Studies

31
Mar
2013
Back from Neutron Scattering Software Workshop in Berlin

Back from Neutron Scattering Software Workshop in Berlin

After the ADD workshop at the ILL in France, I went to Germany, to participate in yet another workshop in Berlin. This time the theme of the workshop was software for neutron scattering, and I learned so much. A bunch of software developers, as well as researchers interested in software, showed up, and there were so many great discussions and presentations of software and what is needed of software. I also got ample opportunities to network a bunch, so that was great.

I found a little time – on the evening of the last day – to go to Alexanderplatz, where there was a market going on. They had music and tonnes of little cute booths selling sausages and all kinds of sweet foods. They also had some pretty silly music going on (see the video further down if you care).

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Travel, Workshops, schools, and courses, 0 comments
23
Mar
2013
ADD2013 workshop at ILL

ADD2013 workshop at ILL

During the last week, I’ve been in France, participating in the ADD workshop at the ILL in Grenoble. It has been a week of tutorials and lectures on different programs and methods that are used for real-space analysis of diffraction data. I got to test out the PDFgui program, which was interesting – since I’d heard about it at the conference in Santa Fe last October.

I got to present a poster as well, but simply used the same poster as the one I presented at the Flipper workshop back in January. I still did not get much of a response in terms of ideas on how to refine my superstructures, but did get plenty of friendly – although slightly unoptimistic – encouragement to continue my work. Sigh.

I also got a bit of time in the evenings to go explore Grenoble, and I found myself getting on the cable cars to the Bastille on top of one of the mountains surrounding the city. The view from up there was spectacular!

When I was done exploring and wandering around, I took the cable car down – and basically got the whole thing to myself. That prompted me to record the descent, with the view of the city in the early sunset – so if you’re interested, have a look at the video below!

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Travel, Workshops, schools, and courses, 0 comments
26
Jan
2013
Flipper2013 workshop at ILL

Flipper2013 workshop at ILL

Since Tuesday, I’ve been at the ILL, attending this years Flipper workshop on the use of polarized neutrons. I was primarily there to learn, since I still haven’t gone much into polarized neutrons, and I have never used them for any experiments.

It was a great workshop, and I learned a lot of new things. I’m still not sure how relevant the things I learned actually are for my PhD project, but at least I met a lot of interesting people. I also presented a poster on the work I’ve done so far on my LCO crystal system – but since we haven’t been able to refine the structure yet, it was mostly a presentation of our awesome data. A few people had a look at it, and openly said that it was going to take a while to get that solved.. so that’s not comforting at all.

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Travel, Workshops, schools, and courses, 0 comments
22
Jan
2013

We just got an article in Neutron News!

This is my first scientific publication apart from my notes collection! Even though I’m not the first-author (Linda Udby did the writing), it’s still super cool! I made all of the figures, and we actually got the front page of the journal for that volume – which of course I also made!

Our Neutron News front page

Our Neutron News front page

You can see the publication via the DOI link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10448632.2013.751795

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Publications, Studies, 0 comments
12
Dec
2012

My first ISIS beamtime

During the last six days, I’ve been in England, more specifically the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, to do measurements on one of our LCO+O crystals (actually the same crystal that we did measurements on at DMC in Switzerland last month). I was at the SXD instrument, a time-of-flight neutron Laue diffractometer, where we measured at five different rotations of the crystal, each for both low temperature and room temperature.

We got a huge amount of data, and mapped out a large volume in reciprocal space. The number of superstructures we saw was really large, and so far we haven’t been able to get a full refinement of the data. The on-site peak integration software was really cool though, and seemed to do the job great – and the instrument scientist was extremely helpful.

All in all, a great experience, and I hope that I (probably with the help of the instrument scientist) will be able to get the superstructures solved.

Of course I also had a few minutes here and there to walk around and take some pictures:
Share this:
Posted by PJR in Experiments, Travel, 0 comments
18
Nov
2012
Yet another beam time, now with students!

Yet another beam time, now with students!

