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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