ALSNews is a biweekly electronic newsletter to keep users and other interested parties informed about developments at the Advanced Light Source, a national user facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California. To be placed on the mailing list, send your name and complete internet address to ALSNews@lbl.gov. We welcome suggestions for topics and content.

Previous Issues are available.


ALSNews           Vol. 104           June 10, 1998

Table of Contents


    1. MICROBIOLOGY AT THE ALS FILMED FOR PRIME TIME
    2. RAPID COMMUNICATIONS WEB SITE SHOWCASES USER RESULTS
    3. HOUSING FOR USERS -- HELP IS AVAILABLE
    4. WHO'S IN TOWN: A SAMPLING OF ALS USERS
    5. OPERATIONS UPDATE

1. MICROBIOLOGY AT THE ALS FILMED FOR PRIME TIME
(contact: mcmartin@lbl.gov)

Last Thursday and Friday a film crew from PBS (the U.S. public television network) spent two days at Berkeley Lab. They shot footage of the ALS from a helicopter, filmed work at the ALS infrared beamline (Beamline 1.4), and interviewed scientists for the last segment of a four-part documentary series on new science related to microorganisms, "Intimate Strangers: Unseen Life on Earth." The series is scheduled to air in prime time in the early part of 1999, and its final segment will focus on "Creators of the Future" -- microbiologists employing integration of scientific disciplines to further understand microbial life and functions.

This integration is familiar to scientists at Berkeley Lab's Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB), which draws upon many divisions at Berkeley Lab. The work of Hoi-Ying Holman, Mike Martin, Wayne McKinney, Dale Perry, and Jennie Hunter-Cevera (all of Berkeley Lab) at Beamline 1.4.3 will be featured. They are employing the beamline to observe in real time the bacterial remediation of chromate and toluene as mixed waste. The bacteria they are studying were isolated from basalt rocks within a mixed waste contaminant plume. The group's research focuses on how the bacteria degrade toluene in situ and biotransform chromate to a less toxic form. Data obtained under these real-time conditions should aid engineers to facilitate use of bioremediation in the field.

2. RAPID COMMUNICATIONS WEB SITE SHOWCASES USER RESULTS

Recent results of experiments conducted at the ALS are now available through a new feature of the ALS web site. The Rapid Communications area features abstracts submitted by ALS users to disseminate experiment results to their peers quickly. All users are invited to submit their own results in HTML format. The Web site contains instructions and tips for submitting abstracts. The submissions are reviewed for scientific validity and readability. Point your browser to http://xrays-1.lbl.gov/ or click on the Rapid Communications button from the ALS Home Page (http://www-als.lbl.gov/).

3. HOUSING FOR USERS -- HELP IS AVAILABLE

Finding reasonable short- or long-term accommodation in the San Francisco Bay Area can be a daunting task for users coming to work at the ALS. To make this job a little easier, users can now go to the Housing section (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/housing.html) of the ALS Quick Guide for Users for current information about available housing in the local area. The new section provides links to several sources of information on housing and related issues. These include:

- The Flea Market (classified) section of Berkeley Lab's Currents newspaper, in which people offering or seeking housing can place ads free of charge;

- The San Francisco Bay Area rentals section of Yahoo's classified ads; and

- The University of California at Berkeley's Dining and Housing Web pages, which also include child care information.

The Quick Guide for Users (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide) provides up-to-date information for users about working at the ALS. It includes everything from registration forms to contacts for technical or administrative assistance.

4. WHO'S IN TOWN: A SAMPLING OF ALS USERS

To highlight the richness of our user community and help introduce recent arrivals, we offer this listing of some of the experimenters who will be collecting data during the next two weeks at the ALS.

Beamline 1.4: Donald Sparks, Robert Ford, Derrek Peak, Andreas Hirsch, and Yugi Arai (U. Delaware) will be using infrared and optical spectroscopy to characterize the kinetics and mechanisms of ion sorption to soil components.

Beamline 8.0.1: Tom Callcott (U. Tennessee) and Dave Ederer (Tulane U.) will do beamline characterization and materials science experiments.

Beamline 9.3.2: Jeff Kortright (Berkeley Lab) will study Faraday rotation for quantitative moments in iron and iron/chromium alloy films.

Beamline 10.3.1: Winfried Siefert (U. Freiburg) will investigate copper impurities in silicon solar cells.

5. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(contact: rmmiller@lbl.gov)

The ALS just completed a planned shutdown period for maintenance and installations. (See ALSNews Vol 103 for details.) Machine reliability was over 98% for setup and studies during the startup week. User operations resumed on June 3, as scheduled. Machine reliability for the week of operations was 92.2% overall and 90.8% for user shifts. The longitudinal coupled-bunch feedback system was inoperative throughout the week because of an unexpected beam loading effect in the main rf system. Longitudinal feedback was restored during a subsequent physics shift. The beam loading effect is currently being studied.

Long-term and weekly operations schedules are available on the Web (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/accelinfo.html). Weekly operations scheduling meetings are held on Fridays at 3:30 p.m. in the Building 6 conference room. The Accelerator Status Hotline at (510) 486-6766 (ext. 6766 from Lab phones) features a recorded message giving up-to-date information on the operational status of the accelerator.