X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis of small quantities of clay mounted on glass slides using conventional Bragg-Brentano geometry generally produces unsatisfactory low-intensity reflections masked by amorphous substrate scatter. Glancing-incidence asymmetric Bragg diffraction, an alternative uncoupled geometry, uses a fixed low-incidence angle and parallel-beam optics to increase path length through the sample and decrease X-ray penetration into the substrate. To evaluate this technique on thin soil clay films, results from conventional Bragg-Brentano and glancing-incidence diffraction (GID) were compared for progressively diluted clay suspensions separated from 2 southeastern soils with typical mineral assemblages. Patterns produced by GID showed overall higher reflection intensities and reduced substrate scatter, especially at higher 2θ angles within the amorphous glass region. Using GID, positive identification of clay minerals was obtained from sample quantities as small as 0.005 mg cm−2 and suspensions as dilute as 29 mg L−1.

The grazing incidence diffraction (GID) method in side inclination mode, described by Ma et al. in 2002, of polycrystalline thin-film residual stress was revisited and explained using simple geometric relations. To overcome the issue of decreasing peak intensity of this method, which is induced by the decreasing incident angle because of the Eulerian cradle Chi-tilt, an improvement of Omega (ω)–Phi (φ) compensation was devised and applied to a NiFe thin-film sample. The geometry of this improved ω–φ compensated GID method in side inclination mode is detailed in this paper. This improvement guarantees a constant incident angle on the sample surface and a fixed sample illumination volume during measurement. The measured data were analysed using parametric refinement in DIFFRAC.TOPAS v6 software in Launch Mode, and details of the input file (.INP) are explained in this paper. The tensile stress of the NiFe thin-film sample was measured to be 1181 ± 85 MPa using this improved method.

In recent years the Australian parliament has been considering the rights to protection from discrimination of intersex and gender identity disorder (GID) people. In 2013 such protections were made law in the amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, which in turn has influenced Senate inquiries into the medical treatment of intersex people. This year’s Australian report describes the purview and the potential ramifications of the inquiry of the Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs, published in October 2013, into the involuntary or coerced sterilization of intersex people in Australia.