Science and Technology Facilities Council Highlights 2012
Edited by Harriet Dingle, Maddy Henney, Jenny Atter, Emily Pritchard, Andrew Pennington and Jane Binks, STFC Communications. Design and layout by Andrew Collins, STFC Media Services. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
Contents It’s a Higgs! ............................................................................4
The Higgs boson - what’s next for the LHC? ........................6
Leading the way in revolutionary research ..........................8
Fathoming the Magic in Stellar Explosions ........................10
A great year for astronomy ................................................12
Astronomy into the future ..................................................14
Watching the weather ........................................................16
Computing leading the way ................................................18
Help feed the World ............................................................20
Improving your aviation experience ..................................22
Towards a cleaner-carbon future ......................................24
Understanding diabetes ......................................................26
Photos ..................................................................................28
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
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SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
Welcome to STFC’s Highlights of 2012 base that the country needs in order to compete effectively in the global knowledge economy.
Every year, STFC delivers world-class research, innovation and skills through our leading edge scientific facilities, our partnerships with UK universities and our international collaborations. Our talented scientists and engineers work effectively with academia, industry and international partners to find solutions to challenges that are facing us all now and into the future, to support jobs and growth through innovation, and to build the scientific and technological
This STFC Highlights brochure captures some of the many successes that our research departments, facilities and funded programmes have delivered over the past 12 months, and shows the variety and excellence of our science. Wherever you look, STFC science is making an impact – it is making a difference to our everyday lives – and this theme is central to everything we do. Two examples show the breadth that this impact can have. Cobalt Light Systems has turned a technique developed at STFC’s Central Laser Facility into a product for airport security screening that could soon help to allow us to safely carry liquids on aeroplanes once again. The discovery earlier this year of a new particle consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider at
CERN (to which STFC pays the UK’s contribution) represented a huge step forward in particle physics, and as a particle physicist, I found this particularly exciting. But it was far more than just an important piece of fundamental science; the discovery generated huge interest among the public, with an audience of over ten million in the UK alone, and CERN was celebrated in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic games. Undergraduate applications for physics are up, and interest in fundamental science is greater than it has been for decades. Of course, it is impossible to bring all of our successes together in the pages of just one Highlights document and I am proud that we have achieved so much in my first year as CEO of this organisation. I know that this trajectory will continue into 2013 and beyond and I am enormously excited to be leading STFC at a time when our work is both so successful and so important.
John Womersley, Chief Executive
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It’s a Higgs! “It’s a boson - These results mark a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the fundamental laws that govern the Universe.” That was the moment on 4 July 2012 that Professor John Womersley, particle physicist and Chief Executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) confirmed that researchers from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, including many British physicists, had found a new particle consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson. Speaking in Westminster at the UK media launch of the discovery, Professor Womersley went on to say: “Obviously having found a new particle, there is still much, much more to do at the LHC – we need to confirm that this new particle is the reason some particles have tangible mass while others are insubstantial, as proposed by Peter Higgs and other scientists, who predicted that a particle like this one must exist for our current understanding of the Universe to work.” The London event was held simultaneously with a seminar held at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, that morning, at which the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented their latest results in the search for the Higgs particle. Both experiments reported strong indications for the presence of a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV. This highly anticipated discovery caused a global media sensation, with scientists and the public alike taking an interest in this elusive particle. CERN operates the world’s largest science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC accelerates protons around a circular tunnel at almost the speed of light. By colliding these beams
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physicists can recreate the conditions that immediately followed after the Big Bang. The high speed collisions break up the protons to create new particles and these events are studied using huge detectors such as ATLAS and CMS. The UK is one of the largest investors of CERN’s 20 Member states. STFC manages the UK’s subscription of around £100 million a year, enabling many UK scientists and engineers to contribute vital hardware, computing and expertise to the LHC. The fundamental particles formed in the LHC make up the Standard Model of particle physics - a ‘theory of almost everything’. The Higgs boson has been a crucial ingredient in the Standard Model since it was theorised by Professor Peter Higgs and others in the 1960s. In the Standard Model it is required that the fundamental particles have no intrinsic mass; they only gain mass through their interaction with the Higgs field. When particles interact with the Higgs field they feel ’drag‘ and this gives them mass. The more particles interact with the field, the more mass they have. For months before the July 2012 announcement, two experiments at the LHC that were looking for the Higgs (ATLAS and CMS) worked in complete isolation from each other so that their results would be demonstrably independent. On 4 July 2012 both the ATLAS and CMS experiments reported results at five sigma. This is the threshold for particle physics discoveries and it describes a 99.99997% confidence that the results did not occur by chance.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
In the months since July, the researchers have been analysing more and more data from the experiments and in December 2012 the latest research findings from the LHC at CERN were reported, showing that the CMS and ATLAS experiments are now showing that the significance of their observation of the Higgs-like particle is standing close to the seven sigma level, well beyond the five required for a discovery, and that the new particle’s properties appear to be consistent with those of a Standard Model Higgs boson.
