ALSNews Vol. 222, May 14, 2003
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
- User Support Building Passes CD-0 Milestone
- New Beamline Delivers Coherent Soft X Rays
- ALS Awards and Honors: Doudna, Lanzara
- UEC Corner: Notes from the Users' Executive Committee
- Reminder: General Sciences Proposals Due June 1
- Who's in Town: A Sampling of ALS Users
- Operations Update
1. USER SUPPORT BUILDING PASSES CD-0 MILESTONE
(Contact: B_Feinberg@lbl.gov)
A proposed User Support Building (USB), to be strategically located next to the ALS, has passed the Department of Energy (DOE) milestone called Critical Decision 0 (CD-0), Approval of Mission Need. This authorizes the project to proceed to the conceptual design phase and request project engineering and design funding. Construction of the USB would involve the demolition of Building 10, a failing World War II - era building on the southwest side of the ALS, with a new building twice its size. The USB would include a high bay for the assembly of experimental apparatus; a seminar room; modern analytical laboratories; and office space for about 135 occupants and support for over 2,000 scientific facility users. The USB, in addition to supporting ALS users, would support users of several major research facilities located at Berkeley Lab, including the Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) and the Molecular Foundry. ALS management and the Users' Executive Committee (UEC) will be working to plan the details of the building.
2. NEW BEAMLINE DELIVERS COHERENT SOFT X RAYS
(Contacts: ZHussain@lbl.gov, attwood@eecs.berkeley.edu)
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on April 22 for Beamline 12.0.2, the new "Coherent Soft X-Ray Science Beamline." Lab Director Charles Shank, ALS Division Director Daniel Chemla, and ALS Scientific Support Group Leader Zahid Hussain were on hand for the dedication. The new beamline is a joint project of the ALS, Berkeley Lab's Center for X-Ray Optics (CXRO), and the University of Oregon. At Beamline 12.0.2, an 8-cm-undulator beamline provides photons of energies from 200 eV to 1 keV. The monochromator consists of a variable-line-spacing grating and an exit slit, enabling a bandwidth of 0.1%. There are two branch lines, one for coherent soft x-ray scattering experiments (8x demagnification, optimized for 800 eV) and the other for coherent soft x-ray optics experiments (14x demagnification, optimized for 500 eV). Steve Kevan (Univ. of Oregon) leads the coherent soft x-ray scattering experiments with the assistance of ALS postdoc Karine Chesnel and student Josh Turner (Univ. of Oregon). Graduate student Kristine Rosfjord (Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Lab) and Paul Denham and Drew Kemp (both of CXRO) have recently completed pinhole spatial filtering experiments that clearly demonstrate the production of microwatts of tunable coherent soft x-rays, sufficient to do a wide range of experiments. Support for beamline construction was provided through the ALS and CXRO by the DOE's Office of Basic Energy Sciences, and through Director Shank by the Univ. of California.
3. ALS AWARDS AND HONORS: DOUDNA, LANZARA
The ALS is pleased to acknowledge and congratulate those in its orbit whose achievements have been recognized through awards and honors.
ALS UEC Chair Jennifer Doudna (Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Lab) has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She will be inducted at an annual ceremony at the academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October. Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an international learned society composed of the world's leading scientists, scholars, artists, business people, and public leaders. Among the 2003 class of 187 Fellows and 20 Foreign Honarary Members are four college presidents, three Nobel Prize winners, and four Pulitzer Prize winners. "Election to the American Academy is an honor that acknowledges the best of all scholarly fields and professions. Newly elected Fellows are selected through a highly competitive process that recognizes those who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines," said Academy President Patricia Meyer Spacks. (See http://www.amacad.org/news/new2003.htm for additional information.)
ALS user Alessandra Lanzara (Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Lab) has been selected to receive the 2003 William L. McMillan Award "for her discovery of a universal energy scale in the nodal quasi-particle spectrum of the cuprate superconductors" due to the coupling of quasiparticles to phonons. The McMillan award honors the memory of a noted physicist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is presented annually to a young condensed matter physicist for distinguished research performed within five years of receiving the Ph.D. degree. Originally from Rome, Italy, Alessandra received her Ph.D. in physics from the Univ. of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1998. Working at Beamline 10.0.1, Alessandra was first author of a paper that identified a "kink" in the energy spectrum of low-energy electrons in three different families of copper oxide high-temperature superconductors. This spectral kink is the signature of an interaction between an electron and a phonon. Electron-phonon coupling drives the low-temperature superconductivity of metal alloys but its role in the cuprates remains to be proven. (See http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/48lattice_vibration.html for additional information.)
