Nano Meets Spectroscopy

When Mary took up her appointment in the Institute's Education Department in June 1997, she indicated that she wished to return to teaching in two or three years. We have just heard that in September she will be joining the staff of the Science Department at Camden Girls' School, London.

All papers published in this volume have been reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing. • Type of peer review: Single Anonymous • Conference submission management system: Morressier • Number of submissions received: 6 • Number of submissions sent for review: 6 • Number of submissions accepted: 6 • Acceptance Rate (Submissions Accepted / Submissions Received × 100): 100 • Average number of reviews per paper: 1 • Total number of reviewers involved: 4 • Contact person for queries: Name: Irshaad Fatadin Email: irshaad.fatadin@npl.co.uk Affiliation: National Physical Laboratory - EET

Over one hundred and fifty participants met at The Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, on March 26th to 29th of this year to attend an international conference sponsored by the Institute of Physics, the Society of Chemical Industry, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Bunsengesellschaft für Physikalische Chemie, the International Association for Hydrogen Energy, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, to consider metal hydrides. Some of the papers concerned the platinum metals.

The 1990 code of practice (COP), produced by the IPSM (now the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, IPEM) and the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL), gave instructions for determining absorbed dose to water for megavoltage photon (MV) radiotherapy beams (Lillicrap et al ). The simplicity and clarity of the 1990 COP led to widespread uptake and high levels of consistency in external dosimetry audits. An addendum was published in 2014 to include the non-conventional conditions in Tomotherapy units. However, the 1990 COP lacked detailed recommendations for calibration conditions, and the corresponding nomenclature, to account for modern treatment units with different reference fields, including small fields as described in IAEA TRS483 (International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) , Vienna). This updated COP recommends the irradiation geometries, the choice of ionisation chambers, appropriate correction factors and the derivation of absorbed dose to water calibration coefficients, for carrying out reference dosimetry measurements on MV external beam radiotherapy machines. It also includes worked examples of application to different conditions. The strengths of the 1990 COP are retained: recommending the NPL2611 chamber type as secondary standard; the use of tissue phantom ratio (TPR) as the beam quality specifier; and NPL-provided direct calibration coefficients for the user’s chamber in a range of beam qualities similar to those in clinical use. In addition, the formalism is now extended to units that cannot achieve the standard reference field size of 10 cm × 10 cm, and recommendations are given for measuring dose in non-reference conditions. This COP is designed around the service that NPL provides and thus it does not require the range of different options presented in TRS483, such as generic correction factors for beam quality. This approach results in a significantly simpler, more concise and easier to follow protocol.

Quark Matter 2008—the 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus–Nucleus Collisions was held in Jaipur, the Pink City of India, from 4–10 February, 2008. Organizing Quark Matter 2008 in India itself indicates the international recognition of the Indian contribution to the field of heavy-ion physics, which was initiated and nurtured by Bikash Sinha, Chair of the conference.The conference was inaugurated by the Honourable Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Smt. Vasundhara Raje followed by the key note address by Professor Carlo Rubbia. The scientific programme started with the theoretical overview, `SPS to RHIC and onwards to LHC' by Larry McLerran followed by several theoretical and experimental overview talks on the ongoing experiments at SPS and RHIC. The future experiments at the LHC, FAIR and J-PARC, along with the theoretical predictions, were discussed in great depth. Lattice QCD predictions on the nature of the phase transition and critical point were vigorously debated during several plenary and parallel session presentations.The conference was enriched by the presence of an unprecedented number of participants; about 600 participants representing 31 countries across the globe. This issue contains papers based on plenary talks and oral presentations presented at the conference. Besides invited and contributed talks, there were also a large number of poster presentations.Members of the International Advisory Committee played a pivotal role in the selection of speakers, both for plenary and parallel session talks. The contributions of the Organizing Committee in all aspects, from helping to prepare the academic programme down to arranging local hospitality, were much appreciated. We thank the members of both the committees for making Quark Matter 2008 a very effective and interesting platform for scientific deliberations.Quark Matter 2008 was financially supported by: Air Liquide (New Delhi) Board of Research Nuclear Sciences (Mumbai) Bose Institute (Kolkata) Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton) Danfysik, Department of Science and Technology (New Delhi) Elsevier B V (Amsterdam) Government of Rajasthan European Organization for Nuclear Research (Geneva) Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung (Darmstadt) Hewlett-Packard Indian Institute of Astrophysics (Bangalore) Institute of Physics (Bhubaneswar) IOP Publishing (Bristol) Merint Infrastructure Ltd. Rajasthan Travel service (Jaipur) RIKEN-BNL Research Centre (Upton) Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (Kolkata) Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai) The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (Chennai) Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (Kolkata)Without the generous support of these organizations it would not have been possible to organize the conference successfully.Jaipur is a city of valour, of battles won and lost, of the vanquished and the victors; Jaipur is a city of legends and romance. Now Jaipur is also a city of carnival; carnival in the world of quarks and gluons with the beautiful maiden ALICE gracing the quarkland.