A simulation of a Higgs boson decay in the CMS experiment. (Credit: CERN)
The Large Hadron Collider 100m below ground 27km in circumference Tunnel interior is an ultra-high vacuum as empty as interplanetary space Colliding lead particles produce temperatures 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the sun concentrated in a miniscule space Magnets are cooled by 10,080 tonnes of liquid nitrogen and 120 tonnes of liquid helium down to -271.3OC (1.9K) – even colder than outer space 600 million proton collisions per second Trillions of protons travel around the accelerator ring 11,245 times a second
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The Higgs boson what’s next for the LHC? “It is a tremendously exciting time to be a particle physicist – it’s a real privilege to be involved in experiments which are shaping mankind’s fundamental understanding of the Universe” Professor Dan Tovey, University of Sheffield So, now that we’ve discovered a Higgs-like particle, what’s next for the Large Hadron Collider, the Higgs boson and particle physics in general? A number of leading UK particle physicists offer their thoughts on some of the next steps that will need to be taken in the complicated world of studying the building blocks of the Universe. Tom Kibble, Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics and Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London was one of the handful of scientists in the 1960s, along with Peter Higgs, to propose that a particle needed to exist to complete the Standard Model. "It is very exciting to find that work I was involved in nearly fifty years ago is once more at the centre of attention. At the time, the
Higgs boson did not seem a very significant feature of the theory, but it has become so as the last missing piece of the 'Standard Model'. Its discovery will complete a chapter, but not the story – the model is amazingly successful, but many features remain to be explained."
task still awaits them. Mapping out the properties of this new particle is the next step, it opens a new era in Particle Physics and will take years more painstaking work. But the stakes could not be higher. The Higgs offers humanity, for the first time, a unique glimpse into why nature is the way it is.”
The fact that so much more still needs to be understood or proven with regards to the Standard Model is a challenge that particle physicists are relishing.
This view is echoed by Professor Valentin Khoze, Director of Durham University’s Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP). Professor Khoze described the discovery as ‘…a triumph for particle physics.’
Professor Themis Bowcock, Head of Particle Physics at the University of Liverpool reiterates that this result came on the back of many decades work by many people but there is still much to do: “Half a century after it was first proposed, and after a monumental effort by generations of physicists around the world, the discovery of the Higgs represents a major breakthrough in our fundamental understanding of nature. For physicists, this is the equivalent of Columbus discovering America. “Physicists have laboured for decades to reach this goal but a huge Simulated Higgs event to four muons (Credit: CERN)
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SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
However he goes on to say that, “The second part of the story about the Higgs particle is even more exciting as it provides us with a window to new Physics - a tool for the exploration of the truly unknown. The next stage will be a detailed and careful study of its properties. Successful completion of this second stage will bring us closer to uncovering new physics, explaining dark matter and other mysteries of the Universe.” The potential secondary applications that may be derived in the future from the work of the teams at the LHC is one of the most exciting aspects of what is happening at CERN according to Dan Tovey, Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Sheffield and head of their team working on the ATLAS collaboration at CERN.
Professor Tovey believes that “The main reason we do this pure research is because we want to understand how the Universe works. Nevertheless this work will inevitably lead to more tangible benefits for society. It’s just the same as when JJ Thomson discovered the electron in 1897, heralding the development of the field of electronics and a myriad of applications.” “We can’t say yet what direct applications the Higgs boson will have, however it has always been the case that fundamental research generates spin-off applications. Examples include the web, grid computing and advanced sensors for medical imaging.”
The latest results from the CMS and ATLAS teams were published in December 2012 and report that further analysis of the data, and a probable combination of both experiments’ data in 2013, will be required before some key properties of the new Higgs-like particle, such as its spin, can be determined conclusively. The focus of the analysis has now moved from discovery to measurement of the new particle in its individual decay channels. Meanwhile, in addition to the spectacular discovery of a Higgslike particle in July, the LHC experiments have led to many other studies improving our understanding of fundamental matter.
In Spring 2013, the LHC will go into a long maintenance stop until the end of 2014. Running will resume in 2015 with increased collision energy of 13 TeV and another increase in luminosity. These more intense beams will mean a greater number of collisions than can be currently produced and a better chance of observing rare phenomena. So as Peter Higgs said at the announcement earlier this year: “In one sense, it is the end of the road, but in another it’s the beginning of where machines like the LHC go next.”
www.cern.ch www.particlephysics.ac.uk
UK Media coverage Broadcast media: 12 million viewers watched coverage of the announcement on television Key news story on BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Newsround (CBBC) and Newsnight 14 million listened to local and national radio coverage Print coverage: Front page coverage from The Guardian, The Independent, ‘I’, The Times, The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times Over 1000 articles in three days
Professor Peter Higgs at CERN. (Credit: CERN)
Social Media Mentioned approximately every second at height of excitement 8 out of 10 Twitter trending topics Higgs related Over 7.5 million Facebook mentions
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Leading the way in revolutionary research A particle accelerator that could revolutionise cancer treatment and make safer nuclear power might sound like a pipe dream, but STFC’s Accelerator Science and Technology Centre (ASTeC) are striving to achieve just that.
The Electron Model of Many Applications.
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EBTF at Daresbury Laboratory.