I just got home from Switzerland, once again, this time from a beamtime at the DMC powder diffractometer, where I was measuring on one of our LCO+O single crystal samples, in order to map out part of reciprocal space (both for the crystal aligned in the cb- and the ab-plane). It was some really cool measurements, and I think I’ve already found the front page image for my thesis!

I actually started out the trip with starting up a beam time at the RITA-II instrument, where a YMnO3 sample were to be investigated. That was also really exciting – and that experiment continued during my own DMC beam time as well (sadly I didn’t have time to follow it all the way though, but their results looked really cool!).

Some of the students from the neutron scattering course were down there with us, to follow the two experiments. That was really fun, but I hadn’t expected how hard it was to help them to understand everything, when I didn’t even understand half of it myself! Usually beam times are really tiring, but this really took the price!

The DMC data weren’t really the most perfect data to do structure refinement from (in the cb-plane we only got 12 structural peaks, and some of them were of really bad resolution), but we saw some cool temperature dependencies, and already have some new proposals out for TriCS and other instruments in order to explore those things more. We also got a friendly beam time of two days at the new EIGER instrument, which will be really cool to work with.

This trip also marked the end of the neutron course, although I still need to correct a few reports, and help a few more of the students with their final project. But all in all, it’s been fun teaching in the course, even though it has been quite hard at some times!

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Experiments, Teaching, Travel, 0 comments
23
Oct
2012
Total scattering workshop in Santa Fe

Total scattering workshop in Santa Fe

From October 14th to 23rd, I was in the states for the first time. I went to Santa Fe (New Mexico) to attend a workshop/conference on total scattering, the Advanced Simulation Techniques for Total Scattering Data conference, arranged by people from Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The actual conference was only from the 16th to the 19th, so I had a few days on each side to go around town and be a bit of a turist. I brought my camera, and got a lot of nice shots (although I’ll have to find the time to actually do the editing and sorting of them later).

My flight there went through Heathrow and Dallas Fort Worth, and turned out to end in a mess – both ways. On the way over there, some very thick fog had hidden Heathrow, and we had to fly in circles – eventually landing in Stanstead to get re-fueled, before we could finally land – more than an hour late – in Heathrow. Of course I missed my Atlantic flight, but luckily I got on the next available one, and still caught my connecting flight in Dallas. My luggage wasn’t as lucky, though.. The people in Dallas were really bad at handling the situation, and it was first when I landed in Santa Fe that people could help me on with the luggage problem (at which time it was too late to send the luggage on from Heathrow, so I had to wait to the evening after). On the way back, our landing in Heathrow got delayed because of the number of planes waiting, and I nearly missed my connecting flight to Copenhagen. The people at Heathrow were nice enough to hand out special orange tickets for people connecting with flights that left soon, but they didn’t take into account that the name ‘Jensen’ is very common in Denmark, and hence stupidly enough only made one ‘Jensen’ ticket, and gave that one to the other ‘Jensen’ Dane that was going on the same plane. So I had to go through the normal procedures, and just caught the plane in time. Of course, my luggage didn’t, again. But oh well, at least I got home.

The conference itself was really nice – both the practical arrangements, the small PDFgui tutorial, the talks, and the trip to Los Alamos, were really well planned and executed. I learned a lot of new information about total scattering, and what it can be used for, and met a lot of cool people. I was really happy to talk to a couple of people from ORNL, to hear how things work over there, since I will be going there in half a year of so.

The turisting part of the trip went nicely as well – I had some fun walking around town, looking at the old buildings and just getting a feel of things. I went to a local supermarket just to see how it was (I was expecting the people packing your groceries for you, but it still just felt creepy to me..), and I went to lots of small restaurants to get some of the New Mexican food (which I was pleasantly surprised about), especially the chile. I even went all the way through town to see the farmers market, and I’m glad I did; You could get to see how they roast the peppers for the chile – that was fun.

Overall, it was a great trip, and I’m really looking forward to going over there again.

A while later, a meeting report was published for the workshop in Neutron News, which can be viewed here. The picture in the top of this blog entry is also from this report.

