[Inter-Korea] :
Incheon’s Ganghwa County, near the inter-Korean border, has designated itself a “danger zone” effective Friday and issued an administrative order banning the dissemination of anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets north of the border. According to county officials on Thursday, the decision stems from ...

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[Science] :
Jeju Island experienced another tropical night on Sunday, setting a fresh record for the number of tropical nights in the southern island. According to the regional office of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) on Sunday, lows for the previous night recorded 26-point-four degrees Celsius on the ...

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[Science] :
Jeju City experienced its 65th tropical night of the season Wednesday, setting a fresh record in an unusually hot September for the southern resort island. According to the regional office of the Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA) on Wednesday, lows for the previous night recorded 27-point-three ...

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[Science] :
This past September set records both for tropical nights and unusually hot daytime weather throughout the country.   According to the Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA) on Tuesday, locations across the nation experienced heat-wave-level temperatures of 33 degrees Celsius or higher over an average ...

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[Science] :
A "supermoon" will occur Thursday night for the first time in 14 months, making the full moon appear brighter and larger than usual. According to the National Gwacheon Science Museum on Monday, it will be the first supermoon since August 31, 2023, rising over Seoul at 5:38 p.m. Thursday and setting at ...

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[Science] :
Most parts of the nation are experiencing heavy rain, with up to 120 millimeters expected in some areas through Saturday.  The Korea Meteorological Administration forecast on Friday that the eastern coastal areas of Gangwon Province will see 50 to 100 millimeters of rain through Saturday, adding that ...

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[Science] :
Overcast skies are forecast nationwide Monday, with showers expected in the south of the country and parts of the central region. According to the Korea Meteorological Administration, overcast conditions and rain are to continue Tuesday. The southernmost island of Jeju is expected to see about 120 ...

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[Science] :
Heavy rain is forecast for Jeju Island and the nation’s southern coastal regions through Saturday due to the indirect impact of Typhoon Kong-rey.  According to the Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA) on Friday, Jeju will see between 80 and 150 millimeters of rain through Saturday.  Up to 300 ...

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[Politics] :
The main opposition Democratic Party(DP) will stage a rally this weekend to denounce alleged influence peddling by President Yoon Suk Yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee and call for a special counsel probe. DP spokesperson Hwang Jung-a said Wednesday that the party will hold the rally in Seoul’s ...

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[Politics] :
Police say former President Moon Jae-in’s daughter has admitted that she operated an illegal lodging business in Jeju City.  Jeju’s provincial police department said Wednesday that it will hand over Moon Da-hye’s case to the prosecution sometime this week and recommend charges under the Public ...

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Differentiating between most overnight accommodations can be simple, based on the building's location, layout, amenities and price, but several outliers blur the lines between these key differences.

[International] :
North Korea has slammed the European Union(EU) for moving to adopt a resolution to address human rights violations in the North.  In an announcement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, the North’s permanent mission to the UN criticized the EU for following what it called the United ...

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[International] :
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly said on Monday that his country’s soldiers were fighting against nearly 50-thousand enemy troops in Russia’s Kursk region.  Reuters said Zelenkyy made the remarks in a post on Telegram.  Zelenskyy said Ukraine will considerably strengthen its ...

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[International] :
The U.S. State Department has confirmed that North Korean troops deployed to Russia’s Kursk region are engaging in combat against Ukraine. In a press briefing Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said he can confirm that over ten-thousand North Korean soldiers have been sent to eastern ...

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Highways and freeways can both be designed with multiple lanes, entrance and exit ramps and limited traffic control to reduce congestion and improve driver safety. However, some small highway vs. freeway distinctions place them in separate categories.

[Culture] :
 Calligraphy by the late Korean independence fighter Ahn Jung-geun will soon be on display for the South Korean public. According to the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, a special exhibition on Ahn’s writings will open Thursday in cooperation with the Ahn Junggeun Memorial Association ...

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Starting your own vegetable garden can be a rewarding and delicious hobby. But choosing the right vegetables can make the difference between a bountiful harvest and a frustrating experience. If you're a beginner, you'll want to start with the easiest vegetables to grow in different seasons.

RM of BTS released his second solo album 'Right Place, Wrong Person' on Friday, his first solo album since 'Indigo' in December 2022.The album carries eleven songs, including the title track...

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Google is home to a ton of super fun hidden Easter eggs you can check out right from your browser. Go ahead, try a couple. You won't be disappointed.

Explore Virgo men's traits, compatibility, and relationship dynamics. Learn what makes a Virgo man unique in love and if he's the right zodiac match for you.

[Economy] :
The nation posted a current account surplus for the fifth consecutive month in September, on the back of robust exports of semiconductors and other IT products.  According to tentative data from the Bank of Korea on Thursday, the current account surplus came to eleven-point-12 billion dollars in ...