The Electron Model for Many Applications (EMMA) is the first accelerator of its kind anywhere in the world. EMMA manipulates an electron beam trajectory such that the particle orbit is compressed inside a doughnut shaped vacuum chamber: this means that its physical footprint can be much smaller than a conventional cyclotron. EMMA utilises an innovative Non-Scaling Fixed Field Alternating Gradient (NS-FFAG) acceleration process, which for the very first time has shown that such a compact machine actually works. Charged-particle accelerators are vital for many cutting-edge research projects, from large scale, multinational research facilities, such as the 26 km circumference Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, to the few centimetres long accelerators used for radiotherapy cancer treatment and cargo scanning applications. EMMA has caused a stir in the scientific community, primarily
Prime Minister David Cameron.
because of its potential to revolutionise cancer treatment. By utilising the same NS-FFAG acceleration process, proton and carbon versions of the same compact accelerator will make it much easier to target hard to reach tumours through a more flexible beam delivery process, making it ideally suited for installation in a hospital environment. As well as therapeutic applications, it is hoped that the technology developed to build EMMA can be harnessed for use in future nuclear reactors. Such reactors would be inherently much safer, as the fission reaction mechanism can be immediately stopped, simply by switching off the drive accelerator. EMMA isn’t the only research accelerator at Daresbury Laboratory: in August 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron announced a £10 m investment for the Laboratory for scientific computing and accelerator technology developments. With this part
EMMA at Daresbury Laboratory.
funding, researchers have designed a linear electron accelerator - the Electron Beam Test Facility (EBTF). Linear electron accelerators are used to achieve high energy acceleration in a short length. EBTF is one of the leading accelerators of this type, as it has a high beam flexibility and tunability, making it a unique facility for applications development. EBTF’s goal is to bridge the gap between prototypes and market ready products by promoting faster and more efficient commercialised demonstration. Linear accelerators are used in a number of research areas, from medical therapy to security imaging and nuclear waste disposal. Cutting edge research tools such as EMMA and EBTF help to keep the UK at the forefront of world leading science and allow research into areas previously inaccessible, opening up new doors to the unknown.
www.stfc.ac.uk/astec
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Fathoming the Magic in Stellar Explosions UK expertise was at the heart of a major milestone in our understanding of the structure and behaviour of rare atomic nuclei. than any other gamma detector,” says Professor Paddy Regan of the University of Surrey. “Without it we simply couldn’t have conducted the experiment, which revealed that tin-100’s speed of decay is the fastest of its kind yet observed.”
Fast-spinning neutron star (Credit: NASA/Dana Berry)
Stars are extraordinary places where extraordinary things happen. Take ‘X-ray bursters’, binary systems typically consisting of a red giant and a neutron star that sucks matter from its companion. The accumulation of matter on the surface of the neutron star results in explosions which are thought to produce highly unstable nuclei passing even beyond the highly exotic doubly magic nucleus 100-Sn in extreme conditions. The properties of these unstable nuclei govern how the nuclear reactions that happen during the explosion occur. Understanding this process of decay will therefore provide a better grasp not just of the internal structure of atomic nuclei but also of how elements are processed in stars. So when, in June, an international team working at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion
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Research in Darmstadt, Germany, announced that they had successfully performed the first ever experiment to study the radioactive decay of tin-100, it represented an important step forward for nuclear physics. Never before has such a heavy element with a nucleus comprising equal numbers of protons and neutrons been studied in this way. The UK has been at the forefront of this pioneering work. In addition to STFC support for the participation of scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Surrey, the Nuclear Physics Group at Daresbury Laboratory collaborated with the University of Liverpool on the design and development of RISING, the ground-breaking gamma-ray detector used in the experiment. “RISING delivers much higher efficiency and greater precision
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
This finding has important implications. According to the nuclear shell model of atomic nuclei, protons and neutrons are arranged in concentric ‘shells’. Some elements have a ‘magic number’ of particles that gives them a complete outer shell. One of these magic numbers is 50 – and tin-100 has 50 protons and 50 neutrons, making it doubly magic and extremely rare. “The results of our experiment showed that tin-100’s ‘magic’ nucleus actually has a very simple underlying shell structure,” Professor Regan explains. “It’s provided new insights into nuclear physics that will help to shape our view of the Universe.” Building on the breakthrough, the upcoming NuSTAR (Nuclear Structure, Astrophysics and Reactions) collaboration, which is part of the FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) accelerator initiative, will now tackle some very big questions such as ‘what are the limits of nuclear matter’? In parallel, RISING technology could have potential to be adapted for use in fields ranging from healthcare to security. In every sense, it really is a question of watch this space.
www.gsi.de
Artists’s impression of a gamma-ray burst (Credit: ESA, illustration by ESA/ECF)
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A great year for Astronomy 2012 has been a great year for UK astronomy. From a picture of 84 million stars, to the delivery of an advanced instrument for a huge space telescope, STFC projects are changing the way we look at our Universe. UK astronomers are looking to answer some of the key questions about the beginnings of the Universe and the formation of its first stars and galaxies. Looking at the past is one way to learn about the future. This is why astrophysicists search relentlessly through space; to uncover the secrets of the evolution of the Universe in the hope that one day we will be able to fully understand why it is the way it is today. Professor Gillian Wright, Head of STFC’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh said: “These achievements, enabling world class science via state of the art hardware and software delivered to major international organisations, are a tribute to the hard work and expertise of staff across STFC and the UK astronomy community.”
