotron trip was considered a right of passage to becoming a full-fledged crystallographer. Today, with FedEx crystallography, most students never visit a synchrotron. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” And two of the possible answers were: “The all night synchrotron runs separated the wheat from the chaff and were a valuable way for PIs to discover which students were really serious,” and “People who miss the ‘good old days’ need to retire.” Although meant to be humorous, this survey captures a very real change in the last decade in both the technique of protein crystallography and the attitudes about the experiment.     

Solvable and/or Integrable and/or Linearizable N-Body Problems in Ordinary (Three-Dimensional) Space. I

Abstract

Several N -body problems in ordinary (3-dimensional) space are introduced which are characterized by Newtonian equations of motion (“acceleration equal force;” in most cases, the forces are velocity-dependent) and are amenable to exact treatment (“solvable” and/or “integrable” and/or “linearizable”). These equations of motion are always rotation-invariant, and sometimes translation-invariant as well. In many cases they are Hamiltonian, but the discussion of this aspect is postponed to a subsequent paper. We consider “few-body problems” (with, say, N =1,2,3,4,6,8,12,16,...) as well as “many-body problems” (N an arbitrary positive integer). The main focus of this paper is on various techniques to uncover such N -body problems. We do not discuss the detailed behavior of the solutions of all these problems, but we do identify several models whose motions are completely periodic or multiply periodic, and we exhibit in rather explicit form the solutions in some cases.     

Opportunities with Synchrotron Radiation at the Mesoscale

What is mesoscale science? The modifier “meso” can mean different things to different communities. In many areas of science, “mesoscale” generally refers to a middle-ground domain of length, energy, or time where theories accurate at both lower and higher scales fail. In materials science, for example, mesoscale behavior often rises when quantum behavior begins to fade, collective effects become important, or statistical variation and defects appear, often at length scales larger than a few nm. However, for atmospheric scientists and ecologists, mesoscale means miles. For meterologists, mesoscale means hundreds to thousands of miles. The mesoscale arena for cosmologists is many light-years across.     

Excellence – energy – ethics

Dear pss readers, As the previous year approached its end, news on three excellent prize winnings and nominations of pss authors and editors reached us: Gerhard Abstreiter of TU Munich will receive the Stern–Gerlach Medal 2014, the highest prize of the German Physical Society for experimental physics, honoring his work on low‐dimensional electron systems in semiconductor hetero‐ and nanostructures. His Review@RRL on InGaAs nanowires on silicon is opening the 2014 volume of pss (RRL) [1]. It is a welcome addition to our recent successful Focus Issue on Semiconductor Nanowires [2]. Our long‐term Editorial Advisory Board member, Wiley author and Guest Editor, Rainer Waser of RWTH Aachen and Research Centre Jülich, is one of the 11 winners of the highly prestigious Leibniz Prize for his outstanding research on nanoelectronics, especially oxides, ferroelectrics and resistive switching [3, 4]. Last but not least, one of the three nominated teams for the German Future Prize has been led by Wolfgang Schnick , LMU Munich, and Peter J. Schmidt , Philips Lumileds Aachen. Their groundbreaking work on new phosphor materials in white light emitting diodes (LEDs) for solid‐state lighting [5] goes back to a highly‐cited pss (a) article from 2005 [6] (see figure). The technology is now being commercialized and expected to enable energy savings on a grand scale in the coming years. Speaking of energy, research results related to this global challenge have been important throughout the year, touching areas such as thermoelectrics [7], efficiency of organic LEDs [8] and photovoltaics [9]. The latter field is even better represented since the recent introduction of our section rrl solar, covering solar cell materials or device development and characterization (see Editorial [10]). The full‐paper sister journals pss (a) and (b) presented an unprecedented number of high‐profile special issues in 2013 [11–15]. With heartfelt gratitude we look back onto fruitful collaboration with highly engaged guest editors, who helped bring to light issues such as the “Advanced Concepts for Silicon Based Photovoltaics” [11], the “Quantum Criticality and Novel Phases” [12], the “Disorder in Order: A special issue on amorphous materials” [13], the “Substrate Interactions in Heterogeneous Catalysis” [14], and the “Quantum Transport at the Molecular Scale” [15] among other interesting topical issues and sections. Both contributors and fine articles are too numerous to do justice to all of them here. We must restrict ourselves to a general invitation to browse this content, only hinting a few possible starting points, such as topological insulators [16], molecular electronics [17] and quantum phase transitions [18].

