1. HOW CARBON MONOXIDE ADSORBS AT DIFFERENT SITES
by Lori Tamura
(Contact: nilsson@slac.stanford.edu)

Deep within an ideal crystalline solid, every atom has a full complement of neighboring atoms, held in place by chemical bonds in all three dimensions. In contrast, atoms on the two-dimensional surface remain partially unattached, leaving "unsaturated" bonds that are available for chemical reactions with external substances. An understanding of how simple molecules bond to such surfaces is important for many different fields of science, including heterogenous catalysis, electrochemistry, biomaterials, and molecular environmental science. A basic question is why molecules preferentially bond to sites with a particular geometry. At Beamline 8.0.1 of the ALS, a research group from Sweden has employed x-ray emission spectroscopy experiments on carbon monoxide and performed ab initio electron density calculations to explore the subtle interplay between the electronic and geometric structure of adsorbates.

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

Publication about this research: Föhlisch, M. Nyberg, J. Hasselström, O. Karis, L.G.M. Pettersson, A. Nilsson, "How Carbon Monoxide Adsorbs in Different Sites," Phys. Rev. Lett. 85(15), 3309 (2000).

2. UPDATE ON CALIFORNIA'S ELECTRICAL POWER CRISIS
(Contact: B_Feinberg@lbl.gov)

Until now the California power crisis has had little effect on Berkeley Lab beyond prompting energy conservation measures. On April 3, however, the California Public Utilities Commission ruled that customers receiving transmission-level voltage are no longer necessarily exempt from rotating outages. Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), the Bay Area utility company, has interpreted this ruling as including Berkeley Lab.

If Berkeley Lab were subject to rotating outages, it would be extremely harmful to the research program at the ALS and at other Berkeley Lab facilities. Negotiations are continuing between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the three California national laboratories, and PG&E. At present, Berkeley Lab is planning to participate in a program whereby the Lab would be exempt from outages in exchange for reducing power consumption whenever any of the rotating outage blocks are affected. The Lab plans to lease sufficient generator capability to reduce the load on PG&E during each of these outages, thus avoiding the necessity of shutting down the Lab. Stay tuned for further updates.

3. RESULTS OF POLL ON REFILL TIMES
(Contact: B_Feinberg@lbl.gov)

The results of the recent user poll on storage-ring refill times are in and have been carefully analyzed. The poll showed no significant preferences for any one of the four options: six hours between fills, eight hours between fills, fixed refill times, or variable refill times (the latter would apply when an unscheduled interruption causes the schedule to be reset). However, when correlations in the responses were analyzed, there was a significant preference for two combinations of the four options: six hours between fills with variable refill times, and eight hours between fills with fixed refill times.

To serve both of these communities, at the suggestion of Users' Executive Committee (UEC) Chair Harald Ade, we will run for a few months with each set of conditions. We are currently running with six hours between fills and variable refill times. In the next several months, after working out the details, we will try eight hours between fills and fixed refill times. Of course, before making the switch we will provide ample notice in ALSNews.

4. REMINDER: PHYSICAL SCIENCES PROPOSALS DUE JUNE 1
(Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov)

The User Services Office is still accepting proposals from scientists who wish to conduct research as independent investigators in the physical sciences during the running period from December 2001 to May 2002. The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2001. (This information does not apply to protein crystallography proposals, which have a separate process and schedule.) Scientists wishing to renew a previous proposal must fill in a one-page ALS Experiment Report and Request for Beamtime form and submit it to the User Services Office by the June 1 deadline. The numeric rating for each proposal will be communicated to the investigator along with comments from the Proposal Study Panel, where appropriate. The cutoff rating for each beamline in the previous proposal cycle is published on the Web (see below). The following resources are available for further information:

ALS User Services Administrator

alsuser@lbl.gov

Independent investigator process

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

Beamline information

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/datasheets.html

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/bl_table.html

Proposal Study Panel (PSP) scores

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

5. UEC CORNER: NOTES FROM THE USERS' EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
by Harald Ade
(Contact: harald_ade@ncsu.edu)

On May 7th, representatives from the user groups of the four U.S. DOE synchrotron facilities met with staffers for members of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Committee, the House Science Committee, and the House Energy and Water Appropriations Committee. These staffers were briefed on the significant scientific, technological, educational, and, in the end, economic contributions these facilities make and how important it is to adequately support them. In a broader context, support was requested from the above committees for doubling the research budget of the physical sciences (through agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the DOE Office of Science) over five years. Additional meetings were held on May 8th with staffers from the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget to have a positive impact on the budget for FY 2003. Another series of visits to individual senators and congressmen of user states or districts is planned for late May or early June. Later during the summer, there will be a direct call from the ALS UEC for a more targeted letter-writing compaign.

6. 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 1.4.2
Chris Weber and Joe Orenstein (Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 1.4.3
Felicia Betancourt and Bob Glaeser (Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Lab)
T.J. Wilkinson and Dale Perry (Berkeley Lab)
Tom Breunig and Dan Fried (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Shyamsunder Erramilli (Boston Univ.)
Hoi-Ying Holman and Kathy Bjornstad (Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 7.3.1.1
Christian Stamm and Joachim Stohr (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)

Beamline 7.3.3
K.-N. Tu (Univ. of California, Los Angeles)

Beamline 8.0.1
Alex Moewes (Univ. of Saskatchewan)
Tom Callcott (Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Dave Ederer (Tulane Univ.)
Eric Fullerton (IBM Almaden Research Center)
Jeff Kortright (Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 10.0.1
Z.X. Shen and coworkers (Stanford Univ.)
N. Berrah and coworkers (Western Michigan Univ.)

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

For the user runs of April 24-30 and May 1-6, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 95%. Of the scheduled beam, 82% 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.

LBNL/PUB-848
Editors: lstamura@lbl.gov, alrobinson@lbl.gov, amgreiner@lbl.gov

This work was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.