VISTA The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) is a 4m telescope that formed part of the UK’s ‘joining fee’ to the European Southern Observatory (ESO). VISTA is carrying out several large surveys of the Southern Sky, creating a vast collection of data which will support research in many astronomical topics for at least the next decade. UK ATC managed the design and construction of VISTA, while STFC’s RAL Space built its huge infrared camera. Earlier this year astronomers using VISTA released a nine-gigapixel image of 84 million stars:
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"This gigantic image is an impressive testament to the quality of the images being taken at the VISTA telescope which UK astronomers and engineers conceived, designed and built", said Professor Jim Emerson from Queen Mary, University of London who leads the VISTA consortium.
KMOS A team at UK ATC have just delivered an instrument, the K-Band Multi Object Spectrometer (KMOS) to ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. The 2.5 tonne, 2 metre diameter KMOS instrument, whose central optical system operates below 140K (-130OC) , can position robotic arms with incredible precision inside the telescope’s field of view. Each of the arms carries a mirror which deflects light from a selected target to spectrometers clustered around the edge of the field of view. KMOS will be used to study galaxy clusters and star formation regions, with its multiple arms making observations more quickly than any previous instrument of this type. Dr Michele Cirasuolo, the UK ATC instrument scientist for KMOS, explains: “KMOS represents a pivotal step in our quest to scrutinise the distant Universe. The ability to observe in the near-infrared up to 24 galaxies simultaneously is an enormous leap forward.”
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
A collaboration between six British and German institutions, KMOS will be used to build a 3D picture of galaxies to help understand how they were assembled from the very first galaxies more than 13 billion years ago.
MIRI In May 2012 the Mid InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) was handed over to NASA, the first of four instruments for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to be delivered. The product of 10 years of hard work by over 200 engineers and scientists, MIRI is an amazingly capable spectrometer. From its orbit 1.5 million miles above the Earth it will be able to study everything from the formation of planets in our local galaxy to objects close to the edge of the observable Universe. The assembly, mechanical and thermal testing of the instrument was undertaken at STFC’s RAL Space, utilising Britain’s world-class expertise in space science. Now at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, MIRI is being integrated in to the James Webb Space Telescope which is set to launch in 2018.
ALMA STFC has been involved with developing both hardware and software for the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) project for more than a decade. This year saw several major milestones, including
the first call for proposals and exciting discoveries from early science observations. The 70th cryostat, to be used on the telescope’s antennas, was delivered.
provide user friendly software tools to enable astronomers to propose observations to be made with the complex ALMA system and examine the data afterwards.
STFC’s Applied Science Division at RAL designed, manufactured and tested the cryostats for the 66 antennas. RAL Space has been responsible for integrating the ultra-sensitive receivers. Constructed at over 5000m above sea level, ALMA will probe the cold Universe and investigate the first stars, galaxies and planet formation. In parallel to the delivery of the hardware, UK ATC staff led the international effort to
This year the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) on Hawaii discovered several pairs of stars that orbited each other in four hours – this was considered impossible because of the required proximity of these binary stars for this short an orbit. This discovery challenges the belief that such binary stars would fuse to form a single, larger star if they were so close together. No previous binaries had been found with an orbit of less than five hours.
Island Telescopes
STFC were pleased to be able to extend the operation of the Hawaii telescopes for at least another year to enable further excellent research to be conducted, Professor Womersley said: “However, we also had to commence negotiations with the University of Hawaii as the leaseholder of the Mauna Kea sites, and with other potential operators of each of the Hawaii telescopes. If a suitable alternative operator is not identified for either Hawaiian telescope, STFC will decommission that telescope and restore the site as required by the lease.”
VISTA (Credit: ESO)
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Astronomy into the future STFC strives to uphold the UK’s expertise in astronomical research through continuing involvement in ground-breaking projects. Space, to the untrained eye, looks mind-blowing in its immensity. The stars, planets and galaxies that make up our Universe are incomprehensible specks of light in the sky. However to those who make a study of space, each of those lights could be the key to unlocking the history of the Universe, a clue in understanding how the Universe began.
SKA Dish.
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SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
An artist’s impression of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)
SKA The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be one of the most complex scientific instruments ever built. Unlike most radio telescopes, which consist of one large dish or antenna, the SKA will combine 4,000 dishes which will act together. With a total collecting area of one square kilometre it will be 50 times more sensitive than the best of today’s radio telescopes, with all-sky imaging enabling astronomers to glimpse the formation and evolution of the very first galaxies and, much closer to home, probe the clouds of gas and dust around nearby stars in which new planets are forming. The vast nature of this international project requires a worldwide consortium including Europe, North and South American and Japan, to provide the required resources and expertise. STFC is funding the UK’s involvement in the design and prototyping activities and acting as coordinator for the project. The decision in May 2012 to construct the SKA across two sites in South Africa and Australia, which both have vast open spaces with minimal radio frequency interference, marked a
SKA Apeture Array.
