The Artemis II crew’s return from its 10-day journey around the Moon brought back wonderful childhood memories. Watching the liftoff and splashdown, I was reminded of the excitement I felt when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. I was eight years old, and although it took every bit of willpower to stay awake, it was a moment I have never forgotten. It is heartening to think that children today have something like this to look forward to.
Back here on Earth, chimpanzees are making news as well. In Uganda’s Ngogo community, one group has split into two, and the factions now appear to be locked in a kind of civil war, with one side dominating the violence. Let’s hope crystals are not at the center of the dispute.
In this issue, we spotlight the Intelligent Optic Module, an automated alignment system for rotating anode generators, and Fraser shares a report from the Spring BCA meeting.
Our Tip of the Month features Mark Del Campo, who explains how to set up the mask for low-temperature work in a way that maximizes data coverage without sacrificing data quality.
Be sure to also visit Crystallography in the News for highlights from cutting-edge research. Jeanette reviews On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence.
May 5 is the final deadline for early bird registration, and the savings are real. After that, prices go up for good.
The hallway conversations. The impromptu dinners. The colleague you've only ever emailed. That's what happens when the crystallography community lands in the same city, and this August 11-18th, that city is Calgary.
Our LinkedIn groupshares information and fosters discussion about X-ray crystallography and SAXS topics. Connect with other research groups and receive updates on how they use these techniques in their own laboratories. You can also catch up on the latest newsletter or Rigaku Journal issue. We also hope that you will share information about your own research and laboratory groups.
Atrigakuxrayforum.comyou can find discussions about software, general crystallography issues and more. It’s also the place to download the latest version of Rigaku Oxford Diffraction’sCrysAlisProsoftware for single crystal data processing.
A few weeks ago, I was in Leeds for the BCA Spring Meeting for the third year in a row. The sun was shining (for the first time in a while!) as I walked up to the conference and it gave an optimistic feel to the day. I was joined by my UK colleagues Chris Morris, Josh Morris and Mark Benson. As a company with Japanese roots, we decided to have some origami on our booth to fold with customers as we chatted about science and other matters. This proved a little embarrassing for us as we got some exceptional contributions that put our attempts to shame. This year’s event was one day shorter than usual and, from an exhibitor's perspective, the shorter format seemed to concentrate activity rather than reduce it. We still managed to catch up with everyone and enjoy some talks.
It was also a meeting with a strong scientific range, spanning crystal formation, energy materials, structure-based drug discovery, and a session reflecting on the life and impact of George Sheldrick. That variety made it a useful event not just for visibility, but for hearing what is currently resonating across the UK crystallography community and for catching up with both familiar faces and new contacts.
The BCA is one of those more intimate conferences that provide many opportunities to connect. We at Rigaku all enjoy it and are looking forward to the next one in 2027!
Achieve peak source performance any time with Intelligent Optics Module (iOM) automated alignment
Automatic beam alignment for consistent performance, the XtaLAB Synergy-DW VHF can now be equipped with our new IOM device for fully motorized automatic beam alignment. With encoders on every axis, iOM puts the beam exactly where you need it with high reproducibility, perfect for the smaller samples commonly studied today. iOM also lets you achieve maximum intensity from your source by automatically maximizing the intensity so you can achieve peak performance at all times.
Intelligent Optics Module (iOM) Overview:
Peak Performance
With automatic alignment, your source can maintain peak performance all the time. Perfect alignment can be achieved within a few minutes to keep your system ready for the smallest and most challenging samples.
Reproducibility The iOM device has been designed with encoders on each motor to ensure it knows its exact position. When aligning the beam, this enables the best position to be automatically found and remembered so optimal alignment can be easily recovered.
Safety Manual alignment of X-ray sources often requires direct access to knobs and screws inside the radiation safety enclosure. This represents a risk of exposure to X-ray radiation and thus is often left to service engineers to perform. The iOM device allows fully remote alignment of the X-ray optic while the X-ray safety enclosure is safely interlocked.
Simplicity X-ray source alignment has never been easier with the iOM device attached to your source. The X-ray optic can be aligned either using manual point and click to point the beam at the sample or automatic alignment for maximum intensity in just a few minutes.
More independence The iOM gives unprecedented control over the optic position, all controlled via a software interface. This means that service engineers no longer need to be present on-site to accomplish full optic alignment. Either use our automatic routine or adjust the alignment yourself with an easy-to-use, intuitive software interface. Still not confident? Our service engineers can step in and perform alignment and source diagnostics over the internet, minimizing your service costs.
How to Configure and Adjust CryoJet Shadow Masks by Mark Del Campo
Learn the step-by-step process for setting up a mask in CrysAlisᴾʳᵒ to account for the shadow cast by a cryo nozzle (jet) on your diffraction images. Proper masking is essential to ensure that the software knows where reflections should not be measured.
Researchers from Japan and the US observed a stable crystal of excitons in a moiré electron–hole bilayer, showing that this system can support tunable correlated crystalline phases of both bosons and fermions.
March 10, 2026
Researchers from China and Ireland have developed a general method to grow high-quality 1D covalent organic framework crystals, enabling atomic-level structure determination using MicroED/3DED and revealing how structural modifications can tune stacking and improve stability and conductivity.
Adrian Woolfson’s On the Futureof Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence is a fascinating examination of the intersection between artificial intelligence and the biological sciences, especially as the former becomes omnipresent and potentially omnipotent. Woolfson’s title pays clear homage to Charles Darwin’s 1859 work On the Origin of Species. Whereas Darwin posited natural selection as a means to explain historical evolution within species, Woolfson is positing a sort of “unnatural selection” via artificial intelligence as a means of future evolution.
While reading On the Futureof Species, the voice of Cliff Robertson as Uncle Ben in Sam Raimi’s 2002 film Spider-Man comes to mind: “With great power comes great responsibility.” (Fittingly, the titular superhero’s powers result after a bite from a genetically modified spider, which alters the molecular structure of his DNA.) While Woolfson is not proposing artificial biological intelligence as a means of endowing humanity with arachnid-derived superpowers, he does outline some of the potential applications where artificial intelligence could help solve seemingly un-solvable DNA-based biological puzzles, leading to the eradication of certain viral infections and genetic diseases.
The most important of the book’s twelve chapters is arguably the final one, boldly titled “A Manifesto for Life.” If the first eleven chapters outline the “great power” artificial biological intelligence offers humanity over its own future of evolution (and that of other species), Chapter 12 outlines the “great responsibility” that comes with it. Woolfson lays out a rulebook for the future use of artificial intelligence in biological applications, especially when it comes to genetic modification. Amongst other things, he argues that nature must be conserved, that artificial intelligence must not supersede natural intelligence, and that bioethics must be strictly observed.
Artificial intelligence is everywhere. Understanding the implications of that omnipresence in real-world scenarios, such as advancements in biological science, is critical. Woolfson’s prose is crisp, concise, and digestible; despite being non-fiction, On the Futureof Species' compellingsubject matter drives the reader from chapter to chapter with a force similar to that of a popular fiction thriller.