The ALS UEC has selected Dennis Lindle as our Vice Chair for 2003. Dennis is a long-time user of the ALS based at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Last month, representatives from the UEC committees of the four DOE-funded synchrotrons—ALS, APS, NSLS, and SSRL—met in Washington, D.C., to lobby congressional reps about the need for continued strong financial support. Greg Denbeaux (Berkeley Lab, CXRO) attended, and he reports that the trip was both educational and productive. In general, the reception from everyone was very positive, indicating that these visits are indeed beneficial. While most were sympathetic at the outset, putting faces and success stories to the mission of the light sources and the DOE Office of Science is helpful in keeping us on their agendas. It can be especially beneficial for users from particular states to meet with their congressional representatives to raise awareness of the importance of synchrotron-based research. This time, user Dr. Martin Caffrey from Ohio State University met with Rep. David Hobson (R-OH), Chair of the Energy and Water Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, to explain how user facilities operate and why they are important to the academic and industrial communities. Any ALS users who want to be involved in such efforts in the future should contact one of the ALS UEC members.
Users are reminded that the 2003 ALS Users' Meeting is planned for October 6 - 8, and this year's theme, on the tenth anniversary of the ALS, is "Looking ahead: the next ten years at the ALS." Meeting co-organizers Eli Rotenberg (ERotenberg@lbl.gov) and Gerry McDermott (GMcDermott@lbl.gov) are planning an exciting series of talks and workshops to highlight recent research as well as future directions at the ALS. Please forward your ideas for workshop topics or discussion leaders to Eli and Gerry, and plan to attend!
5. REMINDER: GENERAL SCIENCES PROPOSALS DUE JUNE
1
(Contact:alsproposals@lbl.gov)
The User Services Office is still accepting general user proposals from scientists who wish to conduct research in the general sciences at the ALS during the running period from December 2003 to May 2004. The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2003. (This deadline does not apply to protein crystallography proposals, which have a separate process and schedule.) Scientists wishing to renew a previous proposal must download the one-page "ALS Experiment Report and Request for Beamtime" form (see links below) and submit it to the User Services Office by the June 1 deadline. Proposals cannot be renewed for more than three cycles after they are first submitted. 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
ALS General Sciences Proposal and Request for Beamtime
http://alsusweb.lbl.gov/4DCGI/WEB_GetForm/Page1P.shtml/Initialize
ALS Experiment Report and Request for Beamtime (renewal form)
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/expt_report.rtf
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
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 1.4.3
John Bradley (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
Thomas Borch (Montana State Univ.)
Ben Gilbert (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Raymond Jeanloz (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2, 5.0.3
Barry Stoddard (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center)
Xiayang Qiu (Pfizer Global Research and Development)
Kevin D'Amico (Structural Genomix)
Kai Lin (Univ. of Massachusetts)
Marc Jacobs (Vertex Pharmaceuticals)
Marc Whitlow (Berlex Biosciences)
Nigel Walker (Tularik, Inc.)
Partho Ghosh (Univ. of California, San Diego)
Marc Knapp (Roche Bioscience)
Elizabeth Getzoff (Research Institute of Scripps Clinic)
Glen Spraggon (Novartis Institute for Functional Genomics)
Duncan Mcree (Syrrx, Inc.)
David McKay (Stanford Univ.)
Beamline 6.3.1
Maurizio Sacchi (Univ. Paris-Sud, France)
Steve Kevan (Univ. of Oregon)
Beamline 7.3.1.1
Kai Starke (Freie Univ. Berlin, Germany)
Sergiy Minko, Denys Usov (Institut fur Polymerforschung Dresden, Germany)
Beamline 7.3.3
John Bargar (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)
Alain Manceau (Univ. Joseph Fourier, France)
Beamline 8.0.1
Manfred Neumann (Univ. of Osnabrueck, Germany)
Kevin Prince (Sincrotrone Trieste, Italy)
Satish Myneni (Princeton Univ.)
Beamlines 8.2.1, 8.2.2
Axel Brunger (Stanford Univ.)
Kenan Garcia (Stanford Univ.)
Jennifer Doudna (Univ. of California, Berkeley, Berkeley Lab)
Wim Hol (Univ. of Washington)
John Kuriyan (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Duilio Cascio (Univ. of California, Los Angeles)
Ashley Deacon (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center/Joint Center for
Structural Genomics)
Beamline 9.0.2
Wei Kong (Oregon State Univ.)
Cheuk-Yiu Ng (Univ. of California, Davis)
Larry Sorenson (Univ. of Washington)
Ricardo Metz (Univ. of Massachusetts)
Beamline 9.3.2
Christine Richter (Universite de Cergy-Pontoise, France)
Allen Johnson (Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas)
Beamline 10.0.1
Duane Jaecks (Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Beamline 10.3.1
Britt Holmen (Univ. of Connecticut)
7. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)
For the user runs of April 30 - May 5 and May 6 - 11, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 95%. Of the scheduled beam, 85% 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 (ALS-CR@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. A Web page showing the ring status in real time can be found at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/status/.
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-875
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.