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[Economy] :
The price of Bitcoin has crossed the 80-thousand-dollar mark for the first time, just days after Donald Trump’s reelection to the U.S. presidency.    According to the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency was trading at 88-thousand-413 U.S. dollars at ...

[more...]

Understanding Nottinghamshire’s groundwater microbial ecosystems  British Geological Survey

BGS releases 10K maps through updated maps portal  British Geological Survey

Earthquake hits Midlands as British Geological Survey confirm magnitude  Birmingham Live

Delivering a sustainable urban future for Europe through geoscience  British Geological Survey

Spotlight on BGS coastal erosion data  British Geological Survey

Local MP checks in on development of new geothermal 'living laboratory' in Nottinghamshire  British Geological Survey

Quake it off: Taylor Swift concerts shake Edinburgh  British Geological Survey

The crystal structure of a neo­pentyl­oxypillar[5]arene with two pyridine mol­ecules encapsulated in the macrocyclic cavity is reported.

This study explores the high-pressure behavior of benzo[a]pyrene, revealing two previously unknown polymorphs at 4.8 and 7.1 GPa. These findings enhance our understanding of the structural dynamics and stability of polycyclic aromatic hydro­carbons under extreme conditions.

Incommensurate phase of potassium guaninate monohydrate is the first example of a modulation in purine derivatives and of a high-pressure incommensurate crystal structure to be solved for an organic compound.

In-situ diffraction measurements reveal that magnesium chloride forms a unique high-pressure phase, a heptahydrate, above 2 GPa. The hydrogen-bonding structure appears to contain orientational disorder.

The odd hydration number has so far been missing in the water-rich magnesium chloride hydrate series (MgCl2·nH2O). In this study, magnesium chloride heptahydrate, MgCl2·7H2O (or MgCl2·7D2O), which forms at high pressures above 2 GPa and high temperatures above 300 K, has been identified. Its structure has been determined by a combination of in-situ single-crystal X-ray diffraction at 2.5 GPa and 298 K and powder neutron diffraction at 3.1 GPa and 300 K. The single-crystal specimen was grown by mixing alcohols to prevent nucleation of undesired crystalline phases. The results show orientational disorder of water molecules, which was also examined using density functional theory calculations. The disorder involves the reconnection of hydrogen bonds, which differs from those in water ice phases and known disordered salt hydrates. Shrinkage by compression occurs mainly in one direction. In the plane perpendicular to this most compressible direction, oxygen and chlorine atoms are in a hexagonal-like arrangement.

The crystal structure of the incommensurate modulated phase of potassium guaninate monohydrate has been solved on the basis of high-pressure single-crystal X-ray diffraction data. The modulated structure was described as a `mosaic' sequence of three different local configurations of two neighbouring guaninate rings. In contrast to known examples of incommensurate modulated organic compounds, the modulation functions of all atoms are discontinuous. This is the first example of the experimental detection of an incommensurate modulated crystal structure that can be modelled using the special `soliton mode' modulation function proposed by Aramburu et al. [(1995), J. Phys. Condens. Matter, 7, 6187–6196].

Protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) plays important roles in cellular homeostasis and is a highly validated therapeutic target for multiple human ailments, including diabetes, obesity and breast cancer. However, much remains to be learned about how conformational changes may convey information through the structure of PTP1B to enable allosteric regulation by ligands or functional responses to mutations. High-resolution X-ray crystallography can offer unique windows into protein conformational ensembles, but comparison of even high-resolution structures is often complicated by differences between data sets, including non-isomorphism. Here, the highest resolution crystal structure of apo wild-type (WT) PTP1B to date is presented out of a total of ∼350 PTP1B structures in the PDB. This structure is in a crystal form that is rare for PTP1B, with two unique copies of the protein that exhibit distinct patterns of conformational heterogeneity, allowing a controlled comparison of local disorder across the two chains within the same asymmetric unit. The conformational differences between these chains are interrogated in the apo structure and between several recently reported high-resolution ligand-bound structures. Electron-density maps in a high-resolution structure of a recently reported activating double mutant are also examined, and unmodeled alternate conformations in the mutant structure are discovered that coincide with regions of enhanced conformational heterogeneity in the new WT structure. These results validate the notion that these mutations operate by enhancing local dynamics, and suggest a latent susceptibility to such changes in the WT enzyme. Together, these new data and analysis provide a detailed view of the conformational ensemble of PTP1B and highlight the utility of high-resolution crystallography for elucidating conformational heterogeneity with potential relevance for function.

