March 2022 ESRFnews 11

NEWS

ESRF co-hosts global synchrotron school In December, students from across the world attended a school held virtually on synchrotron light sources and their applications via the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. Co-organised by the ESRF and four other institutions, the school saw students come to learn about the design, operation and research opportunities offered at modern synchrotron light sources and how such sources are realised. Held over two weeks, the course was broken up into the physical aspects of synchrotrons, the arguments in favour of building them and common synchrotron light-source techniques.

The ESRF has appointed two new directors of research. For five years starting from 1 January this year, Gema Martínez-Criado took over from Harald Reichert with a remit of condensed matter and physical and material sciences, while Annalisa Pastore took over from Jean Susini to focus on life sciences, chemistry and soft-matter science. The ESRF Council approved the appointments unanimously , and acknowledged that both of these positions [are] being filled by female candidates of high calibre [who will] continue to lead, in the coming years, the efforts required to fully capitalise on the world-leading performances of the EBS storage ring and suite of beamlines . (See Portrait, p24.)

New directors step up

M D U R IN G

Former ESRF post-doctoral researchers Ilya Kupenko and Tilman Grünewald have been awarded starting grants from the European Research Council for work at the ESRF. Based at the University of Münster in Germany, Kupenko is aiming to combine high-pressure, high-temperature experiments with various synchrotron techniques at the ID14, ID15B, ID27 and ID28 beamlines to understand the composition of the Earth s core. I need a really small beam with high flux, and ID14 will provide me with exactly that, he says. Meanwhile, Grünewald, who is based at the CNRS/Centrale Marseille Institut Fresnel at Aix-Marseille University in France, will employ the ID13 and ID15A beamlines to develop a new technique, texture tomography , for the study of biomineralisation (see p19).

Users bag ERC grants

seasons. In the outermost rings, cell density and volume were in the midst of increasing but had not yet peaked, implying that death came in the early part of the feeding year. Carbon isotope analysis confirmed that there was not enough carbon-13 from the intake of zooplankton the main food source of the fish as would be expected for the climax of feeding in summer. Growth abruptly stopped in spring, says Dennis Voeten of Uppsala University (Nature DOI: 10.1038/ s41586-022-04446-1). During spring in the northern

hemisphere, the reproduction cycles of many organisms would have been just starting. At the same time in the southern hemisphere, however, it would have been autumn, when many organisms would have been preparing to hibernate over winter. Sheltering in caves or burrows could have been why some species managed to survive into the Paleogene. Our results will help to uncover why most of the dinosaurs died out while birds and early mammals managed to avoid extinction, says Melanie During (above) of Uppsala University and VU Amsterdam.

Dinosaurs doomed in spring The meteorite that led to the extinction of nearly all dinosaurs struck Earth during a northern hemisphere springtime, according to ESRF data. The discovery could help scientists work out why some groups of animals survived the event while others did not. Around 66 million years ago, the

Chicxulub meteorite crashed into the Earth, in what today is the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, marking the end of the Cretaceous period. While it led to the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs, flying reptiles and most marine reptiles, many mammals, birds, crocodiles and turtles managed to survive. Palaeontologists believe the precise timing of the meteor strike could be the reason for the selectivity. To investigate, a team of scientists

from VU Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Uppsala University in Sweden and the ESRF performed high- resolution X-ray tomography at the ESRF s BM05 beamline of the fossilised bones of fish that were entombed in the meteorite s aftermath. The bones exhibited annual rings of growth, as well as finer changes in microstructure that marked the changing of the

Our results will help to uncover why birds and mammals managed to avoid extinction