Dec 212012
 
Red Kite III - January 2013

The third meeting of the Red Kite network will be held on Thursday 10th January, 2013 in the Main Lecture Theatre in the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford.  Attendance will be courtesy of the John Fell Oxford University Research Fund.  The meeting will consist of three sessions, each commencing with a half hour … Read the rest

Dec 202012
 
DetOx: A Program for Determining Anomalous Scattering Factors of Mixed-Oxidation-State Species (K.J. Sutton, S.A. Barnett, K.E. Christensen, H. Nowell, A.L. Thompson, D.R. Allan and R.I. Cooper)

J. Sync. Rad (2013). 20, 200–204. [ doi:10.1107/S0909049512044007 ]

Overlapping absorption edges will occur when an element is present in multiple oxidation states within a material. DetOx is a program for partitioning overlapping X-ray absorption spectra into contributions from individual atomic species and computing the dependence of the anomalous scattering factors on X-ray energy. … Read the rest

Nov 292012
 
Crystallography "In Our Time"

As part of the Bragg Centenary Celebrations, Melvyn Bragg and his guests discussed the history of crystallography, the study of crystals and their structure on “In Our Time” on BBC Radio 4. His guests were Prof. Judith A. K. Howard (University of Durham), Dr. Christopher Hammond (University of Leeds) and Prof. Mike Glazer … Read the rest

Nov 242012
 
Snowflakes at the Oxford Christmas Light Night

Every year, Oxford Inspires organises an evening of social and cultural events in the centre of Oxford following the theme of Christmas Lights.  A lot of the institutions within the city get involved, and this year that included Amber, who was invited to give a presentation at the Snowflake exhibition held at the History of Read the rest

Nov 012012
 
Structure of the Month - November 2012

Presented by: Vanessa E. Fairbank & Dr. Amber L. Thompson
Research Leader: Dr. Andrew L. Goodwin
Published: Physical Review B

Cubic Cd(CN)2 shows the strongest known isotropic negative thermal expansion (NTE; volume contraction on heating).  Variable-temperature single-crystal X‑ray diffraction suggests there is temperature-dependent off-centering of Cd2+ ions that has the effect of increasing … Read the rest

Sep 212012
 
CRYSTALS Enhancements: Asymmetric Restraints (R. I. Cooper, A. Thorn and D. J. Watkin)

J. Appl. Cryst. (2012). 45, 1057–1060. [ doi:10.1107/S0021889812035790 ]

The traditional Waser distance restraint, the rigid-bond restraint and atomic displacement parameter (ADP) similarity restraints have an equal influence on both atoms involved in the restraint. This may be inappropriate in cases where it can reasonably be expected that the precision of the determination of … Read the rest

Sep 042012
 
Structure of the Month - September 2012

Presented by: Sebastian D. Pike & Dr. Amber L. Thompson
Research Leader: Prof. Andrew S. Weller
Published: Science

Transition metal σ-alkane complexes are key intermediates in catalytic C–H activation processes. We have used a direct crystal to crystal transition, by reaction with H2, to produce an alkane σ-complex directly.  This structure is of … Read the rest

Aug 102012
 
Summer Conferences - ACA Annual Meeting 2012, ECM 27 and Aperiodic 2012

Summer is conference season and the members of Chem. Cryst. have been on the road to the ACA in Boston and the ECM in Bergen.  In September, Kirsten will also be attending the 7th International Conference on Aperiodic Crystals, to be hosted in Cairns, Australia.  Contributions include:

David J. Watkin, Richard I. Cooper & … Read the rest

Aug 022012
 
ACA Student Lecturer Award

Congratulations to Karim Sutton, who has been awarded a Margaret C. Etter Student Lecturer Award at the recent American Crystallographic Association annual meeting in Boston.

He presented his recent research determining oxidation states in mixed-valent materials using tunable synchrotron radiation on Diamond beamline I19.

The awards were established to honour the memory of Professor … Read the rest