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.

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ALSNews           Vol. 120          February 3, 1999

Table of Contents


    1. ALS DIRECTOR CHEMLA: MOVING BEYOND BIRGENEAU TOWARD FUTURE
    2. INDEPENDENT-INVESTIGATOR BEAMTIME ALLOCATED
    3. CALL FOR COMPENDIUM ABSTRACTS
    4. MAY TO SEPTEMBER 1999 OPERATING SCHEDULE AVAILABLE
    5. NEW SCIENCE HIGHLIGHT ON THE WEB
    6. RECENT ALS PUBLICATIONS
    7. WHO'S IN TOWN: A SAMPLING OF ALS USERS
    8. OPERATIONS UPDATE

1. ALS DIRECTOR CHEMLA: MOVING BEYOND BIRGENEAU TOWARD FUTURE
By Lori Tamura

On January 29, ALS Director Daniel Chemla reported on the state of the ALS at his second "Town Meeting" since being appointed director last year. After touching upon a few of the major signs of rebuilding in the wake of the DOE Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) Report on Synchrotron Radiation Sources and Science (the "Birgeneau Report"), Chemla went on to discuss his strategies for securing the ALS's future as a world-class light source.

Chemla reported that he has been giving presentations and attending reviews about once a month since last July and has received very positive responses. The Users' Executive Committee, ALS Science Policy Board, and BESAC have all sent letters of support acknowledging the ALS's progress in response to issues raised by the Birgeneau Report. On the budget front, Chemla reported that there was a slight increase in funding for FY 99. In addition, the ALS will receive about $6M in Berkeley Lab support, and a number of major proposals are in various stages of preparation and review, including proposals for molecular environmental science, femtosecond diffraction and spectroscopy, magnetic spectroscopy, bending magnets, and endstation support.

A reorganized and reinvigorated ALS Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), an international group of experts from academia, industry, and government labs, will play a major role in helping to develop the best possible scientific program for the ALS. The committee's responsibilities include reviewing all major proposals before submission, providing regular reviews of all participating research teams, reviewing the ALS spectromicroscopy program (February 24-25), and providing advice on resource allocation.

To be a world-class facility, Chemla said, the ALS must focus on what it can do best: provide the world's brightest x rays in the VUV and soft x-ray range (10 eV to 4 keV) and world-class x rays in the "intermediate" (up to 25 keV) range. The former range represents the original mission of the ALS, and the latter is made possible by the addition of superconducting bend magnets (superbends). Chemla went on to list five core competencies: coherence and holography, femtosecond x rays, aberration-corrected PEEM, scanning microscopy, and high-resolution spectroscopy. Work groups for each core competency have been formed and internal miniworkshops are being held to prepare recommendations for a March 10 strategic planning meeting.

Chemla's strategic plan includes enhancing and extending ALS performance, implementing a scientific outreach program to develop user communities in areas such as protein crystallography and femtosecond physics, and facilitating access to individual investigators. Last year, 98 independent investigator proposals were received; this year the number climbed to 159. "We want to have the best scientists, using the best instruments, doing the best science," Chemla said.

At the end of the meeting, Chemla announced a couple of changes in the ALS's organizational structure. Ben Feinberg, ALS Division Deputy for Operations, will also serve as Deputy Division Director, with the authority to act in the director's absence. Neville Smith's new title is ALS Division Deputy for Science, and Jim Krupnick, Feinberg's deputy in Operations, will also be the ALS Division Deputy for Planning and Administration.

