1. ALS USERS' MEETING HEARS GOOD FUNDING NEWS
by Art Robinson

The ALS users and staff who gathered at Berkeley Lab on October 16-18 for the annual ALS Users' Meeting were treated to some good news. Thanks to an excellent showing before a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) review panel (see ALSNews Vol. 148) and a significant increase in the 2001 budget for BES, funding for ALS operations should soon be back on a growth track. In the meeting's opening session, DOE Associate Director for BES Patricia Dehmer recounted the Congressional deliberations that resulted in the BES funding bump and noted the important role of the scientific community support that impressed the appropriators. In addition, ALS Director Daniel Chemla gave an extensive overview of the state of the facility and presented a brief look at a newly proposed Berkeley Molecular Foundry, developed in response to the growing worldwide interest in nanoscience. If approved, the BMF would include offices and laboratory space for users in a new building adjacent to the ALS.

The now traditional Highlights from Young Researchers session (ALS Division Deputy for Science Neville Smith suggested "junior" was a better descriptor) rounded out the first morning and was followed by oral presentations of scientific highlights from the ALS and elsewhere. A lively evening poster session took place on the ALS patio, with a splendid view of the San Francisco Bay at sunset as a backdrop. In a departure from previous practice, workshops played a larger role in this year's meeting: there were seven in all, compared to two last year. One of this year's workshops, on "X-Ray Microdiffraction and its Application to Problems in Materials Science," was sponsored jointly with the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, whose user meeting immediately followed that of the ALS. A second workshop, the "Forum on Detectors for Synchrotron Radiation," was one of several activities nationwide in preparation for the national "Workshop on Detectors for Synchrotron Radiation Research," which was held in Washington, DC, on October 30-31.

Awards for science and service were presented at a banquet held at the Berkeley Men's Faculty Club. Two teams shared the Halbach Award for Outstanding Instrumentation at the ALS. One team, led by Roger Falcone (Univ. of California, Berkeley), developed streak camera techniques in combination with x-ray diffraction to study the dynamics of structural phase transformations at picosecond time resolution. The other team, led by Robert Schoenlein (Berkeley Lab), developed time-slicing techniques to produce subpicosecond synchrotron radiation pulses. Phil Heimann (Berkeley Lab) and Schoenlein accepted the award on behalf of both teams. The David A. Shirley Award for Science went to a team led by Harry Noller (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) for the solution of the complete ribosome structure at a resolution that allowed determination of many of its component parts. Greg Kusinski (Univ. of California, Berkeley) won the student poster competition for his poster entitled "Imaging Magnetic Domains on a Nanometer Scale with Magnetic Transmission Microscopy." Art Robinson (ALS Technical Information Section) took home the Tim Renner User Services Award for his work with user groups and ALS staff in developing scientific proposals submitted to funding agencies and for contributions promoting the ALS in general. The banquet also provided an opportunity to recognize Daniel Weiss (Georg August University, Gottingen, Germany) and Jianwei Miao (State University of New York, Stony Brook) as the inaugural winners of the Werner Meyer-Ilse Award, established at last year's International Conference on X-Ray Microscopy (XRM) and to be awarded triennially hereafter in conjunction with future XRM Conferences; a medallion was presented by the international award committee chair, David Attwood (Center for X-Ray Optics, Berkeley Lab).

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

The annual Users' Meeting this year started with one and a half days of common invited presentations and ended with seven specialized workshops that attracted speakers and participants from all over the world as well as from outside the synchrotron community. This was a slightly new format (adapted from the National Synchrotron Light Source format) that seems necessary now as the ALS user population has increased tremendously (about 1032 according to a recent count). The meeting attracted about 270 attendees and featured about 75 poster presentations. Also, this year we gave prime time to the Highlights from Young Researchers oral session as well as to the poster session, which was held on the ALS patio. The feedback so far from the community is that they enjoyed the new format because it allowed plenty of time for scientists to interact. If you would like us to continue this format, or if you have other ideas, please let us know.

The first day of the meeting began very well with excellent funding news from Pat Dehmer (see item 1 above). We understand that the budget is not final and hope very much that the funding for BES remains very good since it has an impact on the funding of users and of the synchrotron facilities. Both Dehmer and Berkeley Lab Director Charles Shank congratulated users on the excellent outcome of the DOE Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) review of the ALS earlier this year. Also on the first day, the UEC had a lunch meeting with Dehmer and Bill Oosterhuis (Division of Materials Sciences, BES). Both sides enjoy these regular meetings very much because it allows direct and continuous communication between the elected user representatives and DOE officials.

