Accepting the little differences

Sometimes the life of a researcher is a good one, not least for all the opportunity to travel. I’m away from Japan right now at a conference out in Sydney and I must admit I’m pretty happy about it. It’s great to be surrounded by people who are on a similar wavelength to you; not having to explain what you do and have people look at you as though you are crazy or just immediately loose interest is nice.

It was talking to a fellow researcher that I realised as much as I complain and whinge about the hours and the frustrations, I’m pretty damn lucky. I can’t think of many jobs that afford such a freedom of lifestyle as the one I have now. I\m free to choose to work wherever I want in the world and you know what it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to find some work. I travel a fair amount and I’m exposed to people from all corners of the world. I can pursue the things I find interesting, within reason, and I’m almost constantly mentally engaged.

Hell I’m being paid just to read and learn sometimes. If you’d told me that at the age of twelve I’d have laughed in your face. I’ve met some old friends and made some new ones in my time here and I think it’s the best conference I’ve been to so far.

Anyway this is about my travels through Australia not my journeys through science, though I may throw a bit in every now and then. So my biggest shock about Sydney? It kinda looks and feels a lot like Newcastle, albeit a fair bit warmer. I thought this might be a good thing, I mean I have been a bit homesick for some time, but my initial feelings were really ones of disappointment. Maybe I’ve been in Japan too long? Maybe it just reminded me of the rubbish things I’d left behind at home?

I’m not sure but after the letting go of the initial shock I’ve started noticing quite a few little differences and I’m enjoying the whole experience a lot more. I think it's something I should take away from this and apply to life back in Japan. A lot of people were asking me about life over here and I just found myself complaining. I don't want to be that guy. Anyway without further ado rather than give some kind of proper list I’m just going to outline some random impressions I got in a hodgepodge fashion.

Firstly it’s a lot bigger. I’ve been to big cities before no biggie but Sydney is big whilst still being pretty open. There is a lot of open and green space around here, which does make it quite a pleasure just to wander around aimlessly. I’m also really enjoying being by the sea again. Like actually being by the sea not the Inland sea. On my first day I spent several our just wandering along the docks and the simultaneous waves of nostalgia and unfamiliarity where very refreshing.

Secondly, on the whole people are a little bit more laid back and pleasant than in the UK, or at least as I remember it. I’ve had random people just smile at me in the street, something which I’d completely forgotten happened whilst in Japan, a smiling face was usually coupled with giggles at the novelty of a foreigner. As always it’s nice to not feel like an alien.

One thing that really amused me was the contents of your average convenience store. A lot of familiar products are just that little bit different. Either it’s a slight difference in the packaging images, novel flavours of familiar products, or the same product with a different name; polo’s for example are under the alias of Lifesavers down under.

Woolworths still exists. Mental I know.

Obviously the weather is much nicer. I’ve managed to get here right at the end of spring so the weather is fantastic, not too hot but still much warmer than the UK. On the topic of weather though you often here people talk about the UV index in Aus. It is definitely there. Even when it’s 20 degrees outside if you are in the direct sunlight you can really feel it burn after about 15 minutes, some friends tell me that it gets even worse further south.

Town names are inconsistently interesting. Being a big mix of aboriginal and English names it makes just looking at a local area map pretty amusing. To the south we have Liverpool and right next door is Cabramatta. To the north? Well there is Penrith and not so far away Kurrajong. I could go on but I won’t.

People are well into health and fitness here. It wasn’t unusual to see large groups of people out running, or on bikes or together in boot camps getting fit in the early hours of the morning. This I think this is reflected in the easy access to sports supplements like protein drinks and low carb energy bars in pretty much every corner shop. There also seems to be a lot more gluten-free/dairy-free/vegan-friendly products everywhere too. With an allergy to dairy I’m not complaining.

As I said before I’m staying very close to china town and a major, major difference here is the Asian Influence. Since Australia is so isolated and with the nearest major landmass being south Asia It’s hardly surprising really. At any rate I love Asian food anyway so I’m pretty happy to have easy access to Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian cuisine; something that is surprisingly difficult back in Japan.

Weirdly on the topic of Asia, and South-East Asia to be more precise, I seemed to be drawn towards the Asian delegates at the conference. I don’t think it’s deliberate and at the time I it was pointed out to me by a colleague and I thought he was being stupid but maybe he’s right. I think being stuck in Japan so long I’m unconsciously seeking out familiar sights and sounds when in unfamiliar environments. Well maybe I don’t know well but I think it might be something interesting to monitor when I go back to the UK.

