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NEWS
March 2023 ESRFnews
A project funded by the European
Commission, the UK and Switzerland
to promote research towards a
circular economy opened its first
call to users on 1 March. Open to all
users, academic and industry, the
€15m ReMade@ARI project provides
dedicated assistance from application
to experiment, and encourages the
use of complimentary techniques at
50 analytical research infrastructures
(ARIs), including the ESRF.
ARIs provide users with advanced
characterisation of materials relevant
to circular economies. Operando
and in situ experiments allow users to
see inside manufacturing processes,
and compared with those in normal
laboratories, standard ARI techniques
offer much improved space and
time resolution, chemical speciation
and detection limits. Coordinated
by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-
Rossendorf in Germany, ReMade@
ARI provides tailor-made access for
academic and industry researchers,
as well as training and assistance for
new user groups. The ARIs include
synchrotron light sources, neutron
sources, electron microscopes, ion
and positron beams, and laser and high
magnetic-field facilities. Some 50,000
hours of transnational access is on offer
for research related to electronics, ICT,
batteries, fuel cells, packaging, plastics,
textiles, construction, food, water and
other topics.
Users from small-to-medium
enterprises will be offered a separate
application process, geared towards
fast-track experiments and rapid,
mailin services Another separate
application process is open to
industries in partnership with a
researchandtechnology organisation
RTO and is geared towards longer
more complex experiments involving
multiple sites and possibly operando
and in situ setups For these grants
are available for the RTO to help the
industry
The deadline for applications is 30
April Another call will be issued in six
months See remadeprojecteu
ReMade@ARI opens call
Senior administrators of Israeli science
visited the ESRF on 15 February to
explore recent developments at the light
source, and pay tribute to a relationship
that has lasted nearly 25 years.
David Harel, president of the
Israel Academy of Sciences and
Humanities, and Yoseph Mekori,
chair of the planning and budgeting
committee of the Israeli Council for
Higher Education, led the delegation
from Israel, which became a scientific
associate country of the ESRF in late
1998. Since that time there have been
many successful scientific collab-
orations, and many long-term users,
such as Ada Yonath of the Weizmann
Institute of Science in Rehovot,
who shared the 2009 Nobel prize in
Chemistry, Moshe Deutsch of Bar-Ilan
University, who studies the surface
Israeli delegation visits ESRF
properties of liquid metals, and Boaz
Pokroy of the Technion Israel Institute
of Technology, a materials scientist and
Israel’s current representative on the
ESRF’s science advisory committee.
One recent Israeli collaboration is
that of the Technion and the Nuclear
Research Center Negev within the
Shock BAG, the new community-
driven access mode for those who study
materials under rapid and extreme
loading at the ID19 beamline.
During its visit, the delegation saw
the ID31 beamline for high-energy
studies related to energy, materials
and engineering, the ID29 flagship
beamline for synchrotron serial
crystallography, the ID16A nano-
imaging beamline and the BM18
flagship beamline for hierarchical
phase-contrast tomography.
Left to right: Naomi
Beck, Varda Ben-
Shaul, Itziar
Echeverria, Marek
Karliner, Francesco
Sette, David Harel,
Yoseph Mekori and
Moshe Deutsch.
Bones shown to suffer X-ray damage
X-ray studies of bone should involve
very short exposure times, according
to researchers studying bone radiation
damage at the ESRF and the BESSY II
synchrotron in Berlin, Germany.
Katrein Sauer at the Charité –
Universitätsmedizin Berlin and
colleagues used microcomputed
tomographic imaging at the ESRFs
ID19 beamline and Xray diffraction
mapping and tomography at BESSY
II to analyse the trail of damage left
by Xray radiation in various bone
samples Surprisingly the damage
spread to regions not directly
exposed to the incoming Xrays
Experimental measurements and
computer simulations suggested that
the peripheral damage is caused by
highenergy ionising electrons emitted
by bone crystals and scattering in all
directions, including into regions
of collagen fibres which lend bone
its strength and toughness Nat
Commun 13 7829
This means that caution should
be taken in basic medical research
to ensure that the bone structures of
interest are not damaged the authors
write Xray methods are considered
nondestructive in materials research
but at least for research on bone
tissues this is not completely true
whereas the mineral is more or less
unaffected the adjacent organic
component is not
C H A N T A L A R G O U D
Organic material
within bones can be
affected by Xrays
and the resulting
ionising electrons
S H U T T E R S T O C K/ E A L I S A