We would like to congratulate once again all the award recipients: Roger Falcone and Bob Schoenlein et al. (Halbach Award), Harry Noller et al. (Shirley Award), Greg Kusinski (Poster Award), Art Robinson (Renner Award), and Daniel Weiss and Jianwei Miao (Werner Meyer-Ilse Award). The UEC would also like to again thank very much all the ALS staff members who contributed to the organization of the meeting and allowed it to run smoothly in all aspects.

Finally, we will very soon need your suggestions for new UEC members. We need to replace Steve Kevan (Oregon State Univ.), Jim Underwood (Center for X-Ray Optics, Berkeley Lab), Chuck Fadley (Univ. of California, Davis/Berkeley Lab), and Dave Hansen (Jet Propulsion Lab). One crystallography member and one student/postdoc are necessary. Please send your suggestions to Nora Berrah (berrah@wmich.edu).

3. RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Bard, J., A.M. Zhelkovsky, S. Helmling, T.N. Earnest, C.L. Moore, and A. Bohm, "Structure of Yeast Poly(A) Polymerase Alone and in Complex with 3'-dATP," Science 289, 1346 (August 2000).

Bogdanov, P.V., A. Lanzara, S.A. Kellar, X.J. Zhou, E.D. Lu, W.J. Zheng, G. Gu, J.-I. Shimoyama, K. Kishio, H. Ikeda, R. Yoshizaki, Z. Hussain, and Z.-X. Shen, "Evidence for an energy scale for quasiparticle dispersion in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8," Phys. Rev. Lett. 85(12), 2581 (September 2000).

Canton-Rogan, S.E., A.A. Wills, T.W. Gorczyca, M. Wiedenhoeft, O. Nayandin, C.-N. Liu, and N. Berrah, "Mirroring doubly excited resonances in argon," Phys. Rev. Lett. 85(15), 3113 (October 2000).

Garman, S.C., B.A. Wurzburg, S.S. Tarchevskaya, J.-P. Kinet, and T.S. Jardetzky, "Structure of the Fc fragment of human IgE bound to its high-affinity receptor Fc[epsilon]RI[alpha]," Nature 406(6793), 259 (July 2000).

Minor, D.L., Y.-F. Lin, B.C. Mobley, A. Avelar, Y.N. Jan, L.Y. Jan, and J.M. Berger, "The polar T1 interface is linked to conformational changes that open the voltage-gated potassium channel," Cell 102, 657 (September 2000).

Thomas, L., J. Luening, A. Scholl, F. Nolting, S. Anders, J. Stohr, and S.S.P. Parkin, "Oscillatory decay of magnetization induced by domain-wall stray fields," Phys. Rev. Lett. 84(15), 3462 (April 2000).

van den Akker, F., X. Zhang, M. Miyagi, X. Huo, K.S. Misono, and V.C. Yee, "Structure of the dimerized hormone-binding domain of guanylyl-cyclase-coupled receptor," Nature 406(6791), 101 (July 2000).

4. WHO'S IN TOWN: A SAMPLING OF ALS USERS

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 (Stanford Univ. Medical Center)
Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab)
Sherry Zhang and Phil Ross (Berkeley Lab)
Harvey Doner (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Jessica Preciado, Ralph Grief, and Boris Rubinsky (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Ted Raab (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder)
Felicia Betancourt and Bob Glaeser (Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 5.3.1
Phil Heimann (Berkeley Lab)
Christian Bressler and Melanie Saes (Univ. of Lausanne, Switzerland)
Rafael Abela (Paul Scherrer Institut)

Beamline 7.3.3
Simon Clark (Daresbury Laboratory, UK)
Steven Prilliman (Univ. of California, Berkeley)

Beamline 8.0.1
Manfred Neumann (University of Onasbruck, Germany)
Steve Cramer (Univ. of California, Davis)

Beamline 10.0.1
Francois Wuilleumier, Denis Cubaynes, Jean-Marc Bizau, Segolene Diehl (Univ. Paris-Sud)
Jim Allen (Univ. of Michigan)
Jonathan Denlinger (Berkeley Lab)
Z.X. Shen, Scot Kellar, X. Zhuo, P. Bogdanov (Stanford Univ.)
Darrah Thomas (Oregon State Univ.)
Leif Saethre, Knut Borve, Velaug Myrseth (Univ. of Bergen, Norway)
Tom Carroll (Keuka College)
Edwin Kukk (Univ. of Oulu, Finland)
Eli Rotenberg (Berkeley Lab)
S. Kevan (Univ. of Oregon)
H.W. Yeom (Yonsei Univ., Korea)

5. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)

For the user runs of October 3 - 8, 11 - 16, 17 - 22, and 24 - 30, the beam availability was 95%. Of the delivered beam, 78% was delivered to completion without interruption. 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 Bruce Samuelson (BCSamuelson@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.