1. QUANTITATIVE ZINC SPECIATION IN SOILS
By Art Robinson
(Contact: Alain.Manceau@obs.ujf-grenoble.fr)

A scientific approach to cleaning up the environment requires basic chemical information at the molecular level about contaminants. For example, a remediation strategy depends not just on the concentration of the toxic metal but on its mobility in soil and water and its ease of uptake by plants, animals, and people, properties that depend on the chemical compounds containing the metal. A team of French researchers working at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble has shown how to use complementary x-ray techniques to identify zinc-containing compounds in contaminated French and Belgian soils located near smelters. In particular, they combined spatially resolved (at the micrometer scale) x-ray fluorescence (micro-XRF) and extended x-ray absorption fine structure (micro-EXAFS) at the ALS and polarized EXAFS at the ESRF to make the key identification of important zinc constituents and their structural forms (i.e., their speciation).

Read the full story at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/zinc.html.

Publication about this research: A. Manceau, B. Lanson, M. L. Schlegel, J.-C. Harge, M. Musso, J.-L. Hazemann, D. Chateigner, and G. M. Lamble, "Quantitative Zn speciation in smelter-contaminated soils by EXAFS spectroscopy," Am. J. Sci. 300, 289 ( 2000).

2. MACROMOLECULAR CRYSTALLOGRAPHY BEAMTIME PROPOSALS DUE MARCH 15

The ALS User Services Office is accepting proposals from scientists who wish to conduct research as independent investigators at the Macromolecular Crystallography Facility (Beamline 5.0.2) between July and December 2000. The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2000. (The deadline for the subsequent cycle is September 1, 2000.) Scientists wishing to renew a previous proposal must notify the ALS User Services Office Manager, Bernie Dixon, at alsproposals@lbl.gov.

The following resources are available for further information:

ALS User Services Administrator

alsuser@lbl.gov

Independent-investigator process/proposal form (PDF)

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/independinvest.html

Beamline 5.0.2 information

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/5.0-Datasheet.pdf

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/bl5.0.2.html

Macromolecular Crystallography Facility Web site

http://www.lbl.gov/LBL-Programs/mcf/

3. UEC CORNER: NOTES FROM THE USERS' EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
by Nora Berrah
(Contact: berrah@wmich.edu)

The U.S. Department of Energy's Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) review of the ALS was held on Febrary 3-4, 2000. The review committee was chaired by Yves Petroff, Director General of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, and included distinguished panelists Massimo Altarelli (Elettra Synchrotron Light Source, Italy), John Carruthers (Intel), Chris Greene (Univ. of Colorado), Janos Kirz (SUNY), Ted Madey (Rutgers), Doug Rees (California Institute of Technology), and Nobel Laureate Rick Smalley (Rice Univ.).

The meeting was a complete success! The organization was very smooth and professional, the presentations by ALS management were excellent, and the research highlights given by scientists in various disciplines were outstanding! A session of reports given by young scientists in the form of posters on the ALS floor near their experiments was the icing on the already suberb cake! A thick compendium of the research accomplishments for all the beamlines convincingly illustrated how vibrant and productive the ALS scientific community is in many fields of research. These past two years, 6 Nature, 14 Science, and 26 Phys. Rev. Lett. articles were published, in addition to hundreds of articles in various other refereed journals.

Users played an integral role in the meeting preparation and execution. This review exemplified the excellence that the ALS and its users can attain when they work cooperatively. As can be seen from the agenda (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_news/besac.html), the BESAC review committee met separately with some members of the Scientific Advisory Committe and the Users' Executive Committee. Both of these meetings also went very well. The UEC has congratulated the ALS administration on an excellent job and is in full support of ALS management. The report of the BESAC review committee will be presented to the Department of Energy on February 28-29, 2000, and we all expect that the recommendations will be very favorable to the ALS.

With the user community increasing exponentially (at present, the user community numbers about 800, and a projection of 1200 users for 2002 is not unreasonable), ALS management foresees space problems. A proposal to construct a new building for users is therefore under way. Present plans are to use this building for office space and for experimental staging areas. We need to hear from you, the user community, about your needs regarding office space and staging areas so that we can plan appropriately. We need to hear from you soon. Please give us your suggestions for other uses of the building as well. For example, should we plan for a larger conference room than the present one in the ALS building? Now is your chance to make your views known and to make your requests for space in general. Users can also be accommodated in the available space on the Building 6 mezzanine and in other buildings, such as Buildings 7 and 4. Please send these requests to Gary Krebs (GFKrebs@lbl.gov) and Bernie Dixon (BBDixon@lbl.gov).

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

Beam reliability for the last two weeks (January 31 through February 13) was 95% for user shifts. There were no significant outages. The ALS is currently in a planned shutdown for installations and maintenance. User operations are scheduled to resume at 12:00 a.m. on Tuesday, March 21.

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.