1. SMITH ELECTED RECIPIENT OF PRESTIGIOUS HUMBOLDT AWARD

Neville Smith, ALS Division Deputy for Science, has been elected the recipient of a Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists. Up to 80 awards are granted each year by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany to internationally renowned scholars in recognition of past research achievements. Award winners are invited to spend extended periods at research institutes in Germany to promote international scientific cooperation. Neville's host will be Professor Wolfgang Eberhardt of the Forschungszentrum Jülich (Jülich Research Center). While in Germany, Neville plans to collaborate with Eberhardt on experiments with applications in the field of magnetoelectronics--the study of electrical devices in which electrical transport properties depend not only on the charge but also on the spin orientation of the carriers.

"I am very gratified by this award," said Neville, adding (with his characteristic sense of humor), "It will give me an opportunity to immerse myself full time in science before my brain turns completely to tapioca." Neville's award nomination cited his pioneering work in using angle-resolved photoemission to study the electronic structure of solids as well as his later development of inverse photoemission techniques for determining the unoccupied electronic states of solids and surfaces. In the course of that work he explored the existence of image potential states, where an electron is captured by its own image potential in a well a few angstroms outside the surface of a metal. Neville's research program in Germany will be chosen from the following: spin-polarized photoemission, coherent light scattering, and time-resolved magnetization dynamics.

2. ACS SESSION TO FEATURE CHEMISTRY AT ALS
(Contact: tobin1@llnl.gov)

The 36th American Chemical Society (ACS) Western Regional Meeting will feature a session on "Chemistry Research at the ALS." The meeting will be held at the Cathedral Hill Hotel, 1101 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, California, on October 25-28, 2000. ALS users are encouraged to submit abstracts to demonstrate the depth, breadth, and excellence of the chemistry research performed at the ALS. For more information about the ACS Western Regional Meeting, including details about abstract submission, please visit the Web site at http://www.calacs.org or contact Jim Tobin directly at tobin1@llnl.gov. Abstract forms are available from the ACS Web site at http://www.acs.org/meetings/regional/abstract.html. The deadline for abstract submission is June 16, 2000.

3. MCF BEAMTIME ALLOCATED FOR EXTENDED RUNNING PERIOD
(Contact: GFKrebs@lbl.gov)

The Proposal Study Panel for the Macromolecular Crystallography Facility (MCF) has finalized beamtime allocations for the next running period (July 2000 to March 2001). The majority of the crystallography proposals for this period were deemed to be of very high scientific caliber by the panel. Unfortunately, many excellent proposals had to be turned down because of high demand. In order to allocate more beamtime, the running period was extended from the usual six-month period to nine months. The panel studied 57 proposals that requested a total of 389 eight-hour shifts. Because of the extended running period, about 48% of the requested beamtime was allocated compared to 35% from the previous running period. (Thirty proposals were awarded beamtime.) The average score was 1.91, and the cutoff score was 1.87. For more information about the selection process and results, see the proposal scores Web page at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/pspscores_mcf.html. Two new branchlines of the existing MCF will be completed by late summer. After their commissioning, it is expected that the congestion at the existing branchline will be somewhat alleviated.

4. POSTDOCTORAL OPPORTUNITY
(Contact: kevan@oregon.uoregon.edu or erotenberg@lbl.gov)

A full-time postdoctoral position in synchrotron radiation research at the ALS, focusing on many-body effects at surfaces, is available through the University of Oregon. For more information, please see the posting at http://guernsey.uoregon.edu/~kevan/postdoc.html.

5. RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Eichman, B.F., J.M. Vargason, B.H. Mooers, and P.S. Ho, "The Holliday junction in an inverted repeat DNA sequence: Sequence effects on the structure of four-way junctions," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 97(8), 3971 (April 2000).

Keck, J.L., D. Roche, S. Lynch, and J.M. Berger, "Structure of the RNA polymerase domain of E. coli primase," Science 287, 2482 (March 2000).

Moewes, A.P., A.V. Postnikov, E.Z. Kurmaev, M.M. Grush, and D.L. Ederer, "Resonant mixing of widely separated intermediate states and charge transfer at the 4d-4f resonance of La compounds," Europhys. Lett. 49(5), 665 (March 2000).

Rotenberg, E., J.H. Schaefer, and S.D. Kevan, "Coupling between adsorbate vibrations and an electronic surface state," Phys. Rev. Lett. 84(13), 2925-2928 (March 2000).

Scholl, A., J. Stohr, J. Luning, J.-P. Locquet, J. Fompeyrine, J.W. Seo, H. Siegwart, F. Nolting, S. Anders, and E. Fullerton, "Observation of antiferromagnetic domains in epitaxial thin films," Science 287, 1014 (February 2000).

Slep, D., J. Asselta, M.A. Raffailovich, J. Sokolov, D.A. Winsett, A.P. Smith, H. Ade, and S. Anders, "Effect of an interactive surface on the equilibrium contact angles in bilayer polymer films," Langmuir 16(5), 2369 (March 2000).

6. WHO'S IN TOWN

Following are some of the experimenters who will be collecting data during the next two weeks at the ALS.

Beamline 1.4.3
Phil Huie, Dan Fletcher, and Dmitri Simanovski (Stanford Univ.)
James Chesko (ALZA Corp.)
Jessica Preciado, Boris Rubinsky, and Ralph Greif (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Sherry Zhang and Phil Ross (Berkeley Lab)
Felicia Betancourt and Bob Glaeser (Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 7.3.1.1
Gary Mitchell (Dow Chemical)
Adam Hitchcock (McMaster Univ.)
David Abraham (IBM)

Beamline 8.0.1
Tom Callcott (Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville)
Dave Ederer (Tulane Univ.)
Lou Terminello, Christoph Bostedt, and Tony van Buuren (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

Beamline 10.0.1
Dan Dessau and coworkers (Univ. of Colorado)
Z.X. Shen and coworkers (Stanford Univ.)

Beamline 10.3.1
Tom Cahill and Steve Cliff (Univ. of California, Davis)

Beamline 12.0.1.1
Yi Yang (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison)

7. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: EJLampo@lbl.gov)

Beam reliability for the last two weeks (May 22 - June 4) was 92% for user shifts. There were no significant outages. Of the delivered beam, 71% was delivered as scheduled and another 17% of deliveries had successful durations of five hours or more before interruption. The interruptions mainly were attributable to water-flow trips and tuning problems.

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 Gary Krebs (GFKrebs@lbl.gov, x7727) 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.