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Punjab Police use drones to track black marketers of essential commodities




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Cured COVID-19 patient expresses gratitude to healthcare workers




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Baisakhi: Punjabi singers to hold online musical session for fans




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PGI-Chandigarh to train SAARC health professionals on COVID-19




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Screening of entire Lovely Professional University campus shall be completed by today evening: Spl. Chief Secretary, Punjab




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Punjab Dept of Higher Education issues show-cause notice to Lovely Professional University for violating lockdown norms




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No relaxation in curfew till May 3 in Punjab; no special concessions for Ramzan




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Punjab village head speaks to PM on lockdown success




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Punjab CM assures support to industry; wants liquor business to reopen




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Punjab CM expresses happiness over wheat procurement




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Shops of non-essentials to stay shut till May 3 in Chandigarh




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Punjab Congress asks people to raise tricolour from rooftops on May 1




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A question of access

Post lockdown too, there are a plethora of ways in which online education can be made accessible to students across social strata




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Migrants’ train fare: BJP, Congress slam AAP govt.

It follows letter seeking reimbursement




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BJP expresses concern over govt.’s ‘negligence’ towards health facilities

‘State government has failed to protect the people of Delhi from the virus’




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Congress picks two for MLC polls

In a surprising turn of events on Saturday, the Congress announced two candidates for the May 21 Legislative Council polls, indicating that it is in n




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Delhi govt. reports less COVID-19 deaths than hospitals

Administration denies allegations, says there is an audit panel of doctors that probes and reports every death




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Tamil Nadu forms high level committee to assess Covid-19 impact on economy

The committee shall submit its final reports to the government within three months time and also submit an interim report





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'I'm a fearless actor now'

'Having lived through cancer, through so many ups and downs, I'm not particularly attached to attention or success -- it's lovely if it's there, it's fine if it's not.'




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Online Chess: India suffers twin defeats, finishes 5th

With Viswanathan Anand resting, the Indian team managed to hold their own against the favourites before Yu Yangyi subdued B Adhiban with black pieces to secure another victory in the tournament.




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How to make eggless chocolate mousse

Recipes by chef Ashok Suyal, pastry chef at Jaypee Greens Golf and Spa Resort, Greater Noida.




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Lockdown or lawless tyranny?

We may be witnessing a slow erosion of the democratic republic and the emergence of the police State, warns Sunanda K Datta-Ray.




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Boris Johnson to set out Covid-19 warning system in public address




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Happy Mother’s Day 2020: Wishes, images, quotes, status, messages, cards, wallpapers, and photos




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Is your mother getting her essential nutrients? Check here




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Happy Mother’s Day 2020: Wishes, images, Whatsapp messages, status, quotes and photos




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WhatsApp for Web gets Messenger Rooms support: How it works and other details




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Lockdown or lawless tyranny?

We may be witnessing a slow erosion of the democratic republic and the emergence of the police State, warns Sunanda K Datta-Ray.




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X-ray radiation damage to biological samples: recent progress

With the continuing development of beamlines for macromolecular crystallography (MX) over the last few years providing ever higher X-ray flux densities, it has become even more important to be aware of the effects of radiation damage on the resulting structures. Nine papers in this issue cover a range of aspects related to the physics and chemistry of the manifestations of this damage, as observed in both MX and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) on crystals, solutions and tissue samples. The reports include measurements of the heating caused by X-ray irradiation in ruby microcrystals, low-dose experiments examining damage rates as a function of incident X-ray energy up to 30 keV on a metallo-enzyme using a CdTe detector of high quantum efficiency as well as a theoretical analysis of the gains predicted in diffraction efficiency using these detectors, a SAXS examination of low-dose radiation exposure effects on the dissociation of a protein complex related to human health, theoretical calculations describing radiation chemistry pathways which aim to explain the specific structural damage widely observed in proteins, investigation of radiation-induced damage effects in a DNA crystal, a case study on a metallo-enzyme where structural movements thought to be mechanism related might actually be radiation-damage-induced changes, and finally a review describing what X-ray radiation-induced cysteine modifications can teach us about protein dynamics and catalysis. These papers, along with some other relevant literature published since the last Journal of Synchrotron Radiation Radiation Damage special issue in 2017, are briefly summarized below.