Sorghum, a short-day tropical plant, has been adapted for temperate grain production, in particular through the selection of variants at the MATURITY loci (Ma1–Ma6) that reduce photoperiod sensitivity. Ma3 encodes phytochrome B (phyB), a red/far-red photochromic biliprotein photoreceptor. The multi-domain gene product, comprising 1178 amino acids, autocatalytically binds the phytochromobilin chromophore to form the photoactive holophytochrome (Sb.phyB). This study describes the development of an efficient heterologous overproduction system which allows the production of large quantities of various holoprotein constructs, along with purification and crystallization procedures. Crystals of the Pr (red-light-absorbing) forms of NPGP, PGP and PG (residues 1–655, 114–655 and 114–458, respectively), each C-terminally tagged with His6, were successfully produced. While NPGP crystals did not diffract, those of PGP and PG diffracted to 6 and 2.1 Å resolution, respectively. Moving the tag to the N-terminus and replacing phytochromobilin with phycocyanobilin as the ligand produced PG crystals that diffracted to 1.8 Å resolution. These results demonstrate that the diffraction quality of challenging protein crystals can be improved by removing flexible regions, shifting fusion tags and altering small-molecule ligands.

The third complementary-determining regions of the heavy-chain (CDR3H) variable regions (VH) of some cattle antibodies are highly extended, consisting of 48 or more residues. These `ultralong' CDR3Hs form β-ribbon stalks that protrude from the surface of the antibody with a disulfide cross-linked knob region at their apex that dominates antigen interactions over the other CDR loops. The structure of the Fab fragment of a naturally paired bovine ultralong antibody (D08), identified by single B-cell sequencing, has been determined to 1.6 Å resolution. By swapping the D08 native light chain with that of an unrelated antigen-unknown ultralong antibody, it is shown that interactions between the CDR3s of the variable domains potentially affect the fine positioning of the ultralong CDR3H; however, comparison with other crystallo­graphic structures shows that crystalline packing is also a major contributor. It is concluded that, on balance, the exact positioning of ultralong CDR3H loops is most likely to be due to the constraints of crystal packing.

We present a demonstration of high-pressure grazing-incidence small-angle neutron scattering for soft matter thin films. The results suggest changes in water reorganization at different pressures.

The performance of a high-Z photon-counting detector for powder diffraction measurements at high (>50 keV) energies is characterized, and the appropriate corrections are described in order to obtain data of higher quality than have previously been obtained from 2D detectors in these energy ranges.

Combined 100 ms resolved grazing-incidence small/wide-angle X-ray scattering and optical interferometry reveal that the additive diiodooctane can significantly double the solvent evaporation rate, thereby effectively suppressing the rapid spinodal decomposition process in the early stage of spin-coasting, favouring slow phase segregation kinetics with nucleation and growth.

This study proposes an operation optimization framework for impurity-free recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries. Using a hybrid population balance equation integrated with a data-driven condition classifier, the study firstly identifies the optimal batch and semi-batch operation conditions that significantly reduce the operation time with 100% purity of product; detailed guidelines are given for industrial applications.

We explain analysis of RIXS, HERFD and XR-HERFD data to discover new physical processes in manganese and manganese-containing materials, by applying our new technique XR-HERFD, developed from high resolution RIXS and HERFD.

Grazing-incidence small-angle neutron scattering (GISANS) under pressure (HP-GISANS) at the solid (Si)–liquid (D2O) interface is demonstrated for the pressure-induced lateral morphological characterization of the nanostructure in thin (<100 nm) soft matter films. We demonstrate feasibility by investigating a hydrophobic {poly[(2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5-octafluoro)pentyl methacrylate]} (POFPMA)–hydrophilic {poly[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate]} (PDMAEMA) brush mixture of strong incompatibility between the homopolymers, anchored on Si, at T = 45°C for two pressures, P = 1 bar and P = 800 bar. Our GISANS results reveal nanostructural rearrangements with increasing P, underlining P-induced effects in tethered polymer brush layers swollen with bulk solvent.

A plug-flow fixed-bed cell for synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) and X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) idoneous for the study of heterogeneous catalysts at high temperature, pressure and under gas flow is designed, constructed and demonstrated. The operating conditions up to 1000°C and 50 bar are ensured by a set of mass flow controllers, pressure regulators and two infra-red lamps that constitute a robust and ultra-fast heating and cooling method. The performance of the system and cell for carbon dioxide hydrogenation reactions under specified temperatures, gas flows and pressures is demonstrated both for PXRD and XAFS at the P02.1 (PXRD) and the P64 (XAFS) beamlines of the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY).

