1. IMPORTANT CHANGES TO INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATOR PROPOSAL PROCESS
Contact: GFKrebs@lbl.gov

A task force was convened on March 30, 1999, to discuss the implementation of independent investigator (II) program proposals for the physical sciences. (Protein crystallography proposals have a separate process.) Because of the huge increase in the number of proposals submitted in the last cycle, one of the goals of the meeting was to streamline the proposal process for the users, the Proposal Study Panel (PSP), and the User Services Office. Beginning June 1, 1999, the following three changes to the proposal process for the physical sciences will be instituted by the User Services Office.

First, all II proposals will have the option to remain active for two years (i.e., four six-month cycles). The proposal deadlines for the six-month cycles will remain June 1 and December 1 of each year, though the running periods will shift by two months. New proposals submitted by June 1, 1999 (for beamtime during a transitional eight-month period from October 1999 to May 2000) will begin their two years of eligibility with that cycle. Starting with the proposal deadline of December 1, 1999 (for beamtime from June to November 2000), users will be able to keep an ongoing proposal active by merely submitting a one-page Experiment Report/Beamtime Request every six months. Guidelines for submission will be made available on the World Wide Web.

Second, for the current proposal cycle only (for beamtime from October 1999 to May 2000), investigators may request to have a previous proposal considered by notifying the User Services Office by the June 1, 1999, deadline. Otherwise, the previous proposal will become inactive. Those who resubmit a previous proposal will also begin their two years of eligibility with the current proposal cycle.

Third, the numeric rating for each II proposal will be communicated to the investigator along with comments from the PSP. The cut-off rating for each beamline will be posted on the Web so that independent investigators can make an informed decision on whether to rewrite their proposal, remove it, or keep it in the pool. These changes should reduce the work required of users, the PSP, and ALS staff and allow the peer review process to function smoothly.

The task force that developed these changes included representatives from the Scientific Advisory Committee, the Users' Executive Committee (UEC), the PSP, and ALS management. Members of the task force were Nora Berrah, Charles Fadley, Zahid Hussain, Stephen Kevan, Gary Krebs, Dennis Lindle, Piero Pianetta, Neville Smith, and Louis Terminello. The recommendations of the task force were reviewed and approved by the UEC.

The proposal form for independent investigators is available on the Web at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/independinvest.html. Data sheets describing the capabilities of the beamlines at the ALS are also on the Web at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/datasheets.html

To request a proposal form by mail, contact:
Ruth Pepe, ALS User Services Administrator
Tel: (510) 486-7745
Fax: (510) 486-4773
Email: alsuser@lbl.gov

2. ALS ATTRACTS SCIENCE BUFFS FOR CAL DAY, DAUGHTERS AND SONS TO WORK DAY
Contact: ejmoxon@lbl.gov

The ALS was once again a highlight stop at the Cal Day Open House on April 17 at the University of California, Berkeley. Four busloads of curious visitors ventured up the hill from campus to get an up-close look at the ALS. After an introductory talk by staff from the Center for X-Ray Optics (CXRO), visitors ventured on to the experiment floor where they had the opportunity to visit beamlines and talk to scientists about their research.

On Daughters and Sons to Work Day, April 22, nearly 250 children of Berkeley Lab employees took the opportunity to see their parents' workplaces and to take part in workshops around the Lab. As part of this special day, the ALS sponsored two workshops for children aged 9 to 15. Workshop participants were given a quick introduction to the ALS, which was followed by related hands-on activities that explored electromagnetism and the properties of light. The children were then presented with pencil and paper and transformed into junior science reporters. These eager cub reporters accompanied their escorts on to the ALS experiment floor and took the opportunity to interview them about their work at the ALS. Each participant went home with a deeper, more personalized knowledge of what goes on at the ALS; many thanks to the ALS employees and users who helped open the door to curious young minds!

3. ALS VIEWGRAPHS NOW ON LINE
Contact: ejmoxon@lbl.gov

It's midnight, your presentation is scheduled for 8:00 tomorrow morning, and you can't find that one viewgraph that will make your talk come together. Sound familiar? The ALS has just the solution for you! A collection of our most popular viewgraphs is now available on line in Portable Document Format (PDF). You can download a viewgraph directly from the Web at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/vugraph.html. With the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can print as many copies as you like on your local printer. See the viewgraph Web page for more information about viewing and printing these files. Many more viewgraphs are also available through the ALS viewgraph lending library. See the Web page for more details.

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 1.4.3: Ted Raab (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) will be studying rhizosphere plant/soil interactions by using FTIR spectromicroscopy. Marni Goldman (Berkeley Lab) will be studying bioactive glass layers for future use in medical implants.

Beamline 5.0.2: The research groups of B.C. Wang (Univ. of Georgia), Brian Matthews (Univ. of Oregon), Bernhard Rupp (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and Bing Jap (Berkeley Lab) will be performing biological crystallography experiments.

Beamline 7.3.1.1: Kannan Krishnan and Greg Kusinski (Univ. of California, Berkeley) will study magnetic thin films with the photoemission electron microscope (PEEM), and Zi Qiang Qiu (Univ. of California, Berkeley) will use the PEEM to study domains in magnetic multilayer structures.

Beamline 7.3.3: Wenbing Yun (Berkeley Lab) will continue developing phase-contrast x-ray microscopy with photons at energies of ~8 keV.

Beamline 12.0.1.1: Michele Zacchigna (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland) will be working at the MAXIMUM x-ray microscope to study band bending inhomogeneities in metal/semiconductor interfaces.

5. RECENT PUBLICATIONS

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

Blank, D.A., A.G. Suits, Y.T. Lee, S.W. North, and G.W. Hall, "Photodissociation of acrylonitrile at 193nm: A photofragment translational spectroscopy study using synchrotron radiation for product photoionization," J. Chem. Phys. 108 (1998), p. 5784.

Blank, D.A., W. Sun, A.G. Suits, Y.T. Lee, S.W. North, and G.W. Hall, "Primary and secondary processes in the 193nm photodissociation of vinyl chloride," J. Chem. Phys. 108 (1998), p. 5414.

Bracker, A.S., E.R. Wouters, O.S. Vasyutinskii, and A.G. Suits, "Imaging the alignment angular distribution: State symmetries, coherence, and nonadiabatic dynamics in photodissociation," J. Chem. Phys. 110 (1999), p. 6749.

Evans, M.D., S.L. Stimson, C. Ng, and C. Hsu, "High resolution pulsed field ionization photoelectron study of O2: Predissociation lifetimes and high-n Rydberg lifetimes converging to O2+," J. Chem. Phys. 109 (1998), p. 1285.

6. OPERATIONS UPDATE
Contact: RMMiller@lbl.gov

Beam reliability for user shifts during the last two weeks (April 12-25) was 95.4%. Substantially all of the lost time was in the repair of a problem with the high-voltage power distribution for the storage-ring rf system.

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.