June7-10 Transducers '99 10th International Conference on Solid State Sensors and Actuators, Sendai, Japan Details: J Etizen, telephone: +81 3 3299 1371, fax: +81 3 3299 1361, e-mail: tr99@twics.com, WWW: http://www.com.cas.uec.ac.jp/trans99.html 13-18 IMEKO XV World Congress, Osaka, Japan Details: c/o The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, 35-28-303, 1-Chome Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113. Telephone: +81 3 3814 4121, fax: +81 3 3814 4699, e-mail: mnami@sice.or.jp 14-17 Laboratory Health and Safety, Loughborough University, UK Details: Joyce Bostock, Centre for Hazard and Risk Management (CHaRM), Loughborough University, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, UK. Telephone: +44 1509 222 175, fax: +44 1509 223 991, e-mail: j.g.bostock@lboro.ac.uk 21-25 Frontiers and Science and Measurement, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK Details: Jane Tsakalou, telephone: +44 181 943 6400, fax: +44 181 943 6735, e-mail: jane.tsakalou@npl.co.uk, WWW: http://www.npl.co.uk July 11-15 National Conference of Standards Laboratories, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA Details: Tom Huttemann, 4890 County Road #11, Rushville, NY 14544, USA. Telephone: +1 716 554 6295, fax: +1 716 554 4434, e-mail: info@charlottecvb.org, WWW: http://www.ncsl-hq.org 13-15 The 6th International Workshop on Femtosecond Technology, Chiba, Japan Details: FST'99 Secretariat, The Femtosecond Technology Research Association, 5-5 Tokodai, Tsukuba 300-2635, Japan. Telephone: +81 298 47 5181, fax: +81 298 47 4417, e-mail: fst@festa.or.jp, WWW: http://www.festa.or.jp September 5-8 Sensors & their Applications X, Cardiff, UK Details: Belinda Hopley, Institute of Physics, Conferences Department, 76 Portland Place, London W1N 3DH. Telephone: +44 171 470 4800, fax: +44 171 470 4848, e-mail: belinda.hopley@iop.org, WWW: http://map.eng.abdn.ac.uk/ISAT 12-15 1st International Symposium on Turbulence and Shear Flow Phenomena, Santa Barbara, CA, USA Details: N Kasagi, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113 8656, Japan. Telephone: +81 3 3812 2111 ext. 6417, fax: +81 3 5800 6999, e-mail: kasagi@thtlab.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp, WWW: http://tsfp.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp 12-15 EUROSENSORS XIII, The Hague, The Netherlands Details: R F Wolffenbuttel, telephone: +31 15 278 6287, fax: +31 15 278, e-mail: eurosensors@ei.et.tudelft.nl 16-18 September 3rd International Workshop on Particle Image Velocimetry, University of California-Santa Barbara, USA Details: Professor C D Meinhart, Mechanical and Environmental Engineering Department, University of California-Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. Telephone: +1 217 333 3752, fax: 217 244 5707, e-mail: piv99@engineering.ucsb.edu, WWW: http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/\\~piv99 October 5-7 ISA TECH 1999, Philadelphia, PA, USA Details: Telephone: +1 919 990 9217, fax: +1 919 549 8288, e-mail: kragland@isa.org, WWW: http://www.isa.org/techexpo/ 2000 July 10-13 10th International Symposium on Applications of Laser Techniques to Fluid Mechanics Details: Graça Pereira, Mechanical Engineering Department, Instituto Superior Técnico, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal. Fax: +351 1 849 6156, e-mail: llaser@dem.ist.utl.pt, WWW: http://in3.dem.ist.utl.pt/lisboa-laser

In 1986, it was recognized that several new data analysis techniques could be applied across a wide range of neutron scattering problems, and it was timely to hold a workshop to explain their use to a wider audience. This meeting was a great success and it has lead to a subsequent series of similar meetings to keep the community abreast of current developments in the data analysis field. The third Work-shop on Neutron Scattering Data Analysis, WONSDA '94, was held at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory from April 13-15,1994. The meeting, which was organized by the Neutron Scattering Group of the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry, was attended by over 60 delegates from both Europe and North America.