In X-ray diffraction measurements, the angular resolution has a detection limit due to the receiving size of the detector. In many cases this detection limit is too large and must be breached to obtain the desired information. A novel method is proposed here by making the detector simultaneously measuring and moving. Using the deconvolution algorithm to remove the convolution effect, the pixel size limitation is finally broken. The algorithm used is not a common one, and suppresses signals at high frequencies, ensuring the reliability of the peak shape after restoration. The feasibility of this method is verified by successfully measuring the crystal truncation rod signal of SrTiO3 single crystal, and the resolution is nearly ten times higher than that of a single pixel. Moreover, this method greatly reduces the noise and improves the signal-to-noise ratio.

The African Light Source (AfLS) project is now almost eight years old. This article assesses the history, current context and future of the project. There is by now considerable momentum in building the user community, including deep training, facilitating access to current facilities, growing the scientific output, scientific networks and growing the local laboratory-scale research infrastructure. The Conceptual Design Report for the AfLS is in its final editing stages. This document specifies the socio-economic and scientific rationales and the technical aspects amongst others. The AfLS is supported by many national and Pan-African scientific professional bodies and voluntary associates across many scientific disciplines, and there are stakeholders throughout the continent and beyond. The current roadmap phases have expanded to include national and Pan-African level conversations with policy makers through new Strategic Task Force groups. The document summarizes this progress and discusses the future of the project.

In the realm of X-ray ptychography experiments, a considerable amount of ptychography scans are typically performed within a field of view encompassing the target sample. While it is crucial to obtain overlapping scans in small increments over the region of interest for achieving high-resolution sample reconstruction, a significant number of these scans often redundantly measure the empty background within the wide field of view. To address this inefficiency, an innovative algorithm is proposed that introduces automatic guidance for data acquisition. The algorithm first directs the scan point to actively search for the object of interest within the field of view. Subsequently, it intelligently scans along the perimeter of the sample, strategically acquiring measurements exclusively within the boundary of the region of interest. By employing this approach, a reduction in the number of measurements required to obtain high-resolution reconstruction images is demonstrated, as compared with conventional raster scanning methods. Furthermore, the automatic guidance provided by the algorithm offers the added advantage of saving valuable time during the reconstruction process. Through practical implementation on real experiments, these findings showcase the efficacy of the proposed algorithm in enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of X-ray ptychography experiments. This novel approach holds immense potential for advancing sample analysis and imaging techniques in various scientific disciplines.

A method to optimize the thermal deformation of an indirectly cryo-cooled silicon crystal monochromator exposed to intense X-rays at a low-emittance diffraction-limited synchrotron radiation source is presented. The thermal-induced slope error of the monochromator crystal has been studied as a function of heat transfer efficiency, crystal temperature distribution and beam footprint size. A partial cooling method is proposed, which flattens the crystal surface profile within the beam footprint by modifying the cooling contact area to optimize the crystal peak temperature. The optimal temperature varies with different photon energies, which is investigated, and a proper cooling strategy is obtained to fulfil the thermal distortion requirements over the entire photon energy range. At an absorbed power up to 300 W with a maximum power density of 44.8 W mm−2 normal incidence beam from an in-vacuum undulator, the crystal thermal distortion does not exceed 0.3 µrad at 8.33 keV. This method will provide references for the monochromator design on diffraction-limited synchrotron radiation or free-electron laser light sources.

As a representative of the fourth-generation light sources, the High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) in Beijing, China, utilizes a multi-bend achromat lattice to obtain an approximately 100 times emittance reduction compared with third-generation light sources. New technologies bring new challenges to operate the storage ring. In order to meet the beam commissioning requirements of HEPS, a new framework for the development of high-level applications (HLAs) has been created. The key part of the new framework is a dual-layer physical module to facilitate the seamless fusion of physical simulation models with the real machine, allowing for fast switching between different simulation models to accommodate the various simulation scenarios. As a framework designed for development of physical applications, all variables are based on physical quantities. This allows physicists to analytically assess measurement parameters and optimize machine parameters in a more intuitive manner. To enhance both extensibility and adaptability, a modular design strategy is utilized, partitioning the entire framework into discrete modules in alignment with the requirements of HLA development. This strategy not only facilitates the independent development of each module but also minimizes inter-module coupling, thereby simplifying the maintenance and expansion of the entire framework. To simplify the development complexity, the design of the new framework is implemented using Python and is called Python-based Accelerator Physics Application Set (Pyapas). Taking advantage of Python's flexibility and robust library support, we are able to develop and iterate quickly, while also allowing for seamless integration with other scientific computing applications. HLAs for both the HEPS linac and booster have been successfully developed. During the beam commissioning process at the linac, Pyapas's ease of use and reliability have significantly reduced the time required for the beam commissioning operators. As a development framework for HLA designed for the new-generation light sources, Pyapas has the versatility to be employed with HEPS, as well as with other comparable light sources, due to its adaptability.