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.10           January 24, 1995

Table of Contents


    1. ALSNEWS NOW AVAILABLE ON WORLD WIDE WEB
    2. OPERATIONS SUMMARY FOR 1994
    3. BEAMLINE BREAKTHROUGHS
    4. TIMELY TOPICS

1. ALSNEWS NOW AVAILABLE ON WORLD WIDE WEB
(contact: alsnews@lbl.gov)

Starting this week, the current issue of ALSNews will be available on the World Wide Web ("the Web"), along with an archive of past issues. To access the ALSNews page on the Web, point your browser (NCSA Mosaic, Netscape, or other) to URL:
/als/als_news/als_news.html
If you would prefer to access ALSNews on the Web and not to receive it by e-mail, send a "please unsubscribe me" message which includes your Internet address to alsnews@lbl.gov.

In addition to ALSNews, the material accessible from the ALS HomePage has been expanded to include summaries and announcements of recent and future workshops, guidelines for the independent investigator proposal process, and information on beamlines and operations. The ALS HomePage is available from a button on the ALSNews page or by pointing to:
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_homepage.html

2. OPERATIONS SUMMARY FOR 1994
(contact: rmmiller@lbl.gov)

The ALS proved a reliable and robust performer in 1994, operating for 93.8% of its scheduled hours during user shifts and 92.3% overall. Performance during the last quarter of 1994 was truly noteworthy: 96.3% for users and 93.7% overall. These figures are calculated as the number of hours the ALS beam was actually available divided by the number of hours for which it was scheduled to be available.

3. BEAMLINE BREAKTHROUGHS

** CRYSTALLOGRAPHY BEAMLINE RECEIVES DOE FUNDING **
(contact: howard_padmore@macmail.lbl.gov)

The Department of Energy's Office of Health and Environmental Research (OHER) has committed $3.85M in capital and $250k/year operating funds over the next two years to a macromolecular crystallography facility at the ALS. These funds, along with $1M already committed by OHER and the University of California, assure that a beamline with at least one endstation (out of three planned) can be built. Additional funding of $2.5M for a second endstation is being sought from the private sector.

Crystallography facility users will have access to a complementary Structural Biology Support Facility, already funded at $7.9M for construction. Designed for ease of use and located directly adjacent to the beamline, this facility will offer a full range of highly automated instrumentation and support laboratories, including advanced computational capabilities.

If you would like more information about the crystallography facility or the Structural Biology Support Facility, you can obtain one-page fact sheets for either or both by writing:

ALS Administration
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
MS 80-101
Berkeley, CA 94720

4. TIMELY TOPICS

** NEW MEMBERS FOR THE USERS' EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE **

On January 1, the new members of the Users' Executive Committee (UEC) began their terms of office. The UEC, whose members are elected by the ALS Users' Association, acts as the official voice of the ALS user community in its interactions with ALS management. The current UEC membership is listed below, with asterisks (*) next to the names of new members.

Thomas Callcott, Chair (University of Tennessee)
Harald Ade (North Carolina State University)
Nora Berrah (Western Michigan University)
Jeffrey Bokor (University of California, Berkeley)
Norman Edelstein (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory)
* Marjorie Olmstead (University of Washington)
Linda Powers (Utah State University)
* Eli Rotenberg (University of Oregon)
* Mahesh Samant (IBM Almaden Research Center)
* Louis Terminello (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
Michael White, Past Chair (Brookhaven National Laboratory)

** MONOCHROMATOR WORKSHOP EXPLORES STATE OF THE ART **
(contact: wrmckinney@lbl.gov)

On October 24-26, 1994, some 60 specialists in the design, construction, and use of grating-based monochromators met at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to survey the present status of vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) and soft-x-ray monochromators. The workshop was the second in a series which began at BESSY in March, 1991.

Several talks reviewed existing facilities and focused on the major types of grating-based monochromators: spherical grating (SGM), plane grating (PGM), and varied-line-spacing (VLS). Meeting participants concluded that no single design clearly leads the others in performance, and that a variety of designs would continue to be constructed. Other talks provided updates on parallel areas of work such as multilayer optics and x-ray interferometry.

Other opportunities at the workshop included vendor exhibits and presentations, a poster session, and a tour of the ALS. Wayne McKinney of ALS organized the conference with Howard Padmore and Malcolm Howells of ALS, and Fred Senf, Bill Peatman, and Wolfgang Gudat of BESSY.

** SPEAKERS SET FOR HALBACH SYMPOSIUM ON FEBRUARY 3 **

The ALS is sponsoring a special Halbach Symposium on Magnet Technology on February 3, 1995--with a day-long symposium of scientific and informal talks. Highlights of the program include:

- The First Problem and Personal Reminiscences by Ron Holsinger
- The Use of Modified Sextupole Magnets in Advanced Accelerators by Max
Cornacchia
- Halbach Array/Motor Generators by Richard Post
- Transition Undulator Radiation as Bright Infrared Sources by Kwang-Je Kim
- Concept of Quasi-Periodic Undulator-Control of Radiation Spectrum by Shigemi
Sasaki
- Harmonic Generation with Multiple Wiggler Schemes by Rodolfo Bonifacio
- Low-Field Permanent Magnet Quadrupoles in a New Relativistic-Klystron
Two-Beam Accelerator Design by Simon Yu

Registration is required. Contact:

Elizabeth Saucier
Phone: (510) 486-6166
Fax: (510) 486-4960
Email: ecsaucier@lbl.gov