SKA Dish.
crucial step forwards. Work can now progress on the design and preparations for the construction phase which is expected to begin in 2015/2016.
E-ELT 3000m above sea level, in one of the driest places on Earth, is a mountain that is planned to become home to the World’s biggest ‘eye on the sky’. With its 39m primary mirror, the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) is set to ‘revolutionise optical and infrared astronomy’, says Professor Isobel Hook of the University of Oxford. The E-ELT, a European Southern Observatory (ESO) project, is expected to see first light in 2020 and will produce images 15 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope. Its primary mirror will be made of 800, 1.4m wide segments that together will collect more than 100 million times more light than a human eye. This huge telescope will be able to carry out a huge range of scientific programmes. Its impressive imaging technology means that it will be able to directly image some exoplanets
for the first time, making it possible to study the “habitable zones” of other solar systems to discover whether life bearing planets could indeed exist there. It will study the black hole in the centre of our Milky Way, and those in other galaxies, to determine whether the theories of gravity and general relativity remain applicable at their edges and how they grow and influence the formation of galaxies. By studying the light from distant supernovae, and perhaps measuring the global dynamics of the Universe itself, the E-ELT will throw new light onto the mystery of ‘dark energy.’ Approval for construction of the E-ELT has been granted in principle, but will not commence until provisional votes by four ESO member states, including the UK, have been confirmed and 90% of the funding required has been secured. In the meantime, STFC’s UK ATC is coordinating the UK contributions to the project in collaboration with industry and universities. The objective is to ensure both considerable industrial involvement, and ultimately scientific exploitation, of this ground-breaking telescope by the UK.
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Watching the weather 35,800 km above the equator a satellite is changing the way we look at our climate. GERB-3 marked a significant milestone for STFC’s RAL Space – it was their 200th instrument in 50 years. RAL Space led the international consortium that was involved with the overall GERB project, including the design and building of the instruments, followed by the processing and distribution of the data.
The satellite will be moved to be over the Greenwich Meridian in January 2013. MSG-3 carries an instrument that will improve weather forecasting and help with the rapid detection of extreme weather situations.
GERB-3 studies the Earth’s Radiation Budget (ERB). The ERB is the difference between the amount of energy coming in from the sun and the amount going out, which consists of the solar energy the Earth reflects back into space and the energy it radiates as heat (infrared). GERB-3 takes global measurements every 15 minutes. A despin mirror (that stabilises the image of the Earth) reflects radiation towards a line of detectors. A full disc of the Earth is sampled in five minutes. Three measurements are taken and averaged to minimise the effect of background ‘noise’ on the data.
Right on the edge of the satellite sits a small instrument called GERB3. Measuring 45x20x15cm and weighing in (on Earth) at just 40kg, GERB-3 might seem like a small part of the MSG-3 but, in reality, the Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) instruments are providing data that is vital for our understanding of climate change.
Part of GERB’s role is to study various factors that may be relevant in climate change including the greenhouse effect of water vapour, the impact of clouds and aerosols on the ERB and the daily cycle of air movement and land surface temperatures. Understanding these interactions is important because it helps us to
MSG (Credit: EUMETSAT)
34 minutes after launching from the European Space Port in French Guiana, the Meteosat Second Generation 3 (MSG-3) satellite separated from the launch vehicle and started on its journey into geostationary orbit above the equator at 3.4 degrees west.
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identify the processes which control natural stability and variability in climate and understand how the human activity affects the climate balance. As the name suggests, there were two other GERB instruments before GERB-3. GERB-1 launched as part of the MSG-1 satellite in 2002 and GERB-2 aboard MSG-2 in 2005. The launch of GERB-3 on 5 July 2012 means that the last 10 years of study have now been extended to at least 2016. Researchers will have a continuous 15 year data set that will test and improve our understanding of climate systems and modelling. The Meteosat Second Generation 4 (MSG-4) satellite is due to be launched in 2015. The European Space Agency and the owners of the MSG satellites – the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) – are working to develop Meteosat Third Generation, the next generation of weather and climate satellites that will further improve our capabilities. With Climate Change posing a growing challenge to the global community, the importance of climate monitoring using instruments like GERB-3 has never been clearer. GERB-3 will start to make regular measurements of the Earth in 2013.
The first image from the SEVIRI on MSG-3. (Credit: EUMETSAT)
The GERB-3 instrument. (RAL Space)
A RAL Space scientist working on the GERB-3 instrument. (RAL Space)
The Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) instrument. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
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Computing leading the way From a supercomputer that can do 1015 calculations a second, to the 10 ton clusters that can store more data than 6 million CDs – STFC is opening up High Performance Computing to industry.
Supercomputers at SCD at RAL.
