1. MAGNETIC MATERIALS RESEARCH PROGRAMS UP FOR REVIEW
(Contact: NVSmith@lbl.gov)

At its November meeting, the ALS's Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) called for a broad, cross-cutting review of magnetic materials research programs at the ALS. As a "board of directors," the SAC provides recommendations on all technical and policy issues that bear on the effective utilization of the ALS and on developments required to maintain scientific and technical productivity at the highest possible level. The review committee will be charged by the SAC to identify the elements of an optimum magnetic materials reasearch program at the ALS and to make specific recommendations for the best use of the elliptical polarization undulators (EPUs) now either in operation (at Beamline 4.0) or under construction (at Beamline 11.0) at the ALS. The review committee will be chaired by Sam Bader, senior physicist and group leader of the Magnetic Films Group in the Materials Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory. The review is tentatively scheduled for May 2002 and will take the form of a workshop-style meeting with the participation of both current and prospective ALS users involved in magnetic materials research. A similar SAC-requested cross-program review, which focused on microscopy research at the ALS, was held in February 1999.

2. DEADLINE FOR COMPENDIUM ABSTRACTS EXTENDED
(Contact: LSTamura@lbl.gov)

In response to requests for extra time and to ensure that as many users as possible are represented in our annual compendium of research, the deadline for abstract submission has been extended to February 11, 2002. All users or user groups (including ALS staff members) should submit a one- to three-page abstract (including figures) describing each project conducted at the ALS during calendar year 2001, whether published, unpublished, or in progress.

Submission information (including author guidelines, file specifications, and a submission form) can be found on the Web at http://alspubs.lbl.gov/Compendium_old. If you encounter problems uploading files via the Web, please don't hesitate to notify Lori Tamura as soon as possible (LSTamura@lbl.gov, 510-486-6172). We are currently in the process of indexing the abstracts and sending out acknowledgments; we ask for your patience as we work through the backlog of files that were received by the deadline last week. Many thanks to all those who submitted their work in a timely manner.

3. UEC CORNER: NOTES FROM THE USERS' EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
by Roger Falcone
(Contact: rwf@physics.berkeley.edu)

The UEC held its first meeting, by teleconference, on January 30. We discussed issues that we wanted to bring up during our meeting with the DOE-BES Program Review Committee on February 4. Much of the discussion focused on "quality of life" issues, such as ideas for housing and transportation for users during beamtime, the positive impact of ALS support of beamline scientists and postdocs, and ideas for dealing with the increasing space crunch on the experiment floor of the ALS.

We also discussed holding a UEC meeting, with welcome participation by any users in town, sometime this spring at the ALS.

Jennifer Doudna of Yale University was announced as UEC vice chair.

Please contact me or other members of the UEC with your ideas for the ALS.

4. RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Drennan, C.L., J. Heo, M.D. Sintchak, E.R. Schreiter, and P.W. Ludden, "Life on carbon monoxide: X-ray structure of Rhodospirillum rubrum Ni-Fe-S carbon monoxide dehydrogenase," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98(21), 11973 (October 2001).

Foehlisch, A., O. Karis, M. Weinelt, J. Hasselstroem, A. Nilsson, and N. Martensson, "Auger resonant Raman scattering in itinerant electron systems: Continuum excitations in Cu," Phys. Rev. Lett. 88(2), 027601 (January 2002).

Hoang, C., and A.R. Ferre-D'Amare, "Cocrystal structure of a tRNA psi55 pseudouridine synthase: Nucleotide flipping by an RNA-modifying enzyme," Cell 107, 929 (December 2001).

Minko, S., M. Mueller, D. Usov, A. Scholl, C. Froeck, and M. Stamm, "Lateral versus perpendicular segregation in mixed polymer brushes," Phys. Rev. Lett. 88(3), 035502 (January 2002).

Ohldag, H., T.J. Regab, J. Stoehr, A. Scholl, F. Nolting, J. Luening, C. Stamm, S. Anders, and R.L. White, "Spectroscopic identification and direct imaging of interfacial magnetic spins," Phys. Rev. Lett. 87(24), 247201 (December 2001).

Schaefer, J.H., E. Rotenberg, S.D. Kevan, P. Blaha, R. Claessen, and R.E. Thorne, "High-temperature symmetry breaking in the electronic band structure of the quasi-one-dimensional solid NbSe3," Phys. Rev. Lett. 87(19), 196403 (November 2001).

Sui, H., B. Han, J. Lee, P. Wallen, and B. Jap, "Structural basis of water-specific transport through the AQP1 water channel," Nature 414, 872 (December 2001).

5. 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 (which will be operating in two-bunch mode from February 13-25).

Beamline 1.4.3
Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 4.0.2
Stephen Cramer (Univ. of California, Davis)
Reinhard Doerner (Univ. of Frankfurt, Germany)

Beamlines 5.0.1 and 5.0.2
Xiaoling Xie, Yunyi Wei (Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.)
Julian Chen (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Li Fan, Timothy Wood (The Scripps Research Institute)
Wa Yu, Kaoru Yoshida (Univ. of California, Berkeley)

Beamline 6.3.1
Dennis Lindle (Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas)

Beamline 7.3.1.1
Boris Sinkovic (Univ. of Connecticut)
Simone Anders (IBM Almaden Research Center)

Beamline 7.3.3
Ersan Ustundag (California Institute of Technology)

Beamline 9.3.2
Mike Prior (Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 10.0.1
Yoshiro Azuma (Photon Factory, KEK, Japan)

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

For the user run of January 24 - 28, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 93%. Of the scheduled beam, 69% was delivered to completion without interruption. There were some interruptions due to water-flow trips and superbend intermittent over-temperature trips.

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-863
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.