I’m of course only basing this on my impression of one City in one state of an incredibly large country. I have a sneaky suspicion that other states would have a very different vibe and since New South Wales was the first region to be colonised by the British it’s hardly surprising that there are so many comparisons to draw.

 I'll conclude with the best quote from the weeks conference. "You wouldn't believe how accurate lego is." Laters.

Defining terms

I’ve had this blog running around in my head for quite a while now so I figured it was about time I got it written. Now anyone who follows my Facebook statuses (you know who you are) will probably have noticed certain terms featuring time and time again and maybe, just maybe, you might be a little curious as to what I’m gibbering on about. If that’s the case then this post is for you.

1. Synchrotron/Spring8

In short this is where I work and essentially where I live. A synchrotron is a kind of particle accelerator, the name coming from the synchronous tuning of a guiding and accelerating magnetic field that ensure particles in the accelerator ensure both a circular path around the synchrotron and also keeps there speed constant at just below the speed of light.

Now note I said accelerator, not collider. I do not smash atoms together. I do not create black holes. I am not looking for hitherto undiscovered particles (godly or otherwise). Right now that that’s off my chest I’ll tell you what I am doing which involves exploiting a handy little oddity of electrons.

As these electrons whizz around the ring at breakneck speeds they are constantly being deflected, to maintain that all-important circular path. At the deflection points they will slow down a bit losing energy. But that energy has to go somewhere and so it is radiated in the form of photons of light, x-rays to be precise. Originally this was an accidental side effect but these days’ synchrotrons are built with this phenomenon in mind and with that we come nicely to term number 2.

2. Beamline

These are the positions around the synchrotron at which the x-rays are actually emitted. X-rays act just like any other rays of light so they can be diffracted reflected and focussed in the same ways. The beamline contains the apertures; lens and mirrors used for this purpose as well as big end-station hutches that house the equipment needed for the particular experiment you want to perform. They are essentially a synchrotron scientist’s lab.

 

3. Beamtime

As you can imagine synchrotrons are not infinitely large, such a shame I know. As such the number of simultaneous experiments is limited. Unfortunately the number of scientists wanting to perform experiments is much greater than the number of beamlines. The usage period is therefore allocated in time slots that users refer to as “Beamtime”. This time is always fairly limited and precious so we try ti make as much use of it as possible, hence all the sleepless nights . In fact nothing causes more sleepless nights than the next term.

4. Beam dump

The original term comes from the piece of equipment used to absorb the energy of particles in a particle accelerator to safely stop them. For me and anyone working in a synchrotron however the term is synonymous with “Oh no not again”. Without circulating no x-rays will be emitted and therefore no experiments can be performed. They can happen for a number of reasons. Sometimes it can be down to hutch interlock problems meaning there is a chance a worker could be irradiated by escaping X-rays and so they need to be shut off as quickly as possible. Other times it is down to the electron source (wonderfully known as an electron gun) or the accelerator itself, which leads to instabilities. What it always is though is damned inconvenient. Sometimes a dump is a matter of moments, other times it can last for hours and when the beam comes back all it’s parameters may have changed, meaning the experimental set up has to be re-optimised and more time is lost.

5. Beamline staff

Golden rule, make these guys your friends. They are the people who run the beamline with expertise generally in construction engineering. They develop and maintain most of the equipment and software for performing experiments and will help your experiment run as smoothly as possible. Treat them nicely and you’ll have a nicer time during experiments, especially if there are problems – there are always problems.

 

6.Speckle patterns

These are the stuff that dreams are made of, provided you dream about coherent diffractive imaging (CDI). The experiments I perform involve illuminating samples with very bright X-rays and measuring their reflections from atoms within the sample using a detector similar to those found in digital cameras (though quite a fair bit more expensive). Speckles occur when photons of light with the same wave length, the distance between the humps of the lights wave form, interact with different regions in the sample and are reflected to the same degree. The photons interact additively or destructively and so we see spots of very intense signal or patches of no signal on the detector.

Each speckle contains contributions of reflection from the whole sample so it is the variation in intensity and the periodicity of the samples that hold the important structural information. If that is a little confusing don’t worry, I’m still not fully on top of it myself. What I do know though is that they can be very pretty. Whilst getting the hard structural information requires a fair amount of computation we can still draw some interesting conclusions about overall structural changes within a sample from changes in speckle position and intensity alone. It is quite nice that the data we collect is something you can physically see straight away.

Right science waffle over, hope you feel a little bit more enlightened in regards to my research and hopefully next time I post won’t be so far away.