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Progress in HAXPES performance combining full-field k-imaging with time-of-flight recording

An alternative approach to hard-X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES) has been established. The instrumental key feature is an increase of the dimensionality of the recording scheme from 2D to 3D. A high-energy momentum microscope detects electrons with initial kinetic energies up to 8 keV with a k-resolution of 0.025 Å−1, equivalent to an angular resolution of 0.034°. A special objective lens with k-space acceptance up to 25 Å−1 allows for simultaneous full-field imaging of many Brillouin zones. Combined with time-of-flight (ToF) parallel energy recording this yields maximum parallelization. Thanks to the high brilliance (1013 hν s−1 in a spot of <20 µm diameter) of beamline P22 at PETRA III (Hamburg, Germany), the microscope set a benchmark in HAXPES recording speed, i.e. several million counts per second for core-level signals and one million for d-bands of transition metals. The concept of tomographic k-space mapping established using soft X-rays works equally well in the hard X-ray range. Sharp valence band k-patterns of Re, collected at an excitation energy of 6 keV, correspond to direct transitions to the 28th repeated Brillouin zone. Measured total energy resolutions (photon bandwidth plus ToF-resolution) are 62 meV and 180 meV FWHM at 5.977 keV for monochromator crystals Si(333) and Si(311) and 450 meV at 4.0 keV for Si(111). Hard X-ray photoelectron diffraction (hXPD) patterns with rich fine structure are recorded within minutes. The short photoelectron wavelength (10% of the interatomic distance) `amplifies' phase differences, making full-field hXPD a sensitive structural tool.




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Characterization of the soft X-ray spectrometer PEAXIS at BESSY II

The performance of the recently commissioned spectrometer PEAXIS for resonant inelastic soft X-ray scattering (RIXS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and its hosting beamline U41-PEAXIS at the BESSY II synchrotron are characterized. The beamline provides linearly polarized light from 180 eV to 1600 eV allowing for RIXS measurements in the range 200–1200 eV. The monochromator optics can be operated in different configurations to provide either high flux with up to 1012 photons s−1 within the focal spot at the sample or high energy resolution with a full width at half maximum of <40 meV at an incident photon energy of ∼400 eV. The measured total energy resolution of the RIXS spectrometer is in very good agreement with theoretically predicted values obtained by ray-tracing simulations. PEAXIS features a 5 m-long RIXS spectrometer arm that can be continuously rotated about the sample position by 106° within the horizontal photon scattering plane, thus enabling the study of momentum-transfer-dependent excitations. Selected scientific examples are presented to demonstrate the instrument capabilities, including measurements of excitations in single-crystalline NiO and in liquid acetone employing a fluid cell sample manipulator. Planned upgrades of the beamline and the RIXS spectrometer to further increase the energy resolution to ∼100 meV at 1000 eV incident photon energy are discussed.




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ProQEXAFS: a highly optimized parallelized rapid processing software for QEXAFS data

The high temporal resolution in data acquisition, possible in the quick-scanning EXAFS (QEXAFS) mode of operation, provides new challenges in efficient data processing methods. Here a new approach is developed that combines an easy to use interactive graphical interface with highly optimized and fully parallelized Python-based routines for extracting, normalizing and interpolating oversampled time-resolved XAS spectra from a raw binary stream of data acquired during operando QEXAFS studies. The programs developed are freely available via a Github repository.




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Pressure effects on lipids and bio-membrane assemblies

Pressure can play a key role in probing the structure and dynamics of membrane assemblies, and is also critical to the biology and adaptation of deep-sea organisms. This article presents an overview of the effect of pressure on the structure of membranes and recent developments in high-pressure instrumentation.




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Precession electron diffraction – a topical review

This topical review highlights progress made recently in the development and application of precession electron diffraction (PED) and its scanning variant for the determination of unknown crystal structures and the mapping of orientations at the nanoscale.

















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Chirality in Biological Nanospaces: Reactions in Active Sites. By Nilashis Nandi. Pp. 209. CRC Press, 2011. Price £79.99. ISBN 9781439840023.




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Macromolecular X-ray crystallography: soon to be a road less travelled?

From the perspective of a young(ish) structural biologist who currently specialises in macromolecular X-ray crystallography, are the best years of crystallography over? Some evidence and hopefully thought-provoking analysis is presented here on the subject.