Research on Covid-19

In March 2018, the nine-week MOOC “Introduction to synchrotrons and x-ray free-electron lasers” (abbreviated to “SYNCHROTRONx”) came online via the edX provider of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), created by Phil Willmott of the Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institute. “MOOC” is an acronym for “massive open online course”, a teaching platform started in the first decade of this century, which has become increasingly popular in the last five to six years. MOOCs have no limits to participation and are free. Some of the most popular MOOCs can attract many tens of thousands of participants. Even the most specialized subjects may have an initial enrollment of over a thousand, more than an order of magnitude larger than that typically found in traditional higher education. There were over 70 million MOOC enrollments covering nearly 10’000 subjects offered by the top five providers in 2017 alone!

In the last two decades, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) have evolved into two well-established techniques capable of providing complementary and operando information about a sample’s morphology and composition, respectively. Considering that operation conditions can often lead to simultaneous and related changes in a catalyst’s speciation and shape, herein we introduce a setup that combines SAXS and XAS in a configuration that allows optimum acquisition and corresponding data quality for both techniques.

We have observed the spatial distribution of magnetic flux in Nb, Cu/Nb, and Cu/Nb/Co thin films using muon-spin rotation. In an isolated 50-nm-thick Nb film, we find a weak flux expulsion (Meissner effect) which becomes significantly enhanced when adding an adjacent 40 nm layer of Cu. The added Cu layer exhibits a Meissner effect (due to induced superconducting pairs) and is at least as effective as the Nb to expel flux.

La_1/3Sr_2/3FeO₃ is reported to show a 2Fe⁴⁺ → Fe³⁺ + Fe⁵⁺ charge disproportionation (CD) accompanied by Fe³⁺/Fe⁵⁺ charge ordering (CO) and a metal-insulator (MI) transition at 200 K [1]. The MI transition was ascribed to CD and CO. Based on the CO, the magnetic structure was reported to be P-3m1 or P1 from the neutron diffraction studies performed at 50 K and 15 K, respectively [2]. The former seems not to be a correct solution since the presence of rotoinversion -3 is incompatible with the claimed collinear magnetic structure, with the collinear moments in the ab-plane in R-3c metric; and the latter might be a correct solution, but without any symmetry restrictions in space group P1.

Temperature-pressure phase diagram of the Kitaev hyperhoneycomb iridate β-Li₂IrO₃ is explored using magnetization, thermal expansion, magnetostriction, and muon spin rotation measurements, as well as single-crystal x-ray diffraction under pressure and ab initio calculations.

Since it was first established in 1987, the annual Regio-Meeting has been instrumental in facilitating interactions in the structural biology community in southwestern Germany, the eastern region of France and an expanding area of Switzerland. It is set as an informal event to foster young scientists to discuss their research results in an international context. The 2018 edition will take place in the heart of Switzerland in Emmetten from September 26 to 28, 2018. Registration and abstract submission deadline: September 7, 2018.

Knowledge about the cross sections data of the target materials used for spallation neutron facilities (SNF) and accelerator driven systems (ADS) is essential for the licensing, safe operation and decommissioning of these facilities. In addition, these data are important to evaluate and improve the existing computer simulation codes. Especially the α-emitter ¹⁴⁸Gd has a large contribution to radio-toxicity of spallation target facilities with its 74.6 years of half-life.

The observation of Higgs boson production in association with a top quark-antiquark pair is reported, based on a combined analysis of proton-proton collision data at center-of-mass energies of √s = 7,8, and 13 TeV, corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 5.1, 19.7, and 35.9 fb^-1, respectively. The data were collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC.

Catalytic oxybromination may turn the cheap and abundant feedstock methane into the platform compounds bromomethane and dibromomethane. Yet researchers have been puzzled by the catalysis mechanism, which was speculated to involve free radical intermediates. Operando photoelectron photoion coincidence helped distinguish surface and gas-phase reaction steps and elucidated the crucial halogen-mediated C–H bond activation step, which is driven by elusive bromine and methyl radicals.

Staked-in needle pre-fillable syringes (SIN-PFS) are a convenient delivery system widely established in the growing pharmaceutical market. Under specific storage conditions, the needle of PFS containing high concentration drug product (DP) solution is prone to clogging, which prevents administration of the liquid.

A peculiar magnetic “dead layer” is detected at the surface of thin films of DyTiO3, a ferrimagnetic Mott insulator. Depth dependent X-ray absorption measurements performed at the X-Treme beamline in the Swiss Light Source indicate that this layer is associated with a deviation of the Ti valence from 3+ toward 4+ at the film surface, suppressing the magnetic coupling between Ti ions and unleashing a strong paramagnetic response from uncoupled Dy ions.

The characteristics of low energy electrons accelerated by a laser wakefield (Laser Wakefield Acceleration LWFA) has been studied. The work included understanding the acceleration process, setting up the experiment and measuring properties like charge, divergence and energy of the accelerated electrons. The experiment included diagnostics for the laser and the electrons. In order to make high-resolution energy distribution measurements with relative errors ∆E/E of below 10%, a tunable electron spectrometer has been designed, built and characterized. A tunable permanent magnet quadrupole triplet has been designed for stigmatic focusing in a range of 5 keV to 5 MeV.

In this work, we have enhanced our originally proposed experiment-modeling synergy in Upadhyay et al. Acta Mat. 2016, to capture the stress evolution in the complex cruciform geometry during arbitrary multi-axial load path changes. We perform cruciform simulations using the implementation of the visco-plastic self-consistent (VPSC) model as a user material (UMAT) into the ABAQUS finite element (FE) solver. We also use the Elasto-viscoplastic fast Fourier transform (EVP-FFT) approach to compute yield surfaces. This experiment-modeling synergy is exploited to understand the mechanical response (including the elastic response, Bauschinger effect and hardening) of 316L stainless steel following biaxial load path changes.

The description and detection of unconventional magnetic states, such as spin liquids, is a recurring topic in condensed matter physics. While much of the efforts have traditionally been directed at geometrically frustrated antiferromagnets, recent studies reveal that systems featuring competing antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic interactions are also promising candidate materials.

Global sensitivity analysis (GSA) is routinely applied in engineering to determine the sensitivity of a simulation output to the input parameters. Typically, GSA methods require the code output to be a scalar. In the context of thermal-hydraulic system code, however, simulation outputs are often not scalar but time-dependent (e.g. temperature profile). How to perform GSA on these outputs?

The writing and deletion of magnetic Skyrmions is a fundamental step towards the fabrication of memory devices based on this promising spin configuration. Researchers at the Korea Institute of Technology have demonstrated the writing and deleting of isolated magnetic Skyrmions at room temperature in ferrimagnetic multilayer superlattice stacks using electrical currents.

The material α−RuCl₃ continues to garner attention as the current poster child for realising the Kitaev model. New work places recent experimental observations on a solid theoretical footing, and concludes that the physics of α−RuCl₃ is not dominated by Kitaev interactions.