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Travel, Workshops, schools, and courses, 0 comments
26
Sep
2012

Responsible Conduct of Research course

These last two days, I’ve spent my mornings at the old faculty of life sciences, following the new mandatory PhD course Responsible Conduct of Research. The course was started because of the problems with the neuro-science (or what was it?) researcher Milena Penkowa, who did a lot of bad things (read; science misconduct). I don’t know exactly what the logic was, but I think the people at the top of the university thought it would make them look good if they demanded all PhD students to follow a course on the matters of misconduct and politics.

First, I was appaled by the sheer weight of the papers they wanted us to read: Not only news-paper clips and guides, but huge pieces of law texts. I haven’t had that much trouble getting through a curriculum since following the (also mandatory, but on the bachelor education in physics) course in science ethics and history/theory. I guess I learned a bit though – I now know what the different committees are called, and what they do, and I learned about a couple of cases where people have done wrong. But all in all, most of what they made me read what logics, and I felt a bit stupid for actually following their demands of reading it – I might as well just have thought it up myself.

The lectures on the two mornings were fine, though, but maybe (who am I kidding, not maybe, definetely!) boring. At least we got free coffee…

To pass the course, you have to write a two-page essay on a case from your own scientific environment or work, related to the curriculum of the course. I haven’t written an essay since high school, and I’ve always hated it. For now, I have no idea what I want to write about, and I really don’t know how I’ll be able to write something I’ll be happy about handing in. Let’s see what I end up with…

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Workshops, schools, and courses, 0 comments
17
Sep
2012

One more workshop on the list – this time on DISCUS

During the full last week, I was in Erlangen (Germany, close to Nürnberg), following a workshop on the diffuse scattering simulation program DISCUS.

It was lots of fun, but I had kind of hoped for something else. A lot of the first day (and sub-sequent days) were used on how to use linux and the terminal (and ranting about how bad windows is – that is, using bad and wrong arguments for it…), instead of introducing the program in a good way. We went through a lot of different tutorials, but a lot of it was very hurried, and not very deep. I guess that at least I got a lot of tools back home with me, so if I really need to use the program (I don’t know if I will, yet), I have something to read up on.

I did buy the DISCUS cook book beforehand, and read a little in it (I didn’t get that far because of me being really busy). I must say that it was a really expensive book, due to the fact that you can only get it i hard-cover, but it is well written – and I think I’ve learned far more from that short period of reading in it, than I did from the actual workshop.

All that said, I would probably recommend people going to the workshop if they actually intend to use the program themselves. It’s really hard figuring out the small logic things on your own – like the fact that they have three different independent programs in the package.

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Travel, Workshops, schools, and courses, 0 comments
27
Jul
2012
OrientExpress beamtime over

OrientExpress beamtime over

I’ve just returned from the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, where I’ve been on a super-short beamtime at the neutron Laue instrument OrientExpress. This was my first time to the ILL, and I was going there on my own. That was confusing! The airport in Lyon has really bad signing, but I found my way (after a while of wandering around not understanding anything, I might add..).

I was measuring on two new LSCO crystals, to see how many single crystals was in them. Both of them actually came from one crystal, but it broke into two during the oxygenation process. It seems like they are possibly full single crystals, a great result, but they might have a splitting in the length direction (they are cylindrical) – which is kind of a mess to cut up. I guess I will have to do some X-ray Laue images to see if that is the case.

The absolutely stunning rail station at Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport

On the way back home, I went to the airport in Lyon a little early, to go explore the train station connected to the airport. I have never seen a more alien building – it’s absolutely stunning!
Share this:
Posted by PJR in Experiments, Travel, 0 comments
29
Jun
2012
Another workshop

Another workshop

This whole week I have been participating in the Second Annual Niels Bohr International Academy Workshop on ESS Science (yeah, that’s a long name, I know) held here at the Niels Bohr Institute.

During the lectures, we were told a lot about current neutron instruments, and the programming used to analyze data. I also participated in tutorial sessions in the program RMCProfile, and I was really happy to get to know that particular program. I might use it during my Ph.D., if I get the time (and beam time!).