In 2011 the UK Government invested £37.5m into High Performance Computing (HPC) and from this the Hartree Centre was born. The leading HPC facility is a collaboration between STFC and the world’s biggest IT and consulting services company IBM. This brings together the UK’s foremost HPC site with world renowned experience and skills. HPC at the Hartree Centre is undertaken by two IBM supercomputers a Blue Gene/Q called Blue Joule and an iDataPlex cluster called Blue Wonder. When installed, Blue Joule was the UK’s number one supercomputer and the world’s largest dedicated to software development. Blue Wonder is a world-class iDataPlex cluster and is ideal for getting the best value from ‘big data’. The Hartree Centre’s state of the art facilities will enable organisations from a variety of backgrounds,
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including government and industry, to access cutting edge science and technology. Its facilities include a surround wall visualisation suite, a quad wall visualisation suite and a computer suite where users can get to grips with the available software. The visualisation suites will help users to analyse how highly complex systems, such as the Earth’s climate and weather systems, affect our lives. In June 2012, Blue Joule became the first UK supercomputer to run an application at one thousand trillion calculations a second (a Petaflop). This is one thousand times faster than the last big milestone, the Teraflop, which was achieved in 2002. In March 2012 there were further improvements in computing capabilities as a new super-datacluster was installed in the data centre at STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
The JASMIN+CEMS cluster is a combination of two machines into one £4.5 million, 10 ton hardware system. This installation means that important research areas, such as climate change, can be studied more effectively. The data collected from space will also be opened up to businesses who will be able to use it to develop new products and services – this will benefit industry. The cluster has 4.6 Petabytes of usable, fast-access parallel file storage. 4.6 Petabytes is the equivalent of almost 6.5 million CDs. The way that the cluster’s processors and data storage is configured means that it can switch from being a data server to number cruncher, depending on demand.
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Help feed the World UK research using STFC’s Central Laser Facility (CLF) has discovered why proteins in the membrane of plant cells don’t move as much as their animal counterparts. This is helping us to understand plant immune systems and could lead to the development of disease resistant crops. Theoretically, cell membranes should allow lipids and proteins to diffuse freely. In reality animal cells have a number of limitations on their protein and lipid mobility, one example is protein-protein interaction. Even with these constraints, plant cell membranes are relatively immobile compared to animal cells, so researchers wanted to study the control mechanisms that limit protein mobility in plant cells. Using Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) funding for research into the molecular processes underlying cancer, CLF has developed a new technique that can track single molecules . Timely transfer of this technique from human cells to plant cells has allowed scientists to follow the movement of individual molecules in real time and this allows them to study how the cell wall affects protein mobility.
therefore the cell’s ability to react to an immune response; this could leave the plant vulnerable. The new technique was used in conjunction with another technique called Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy, which was used to remove background fluorescence. A custom-built microscope was developed to allow TIRF microscopy to be used. Dr Stan Botchway, from CLF’s Lasers for Science, said: “The technique we’ve developed and deployed to solve this mystery has helped provide unprecedented insights into plants’ defence mechanisms. As a result, we’ve plugged a major gap in scientists’ understanding of how plants function at a microscopic level.”
Dr Runions, from Oxford Brookes University, said: “This new technique that, lets us look directly at single protein molecules in a plant cell membrane, has opened many new avenues for us to explore. A new grant from the BBSRC will enable us to continue this research so that we can study the interplay of proteins at the cell surface that helps a plant sense its environment.” By better understanding the mobility of membrane proteins and the reaction of the cell wall to an immune response we can develop plants that are more resistant to disease. This may increase crop yields which could prove vitally important in feeding the world’s growing population.
The project, undertaken by scientists from Oxford Brookes University led by Dr John Runions, and also funded by BBSRC, found that the plant cell wall affects both the speed and the trajectory of the diffusion of membrane proteins. When the plant’s immune response is triggered, there is an increase in the synthesis of proteins that stabilise the cell membrane. This restricts protein mobility and
Studying a biological sample.
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SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
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Improving your aviation experience Frustrated by airport security scans? An STFC spin-out may soon safely be putting the liquids back in your hand luggage thanks to a unique non-invasive materials analysis. Cobalt Light Systems was set up in 2008 following the development of Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy (SORS), an innovative technology that was pioneered at STFC’s Central Laser Facility (CLF). SORS provides an analysis system that could have applications in many market areas. Cobalt Light System’s technology uses SORS to quickly and accurately measure the chemical structure of a sample without touching or changing it, allowing the contents of a container to be established without opening it or damaging its contents. This ground breaking technique could be used in the pharmaceutical sector and for chemicals analysis in security screening. In December 2011, Cobalt Light Systems’ innovative INSIGHT100 bottle scanner received European approval. This means that aircraft passengers may soon be able to take liquids larger than 100ml on to commercial flights.
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During 2012 the system was trialled at several major European airports. Following the discovery of a terrorist plot involving liquid explosives in 2006, passengers are not currently allowed to take liquids above 100ml past airport security; however, the INSIGHT100 is able to scan the liquid without opening the bottle and determine whether its contents are safe for travel. Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy (SORS) is a variation of established Raman Spectroscopy that allows high level chemical analysis of an object even if the contents cannot be seen. Raman Spectroscopy shines a beam of light, usually from a laser, at the sample to be characterised. The light interacts with the molecules within the sample and a detector then analyses the light signatures from the illuminated sample surface. This process typically identifies what the surface of a sample is made up of.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
SORS is used when the illumination zone is spatially separated from the collection point by several millimetres. This allows more effective collection of light that interacts deeper in the sample. The detector and computer will then analyse the light signature that is given off from within the sample. This allows the chemical analysis of a sample several millimetres, and sometimes centimetres, below the surface as opposed to the hundreds of microns that are typically achieved with standard Raman Spectroscopy. SORS has the potential to be developed to detect counterfeit pharmaceuticals, help in cancer diagnostics and non-invasively diagnose bone disease and so, with more and more applications for SORS becoming apparent, the future of Cobalt Light Systems looks bright.
