It started when a couple of friends tossed out a near-impossible idea, a joke almost. It seemed a long shot. It was daft.

Crazy or not, the idea seeded a unique collaboration between the University of Arizona and the Institute for Research in Food and Development (CIAD) in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico.

A major goal is to establish a first superconducting Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) instrument in the state of Sonora.

"We are still astonished that this is really happening," said Neil E. Jacobsen, assistant staff scientist and head of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Facility in the UA chemistry department.

Last December, Jacobsen and Kenner Christensen, a research specialist in the UA chemistry department, moved a spare NMR from the UA to the newly built CIAD facility in Hermosillo.

CIAD researchers plan to use the device in finding valuable substances in waste and in ecologically important plants. For example, NMR helped determine that sap from mesquite trees is very similar to a common food emulsifier, gum arabic. If the sap is useful, then planting and conserving trees becomes more economical than harvesting their wood. This benefits both the economy and the environment.

Jacobsen met Francisco Goycoolea Valencia and his wife, Pilar Cabezon Goycoolea, both of CIAD, four years ago when they brought samples to the UA in Tucson for analysis. "We had a lot in common and the friendship grew very quickly," he explained.

Jacobsen began visiting Hermosillo regularly. He gives lectures and teaches workshops in Spanish. He has also served as a thesis committee member for a graduate student.

When the UA chemistry department acquired a more powerful NMR machine last year, something had to go to make space in the facility. The 200 MHz solid-state NMR was the most likely candidate, since it was not used enough to justify maintenance costs.

Jacobsen asked his friends from CIAD if they might be able to use it.

A new NMR spectrometer costs about a half million dollars. CIAD had tried for years to come up with the money, but failed. From failure came inspiration.

"Everyone agreed that we had a good instrument that we couldn't use," Jacobsen said. "We would get very little for it if it were sold. And we had a group of people who could really use it."

This seemingly simple plan would require a lot of work to make a reality, he soon found. There were legal issues. And importing and installing the instrument presented more obstacles.

The office of Richard Powell, UA Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, helped resolve the legal issues. Powell's staff drew up a contract that detailed the long-term loan of the instrument and also had the contract translated into Spanish.

Next, CIAD contracted a specialist who cleared the way in advance to get the machine across the border.

"We were very happy when we received the message that the truck had gotten the "verde" (green light) at the border -- especially considering that the instrument looks like a very large bomb and has the word "nuclear" on it," Jacobsen said.

Making the NMR operational again is the biggest challenge. Usually, this also is a job contracted out to specialists. However, Jacobsen and Christensen agreed to undertake this difficult task themselves. Each stage of installation requires a separate trip to Hermosillo.

Jacobsen, Christensen and Javier Hernandez Martinez of CIAD completed the first step in installation last month when they assembled the instrument.

The NMR consists mainly of a large magnet so powerful that it can pull tools from a person's hand or stop a heart pacemaker dead.

Alignment of the magnet's inner copper tubes, which are very close but must not touch each other, presented the biggest challenge during assembly. By all indications, magnet alignment went smoothly. But the scientists won't know for sure until they complete the next stage of the installation, which requires two more trips to Hermosillo.

In this next stage, the scientists will use a high-vacuum pump to create a vacuum "thermos bottle" for insulation, and begin adding liquid nitrogen as a coolant. Finally, they will add liquid helium to cool the magnet to minus 452 degrees Fahrenheit, or near absolute zero. At this extremely low temperature, the magnet essentially can run forever, without any outside source of electricity.

Scientists use NMR to determine the exact structure of chemicals. The technique gives information about the kinds of atoms present and their location relative to each other.

Nuclear magnetic resonance does not involve any radioactive emission. Rather, the technique is similar to MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging, that doctors use to visualize soft tissues.

In MRI, a large magnet surrounds the patient. The instrument then sends radio waves to the affected area. Magnetism causes the radio waves to interact with the tissue in a way that can be transformed into an image.

In NMR, the process is the same, but it occurs on a much smaller scale. In NMR, the magnet surrounds not a patient, but a very narrow test tube that contains a chemical to be analyzed. And instead of an image, researchers see peaks that they must learn to interpret. Here again, the word "nuclear" does not refer to emission of radiation, but to the interaction of the radio waves with the nucleus of the atom.

As for the future of the UA-CIAD collaboration, Jacobsen says, at this point it's difficult to look beyond installation.

But when the NMR is operational, CIAD will use it to analyze samples for the UA as needed. And the international partners hope that the machine will enable them to win funding to further their research. Competition for limited research funding is tougher in Mexico than in the United States, Jacobsen noted.

Contact: Neil Jacobsen, 520-621-8146, neil@u.arizona.edu
This story and images are online at  http://science.opi.arizona.edu