ALSNews Vol. 209, october 16, 2002
ALSNews is a biweekly electronic newsletter to keep users and other interested parties informed about developments at the Advanced Light Source, a national user facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California. To be placed on the mailing list, send your name and complete internet address to ALSNews@lbl.gov. We welcome suggestions for topics and content.
Previous Issues are available.
Table of Contents
- 2002 Users' Meeting Highlights
- First Call: General Sciences Proposals Due December 1
- UEC Election Begins Tomorrow Online
- Tremendous Turnout for Open House
- Who's in Town: A Sampling of ALS Users
- Operations Update
1. 2002 USERS' MEETING HIGHLIGHTS
by Lori Tamura
(Contact: rwf@physics.berkeley.edu)
Over 350 participants gathered at Berkeley Lab last week for the 2002 ALS Users' Meeting. Evolving modes of user access were a hot topic this year, being addressed in several talks by ALS and DOE officials as well as in a town-hall question-and-answer period during the meeting's opening sessions. The agenda also included updates on the state of the ALS, the announcement of awards, the presentation of research highlights (see http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/program.html), and a wide-ranging series of workshops exploring opportunities for future development at the ALS (see http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/workshops.html).
In his opening remarks, Berkeley Lab Director Charles Shank announced that Steve Kevan (Univ. of Oregon) will soon be stepping down as chair of the ALS Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). He thanked Steve for his valuable leadership of this important committee and invited users to provide input to ALS Deputy Director for Science Neville Smith on filling the vacancy left by Steve's departure. Director Shank also mentioned that Berkeley Lab is looking into opportunities for building an on-site user housing facility and encouraged users to communicate their housing needs to the Users' Executive Committee (UEC).
Pat Dehmer, representing the Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES), focused on clarifying the context surrounding recently proposed changes to modes of user access. She emphasized that this development is best characterized as a step in the continuous evolution of ways to provide access to user facilities so as to maximize scientific output. Furthermore, such change can only happen with the cooperation and input of light source directors, user communities, and funding agencies. Neville Smith also spoke at length about the history of participating research teams (PRTs) and how the ALS is evolving towards an approved program (AP) model. Details about the AP model and other user-access issues were the main focus of discussion during the town-hall meeting part of the program.
ALS Director Daniel Chemla reviewed the state of the ALS, recapping a busy, productive year and providing status reports on current projects, including the recently approved femtosecond slicing source beamline. Other current projects include the molecular environmental science (MES) beamline (being commissioned) and the PEEM3 microscope (under construction, expected completion in 2004). Future projects with high priority include ultrahigh-resolution spectroscopy, coherent soft x-ray scattering, a super-radiant coherent infrared ring, and a superbend beamline for high-pressure research. In addition, Accelerator Physics Group Leader David Robin reported that, a year after installation, the superbends are very reliable, exceeding expectations. The transition was seamless and there has been no significant effect on nonsuperbend users of the ALS.
Awards for 2002 were presented during a reception and buffet dinner held on the ALS patio on Thursday evening. Ximei Qian (Univ. of California, Davis) won the student poster competition with her submission titled "State-Selected Ion-Molecule Reaction Dynamics at Extremely High Vibrationally Excited States." The Renner User Services Award was split between Charles A. Knopf (Mechanical Engineering Group, retired) "for his years of dependable, cheerful work in fitting water connections and in enhancing the user-friendly atmosphere at the ALS" and Gerry McDermott (Berkeley Center for Structural Biology) "for consistently going out of his way to help users and make them feel at home."
This year's Halbach Award for Innovative Instrumentation went to Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.), Peter Hitchcock (McMaster Univ., Canada), David Kilcoyne (North Carolina State Univ.), Tolek Tyliszczak (Berkeley Lab), Tony Warwick (ALS), and the STXM Team "for design and implementation of advanced interferometrically controlled scanning transmission x-ray microscopes." In accepting the award on behalf of the team, Harald praised all who had contributed. The Shirley Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement was presented jointly to Nora Berrah (Western Michigan Univ.), John Bozek (ALS), Carmen Cisneros (Univ. Nacional Autonoma de Mexico), Aaron Covington (Lake Tahoe Community College), and Ron Phaneuf (Univ. of Nevada, Reno) "for groundbreaking advances in atomic and molecular physics, including studies of photon-ion beams." The recipients are delighted to acknowledge their many collaborators and express special gratitude to their students.
2. FIRST CALL: GENERAL SCIENCES PROPOSALS DUE DECEMBER
1
(Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov)
The User Services Office is now accepting general user (formerly independent investigator) proposals from scientists who wish to conduct research in the general sciences at the ALS during the running period from June to December 2003. The deadline for submissions is December 1, 2002. (This deadline does not apply to protein crystallography proposals, which have a separate process and schedule.) The change in terminology from independent investigator to general user was agreed upon by the various light sources to be consistent with each other.