     

The effect of clamped and free boundaries on long range strain coupling in structural phase transitions

In ferroelastic structural phase transitions, the atomic ordering in one cell creates a local strain field which is propagated elastically throughout the material, resulting in an effective or indirect coupling J(R _ij ) between the ordering in cells i and j. With free boundaries on the sample, the J(R _ij ) contains a Zener-Eshelby term J _Z of infinite range, which largely determines the transition temperature T _c. The present paper shows what happens when the boundaries are clamped. On cooling from a high temperature an anomaly takes place at more or less the same temperature as the phase transition for free boundaries. Cooling results in an irregular pattern of domains with positive and negative order parameter whose long range strains cancel. Two cases are distinguished. In the “tweed” case coherent domain boundaries form easily and result in fine lamellar domains. When coherent domain boundaries are not possible (the “non-Sapriel”) case, larger less regular domains are formed. In either case the macroscopic net strain adds up to zero.     

Digital color holography applied to fluid and structural mechanics

In various domains such as acoustics, vibrations or fluid mechanics, non-invasive metrological tools, giving full-field measurements with very high spatial and temporal resolutions, need to be developed to validate the models and/or numerical simulations of the studied phenomena. In this way, ONERA and LAUM have developed optical real-time methods based on three-wavelength digital holographic interferometry to analyze either unsteady wake flows or vibrating kinematics or complex fields. These digital color holographic methods aim at avoiding panchromatic holographic plates and their related constraints. In the domain of fluids mechanics, an interferometric set-up is presented to generate micro fringes from the observed area. The data are processed thanks to direct and inverse Fourier transforms to obtain a gas density field and to study its evolution in time. In structural mechanics, a versatile interferometric imaging set-up, based on digital Fresnel holography, is presented. These new optical imaging methods result in full-field measurements with a high spatial resolution. This research ultimately aims at analyzing, in time, unsteady complex wake flows, vibrating kinematics and acoustic fields. A few examples are given and the possibilities and limits of these methods are discussed.     

Elastic 3He scattering from even Ar isotopes and backward-angle anomalies in the systematics of elastic 3He scattering

Angular distributions have been measured for ³He elastic scattering from ^{36, 38, 40}Ar at 26.5 MeV and from ³⁶Ar and ⁴⁰Ca at energies between 24.5 and 28 MeV. This scattering clearly shows features of “anomalous” backward-angle scattering, which is discussed in the systematics of ³He scattering from heavier target nuclei. The data for “anomalous” scattering can be described by optical potentials which show features significantly different from those of “normal” scattering. These features are smaller radius parameters for the real optical potential and a strongly reduced volume integral for the imaginary potential.     

A Solvable N-body Problem of Goldfish Type Featuring N2 Arbitrary Coupling Constants

A N-body problem “of goldfish type” is introduced, the Newtonian (“acceleration equal force”) equations of motion of which describe the motion of N pointlike unit-mass particles moving in the complex z-plane. The model—for arbitrary N—is solvable, namely its configuration (positions and velocities of the N “particles”) at any later time t can be obtained from its configuration at the initial time by algebraic operations. It features specific nonlinear velocity-dependent many-body forces depending on N² arbitrary (complex) coupling constants. Sufficient conditions on these constants are identified which cause the model to be isochronous—so that all its solutions are then periodic with a fixed period independent of the initial data. A variant with twice as many arbitrary coupling constants, or even more, is also identified.