An international Korean-Hungarian-Polish team combined neutron and X-ray tomography and finite element calculations to relate the complex polymineral microstructure and the load-bearing properties of concrete, the material used in the largest amount by mankind.
Researchers of BNC developed a state-of-the-art combination of three-dimensional surface and volumetric digital imaging techniques, as well as position-resolved element composition analysis by PGAI, to scrutinize the rocks containing fossils of the Parascutella gibbercula sea urchins.
The methodology used in the described study opens new perspectives in the understanding of the sedimentation conditions of the sea bottom.
A complete set of detector response functions, i.e. the gamma spectra corresponding to incremental gamma-ray energies up to 12 MeV, were obtained for the Budapest PGAA facility by geant4 Monte-Carlo simulations and were used to unfold the experimental prompt-gamma spectra, for use in nuclear physics.
The unfolding successfully removed the continuous Compton-background and the escape peaks related to a full-energy peak but preserved the shape and area of the full-energy peak itself.
The behaviour of colloidal particles at water-solid interfaces is relevant in material science, food processing, medicine and environmental engineering. A team from the University of Geneva with researchers from the Budapest Neutron Centre used neutron reflectivity to study colloidal silica nanoparticle suspensions near the (negatively) like-charged native-oxide-covered surface of Si. Intriguingly, the nanospheres develop a self-organised damped, oscillatory concentration profile normal to the interface, as demonstrated in the figure.