The publishers of Physics in Medicine and Biology (PMB), IOP Publishing, in association with the journal owners, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM), jointly award the Roberts prize for the best paper published in PMB during the previous year. The procedure for deciding the winner is a two-stage process. First, a shortlist of contenders is drawn up based on those papers that had the best referees' quality assessments, with a further quality check and endorsement by the Editorial Board. The papers on the shortlist are then reviewed by a specially convened IPEM committee consisting of members with fellow status. This committee reads the shortlisted papers and selects the winner.We have much pleasure in advising readers that the Roberts Prize for the best paper published in 2012 is awarded to Michel Defrise, Ahmadreza Rezaei and Johan Nuyts from the Vrije Universiteit Brussels and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium for their breakthrough paper that describes how the information needed for attenuation correction in PET imaging can be extracted, to within a constant, from time-of-flight emission data:Time-of-flight PET data determine the attenuation sinogram up to a constant 2012 Phys. Med. Biol. 57 885 Michel Defrise1, Ahmadreza Rezaei2 and Johan Nuyts21Department of Nuclear Medicine, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, B-1090 Brussels, Belgium 2Department of Nuclear Medicine, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, BelgiumThis paper represents an important and timely contribution to the literature as time-of-flight PET scanners are now offered by several manufacturers. In hybrid PET/CT scanners, the PET attenuation correction, necessary for quantitative reconstruction of the tracer distribution, can be derived directly from the CT data. Sometimes, however, the PET and CT scans may be poorly aligned due to patient motion and other approaches are needed. In addition, hybrid PET/MRI scanners also, have been developed recently, and in these scanners attenuation correction of the PET data is a particularly difficult challenge as there is no direct relationship between MR signal intensity and tissue attenuation for 511 keV photons. This paper offers a possible path forwards for attenuation correction in these circumstances by exploiting consistency conditions in tandem with time-of-flight information and proves under these circumstances that the data for PET attenuation correction can be determined to within a constant.Our congratulations go to these authors. Of course all of the shortlisted papers were of an extremely high standard, and merit recognition by the community. They are listed below in alphabetical order. We also would like to thank the PMB Editorial Board and the IPEM Committee members for their hard work in assessing the papers.Simon R Cherry Editor-in-Chief Jon Ruffle Publisher ReferencesBuhr H, Büermann L, Gerlach M, Krumrey M and Rabus H 2012 Measurement of the mass energy-absorption coefficient of air for x-rays in the range from 3 keV to 60 keV Phys. Med. Biol. 57 8231Chen W, Unkelbach J, Trofimov A, Madden T, Kooy H, Bortfeld T and Craft D 2012 Including robustness in multi-criteria optimization for intensity modulated proton therapy Phys. Med. Biol. 57 591Clasie B M, Sharp G C, Seco J, Flanz J B and Kooy H M 2012 Numerical solutions of the gamma index in two and three dimensions Phys. Med. Biol. 57 6981Connell T, Alexander A, Evans M and Seuntjens J 2012 An experimental feasibility study on the use of scattering foil free beams for modulated electron radiotherapy Phys. Med. Biol. 57 3259Defrise M, Rezaei A and Nuyts J 2012 Time-of-flight PET data determine the attenuation sinogram up to a constant Phys. Med. Biol. 57 885Dowdell S J, Clasie B, Depauw N, Metcalfe P, Rosenfeld A B, Kooy H M, Flanz J B and Paganetti H 2012 Monte Carlo study of the potential reduction in out-of-field dose using a patient-specific aperture in pencil beam scanning proton therapy Phys. Med. Biol. 57 2829Scott A J D, Kumar S, Nahum A E and Fenwick J D 2012 Characterizing the influence of detector density on dosimeter response in non-equilibrium small photon fields Phys. Med. Biol. 57 4461Stam M K, Crijns S P M, Zonnenberg B A, Barendrecht M M, van Vulpen M, Lagendijk J J W and Raaymakers B W 2012 Navigators for motion detection during real-time MRI-guided radiotherapy Phys. Med. Biol. 57 6797Xia T, Alessio A M, De Man B, Manjeshwar R, Asma E and Kinahan P E 2012 Ultra-low dose CT attenuation correction for PET/CT Phys. Med. Biol. 57 309Yamaguchi M et al 2012 Beam range estimation by measuring bremsstrahlung Phys. Med. Biol. 57 2843For more information on this article, see medicalphysicsweb.org

The preparation of graphene with high quality serves as a prerequisite for its usage. Traditional methods of graphene production, represented by liquid-phase exfoliation and chemical vapor depositi...

