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It was with great excitement and anticipation that almost 2,000 visitors arrived at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility, to take part in a special series of Inside Diamond open days, held to mark the facility’s 10th Anniversary.
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The first researchers to use the new Oxford Instruments high-field superconducting magnet at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility, are searching for “hidden magnetic states”. If found, they will provide important confirmation of a theoretical model which could have important applications in magnetic data storage. Diamond’s BLADE beamline is providing them with the tools for the search.
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Stitching, sculpture and slug-like aliens all formed part of a special 10th Anniversary event that was on Friday 11th May at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility, on the Harwell Science & Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
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For our tenth anniversary celebrations we will be holding open days for the public on the 16th, 17th and 19th June 2012.
Inside Diamond is a series of public events, welcoming visitors to Diamond to meet our scientists, find out about the exciting work taking place here, and have a tour of the synchrotron itself.
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Water, essential to life… or is it?
Proteins are large biological molecules that are synonymous with living things. They allow us to convert food into energy, supply oxygen to our blood and muscles, and drive our immune systems.
It is the general understanding that since proteins have evolved in a water-rich environment, they are dependent on water to survive and function. Researchers at the University of Bristol have used the Circular Dichroism beamline (B23) at Diamond Light Source to ...
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The traditional picture of comets as cold, icy, unchanging bodies throughout their history is being reappraised in the light of analyses of dust grains from Comet Wild2. A team led by the University of Leicester has detected the presence of iron in a dust grain, evidence of space weathering that could explain the rusty reddish colour of Wild2’s outer surface. The results were presented by Dr John Bridges at the National Astronomy Meeting in Manchester on Tuesday 27th March
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Diamond, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility and one of Oxfordshire’s flagship science institutes, was formed a decade ago, on the 27th March 2002, when the Wellcome Trust and the UK Government signed the Joint Venture Agreement and Diamond Light Source Ltd was born.
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A doughnut-shaped scientific building in the Oxfordshire countryside provided the unusual inspiration for a new international science fiction prize as the names of the winners are revealed this week by its organisers Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility.
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In October 2010, a dam failure at an aluminium producing plant in western Hungary released around one million cubic metres of toxic red sludge into nearby towns and villages and across agricultural land. The sludge was a mixture of water and mining waste containing heavy metals and was deemed a threat to the environment by Hungarian officials. A large cleanup operation ensued. A team from the University of Leeds has used Diamond’s Microfocus Spectroscopy beamline, I18, to study samples of ...
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Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility and one of Oxfordshire’s flagship science institutes, is celebrating its 10th Anniversary in 2012. A special programme of events are planned to mark this milestone and a number of them took place as part of the 2012 Oxfordshire Science Festival, which ran from the 3rd-18th March.
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Scientists from across the European Union are calling Oxfordshire home thanks to the pull of Diamond Light Source.
The UK’s national synchrotron science facility is based at Harwell and, while the majority of staff are from the UK, it employs scientists from around the world, including workers from more than half the EU member states.
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A new theory developed by Prof Gerrit van der Laan, from the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and Diamond Light Source, and published this week in the journal Physical Review Letters, provides a powerful sum rule that scientists can use to explore the properties of novel materials, such as those used for spintronics devices. Such materials require constant refinement of their physical qualities in order to keep up with the rapid advancement in a wide range of technologies, ...
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G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the single most important drug target in the body because they are central to so many biological processes. Gaining a better understanding of how GPCRs operate will help scientists develop novel strategies to modulate their activity, potentially affecting their role in diseases such as Parkinson’s or conditions such as insomnia.
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Killer T-cells in the human body which help protect us from disease can inadvertently destroy cells that produce insulin, new research has uncovered.
The study, which is based on experimental data collected at Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire, provides the first evidence of this mechanism in action and could offer new understanding of the cause of Type 1 diabetes.
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Diamond Light Source has recently played a key role in helping to reveal the exact structure of the most complex non-DNA molecular knot prepared to date.
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Diamond Light Source is inviting the public to vote for their favourite Flash Fiction short story, as part of its Light Reading story writing competition.
Supporting Oxford’s bid to be UNESCO World Book Capital 2014, Diamond has been encouraging the nation to get creative and write short stories inspired by the synchrotron’s science output and the facility itself.
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Ice cores drilled from the frozen Antarctic landscape are made up of layer upon layer of frozen snow, dating back hundreds of thousands of years. Trapped within the ice are minute dust particles which can yield valuable information on temperature, precipitation, atmospheric composition and volcanic activity, frozen at the time of the snowfall. A group of Italian scientists have been using one of Diamond’s spectroscopy beamlines, B18, and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource to ...
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Diamond’s X-ray Imaging and Coherence beamline has welcomed its first users. Researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield worked with the beamline team to develop techniques on the coherence branch of I13.
Professor John Rodenburg from the University of Sheffield, one of the lead researchers on the project, said, “We were using a variety of samples as a means to test the beamline’s capabilities.
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Artificial heart valves have been used since the 1960s to replace natural heart valves damaged through disease. Each of four valves enables unimpeded blood flow through the heart itself and from the heart to the major arteries. As the heart beats the valve opens and closes, subjecting it to pressure loading and unloading. Artificial heart valves must be able to withstand repeated cycles of tensile loading and unloading in realistic conditions. Scientists from the University of Cambridge and ...
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Diamond Light Source and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) are arming the engineers of tomorrow with the vital skills and experience needed to succeed in the UK job market, as youth unemployment figures hit 1,000,000.
Run by STFC with a third of support from Diamond Light Source, the Advanced Engineering Apprenticeship scheme at STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) has been running for 19 years and is one of the best apprenticeship schemes in the country.