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Workshops, schools, and courses, 0 comments
15
Jun
2012

Another RITA-II beamtime

This was a hard couple of weeks! Just the day after getting home from the DanScatt meeting in Odense, I took a plane to Switzerland super-early in the morning, for a new round of beamtime at the RITA-II instrument at PSI.

Helium and nitrogen refill

Helium and nitrogen refill gives a lot of smoke

With a little help from Christof Niedermayer, I used the first couple of days to get our sample aligned and get it on a new holder (it was already aligned in the ac-plane from the last beamtime, but we needed it in the ab-plane with a certain tilt out of the plane). Astrid showed up Sunday to help. Unfortunately, somewhere in the research phase we had found the wrong diameter of the magnet we were going to use, and it turned out that we had to start all over with a much smaller holder! That was a huge setback, and we had to start almost all over with the alignment. We weren’t done yet when Linda showed up on Monday.

But we did get it working in the end, and did a lot of cool measurements on an incommensurate magnetic peak, and how it changed with applied magnetic field.

A little weekend trip to Basel

Astrid went home after the first week, leaving Linda and I to finalize the experiment (even though I guess this experiment was mostly for her project). Luckily, it was possible to script a large amount of the scans, and we actually took a whole day off to go to Basel Saturday June 9th. That was a really great little trip, and we saw a lot of fun museums and architecture – especially the Tinguely museum was interesting, with so many odd sculptures!

Another fun thing that happened was that I met Ivana (who I met at the PSI summer school in 2011) in the instrument hall! She was at a beamtime at the SANS-I instrument, doing some measurements that I really didn’t understand. But we had a little time to get some coffee at talk things over, that was nice.

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Experiments, Travel, 0 comments
19
May
2012
PSI detwinning beamtime

PSI detwinning beamtime

Yesterday, I returned from a long week in Switzerland, where I’ve been on a beamtime at the RITA-II instrument at the SINQ neutron source at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI).

I was there along with Astrid T. Rømer and Linda Udby, doing measurements on three different LSCO crystals. We tried detwinning them using magnetic fields, but it ended up not working at all.. Week well spent! Well, at least I got some training in aligning single crystals, and we did get some beautiful data.

We’ll have to look at some different techniques for measuring detwinning than neutron scattering (possibly dilatometry), before we want to do anything with neutrons again.

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Experiments, Travel, 0 comments
06
May
2012

FysikRevy 2012

Yesterday I was to the annual FysikRevy at the Niels Bohr Institute, and it was great! A bunch of the students band together and make a two-hour (or was it more?) show with singing and acting (and a lot of booze) – doing small sketches teasing the teachers and the administration.

I haven’t been to the revy the last couple of years, since it always ended up being in a weekend where I didn’t have time. But this year, I finally found the time, and I am really glad that I did. I’m already looking forward to next year!

Oh, and something funny: I was actually indirectly in the revy. A printed version of one of my note collections was in one of the sketches!

For an example of what happened at the FysikRevy, even in English, have a look at their YouTube page for one of the most awesome songs they’ve written so far!

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Studies, 0 comments
24
Apr
2012

Experimental Physics course start

This year I will be teaching as a teaching assistant in the second-year course Experimental Physics (just as I did last year). Today was the first day with the students, and it looks really promising. There are, however, a huge number of them (it seems like they ended up being 72, as compared to last year when we only had around 48).

I will be the primary teacher of the numerical math program MATLAB, as well as the typographic program package LaTeX. I will also help in the practical exercises, where the students will be doing different experiments over the course of a full day (they will do three of these experiments), in order for them to write an experimental report/article over it. We will have a lot of reports to correct for them this year..

The course went really well last year, so I hope we will be able to keep the standard again. Because of the large number of students, I ended up making a wiki for the MATLAB exercises, such that they can help themselves more during the exercise sessions. I hope it’s actually usable! This first day, it seemed to lessen the queuing for questions a little – so it might have been worth the effort (and anyway, I can use it as-is next year as well).

Share this:
Posted by PJR in Studies, Teaching, 0 comments