Crystallography Times vol. 12, No. 3, from Rigaku, focusing on single crystal X-ray diffraction, is available from the company’s website.
May 23, 2020 – The Woodlands, Texas. The May edition of Crystallography Times from Rigaku Corporation has been published and is now available on the company’s global website. Crystallography Times is an electronic newsletter published by Rigaku, focusing on single crystal X-ray diffraction. It serves the X-ray analysis community by presenting the latest news and crystallographic research.
The new issue begins with an invitation to a series of tuition-free one-hour webinars on practical aspects of X-ray crystallography, in response to the cancellation of numerous schools and conferences this summer.
“Crystallography in the News” is a collection of recent news and developments, featuring the latest research findings in protein and small molecule crystallography and X-ray diffraction from around the world. News items include reports describing work being done by several institutions to find antibodies to combat SARS-Cov2, and news of an alliance of five large pharmaceutical companies formed to share information to help develop coronavirus antivirals.
A new product, the Rigaku Intelligent Goniometer Head (IGH), is announced in the newsletter. Rigaku offered its first motorized goniometer head for the home lab in 2004. Building on this experience in goniometer head automation, Rigaku Oxford Diffraction designed the latest goniometer head— the smallest detachable motorized goniometer head on the market—to offer convenience, safety and automation possibilities with minimum impact on data collection strategies.
The “Lab in the Spotlight” feature presents The Papish Lab at the University of Alabama. The group, headed by Dr. Elizabeth T. Papish in Tuscaloosa, AL, focuses on bioinorganic and organometallic chemistry. Their aim is to mimic how nature controls reactivity by using hydrogen bonds or protonation/deprotonation to control reactivity.
The book review for May presents Radical: The Science, Culture, and History of Breast Cancer in America by Kate Pickert. Unique among works of healthcare journalism marketed towards the general public, the book provides both information regarding the science, culture, and history of breast cancer in America, and also shares the author’s deeply personal narrative with the reader.
Among the featured videos is a link to a movie of polystyrene beads crystallizing in a petri dish, showing how researchers used positively and negatively charged polystyrene beads to model how crystallization might occur in certain materials.
Useful links to a symmetry and space group tutorial for structural science and a SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 Resource Guide, along with access to access to the Rigaku Oxford Diffraction user forum are also included.
Readers can subscribe to the newsletter or view the current issue online at https://www.rigaku.com/subscribe.