1. DEADLINE FOR PHYSICAL SCIENCES INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATOR PROPOSALS: DECEMBER 1
(Contact: GFKrebs@lbl.gov)

December 1, 1999, is the deadline for independent investigator (II) proposals in the physical sciences for the next running period, which will last from June to November 2000. The Independent Investigator Proposal and Request for Beamtime form can be obtained from the User Services Office or on the Web at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/independinvest.html. Investigators who would like to keep a previous proposal active must fill in a one-page Experiment Report/Beamtime Request and submit it to the User Services Office by the December 1 deadline. This form will be available after November 1. (The information above does not apply to protein crystallography proposals, which have a separate process and schedule.) All II proposals have the option to remain active for two years (i.e., four six-month cycles) with the submission of an Experiment Report/Beamtime Request every six months.

The numeric rating for each II proposal will be communicated to the investigator along with comments from the Proposal Study Panel (PSP). The cutoff rating for each beamline in the previous proposal cycle is published on the Web at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/pspscores.html.

Information on the proposal process and a summary of the proposal deadlines for both physical sciences and protein crystallography are available 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) 486-5268
Fax: (510) 486-4773
Email: alsuser@lbl.gov

2. PRESIDENT OF DOMINICAN REPUBLIC TOURS ALS

President Leonel Fernandez Reyna of the Dominican Republic visited the light source on September 30. The President was accompanied by a delegation of more than 60 visitors representing Dominican businesses, universities, and media. As part of a three-day visit to the Bay Area, the group came to Berkeley Lab and toured the Advanced Light Source with Laboratory Director Charles Shank. ALS Division Deputy for Science Neville Smith led the tour, and thanks go to several ALS user groups for assistance on the experiment floor. Fernandez's goal was to explore possible collaborations between his country and high-technology centers in the United States. Other stops on his Bay Area trip included the University of California, Berkeley, campus and various Silicon Valley high-tech firms.

3. FEBRUARY 2000 SHUTDOWN IN THE WORKS
(Contact: JPHarkins@lbl.gov)

Planning is under way for the February 2000 shutdown. The accelerator will be shut down on February 14 for four weeks of construction and maintenance plus one additional week of commissioning and startup. Beam will be restored to users on March 21.

Much of the work to be accomplished is preparation for the future installation of the superconducting bend magnets in 2001. The vacuum chambers in Sectors 8 and 12 will be machined to provide clearance for the small-gap dipole magnets, as the Sector-4 chamber was this spring, and Sectors 4, 8, and 12 will have quadrupole magnets and utilities installed as well as have modifications made to the roof blocks. Power supplies will be installed and commissioned to separately control the quadrupole family (QFA) magnets in these sectors.

Additional construction to be accomplished during the shutdown includes installation of new front-end components for Beamline 5.0, survey and alignment of the storage ring, and modifications to a ceramic break (a short section of beam pipe) in the booster-to-storage-ring line.

The list of projects to be accomplished during this shutdown will be frozen on December 16. ALS Division Deputy for Planning and Administration Jim Krupnick must approve any additions to this list after December 16. If you have any work for which you need ALS resources and that you anticipate accomplishing between February 14 and March 21, please contact Joe Harkins (JPHarkins@lbl.gov) to make sure that adequate resources are available.

4. DAVID ROBIN NAMED ACCELERATOR PHYSICS GROUP LEADER
(Contact: DSRobin@lbl.gov)

Acting Accelerator Physics Group Leader David Robin has been selected to lead the group on a permanent basis. Robin has served as acting group leader since September, when he took over at the departure of Alan Jackson. He has been a member of the ALS Accelerator Physics Group, matrixed from the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division, since 1994. The new appointment was announced October 5 and is effective immediately. Group memeber John Byrd has accepted the position of Deputy Accelerator Physics Group Leader.

5. BUILDING 6 MEZZANINE CONSTRUCTION CONTINUES
(Contact: JPHarkins@lbl.gov)

Construction has started on the last section of the Building 6 mezzanine. Parking between Building 6 and the liquid-nitrogen cooling towers has been assigned to the contractor as a construction staging area. The first-floor kitchenette areas near column lines 5 and 8 will be blocked off for the next six weeks so that the second floor can be extended into the curved window space. If you have any questions, please contact Joe Harkins (JPHarkins@lbl.gov).

6. UEC CORNER: NOTES FROM THE USERS' EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
by Stephen Kevan
(Contact: kevan@oregon.uoregon.edu)

I look forward to seeing you at the Users' Meeting next week. The UEC has put together an excellent agenda highlighting much of the great new science being done at the ALS. There will be a particular focus on results from young researchers this year. In addition to the normal activities--oral and poster sessions, equipment show, banquet, etc.--the user community will also have an opportunity to meet with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) program managers to discuss various issues of current interest. The only bad news about this year's meeting is that new DOE policies concerning chargeable expenses have rendered some of our ancillary activities more difficult. We have had to cancel the T-shirt competition, for example, though the winning design will appear on the cover of the abstract booklet.

There will be a significant focus on budgetary matters at the meeting. There is much potentially bad news and some good news in the current budget process. We will have an opportunity to explore these issues as they pertain to operating and finishing the build-out of the ALS.

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 two weeks at the ALS.

Beamline 1.4.2: Chris Weber and Joe Orenstein (Univ. of California, Berkeley) will be studying the far-infrared properties of high-temperature superconductor thin films.

Beamline 1.4.3: Felicia Hendrickson and Robert Glaeser (Berkeley Lab) will continue studies of the bacteriorhodopsin photocycle. Don Young (Chevron) will study residues on auto engine parts. Ron Simms, Karl Neiman (Utah State Univ.), and Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab) will investigate pyrene degradation and bound residue formation in the presence of humic acids. Mary Kauffman (Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory) will study Burkholderia cepacia G4 attached to basalt and exposed to various chemicals. Sherry Zhang and Phil Ross (Berkeley Lab) will measure buildups on battery anodes. Peggy Arps (Univ. of Nevada, Reno) will look for bacterial interactions in corrosion processes of cooling water pipe systems.

Beamline 7.3.1.1: Gary Mitchell (Dow Chemical) will study polymers with the photoemission electron microscope.

Beamline 8.0.1: Steve Cramer (Univ. of California, Davis) and coworkers will look at chemical shifts and intensity changes in the L emission of nickel and manganese metal complexes.

Beamline 10.0.1: Ron Phaneuf, Aaron Covington (Univ. of Nevada, Reno), and coworkers will study the photoionization of singly charged oxygen ions using the photon-ion endstation. Francois Wuilleumier (LSAI, Orsay, France) and coworkers will study triply excited lithium atoms by using high-resolution photoelectron spectroscopy. Z.X. Shen and Scott Kellar (Stanford Univ.) will study the electronic structure of high-Tc superconducting and related materials by using high-momentum-resolution electron spectroscopy.

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

Beam reliability for the last two weeks (September 27 to October 10) was 97.7% for user shifts. There were no significant outages.

Long-term and weekly operations schedules are available on the Web (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/accelinfo.html). Requests for special operations use of the "scrubbing" shift should be sent to Bob Miller (RMMiller@lbl.gov, x4738) by 1:00 p.m. Friday. 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.