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A new study based on neutrons provides valuable insights into the thermal vulnerability of different bacterial families. It shows that organisms adapted to very low temperatures are also surprisingly fragile: even a slight rise in temperature can be lethal, long before any structural damage appears.

A team of researchers at the ILL investigated how salt alters the shape of lipid vesicles.

In everyday life, we typically encounter water in one of three familiar states – solid, liquid or gas. But there are in fact many more phases, some of which – predicted to exist at high temperature and pressure – are so strange they’re referred to as exotic. State-of-the-art neutron spectrometers and sample environment infrastructures at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) have enabled the first experimental observation of one of these exotic phases – plastic ice VII.

A study now published in Nature Communications brings remarkable insights into the enigmatic behaviour of supercritical fluids, a hybrid state of matter occupying a unique space between liquids and gases, and arising in domains ranging from the pharmaceutical industry to planetary science. The obtained results are at the limit of current experimental possibilities and could only be obtained in a high-flux neutron source such as the ILL.

Understanding the interactions of biomolecules such as proteins or drugs with the membrane of cells is important in biomedical research and for the pharmaceutical industry. The sensitivity of neutrons to hydrogen atoms make neutron scattering a unique probe.

Sketch of Pt nanoparticles on a Aluminium oxide support in interaction with different amount of dihydrogen molecules. Credit ACS / E. Vottero The societal impact of catalysts – substances used to influence the rate or outcome of a chemical reaction – is immense. Es…