The annual international conference Functional Materials and Nanotechnologies (FM&NT) was started in 2006 by scientists from the Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia. The warm welcome and open atmosphere of this scientific conference has turned it into an event where people from different countries and different fields come and meet under the shared umbrella of functional materials and nanotechnology. It is particularly important for early stage scientists who are looking for new knowledge and contacts with people from various fields to build their own network. Our Latvian colleagues, with their success in internationalization, made us neighbouring Estonians so jealous that we could not help but propose organising the conference every second year in Estonia.In a way, this conference is a continuation of the idea of the famous Baltic seminars which took place over several decades in the last century. Due to political constraints, these seminars were only open to scientists of former Eastern Europe countries, but had a great popularity and attendance from over the whole Soviet Union. Many collaborations started from the initial personal contact between scientists at these twice yearly seminars, held alternately in Latvia and Estonia.At the FM&NT 2012 conference, the decision was made that Institute of Physics, University of Tartu would organise the next event in Tartu in 2013. FM&NT-2013 was hence held in Tartu (Estonia) from 21–24 April 2013 at the Dorpat Conference Centre.The main selected topics of the conference were: (i) multifunctional materials, (ii) nanomaterials, (iii) materials for sustainable energy applications and (vi) theory. Additionally, the focus in this conference was on studies with the help of synchrotron radiation and other novel light sources such as free electron lasers.The conference provided an opportunity for 300 scientists from 21 countries to meet, establish contacts, exchange knowledge and discuss their research. During the three days of the conference, 14 invited talks were given, 45 oral and five commercial talks by companies were delivered and more than 200 posters were presented and discussed.As an outcome of the conference, 14 contributions were selected as regular papers to be submitted as a special section in Physica Scripta , and they are published in this issue. Additionally, 62 papers submitted based on the conference contributions, were included in IOP Conference Series : Materials Science and Engineering and are available at http://iopscience.iop.org/1757-899X/49/1. Additional information about FM&NT-2013 is available at its homepage http://fmnt.ut.ee/. Future information regarding the conference will be published on the website.Photograph. Participants of FM&NT-2013, the photo was taken in front of the Science Centre AHHAA on 23 April 2013.AcknowledgementThe Organizing Committee would like to thank all the speakers, contributors, session chairs and other staff involved for their personal efforts in making FM&NT-2013 successful and memorable. We express our thanks to all the authors for their research contribution presented in this issue. We express our gratitude to all of the reviewers and editors with special thanks to the Editor-in-Chief of Physica Scripta Dr Suzy Lidström, who took part of the conference with an invited talk. The efforts of members of the IOP Publishing team, especially the publisher Yasmin McGlashan, and the guest editor from the local organizing committee Dr Rainer Pärna, are also gratefully acknowledged.We would like to acknowledge financial support by Tartu University Development Fund, Estonian national projects supporting Materials Science, Science Internationalisation and Centre of Excellence programs based on the contribution of the European Structural Funds and Estonian national funding. Also, the graduate school on ‘Functional Materials and Technologies’ supported by the European Social Fund has given a generous contribution to assist in the participation of our early stage researchers. This support is gratefully acknowledged. We also would like to acknowledge and thank all the sponsors, companies (Raith, Bruker, Vistec Lithography, Saint-Tech, The Doma Group, Armgate and American Elements) who create conditions for our everyday research in the Baltics. We hope that the continuation of the tradition introduced with this conference will strengthen the international cooperation of scientists from Baltic states with researchers from other countries. In particular, we very much value the communication between new generations of researches which takes place, ensuring the fruitful development of science in our countries.The Organizing Committee hopes that the conference FM&NT-2013 gave the participants good insight into recent progress in nanotechnology, sustainable energetics, the processing and modelling of multifunctional materials and research enabled by the use of synchrotron radiation or other novel light sources such as free electron lasers. We sincerely hope that the conference has provided support for the circulation of information and brought together many young and experienced scientists from different fields, leading to fruitful discussions. We hope that all of the participants had an ejoyable and memorable time in Tartu. We welcome you back in the future.

