I had an opportunity to embark on an academic tour to South Korea and Japan. Among activities planned were to attend an innovation award ceremony at Seoul, and to visit established universities, including Hiroshima University. Apart from this, I also visited the Port and Airport Research Institute (PARI), the University of Tokyo, and Goko Senior High School. I also attended foster family programs similar to a program I joined with HOST UK that I have shared recently. This academic tour was financed using a grant awarded by the Malaysia Ministry of Higher Education and Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia.
In this article, I will share about my visit to Hiroshima University. I aimed to post about many other programs in my tour to South Korea and Japan in my next articles.
Before this Japan tour, I went to South Korea to receive innovation awards at World Invention and Innovation Contest, held by Korea Invention News (KINEWS) at Convention Centre of Chung Mu Art Hall, Seoul. As the grant leader, I received on behalf of my research team two gold medal awards and a Special award for our innovative research product.
The awards received were for our research that aimed to investigate the strength of concrete and brick made from dredged sediments and to compare them with the strength of conventional building materials. This research used two types of dredge waste; silt and sand, obtained from rivers at Peninsular Malaysia namely; Sungai Kuala Perlis, Sungai Bebar, and Sungai Setiawan. The results showed that the building materials made from these dredge wastes were able to satisfy the requirement of minimum strength to be used in the local construction industry.
At Hiroshima University, I visited the Hiroshima Synchrotron Radiation Center (HiSOR). This laboratory had welcomed many guests, including school and university students in an effort to introduce their frontier research. Other promotional activities made by this university included conferences, open lectures, seminars, and training.
This advanced research center performed experimental studies on Synchrotron Radiation. Among their research are ‘Discovery of new topological insulator: TIBiSe2’, ‘Mechanism of electron pairs in superconductors’ and ‘Structure of protein for drug transport’. From a layman’s perspective, I understand that one of the main objectives to perform research in the area of Synchrotron Radiation was to create a superconductor that uses energy released from electrons whose direction is bent using a magnet. Machines available at this center were used to view and measure the electron behavior for various applications including in the field of electronics and medicine.
An interesting part of the tour at this center was related to its safety measure. The risks faced by researchers here were fire, electrocution, and exposure to radiation. For safety purposes, each monitoring post has to have 2 researchers at a time. The energy released by the electrons is heat, so aluminum foil was used to control the temperature of a heated machine. A sensor was used to monitor the rate of radiation exposure to the user. This device will be checked frequently because of the radiation characteristic that is hazardous and invisible. To prevent radiation exposure to researchers, the laboratory will be tightly closed during the synchrotron radiation injection. High-resolution photoemission spectroscopy, spin-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, and VUV-CD spectroscopy were used during the injection of radiation. The tour finished after 4 hours.
By attending the world award ceremony, I feel acknowledged and this increased my confidence to start a new research project. From the academic tour at Hiroshima University, I learned new knowledge that is outside of my expertise. I also learned the importance of safety measures to protect the health of researchers. The acknowledgment and new knowledge that I gained hopefully will benefit me in the long run.
The risks faced by researchers here include exposure to radiation and electrocution.
Aluminium foil was used to control the temperature of a heated machine. The energy released by the electrons is heat, so the machine needs to be cooled down using this aluminium foil.
This is a sensor used to monitor the user rate of radiation exposure. This device will be checked frequently because of the hazardous invisible radiation. To prevent radiation exposure to researchers, the laboratory will be tightly closed during the injection of synchrotron radiation into the research sample. High-resolution photoemission spectroscopy, Spin Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy, and VUV-CD Spectroscopy were used during the injection of radiation.
Norpadzlihatun Manap
June 2015