The Insight 100 scanner (Credit: Cobalt Light Systems)
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
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Towards a cleaner-carbon future Despite the very substantial worldwide development of wind and solar renewable energy production over the past decade, the ever-increasing rise in global energy requirements leads to the inevitable economic reality that coal- and gas-fired power stations will provide a large proportion of the world’s energy needs for the next decade and beyond. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the most effective approach for mitigating the negative atmospheric and environmental impacts of this fossil fuel dependence. Perhaps the most promising CCS technology is the capture of greenhouse gases, such as CO2 and SO2, by molecular entrapment in highly porous solids.
that are connected by organic molecule linkers. The choice of metal ions and organic ligands not only determines the spatial properties of the framework but also the chemical activity of the material. NOTT-300 contains open one-dimensional channels that are extensively decorated with hydroxyl (OH-) groups.
There are many challenges in producing the ideal CCS material. Clearly it must be able to absorb a large amount of CO2 – and, ideally, SO2 – but it must, at the same time, also allow other gases to pass through. The material must, in addition to being ‘easy-on’, must also be ‘easy-off’ to allow reuse of the CCS material as well as the storage and potential use of both CO2 and SO2. Lastly, synthesis should be environmentally-friendly and able to be scaled up, at low cost, to tonne-sized quantities. Researchers at the University of Nottingham may just have discovered this ideal material.
Current CCS processes involve the separation of CO2 and SO2 using amine-based solvents. The main drawbacks of these materials are the high energy requirements associated with the relatively strong bonding of CO2 and SO2 to the amine groups and the environmental issues associated with the potential loss of toxic, volatile side products. MOF-based CCS research has, to date, been based on amine-functionalised frameworks – however, toxicity and high energy requirements are still an issue. The hydroxyl group approach used by Professor Martin Schroder and Dr. Sihai Yang at the University of Nottingham overcomes both these issues.
Named NOTT-300, the Nottingham compound is a metal-organic framework (MOF) material. MOFs have an open skeletal molecular structure with metal-ion vertices
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Their collaboration with Professor Bill David and Dr Timmy RamirezCuesta at ISIS has enabled an
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
understanding to be developed of the detailed molecular arrangement and packing within the MOF tunnels and the host:guest interaction between NOTT-300 and CO2 / SO2. Dr Ramirez-Cuesta describes this mechanism as ‘similar to Velcro in that the material selectively captures the gases from the flue gas using weak interactions (the sticking) and holds them until they can be ‘peeled’ off at low pressure and then stored.’ This ease of the removal is important in terms of both energy conservation and viability; simply lowering the pressure is sufficient to release the captured gases from the complex. Importantly, NOTT-300 shows poor selectivity to most gases other than CO2 and SO2. However, the collaboration has found that water vapour is also adsorbed into the material with the consequent reduction in efficiency of CO2 and SO2 capture; further research is underway. Nevertheless, NOTT-300 shows a very high uptake of both CO2 and SO2, with SO2 uptake being the highest ever reported. This research has recently been published in Nature Chemistry.
A model of the NOTT-300 metal organic framework. (Credit: University of Nottingham)
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
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Understanding diabetes New research on Insulin at ISIS has shed light on the protein aggregates associated with increasingly common conditions like type 2 diabetes. Observing the conditions under which these so-called amyloid fibrils and spherulites form could help to slow or even stop the progression of these illnesses. Amyloid fibrils and spherulites are protein aggregates that form when proteins undergo self-association. Under certain conditions, proteins lose their shape and expose the hydrophobic core to the watery (aqueous) environment surrounding it. The unfolding triggers initial aggregation as the exposed hydrophobic interiors are drawn together to avoid contact with the aqueous environment. Once these initial aggregates have formed, the internal structure of the molecules rearranges to form β-sheet rich structures that subsequently grow into long fibrous structures called fibrils. Under certain conditions these fibrils can grow out radially from a central core to form a supramolecular pom-pom like structure called an amyloid spherulite. ISIS is a pulsed muon and neutron source based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. A unique type of diffraction, smallangle neutron scattering (SANS), was used to study the early stages of insulin aggregation in real time with a resolution of minutes. The protein concentration was varied in these experiments and its influence on the relative abundance of fibrils and spherulites produced was determined. The aim of the
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experiment was to attempt to develop a better understanding of the conditions under which amyloid aggregates form, which may lead to insights into how to tackle diseases such as type 2 diabetes. The neutron data showed that the protein molecules initially formed small, elongated aggregates that are less than 20nm in size, but that these gradually extend to form longer, fibrous fibrils and spherulites. The next stage of research is to investigate what happens as amyloid spherulites grow; in the intermediate stages, there are complicated changes in the shape and structure of the aggregates, and it is still not understood why these occur. Dr James Sharp from the University of Nottingham, the Principal Investigator for the project said: “Having access to the SANS2D beamline at ISIS has been crucial; without it, we would not have been able to undertake this important research. Understanding how amyloid aggregates are implicated in type 2 diabetes and in neurodegenerative diseases is key to understanding how to reduce their debilitating effect on people’s lives, and the chance to answer a number of important questions
