̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - ̽��ֱ�� of Glasgow

Scottish rocks to play a key role in Mars space mission

sc604 — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 15:48:18 +0000

A group of scientists, including from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, have this week been collecting samples of rock from the NatureScot National Nature Reserve (NNR) as part of the NASA and European Space Agency (ESA)’s Mars Sample Return Program.

̽��ֱ��programme is gathering samples of rocks from around the world that bear a similarity to those on Mars, ahead of rock samples from the Red Planet being brought back to Earth in 2033.

Rum has been selected as the only UK site for sampling, and is a high priority in the programme, as some of its igneous rocks have a very similar mineral and chemical content to those that have been collected by NASA’s Perseverance Rover during its exploration of an ancient lakebed on Mars.

Intensive study of the rocks from Rum and around the globe will crucially help scientists understand what methods of testing and analysis will work best in readiness for when the Martian rocks return to Earth.

As the first samples from another world, the Mars rocks are thought to present the best opportunity to reveal clues about the early evolution of the planet, including the potential for past life.

̽��ֱ��Rum sampling is being led by Dr Lydia Hallis, a geologist and planetary scientist from the ̽��ֱ�� of Glasgow, and member of the programme’s Science Group. ̽��ֱ��team also includes scientists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the ̽��ֱ�� of Leicester and Brock ̽��ֱ�� in Canada.

“These Rum rocks are an excellent comparison to one particular Martian rock sample, which the NASA Perseverance Rover collected from the igneous Séítah Formation within Jezero crater,” said Hallis. “Not only is the mineralogy and chemistry similar, but the two rocks appear to have a similar amount of weathering.

“This seems strange when we think how wet and warm Rum is compared to present-day Mars, but billions of years ago when the Séítah formation crystallised on Mars the difference in environment would not have been so pronounced. At this time Mars was much wetter and warmer, with a thicker atmosphere that may even have produced rain (though not as much as we get in Scotland!). Over time the Martian atmosphere thinned, leaving the surface much dryer and colder, essentially halting any further weathering within Séítah and preserving the rocks at Jezero Crater for us to investigate today.

“ ̽��ֱ��rocks on Rum are much younger, but their exposure to the Scottish elements has produced roughly the same amount of weathering as was produced in the Séítah Formation during Mars’ early wet and warm climate. Because of all these similarities, analysis of the Rum rocks should give us a good head start and help the samples from the Red Planet achieve their full potential when they are returned to Earth.”

“It’s amazing to think that somewhere right here in the UK might be able to tell us something about the geology of a different planet,” said team member Professor Helen Williams from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “We’ve still got several years left to wait before we can study the real Mars rocks, but in the meantime, our Scottish samples will provide scientists with the perfect material to test and refine the analytical techniques they will be using to investigate material returned from the Red Planet.”

Lesley Watt, NatureScot’s Rum NNR reserve manager, said: “With its extinct volcanoes and dramatic mountains, Rum has always been one of the best places to discover Scotland's world-class geology, but we didn’t quite realise that the rocks here were of interplanetary significance as well.

“It has been fascinating to learn more about the NASA/ESA mission, and really exciting for the island to play a small part in this truly historic endeavour to find out more about Mars. We hope it will add yet another element of interest for visitors to this special place.”

Adapted from a NatureScot press release.

Ancient rocks from the Isle of Rum in northwest Scotland are playing an important role in an international space mission to discover more about Mars.

It’s amazing to think that somewhere right here in the UK might be able to tell us something about the geology of a different planet

Helen Williams

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Illustration of NASA's Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Watching magnetic nano ‘tornadoes’ in 3D

sc604 — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 15:01:20 +0000

̽��ֱ��team, from the Universities of Cambridge and Glasgow in the UK and ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, used their technique to observe how the magnetisation behaves, the first time this has been done in three dimensions. ̽��ֱ��technique, called time-resolved magnetic laminography, could be used to understand and control the behaviour of new types of magnets for next-generation data storage and processing. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Magnets are widely used in applications from data storage to energy production and sensors. In order to understand why magnets behave the way they do, it is important to understand the structure of their magnetisation, and how that structure reacts to changing currents or magnetic fields.

