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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 22-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Andy Freeberg
afreeberg@slac.stanford.edu
650-926-4359
DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Scientists used the powerful X-ray laser at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to create movies detailing trillionths-of-a-second changes in the arrangement of copper atoms after an extreme shock. Movies like these will help researchers create new kinds of materials and test the strength of existing ones.
This work, published Oct. 11 in Science, pinpointed the precise breaking point when the extreme pressures began to permanently deform the copper structure, or lattice, so it could no longer bounce back to its original shape. Such experiments provide a direct test of complex computer simulations that model the behavior of many millions of atoms within tiny samples of material.
Such simulations are used to design stronger, more durable materials such as shielding for satellites to withstand high-speed pelting by space debris but they have been hard to test in the lab because of the tiny samples and short timescales involved.
"The results enable a number of materials experiments that can be compared to simulations at the same scales," said Despina Milathianaki, a staff scientist at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) who led the experiment. "This and future experiments, designed to provide a direct comparison with simulations, will help us to accurately predict the strength of materials in extreme conditions."
In this experiment, researchers shocked a layer of copper about 1 thousandth of a millimeter, or 1 micron thick with optical laser pulses, and then probed the copper's lattice with ultrabright X-ray pulses. They compiled the X-ray images into atomic-scale movies that detail how the lattice responded at various times after the shock, including the moment the copper reached its breaking point.
"The demand for research time at LCLS is already at a premium, and these results demonstrate yet another new technique that we believe will open the door to a host of new experiments," said Sebastien Boutet, who leads LCLS's Coherent X-ray Imaging (CXI) Department, where the measurements were performed.
The same research team composed mostly of SLAC scientists, with collaborators from University of Oxford, Stanford University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory also shocked other metals, including iron and titanium, and is analyzing the data obtained from those samples.
Follow-up research scheduled at LCLS in March seeks to extend the research to additional materials and to enlist other x-ray scattering techniques, which may provide more details about the origins of the damage in the lattice.
###
SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located in Menlo Park, California, SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. To learn more, please visit http://www.slac.stanford.edu.
This research was supported by the Linac Coherent Light Source's (LCLS) in-house research effort. SLAC's LCLS is the world's most powerful X-ray free-electron laser. A DOE national user facility, its highly focused beam shines a billion times brighter than previous X-ray sources to shed light on fundamental processes of chemistry, materials and energy science, technology and life itself. For more information, visit lcls.slac.stanford.edu.
DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
Citation: D. Milathianaki et al., Science, 11 Oct 2013 (10.1126/science.1239566)
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 22-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Andy Freeberg
afreeberg@slac.stanford.edu
650-926-4359
DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Scientists used the powerful X-ray laser at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to create movies detailing trillionths-of-a-second changes in the arrangement of copper atoms after an extreme shock. Movies like these will help researchers create new kinds of materials and test the strength of existing ones.
This work, published Oct. 11 in Science, pinpointed the precise breaking point when the extreme pressures began to permanently deform the copper structure, or lattice, so it could no longer bounce back to its original shape. Such experiments provide a direct test of complex computer simulations that model the behavior of many millions of atoms within tiny samples of material.
Such simulations are used to design stronger, more durable materials such as shielding for satellites to withstand high-speed pelting by space debris but they have been hard to test in the lab because of the tiny samples and short timescales involved.
"The results enable a number of materials experiments that can be compared to simulations at the same scales," said Despina Milathianaki, a staff scientist at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) who led the experiment. "This and future experiments, designed to provide a direct comparison with simulations, will help us to accurately predict the strength of materials in extreme conditions."
In this experiment, researchers shocked a layer of copper about 1 thousandth of a millimeter, or 1 micron thick with optical laser pulses, and then probed the copper's lattice with ultrabright X-ray pulses. They compiled the X-ray images into atomic-scale movies that detail how the lattice responded at various times after the shock, including the moment the copper reached its breaking point.
"The demand for research time at LCLS is already at a premium, and these results demonstrate yet another new technique that we believe will open the door to a host of new experiments," said Sebastien Boutet, who leads LCLS's Coherent X-ray Imaging (CXI) Department, where the measurements were performed.
The same research team composed mostly of SLAC scientists, with collaborators from University of Oxford, Stanford University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory also shocked other metals, including iron and titanium, and is analyzing the data obtained from those samples.
Follow-up research scheduled at LCLS in March seeks to extend the research to additional materials and to enlist other x-ray scattering techniques, which may provide more details about the origins of the damage in the lattice.
###
SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located in Menlo Park, California, SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. To learn more, please visit http://www.slac.stanford.edu.
This research was supported by the Linac Coherent Light Source's (LCLS) in-house research effort. SLAC's LCLS is the world's most powerful X-ray free-electron laser. A DOE national user facility, its highly focused beam shines a billion times brighter than previous X-ray sources to shed light on fundamental processes of chemistry, materials and energy science, technology and life itself. For more information, visit lcls.slac.stanford.edu.
DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
Citation: D. Milathianaki et al., Science, 11 Oct 2013 (10.1126/science.1239566)
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are officially engaged! And while we know that their upcoming nuptials are sure to be even bigger than the over-the-top engagement, we also know that it will be Kardashian's third time down the aisle.
Source: http://www.ivillage.com/celebrities-who-got-married-three-times/1-a-550408?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Acelebrities-who-got-married-three-times-550408TOKYO (AP) — Japan's consumer prices rose in September for the fourth straight month, boosted mainly by higher energy costs, in the latest set of data showing fitful progress toward revitalizing the economy.
