1. DOE MANDATES CHANGES TO LIGHT-SOURCE OPERATIONS
(Contact: GFKrebs@lbl.gov)

On August 2, top officials of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) met with managers from the four major U.S. light sources to discuss issues concerning participating research teams (PRTs), also known as collaborative access teams (CATs), and general users (independent investigators). BES officials Pat Dehmer, Iran Thomas, Bill Oosterhuis, Pedro Montano, and Bob Astheimer issued a mandate to the light sources to begin evolving away from the old PRT/CAT system and to centralize beamtime scheduling.

While the PRT/CAT system of access was useful in helping to build up beamlines during earlier growth phases, BES believes that in a steady state, the only stable situation is one in which the beamlines are operated and maintained by the facility. BES expects the transition to take place over a period of a few years--in some cases, several years--so that previous memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and commitments can be honored. As for the centralized scheduling change, the impetus was a recent Inspector General audit on beamline usage. Centralized scheduling was recommended as a way to achieve greater access to the beamlines. In addition, BES will require that light sources use the same principles whether granting normal or proprietary access to a facility.

Representing the ALS at the meeting were Neville Smith (Deputy Director for Science) and Gary Krebs (User Services Group Leader). Neville and ALS user Steve Kevan (Univ. of Oregon, ALS Scientific Advisory Committee chair) proposed an alternative to the PRT/CAT system called the "approved programs" model. There seemed to be a consensus that this new mode of access, which is currently under consideration at the ALS, would satisfy the needs of the users as well as the BES mandate for facility-operated beamlines. Neville was asked to compose a document that could be used by all the facilities as a guide to the principles of access and the transition process. BES is requiring that each light source develop a plan for centralized scheduling by October 1, 2002.

2. 2002 ALS USERS' MEETING ANNOUNCEMENTS
(Contact: alsum2002@lbl.gov)

The ALS Users' Meeting Program Committee, the Users' Executive Committee (UEC), and the User Services Office announce the 2002 ALS Users' Meeting, to take place October 10 - 12 at Berkeley Lab. This year's meeting will feature a keynote address by Professor Steve Leone of the University of California and newly appointed director of the ALS Chemical Dynamics Group. In addition, there will be meeting sessions devoted to facility updates, highlights from young researchers, and ALS recent research highlights. A student poster competition, a poster session, and six focused workshops will round out this year's program. Register early, by October 1, to receive the early registration rate of $150 (regular) and $60 (student).

All ALS users, postdocs, and students are encouraged to participate by submitting abstracts for presentation at the meeting. Highlight oral presentations will be selected from the submitted abstracts; others will be presented in the poster session. Abstracts must be received by September 13 to be considered for an oral presentation or the student poster competition. Abstracts received by September 27 are guaranteed space in the general poster session and inclusion in the program booklet.

Visit the ALS Users' Meeting Web site at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/ for additional meeting information, including online registration and abstract submission requirements.

3. SUBMIT YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS FOR UEC NOMINEES

The UEC is currently seeking recommendations from ALS users for nominees to be placed on the ballot for this fall's UEC election. Note that these are not direct nominations; a UEC committee will consider these recommendations in drawing up a candidate list. Direct nominations from members of the ALS Users' Association may also be made by petition on an official nomination form. These require the signed endorsement of five Users' Association members and must be mailed or turned in at the upcoming Users' Meeting in October. A simple online form for recommendations as well as a downloadable nomination form (in PDF format) can be found at the UEC election Web site (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/uec/vote/).

The deadline for submitting recommendations is September 30, and the deadline for submitting signed nomination forms is October 12. The final slate of candidates will be announced on the election Web site on October 17. Voting will take place online from October 17 to November 15, and the results will be posted on November 19. The newly elected UEC members will take office for a three-year term beginning in January 2003 and ending in January 2006.

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. (The ALS has been operating in two-bunch mode since August 6. Normal 1.9-GeV multibunch operation will resume on August 20.)

Beamline 1.4.3
Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab)
Felicia Betancourt (Berkeley Lab)
Ted Raab (Carnegie Institute of Washington)

Beamline 4.0.2
Nora Berrah (Western Michigan Univ.)

Beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2
Dong Hae Shin, Shengfeng Chen, Jeroen Brandsen (Berkeley Structural Genomics Center)
Mark Knapp, Pete Dunten, Armando Villasenor (Roche Bioscience)
Johnathan Friedman, Latesh Lad, Huiying Li (Univ. of California, Irvine)

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

Beamline 7.0.1
Z.Q. Qiu (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Ivan Schuller (Univ. of California, San Diego)
Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.)

Beamline 7.3.1.1
Simone Anders (IBM Almaden Research Center)
Adam Hitchcock (McMaster Univ., Canada)

Beamline 8.0.1
Dennis Lindle (Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas)
Yasuji Muramatsu (Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute)

Beamline 9.0.2
Arthur Suits (State Univ. of New York at Stony Brook)

Beamline 9.3.2
Mike Prior (Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 10.0.1
Nora Berrah (Western Michigan Univ.) Z.X. Shen (Stanford Univ.) Astrid Mueller (Berkeley Lab)

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

For the user run of July 30 - August 4, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 96%. Of the scheduled beam, 84% was delivered to completion without interruption. For the user run of August 6 - 12 (two-bunch mode), the beam reliability was 98%. Of the scheduled beam, 98% 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-863
Editors: lstamura@lbl.gov, alrobinson@lbl.gov, ejmoxon@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.