“Until now, it hasn’t been possible to actually measure how magnets respond to changing magnetic fields in three dimensions,” said Dr Claire Donnelly from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, and the study’s first author. “We’ve only really been able to observe these behaviours in thin films, which are essentially two dimensional, and which therefore don’t give us a complete picture.”

Moving from two dimensions to three is highly complex, however. Modelling and visualising magnetic behaviour is relatively straightforward in two dimensions, but in three dimensions, the magnetisation can point in any direction and form patterns, which is what makes magnets so powerful.

“Not only is it important to know what patterns and structures this magnetisation forms, but it’s essential to understand how it reacts to external stimuli,” said Donnelly. “These responses are interesting from a fundamental point of view, but they are crucial when it comes to magnetic devices used in technology and applications.”

One of the main challenges in investigating these responses is tied to the very reason magnetic materials are so relevant for so many applications: changes in the magnetisation typically are extremely small, and happen extremely fast. Magnetic configurations – so-called domain structures – exhibit features on the order of tens to hundreds of nanometres, thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, and typically react to magnetic fields and currents in billionths of a second.

Now, Donnelly and her collaborators from the Paul Scherrer Institute, the ̽��ֱ�� of Glasgow and ETH Zurich have developed a technique to look inside a magnet, visualise its nanostructure, and how it responds to a changing magnetic field in three dimensions, and at the size and timescales required.

̽��ֱ��technique they developed, time-resolved magnetic laminography, uses ultra-bright X-rays from a synchrotron source to probe the magnetic state from different directions at the nanoscale, and how it changes in response to a quickly alternating magnetic field. ̽��ֱ��resulting seven-dimensional dataset (three dimensions for the position, three for the direction and one for the time) is then obtained using a specially developed reconstruction algorithm, providing a map of the magnetisation dynamics with 70 picosecond temporal resolution, and 50 nanometre spatial resolution.

What the researchers saw with their technique was like a nanoscale storm: patterns of waves and tornadoes moving side to side as the magnetic field changed. ̽��ֱ��movement of these tornadoes, or vortices, had previously only been observed in two dimensions.

̽��ֱ��researchers tested their technique using conventional magnets, but they say it could also be useful in the development of new types of magnets which exhibit new types of magnetism. These new magnets, such as 3D-printed nanomagnets, could be useful for new types of high-density, high-efficiency data storage and processing.

“We can now investigate the dynamics of new types of systems that could open up new applications we haven’t even thought of,” said Donnelly. “This new tool will help us to understand, and control, their behaviour.”

̽��ֱ��research was funded in part by the Leverhulme Trust, the Isaac Newton Trust and the European Union.

Reference:
Claire Donnelly et al. ‘Time-resolved imaging of three-dimensional nanoscale magnetization dynamics.’ Nature Nanotechnology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-020-0649-x

Scientists have developed a three-dimensional imaging technique to observe complex behaviours in magnets, including fast-moving waves and ‘tornadoes’ thousands of times thinner than a human hair.

We can now investigate the dynamics of new types of systems that could open up new applications we haven’t even thought of

Claire Donnelly

Reconstruction of 3D magnetic structure

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Targeting hard-to-treat cancers

sc604 — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 09:06:34 +0000

While the survival rate for most cancers has doubled over the past 40 years, some cancers such as those of the pancreas, brain, lung and oesophagus still have low survival rates.

Such cancers are now the target of an Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and involving researchers from Imperial College London, ̽��ֱ�� College London and the Universities of Glasgow and Birmingham.

“Some cancers are difficult to remove by surgery and highly invasive, and they are also hard to treat because drugs often cannot reach them at high enough concentration,” explains George Malliaras, Prince Philip Professor of Technology in Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who leads the IRC. “Pancreatic tumour cells, for instance, are protected by dense stromal tissue, and tumours of the central nervous system by the blood-brain barrier.”

̽��ֱ��aim of the project, which is funded for six years by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, is to develop an array of new delivery technologies that can deliver almost any drug to any tumour in a large enough concentration to kill the cancerous cells.

Chemists, engineers, material scientists and pharmacologists will focus on developing particles, injectable gels and implantable devices to deliver the drugs. Cancer scientists and clinicians from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre and partner sites will devise and carry out clinical trials. Experts in innovative manufacturing technologies will ensure the devices are able to be manufactured and robust enough to withstand surgical manipulation.