P123] Reference dosimetry in flattening filter-free beams: Experience with IPSM-1990/IPEM Topical Report 1–2016 and IAEA TRS-398

Focus on Analytical Instruments

Objective. A calibration service based on a primary standard calorimeter for the direct determination of absorbed dose for proton beams does not exist. A new Code of Practice (CoP) for reference dosimetry of proton beams is being developed by a working party of the UK Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM), which will recommend that ionisation chambers are calibrated directly in their clinical beams against the proposed Primary Standard Proton Calorimeter (PSPC) developed at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). The aim of this work is to report on the use of the NPL PSPC to directly calibrate ionisation chambers in a low-energy passively scattered proton beam following recommendations of the upcoming IPEM CoP. Approach. A comparison between the dose derived using the proposed IPEM CoP and the IAEA TRS-398 protocol was performed, and kQ values were determined experimentally for three types of chambers. In total, 9 plane-parallel and 3 cylindrical chambers were calibrated using the two protocols for two separate visits. Main results. The ratio of absorbed dose to water obtained with the PSPC and with ionisation chambers applying TRS-398 varied between 0.98 and 1.00, depending on the chamber type. The new procedure based on the PSPC provides a significant improvement in uncertainty where absorbed dose to water measured with a user chamber is reported with an uncertainty of 0.9% (1 σ ), whereas the TRS-398 protocol reports an uncertainty of 2.0% and 2.3% (1 σ ) for cylindrical and plane-parallel chambers, respectively. The kQ values found agree within uncertainties with those from TRS-398 and Monte Carlo calculations. Significance. The establishment of a primary standard calorimeter for the determination of absorbed dose in proton beams combined with the introduction of the associated calibration service following the IPEM recommendations will reduce the uncertainty and improve consistency in the dose delivered to patients.

This volume of Journal of Physics: Conference Series is dedicated to the International Conference on Modern Perspectives of Cosmology and Gravitation (COSGRAV 12) organized by Physics and Applied Mathematics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, held on 7–11 February 2012. The conference, which focused exclusively on recent trends of research in Cosmology and Gravitation, was the first in the series held in this institute of great repute. The ultimate plan is to make it a regular event every two or three years based on the very positive response we received which was beyond our expectation. The immediate purpose of this conference was to bring together experienced as well as young scientists who are interested in working actively on various aspects of Cosmology and Gravitation. The lectures addressed major theoretical issues, current and forthcoming observational data as well as upcoming ideas in both theoretical and observational sectors. Keeping in mind the ‘academic exchange first’ approach the lectures were arranged in such a way that the young researchers had ample scope to interact with the stalwarts who are internationally leading experts in their respective fields of research. The major topics covered in the conference are: Early Universe: Inflation, Alternatives and Links to Fundamental Physics Present Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Alternatives Observational Cosmology: CMB, Supernovae, Lensing, Galaxies and Clusters Quantum Aspects of Gravity Black Hole Physics Interface of Gravitation with Information Theory and Condensed Matter Physics.Besides the invited talks a good proportion of the participants also presented their work through contributory talks and posters on this big platform. This was particularly encouraging and of benefit to the young participants, given that there were a number of scientists of international repute among the participants, the feedback from whom could guide them in the right direction. All the contributions were refereed by experts. This set a standard of its own.We are indebted to the Indian Statistical Institute for providing us with generous funding that covered all the expenses required to organize such a huge conference, and for providing us with the support staff facilities. We gratefully acknowledge encouragement from Professor Bimal K Roy, Director, Indian Statistical Institute, and his constant support in all aspects of the conference which made the program function so well. We thank the Scientific Advisory Committee for their valuable suggestions on technical aspects of the conference. We thank all the members of Local Organizing Committee as well as the volunteering students who contributed their hard labour to make the conference a great success. Special thanks to Sudipta Das, Barun Kumar Pal and Sayantan Choudhury for their help during every stage of the conference.We sincerely thank IOP Publishing and the staff of Journal of Physics: Conference Series for the publication of this issue.Last but not least, we thank all the speakers and participants without whom the program would not have been such as success. We hope we will your active participation in future versions of the conference as well. Supratik Pal and Banasri Basu (Editors) Physics and Applied Mathematics Unit Indian Statistical Institute 203 B.T.Road Kolkata 700108 INDIA

I was interested to read of the presentation by Alun Jones, chief executive of the Institute of Physics, of the first volume of Journal of Physics E to the chief executive of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Bob McGuiness (August p45). However, as a former chairman of the editorial board of the Journal of Scientific Instruments. I am left wondering which first volume was presented.