The core consumer price index, which excludes food, was up 0.7 percent compared with 0.8 percent in August, the Management and Coordination Agency said. With food prices factored in, the index was up 1.1 percent.
The government is striving to end a long bout of deflation through aggressive monetary easing and hefty spending on public works. Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda insists the economy is on track to achieve an official target of 2 percent inflation within the next year or so.
But economists say much of the increase in prices in recent months has been due to higher costs for imported food and energy as the Japanese yen has weakened as a result of mammoth monetary easing.
"Import price inflation has remained stubbornly high, so we could see a further mild increase in goods inflation in coming months. But the pass-through from the weak yen to goods prices has now mostly run its course," Capital Economics said in a commentary Friday.
It said further prices increases would likely be muted.
A planned 3 percentage point increase in the 5 percent national sales tax in April 2014 is expected to weigh on growth in the coming year, despite government stimulus measures to counter the expected impact on consumer demand.
Consumer spending is likely to gain some oomph, however, as shoppers rush to buy big ticket items such as vehicles ahead of the tax hike.
Weaker than expected growth in exports, despite the weaker yen, is also viewed as a sign of wavering momentum.
"Economic recovery takes a break," said a headline in Friday's edition of the financial newspaper Nikkei Shimbun.
Excluding food and energy costs, the inflation index was flat, the first time since 2008 that measure has not fallen.
Japanese consumers are facing price hikes for a wide array of items, including most food products. Fresh food prices rose 11 percent in September from a year earlier, including a 58 percent increase in the price of cucumbers. Gasoline prices rose 9 percent and electricity rates 7.6 percent, for a 5.4 percent increase in overall utility rates.
Price increases for other consumer goods, housing and services have remained weak, however, due to competition and oversupply.
Wage increases, key to stimulating consumer demand, have been slow in coming. Major labor groups say they plan to push for more than 1 percent increases in base wages in spring labor negotiations next year, for the first time in five years. But any increase in average incomes is likely to be more than offset by price and tax hikes.
Rodríguez.
For another dose of Sense of Place: Detroit, we revisit an archived studio session from 2009 Rodríguez. The Motor City folk rocker's albums from the '70s, Cold Fact and Coming from Reality, were being re-released at the time of this interview. While those records became huge hits in South Africa several years after their initial U.S. release, back in Detroit, Rodriguez was completely unaware of his fame until decades later.
The incredible story of Rodríguez's latent success was brought to an international audience by the 2012 documentary Searching for Sugar Man. He tells the tale in his own words here on the World Cafe.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — DuPont Co. says it will spin off its Performance Chemicals unit to shareholders.
The company has said previously that it was looking at options for the unit. Performance Chemicals is one of DuPont's largest businesses by revenue, but it has been struggling because of falling prices for titanium dioxide, a key industrial pigment.
It says it expects the spinoff to its shareholders to happen in about a year and a half.
The company says the spinoff will give it more reliable earnings growth.
When DuPont reported earnings on Tuesday it said that Performance Chemicals sales have fallen 9 percent so far this year. Pre-tax operating income in that unit is less than half of what it was at this time last year.
Its shares rose $1.62 to $63 in after-hours trading.
An impressive story for those who can follow its dense political maneuvers.
Hamptons International Film Festival
Carlos Aguilo, Mandy Jacobson
Suggesting that the fall of apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela can be tracked back to a sole commodities trader in France, Plot for Peace introduces viewers to a timeline of secret meetings and diplomacy so finely balanced one can hardly believe it all worked. The tale is surprising, and directors Carlos Aguilo and Mandy Jacobson blaze right through it -- recounting ins and outs across an entire continent in ways that will challenge most viewers in the West. Mandela's marquee value is the doc's biggest selling point, but he's not really a part of the story; though its value for history students is clear, commercial appeal isn't.
Jean-Yves Ollivier, known to some as "Monsieur Jacques," was born in Algeria and experienced that country's civil war as a teenager. So when he visited South Africa as a businessman in 1981, he was primed to understand the unsustainability of a system in which a small number of insulated whites oppressed a vast black population. To hear him describe it, he ignored global sanctions and did business in the country in order to keep South Africans communicating with neighboring countries; in time, the entrepreneur became an advisor to Jacque Chirac on African affairs, and his history of making connections with those the world had shunned paid off.
Ollivier's tale is told first-hand and corroborated by heads of state, spies, and American diplomat Chester Crocker -- none of whom ever saw the whole picture of Ollivier's operation as he was conducting it. The film describes a complex series of political trades that led to a dramatic 1987 prisoner swap on a tarmac in Mozambique; elsewhere, Monsieur Jacques helped negotiate the removal of South African and Cuban troops from Angola, initiating a "domino effect" of peace in the region.
The narrative is dauntingly dense and quick-moving for those lacking a working knowledge of 1980s geopolitics, but fine photography and lively interviewees help pull us through parts we mightn't quite understand -- conveying the sense that we're meeting a kind of hero, even if the mechanics of his achievements don't always sink in.
Production Company: Indelible Media
Directors: Carlos Aguilo, Mandy Jacobson
Screenwriter: Stephen Smith
Producer: Mandy Jacobson
Director of photography: Rita Noriega, Diego Olivier
Music: Antony Partos
Editor: Carlos Aguilo
No rating, 80 minutes
