ALSNews Vol. 211, November 13, 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.

Progress Report on SESAME Project in Jordan
Reminder: General Sciences Proposals Due December 1
Processing Delays Possible for Nonimmigrant Visas
UEC Voting to Conclude Friday
Photos of Users' Meeting Now Online
Who's in Town: A Sampling of ALS Users
Operations Update

1. PROGRESS REPORT ON SESAME PROJECT IN JORDAN
(Contact: ZHussain@lbl.gov)

Accompanied by Herman Winick (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory), Dieter Einfeld, Technical Director of SESAME (Synchrotron light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East), stopped by the ALS recently to update users and staff on the status of this trailblazing project. Developed under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), SESAME will be a major international research center in the Middle East/Mediterranean region. It will be located on the campus of Al Balqa University in Allaan, Jordan. The SESAME site is 30 km northwest of the Jordanian capital, Amman, but significantly also only a 2- to 3-hour drive from Jerusalem.

When originally proposed in 1997 by Gus Voss (Deutches Elektronen-Synchrotron, DESY) and Winick, SESAME was to use hardware from the synchrotron light source BESSY I, which was scheduled for decommissioning as soon as the third-generation BESSY II was up and running in Berlin. Use of BESSY I hardware would help make the project practical for a region without a large scientific infrastructure and with limited resources. BESSY I was crated and shipped to Jordan from Berlin last summer. However, with an 800-MeV storage ring, the old machine was not compatible with most of the scientific applications foreseen for the facility, which required hard x rays with photon energies up to 20 keV. After a series of redesigns, SESAME is now envisioned to be a 2-GeV, third-generation light source with an emittance of 17 nm-rad and 13 of its 16 straight sections available for the installation of insertion devices with a length of around 3 m. The circumference of the machine will be 120 m. The 800-MeV booster synchrotron of BESSY I will still be used with small changes. A new building to house SESAME will provide the space for offices, workshops, laboratories, and beamlines with lengths up to 30 m.

Governing SESAME at present is a 13-country Interim Council chaired by Herwig Schopper, former Director-General of CERN. A Permanent Council is being formed of countries that notify UNESCO that they accept the SESAME statutes, the most important element of which is a collective commitment to provide the annual operating expenses. There are also several observer states (including the United States) from elsewhere in the region and around the world. The European Union may fund part of the construction of the machine and beamlines. Funds or in-kind contributions are also being sought from the U.S., Japan, and other countries. In anticipation of progress toward identifying funds for initial accelerator and beamline capital costs, groundbreaking for the new building is scheduled for January 6, 2003, with the King of Jordan and Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, in attendance. SESAME could be producing its first light for beamlines in 2007, a schedule that clearly depends on the achievement of political stability in the region. In the meantime, a large number of trainee scientists are scattered around the world's synchrotron light sources learning the skills of the trade.

2. REMINDER: GENERAL SCIENCES PROPOSALS DUE DECEMBER 1
(Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov)

The User Services Office is accepting general user proposals (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; see link for "Proposal process" below.)

Scientists wishing to renew a previous proposal must fill in a one-page Experiment Report/Beamtime Request (an RTF form is available for download at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/expt_report.rtf) 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 any comments offered by the Proposal Study Panel. 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:

Submitting a general science proposal for beam time
http://alsusweb.lbl.gov/

Becoming an ALS User
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/becomealsuser.html

Proposal process (general science and protein crystallography)
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

ALS User Services Administrator
alsuser@lbl.gov

3. PROCESSING DELAYS POSSIBLE FOR NONIMMIGRANT VISAS
(Contact: BOrtega@lbl.gov)

On September 11, 2002, the U.S. State Department announced the implementation of stricter screening measures for foreign nationals applying for nonimmigrant visas at U.S. consulates. A nonimmigrant visa is issued to those with permanent residence outside the U.S. but who wish to be in the U.S. temporarily for purposes such as tourism, medical treatment, business, temporary work, or study. The latest information from the State Department indicates that the new screening measures, which include security background checks that may be requested at the discretion of consular officials, can take up to three months to complete. Unfortunately, these lengthy processing delays have already resulted in canceled beam time for a few users. To avoid this in the future, affected users are strongly encouraged to apply for visas as early as possible--as soon as they are notified of receiving beam time--and to coordinate the scheduling of their beam time with the ALS User Services Office (510-486-7745, alsuser@lbl.gov). For more information about the visa application process and policies with respect to Berkeley Lab, contact Ben Ortega of the Lab's International Researchers and Scholars Office (510-486-6326, BOrtega@lbl.gov).

ALSNews Vol. 211, November 13, 2002

Previous Issues are available.

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