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Diamond are pleased to announce that they will be hosting the 10th International Workshop on X-Ray Spectroscopy of Magnetic Solids (XRMS10).
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On Monday 11th January, Tim Stevenson OBE, Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, launched Science in a new light, an exhibition of science and art taking place at the North Wall Arts Centre in Summertown.
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On Friday 8th January 2010 Diamond became the proud owner of a new instrument that will enhance the capabilities of the facility’s surface and interfaces research village, enabling more complicated and sensitive experiments.
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MX beamlines are extremely powerful instruments for solving the structure of proteins. There are nearly 100 operational Macromolecular Crystallography (MX) beamlines around the world, and being able to accurately calibrate them is vital to ensuring the accuracy of the data they collect. Scientists from Diamond have shown that an unusual calibration standard – beeswax – may be able to help this happen. This work has been published in the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation.
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The first experimental station to use InfraRed light at the UK’s national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, has now started operation.
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Breaks in DNA cause a cascade of intercellular responses including the activation of the Mre11/Rad50/Nbs1 (MRN) complex. This complex attaches itself to the strand break point and holds the broken ends in close proximity to one another ready for rejoining.
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A critical step involved in regulating the cytoskeleton and cell signalling is the activation of Rho guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases), initiated by the exchange of guanine diphosphate (GDP) for guanosine triphosphate (GTP), a process catalysed by guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs). Here structural research provides us with evidence that a nucleotide sensor on the GEF DOCK9 is intrinsic to the release of guanine diphosphate (GDP) from the Rho-family GTPase Cdc42. This nucleotide ...
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It is with great pleasure that we announce the making of our core Data Acquisition framework "Open Source".
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Assistant Professor of Engineering at the University of Warwick School of Engineering, Dr Joanna Collingwood, has been elected as Chair by the members of the newly formed Diamond User Committee.
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Porous materials are important in a wide range of applications including catalysis and storage of gases such as carbon dioxide, a major contributor to climate change. Finding new ways to synthesise these materials will enable more control over their properties and performance. A group from the University of Liverpool has developed a technique for assembling prefabricated organic cage structures into crystalline materials where controlling how the cages connect determines whether the material ...
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Orthovanadates have recently emerged as promising optical materials for birefringent solid-state laser applications. They can be also used in a number of applications including cathodoluminescent materials, thermophosphors, scintillators, and nuclear waste storage. Given the technological importance of zircon-type orthovanadates, their electronic and optical properties have been extensively studied but their mechanical properties, which are of interest in several areas of materials research, ...
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Today (5th Nov 2009) over 80 students from across Oxfordshire and beyond attended a careers day that focused on the wide range of exciting opportunities that exist for engineers in the UK.
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Rotaxanes are tiny molecular structures where a central straight molecule passes through a macrocycle, making a molecular machine in the shape of an axle inside a wheel. Bulky stoppers at either end of the straight molecules keep the wheel on the axle. These molecular machines have the potential to be used as molecular shuttles by moving the wheel along the axle, which is of interest for nanoscale electronic components and also in biology, where many biochemical functions are based on ...
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How can a disease that affects one species such as birds transfer to another such as humans? In the case of influenza, the answer could lie in a protein called hemagglutinin – the part of the flu virus that binds it to human cells when a person is infected. In the twentieth century there were three flu pandemics in 1918, 1957 and 1968. Scientists from the Medical Research Council have been using Diamond to study the structure of hemagglutinin from the virus strain that caused the 1957 ...
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EphA4 is a protein which is attached to the surfaces of many types of human cells and plays a role in a wide range of biological processes. EphA4 functions by binding to ephrin ligands, cell surface proteins which sit on opposing cells. The signalling cascades which result from this contact direct cells to move in a particular direction, to the right place in the body. This is critical in the development of the nervous system, and has also been linked with the suppression of melanoma tumours.
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On Monday 12th October, a team of scientists from the University of Bath became the first researchers to use the UK’s national synchrotron facility’s latest experimental station (I07).
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Why recognising sex pheromone components of the silkworm moth at the scale of atoms and molecules impacts on eco friendly agriculture.
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Understanding how viruses such as HIV function is vital in the search for more effective antiviral medicines, as well as opening up novel possibilities in gene therapy. A collaborative study involving researchers from Imperial College London, Yale University, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, led by Dr. Peter Cherepanov from the Division of Medicine at Imperial took advantage of Diamond’s I02 and I04 macromolecular crystallography beamlines to reveal important mechanistic aspects of ...
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Since the Stone Age humans have been adept at selecting materials for specific tasks based on the material’s properties. With the discovery of smelting man learned to manipulate materials to improve performance. Now new materials can be “built” on a nm scale with properties that are required for a host of applications, from solar cells to catalysts in industrial process.
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The self-assembly of peptides into fibrils is commonly observed. Such fibrils may have biological roles and may also be useful in nanotechnology applications, as scaffolds to create metal nanowires or to template the self-assembly of other inorganic materials, for biosensors or as supports for cell adhesion. The misfolding of proteins into so-called amyloid fibrils is also implicated in amyloid diseases such as Alzheimer’s and type II diabetes. It has been suggested that amyloid fibrils are ...