2. INDEPENDENT-INVESTIGATOR BEAM TIME ALLOCATED
By Gary Krebs (Contact: GFKrebs@lbl.gov)

The allocation process for independent-investigator beamtime during the running period between April and September 1999 is complete. The number of proposals increased since the last proposal cycle from 98 to 159 as several new beamlines became available. The number of eight-hour-shift requests also increased dramatically from 1,358 to 2,285. But a total of 1,310 shifts, representing 57% of the total time requested in the proposals, were available. It is regrettable that we will be unable to grant beamtime to many excellent proposals. Competition for time on insertion-device beamlines was especially keen; for the most highly subscribed beamlines, 7.0.1, 8.0.1, and 6.3.2, the ALS was able to grant only about 32% of the time requested. Those requesting time on the insertion-device beamlines will continue to find the proposal process for independent investigators extremely competitive.

Beamtime requests for independent-investigator experiments are reviewed twice each year. A Program Study Panel (PSP) evaluates each proposal, providing the basis for granting beamtime. The PSP is made up of five scientists from a variety of synchrotron science disciplines. There is a separate PSP for the macromolecular crystallography facility at Beamline 5.0. More information on the PSP and independent investigator process is available on the ALS web site at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/independinvest.html. Among bend-magnet beamlines, Beamline 6.3.2 was the most competitive.

Total shifts available per beamline = 333
Most beamlines run 25% independent investigator time = 83 shifts

     Beamline   Proposals   Shifts requested   Shifts allocated

     1.4           10            177                 177

     3.3.2          1             15                  15

     4.0.1          2             72                  72

     6.1.2          7             95                  95

     6.3.1          5             32                  32

     6.3.2         23            256                  83

     7.0.1         34            470                 211

     7.3.3          3             66                  66

     7.3.1.1        7             92                  83

     7.3.1.2        2             23                  23

     8.0.1         26            406                  83

     9.0.1          2             40                  40

     9.0.2          2             31                  31

     9.3.1          7             93                  83

     9.3.2         11            169                  83

     10.0.1.1       2             20                  20

     10.0.1.2       4            144                  29

     10.3.1        10             78                  78

     10.3.2         1              6                   6

     Totals       159           2285                1310   (57%)

3. CALL FOR COMPENDIUM ABSTRACTS
Contact: lstamura@lbl.gov

ALS users: now that 1998 is over, it's time to boil down a year's worth of the effort you spent on your ALS project into four pages or less. On January 22, all ALS users from the past year were mailed a call for abstracts to be published in the ALS Compendium of User Abstracts and Technical Reports. If you performed research at the ALS in 1998 and did not receive a mailing, contact Lori Tamura at lstamura@lbl.gov. We need your help to make the Compendium representative of your work and to convey the breadth, depth, and importance of the ALS scientific program. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is February 26, 1999.

All users or user groups (including users who are also ALS staff members) should submit a 1- to 4-page abstract describing each project worked on at the ALS during 1998 (January 1 to December 31), whether published, unpublished, or in progress. As it was last year, the Compendium will be published electronically on the Web as well as on paper, requiring that we have an electronic file of each abstract. A variety of electronic submission options are available, including FTP (file transfer protocol), web upload, or mailed diskette. Detailed instructions for each option as well as templates and author guidelines can be found online at http://alspubs.lbl.gov/Compendium_old/.

4. MAY TO SEPTEMBER 1999 OPERATING SCHEDULE AVAILABLE
Contact: GFKrebs@lbl.gov

The operating schedule for running time between April and September 1999 is now available on the Web. Point your browser to http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/schedules/aprsep99.html to see the schedule. You can also download a copy of it as a Microsoft Excel file, as a Microsoft Word file, or in Portable Document Format (PDF).

5. NEW SCIENCE HIGHLIGHT ON THE WEB
Contact: AGSuits@lbl.gov

A science highlight about using crossed-molecular-beam scattering to study the chemical dynamics of pentane and propane metathesis reactions is now available on the Web. The work was reported in ALSNews, Volume 119 ("Dynamics of Pentane and Propane Metathesis Reactions").

Point your browser to http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/pentane.html to see data and diagrams explaining the experiment.

6. RECENT ALS PUBLICATIONS

We cite below a few of the more recent publications that have been generated from work done at the ALS.