Scientists wishing to renew a previous proposal must fill in a one-page Experiment Report/Beamtime Request and submit it to the User Services Office by the December 1 deadline. The numeric rating for each proposal will be communicated to the user 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
General user proposal 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
3. UEC ELECTION BEGINS TOMORROW ONLINE
(Contact: AMGreiner@lbl.gov)
Online voting for three new Users' Executive Committee (UEC) members will take place starting tomorrow, October 17, and continuing through November 15, 2002. Check the UEC Elections Web site at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/uec/vote/ to view the final slate of candidates and their bios. All ALS users with current email addresses on file in our user database are eligible to vote. The election results will be posted at the above site on November 19, 2002. The newly elected members will take office for a three-year term beginning January 1, 2003, replacing those rotating off the committee at the end of this year: Roger Falcone (Univ. of California, Berkeley), Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.), and Carolyn Larabell (Berkeley Lab).
4. TREMENDOUS TURNOUT FOR OPEN HOUSE
(Contact:EJMoxon@lbl.gov)
At Berkeley Lab's Open House event on Saturday, October 5, tours of the ALS were the "hottest ticket in town," according to visitors who spent up to half an hour waiting patiently in line to get inside the ALS. The crowds started arriving promptly as the Lab opened its gates at 10:00 a.m., and traffic remained steady well past the 4:00 p.m. closing time. A volunteer army of knowledgeable ALS staff served as tour guides, escorting groups around the experiment floor, into the control room, up over the storage ring, and under the ALS's signature dome. Users with beamtime seemed to take the zoo-like atmosphere in stride, posting humorous "Do Not Feed the Scientist" signs around work areas.
Out on the patio, the perennially popular demonstrations involving liquid nitrogen (an ALS staple) were updated to include ice-cream-making, ensuring a steady throng of taste-testers around the booth throughout the unusually hot day. Also popular was a crystal-growing demonstration sponsored by the Physical Biosciences Division (PBD), where kids could grow their own sugar-crystal lollipops. Those craving more substantial fare could choose from a menu of talks--on ALS science by Berkeley-based users Carolyn Larabell and James Holton and on ALS technology by accelerator physicist Christoph Steier and retired engineer Art Ritchie. With an overall attendance of 7000+, this Open House was by all accounts a huge success. Sincere thanks to all those who volunteered their time and effort, and hearty congratulations to the event's ALS/PBD coordinators, Liz Moxon, Art Robinson, Jane Tanamachi, and Ellen Ford.
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.
Beamline 1.4.3
Simon Clark (Berkeley Lab)
Rajeshwari Ganguli, Carol Litchfield (George Mason Univ.)
Beamline 7.0.1
Karsten Horn (Fritz-Haber-Institute, Germany)
Ivan Schuller (Univ. of California, San Diego)
Laurent Duda (Uppsala Univ., Sweden)
Beamline 7.3.1.1
Simone Anders (IBM Almaden Research Center)
Stephen Urquhart (Univ. of Saskatchewan, Canada)
Adam Hitchcock (McMaster Univ., Canada)
Beamline 8.0.1
Eberhard Umbach (Univ. Wurzburg, Germany)
Alexander Moewes (Univ. of Saskatchewan, Canada)
Beamline 8.2.2
Ed Berry (Berkeley Lab)
Geoffrey Chang, Christopher Roth, Alex Ma (The Scripps Research Institute)
Beamline 8.2.1
Karthikeyan Subramanian, Sangita Sinha (Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical
Center)
Steve Edwards (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder)
Beamline 8.3.1
Peter Hwang (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Emmanuel Skordalakes, Paul Pease, Eric Abbate, Wa-On Yu (Univ. of California,
Berkeley)
Beamline 10.0.1
Z.X. Shen (Stanford Univ.)
Ron Phaneuf (Univ. of Nevada, Reno)
Erwin Poliakoff (Louisiana State Univ.)
James Allen (Univ. of Michigan)
Beamline 10.3.2
Donald Sparks, Gerald Hendricks (Univ. of Delaware)
Satish Myneni (Princeton Univ.)
6. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)
For the user run of October 1 - 7, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 98%. Of the scheduled beam, 93% 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/schedules/index.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.
ALSNews is a biweekly electronic newsletter to keep users informed about developments at the Advanced Light Source, a national user facility located at Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California. To be placed on the mailing list, send your email address to ALSNews@lbl.gov. We welcome suggestions for topics and content. Submissions are due the Friday before the issue date.
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.