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
about how these aggregates form using neutron scattering has been incredibly valuable.” The research undertaken by a team from the Universities of Nottingham, Cambridge and Sheffield offers an unprecedented view on the molecular level processes that cause the formation of these potentially harmful aggregates. The formation of these aggregates can also occur during the processing of protein based drugs such as insulin, thus rendering them useless. This research could enable pharmaceutical companies to overcome these difficulties. Amyloid aggregate formation in other proteins has been implicated in diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease and understanding how these processes are involved in the initial stages of such conditions may allow us to develop ways of reducing the significant impact that these illnesses have on so many people’s lives.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
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2012 RAL Space 50th The launch of the Allouette Satellite in 1962 marked the beginning of RAL Space's involvement with the space industry. To mark this momentous 50th anniversary a conference dedicated to the last 50 years of RAL Space was held at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. www.stfc.ac.uk/RALspace
LHC on Tour In the wake of the excitement surrounding the discovery of a Higgs-like particle at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), STFC has taken a full size replica of the LHC tunnel on a UK tour that included the Houses of Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Big Bang Fair. The tour is designed to raise awareness of the benefits to the UK and to celebrate British involvement in the LHC, whilst using hands-on activities to inspire the next generation of physicists.
DL 50 October saw 50 years since the establishment of Daresbury Laboratory. Current and former staff members and special guests gathered to commemorate the world leading science that has been researched at the Laboratory since 1962. Speakers praised the impressive history of Daresbury, but also looked to the future and shared their hopes for many discoveries yet to come.
STFC CERN BIC
Credit: CERN
In October 2012, the STFC CERN Business Incubation Centre (STFC CERN BIC) opened is door to applications for its innovative support scheme. The BIC, based at Sci-Tech Daresbury, will provide financial and business support for small businesses based on technologies connected to High Energy Physics. The programme aims to improve knowledge transfer between science and industry and encourage the innovative use of CERN and STFC intellectual property.
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SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
www.stfc-cern-bic.org
Photowalk
Credit: Lisa Ward/STFC
During September amateur and professional photographers were given ‘behind the scenes’ access to leading science laboratories across the country as part of the 2012 STFC Photowalk. The free event allows photography enthusiasts a rare glimpse at the cutting edge science that takes place at our sites and the opportunity to capture unique images of this ground-breaking research. The best UK Photowalk images will qualify for an international competition against images from laboratories in the United States, Germany, Italy and Canada. The winning image (shown) was announced in December 2012. Having won the competition with this picture of the 25 m antenna at Chilbolton, Mrs Lisa Ward will now be going on a trip to CERN.
ESRF
Credit: M Bowler
A scientist who used the STFC supported European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on G Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs). GPCRs are found on cell membranes and cause important physiological effects. Brian Kobilka used ESRF to solve an important GPCR structure. He shared the prize with Robert Leftkowitz whose research led to the discovery that all GPCRs have a similar molecular structure. www.esrf.eu
ILL
Credit: P Ginter
A rise in antibiotic resistant to one of the most common antifungal drugs prescribed, Amphotericin B (AmB), has led to the requirement for higher does which has, in some cases, caused lethal side effects such as kidney poisoning. Neutron scattering at the ILL has been used to identify how AmB reacts with cell membranes at a sub-molecular level to understand how it causes the damaging side effects. This research will enable the drug’s specificity to be improved to ensure maximum efficiency towards fungal cells, with minimal side effects. www.ill.eu
ESA BIC The European Space Agency Business Incubation Centre (ESA BIC), based in Harwell, has seen its first tenant graduate from the programme. G2Way Limited joined ESA BIC in 2011 with their electric Unmanned Arial Vehicle (UAV). G2Way uses the UAVs in Low Level Earth Observation (LLEO) to evaluate crops and advise farmers on improving yields. G2Way will launch its service commercially in 2013.
Credit: G2way Limited
www.g2way.com
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS 2012
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Polaris House, North Star Avenue, Swindon SN2 1SZ, UK T: +44 (0)1793 442000 F: +44 (0)1793 442002 E: Publications@stfc.ac.uk
www.stfc.ac.uk
Head office Science and Technology Facilities Council, Polaris House, North Star Avenue, Swindon SN2 1SZ, UK Establishments at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire; Daresbury Laboratory, Cheshire; UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Edinburgh; Chilbolton Observatory, Hampshire; Isaac Newton Group, La Palma; Joint Astronomy Centre, Hawaii.
vison/STFC Credit: Angela Da Cr
arding/STFC edit: Greg H TFC iam Palin/S Credit: Will
/STFC isa Ward Credit: L
ngley/STFC Credit: Roger Di
Credit: Vince Mo/STFC
Science and Technology Facilities Council