S.-W. Chiu, Y. Cheung, N.-L. Ma, W.-K. Li, and C.Y. Ng, "A G2 ab initio study of C2H5S+, I. structures, energetics, and unimolecular isomerizations of non-carbenoid isomers," J. Mol. Struct. 452, 97-115 (1998).

C.-W. Hsu, M.D. Evans, S.L. Stimson, and C.Y. Ng, "Rotationally resolved photoelectron study of O2+(B2_Sigma g-, 2Sigma u-; v+=0-7) at 20.2-21.3 eV," J. Appl. Phys. 110, 315 (1999).

S.R. Mishra, T.R. Cummins, G.D. Waddill, K.W. Goodman, J.G. Tobin, W.J. Gammon, T. Sherwood, and D.P. Pappas, "Characterization and photoemission dichroism of epitaxially grown Gd(0001)/Y(0001)," J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 16, 1348 (September 1998).

J.H. Underwood, and E. Gullikson, "High-resolution, high-flux, user friendly VLS beamline at the Advanced Light Source for the 50-1300 eV energy region," J. Electron Spectros. Relat. Phenom. 92, 265-272 (August 1998).

D.G. Stearns, D.P. Gaines, D.W. Sweeney, and E.M. Gullikson, "Nonspecular x-ray scattering in a multilayer-coated imaging system," J. Appl. Phys. 84, 1003-1028 (July 1998).

S. Eisebitt, A. Karl, C. Sathe, A. Agui, W. Eberhardt, and J.E. Nordgren, "Electronic structure of single-wall carbon nanotubes studied by resonant inelastic x-ray scattering," Appl. Phys. A: Mater. Sci. Process. 67, 89 (July 1998).

7. 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 month at the ALS.

Beamline 1.4.3: Felicia Hendrickson and Robert Glaeser (Univ. of California, Berkeley) will be studying the photocycle of bacteriorhodopsin microcrystals by FTIR spectroscopy.

Beamline 7.0.1: Joseph Nordgren (Uppsala Univ.) will study soft x-ray fluorescence of materials and molecules, and Jeff Kortright (Berkeley Lab) will conduct imaging studies of magnetic interactions in magnetic multilayers.

Beamline 7.3.3: Richard Saykally and Kevin Wilson (Univ. of California, Berkeley) will determine molecular structural changes in high-pressure water jets by means of x-ray diffraction. Robert Glaeser (Univ. of California, Berkeley) will measure x-ray scattering profiles from pure water and from aqueous solutions of amino acids. He will make quantitative comparisons of molecular dynamic simulations of the x-ray scattering of amino acids in water.

Beamline 8.0.1: Manfred Neumann (Univ. of Osnabruck, Germany) will investigate the band structure of ferroelectric perovskites by x-ray resonant inelastic scattering. Alexander Moewes (Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices), Ernst Kurmaev (Russian Academy of Sciences), and Maurizio Matteucci (National Research Council, Italy) will investigate chemical reactions in polymers induced by ion beam mixing.

Beamline 9.0.2.2: Branko Ruscic (Argonne National Lab) and Gary Jarvis (Berkeley Lab) will be studying pulsed-field ionization of the radicals CH3 and HOCO.

Beamline 10.3.1: Professor Eicke Weber (Univ. of California, Berkeley) will be studying surfactant distributions in GaN films grown at Berkeley Lab.

Beamline 10.3.2: Martin Wilder (Univ. of California, Davis) will conduct microspectroscopy of lanthanum-bearing calcium silicate glasses; Lynn Ingram and Kathleen Johnson (Univ. of California, Berkeley) will study trace-element chemistry in speleothems; and Brendan Roark (Univ. of California, Berkeley) will study trace-element chemistry in coral.

8. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: rmmiller@lbl.gov)

Beam reliability for the last two weeks (January 18-31) was 99% overall and 99% for user shifts.

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.