One technology the team will examine is the ability of advanced materials to self-assemble and entrap drugs inside metal-organic frameworks. These structures can carry enormous amounts of drugs, and be tuned both to target the tumour and to release the drug at an optimal rate.

“We are going to pierce through the body’s natural barriers,” says Malliaras, “and deliver anti-cancer drugs to the heart of the tumour.”

Cambridge leads a £10 million interdisciplinary collaboration to target the most challenging of cancers.

We are going to pierce through the body’s natural barriers and deliver anti-cancer drugs to the heart of the tumour.

George Malliaras

David Fairen-Jimenez

Crystalline metal–organic framework

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‘Unprecedented’ storms and floods are more common than we think

lw355 — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 10:48:44 +0000

A team of experts from the Universities of Aberystwyth, Cambridge and Glasgow have drawn on historic records to build a clearer picture of the flooding.

They conclude that 21st-century flood events such as Storm Desmond are not exceptional or unprecedented in terms of their frequency or magnitude, and that flood frequency and flood risk forecasts would be improved by including data from flood deposits dating back hundreds of years.

Dr Tom Spencer from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge said: “In the House of Commons on Monday (December 7), the Environment Secretary called the flooding in north-west England ‘unprecedented’ and ‘consistent with climate change trends’. But is this actually true?

“Conventional methods of analysing river flow gauge records cannot answer these questions because upland catchments usually have no or very short records of water levels of around 30 or 40 years. In fact, recent careful scientific analysis of palaeoflood deposits (flood deposits dating back hundreds of years) in the UK uplands shows that 21st-century floods are not unprecedented in terms of both their frequency (they were more frequent before 1960) and magnitude (the biggest events occurred during the 17th–19th centuries).”

Professor Mark Macklin, an expert in river flooding and climate change impacts at Aberystwyth ̽��ֱ��, said: “UK documentary records and old flood deposits dating back hundreds of years indicate that these floods are not unprecedented, which means we are grossly underestimating flood risk and endangering peoples’ lives.

“In some areas, recent floods have either equalled or exceeded the largest recorded events and these incidences can be ascribed to climate variability in Atlantic margin weather systems.

“It is of concern that historical data suggests there is far more capacity in the North Atlantic climate system to produce wetter and more prolonged flood-rich periods than hitherto experienced in the 21st century. Looking forward, an increased likelihood of weather extremes due to climate change means that extending our flood record using geomorphology science must be placed at the centre of flood risk assessment in the UK.”

Professor Macklin suggests that new approaches to flood risk analysis be adopted to include instrumental, documentary and most importantly palaeoflood records.

He added: “Current approaches using flood frequency analysis and flood risk assessment based on 40-50 year long flow records are far shorter than the design life of most engineering structures and strategic flood risk planning approaches. They are not fit for purpose now, let alone in a changing climate.”

Professor John Lewin from the ̽��ֱ�� of Aberystwyth said: “What is needed, is far more resilience for already-developed floodplains, and much more serious insistence that future floodplain development should be virtually curtailed. Somewhere along the line floodplain development has been allowed by local authorities and the UK government to continue regardless.”

Dr Larissa Naylor from the ̽��ֱ�� of Glasgow said: “These floods and the 2013/14 storms have shown us that our landscape is dynamic rather than static – where rivers reshape floodplains and erosion remodels our coastline – with large economic and social costs. We need to urgently consider how we plan our cities and towns, and rebuild in the wake of large flood and storm events, to live safely in our changing landscape.”

Spencer, Lewin, Macklin and Naylor are members of the British Society for Geomorphology’s Working Group on Stormy Geomorphology, who are currently finalising a global state-of-the-art analysis of the role geomorphology science can play in an age of extremes in the Wiley journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms.

̽��ֱ��recent ‘unprecedented’ flooding in north-west England might be more common than currently believed, a group of scientists has warned.

Analysis shows that 21st-century floods are not unprecedented in terms of both their frequency and magnitude."

Tom Spencer

Gavin Lynn via Flickr

Flooded lakehouse, Keswick, Cumbria, UK

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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