ALSNews Vol. 231, October 1, 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
- Nogo Receptor Yields Framework for Neuron-Repair Studies
- Attwood, Marx to Highlight ALS History at Users' Meeting
- Shirley, Halbach, and Renner Award Nominations Still Open
- VUV14 To Be Held in Cairns, Australia, July 2004
- Who's in Town: A Sampling of ALS Users
- Operations Update
1. NOGO RECEPTOR YIELDS FRAMEWORK FOR NEURON-REPAIR
STUDIES
by Dan Krotz
(Contact: GMcDermott@lbl.gov)
Scientists are inching closer to a cure for spinal cord injuries, thanks to a research team that used the ALS to determine the structure of a protein that prevents neurons from repairing themselves. The protein is dubbed the Nogo receptor because it binds with several other proteins that block neural growth. It is found on the surface of thin fibers, called axons, which carry information along neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Researchers believe that if they can pharmaceutically block the interaction between the Nogo receptor and these growth-inhibiting proteins, then severed neurons may fuse back together, and paralyzed people could walk again.
Read the full story at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/66nogo.html.
Publication about this research: X.L. He, J.F. Bazan, G. McDermott, J.B. Park, K. Wang, M. Tessier-Lavigne, Z. He, and K.C. Garcia, "Structure of the Nogo Receptor Ectodomain: A Recognition Module Implicated in Myelin Inhibition," Neuron 38, 177 (2003).
2. ATTWOOD, MARX TO HIGHLIGHT ALS HISTORY AT USERS'
MEETING
(Contact: alsum2003@lbl.gov)
In a special "ALS 10-Year Retrospective" session at next week's ALS Users' Meeting, David Attwood and Jay Marx (both of Berkeley Lab) will chronicle the twists and turns in the ALS's journey from concept through construction. David Attwood, who served as ALS scientific director in the late eighties, will recount "The Impossible Dream," about how the ALS came to be. Jay Marx, who served as the ALS project director, will recall "The Construction of the ALS—A Personal Retrospective." Also, many veteran ALS project members will be invited guests at the early evening reception on Monday, which will also feature an exhibit of photos depicting the construction of the ALS. The retrospective theme will continue on Tuesday with the dedication of the main ALS conference room in honor of Klaus Halbach, inventor of the permanent-magnet insertion devices—wigglers and undulators—that changed forever the way we think about synchrotron radiation facilities.
An updated program for the meeting, including a list of the young researchers and highlights speakers, has been posted online at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/agenda.html. Online registration is still open at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/registration.html. The registration fee covers attendance at all sessions (including the poster session, vendor exhibits, and workshops), meeting materials, lunches, coffee breaks, the reception, the buffet/awards dinner, and an ALS 10th anniversary T-shirt.
3. SHIRLEY, HALBACH, AND RENNER AWARD NOMINATIONS
STILL OPEN
(Contact: EJMoxon@lbl.gov)
Now is the time to submit your nomination(s) for the Shirley (science), Halbach (instrumentation), and Renner (user service) Awards. The deadline has been extended to the close of business at Berkeley Lab tomorrow, October 2. To submit a nomination, go to the 2003 ALS Users' Meeting Award Nominations Web page at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/nominations.html. The nominations may be for an individual or a group, and a brief rationale for the nomination(s) is required. Past award winners, along with a representative from the UEC and the ALS, will serve on the award selection committee. The awards will be presented at the ALS Users' Meeting dinner/buffet on Tuesday, October 7.
4. VUV14 TO BE HELD IN CAIRNS, AUSTRALIA, JULY
2004
(Contact: vuv14@anu.edu.au)
Mark your calendars: the Fourteenth International Conference on Vacuum-Ultraviolet Radiation Physics (VUV14) will be held in Cairns, Australia, July 19 - 23, 2004. This will be the first visit to the Southern Hemisphere in the 40-year history of the VUV conference series, which began in Los Angeles in 1962 and is now run triennially, with the most recent conference (VUV13) held in Trieste, Italy, in 2001. VUV12 was hosted by the ALS in 1998. The conference Web address is http://vuv14.anu.edu.au/.
VUV14 will encompass all aspects of theoretical and experimental studies of the interaction of ultraviolet and x-ray radiation with matter over a photon energy range from a few eV to many keV. Relevant areas of research include, but are not limited to, atomic and molecular science, materials science, surface science, condensed-matter science, soft-matter science, and other aspects of physics, chemistry, and biology, together with the novel instrumentation required to conduct such research. The major tools of investigation, e.g. synchrotron radiation, lasers, laboratory sources, and plasma sources, are important topics, as are the associated optics, technology, and analytical techniques.
To subscribe to the VUV14 mailing list, visit http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/vuv14list/ and follow the instructions or email vuv14@anu.edu.au and ask to be subscribed.
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
Ted Raab (Carnegie Institution of Washington)
Gordon Brown (Stanford Univ.)
Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 4.0.2
Luis Miguel Garcia Vinuesa (Univ. of Zaragoza, Spain)
Kai Liu (Univ. of California, Davis)
Jeffrey Kortright (Berkeley Lab)
James Tobin (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
Beamlines 5.0.1,
5.0.2, 5.0.3
Marc Whitlow, Marc Adler (Berlex Biosciences)
Sutapa Ghosh, Elise Sudbeck (Celgene Corporation)
Beamline 5.3.2
Rainer Fink (Univ. Erlangen, Germany)
Gary Mitchell (The Dow Chemical Company)
Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.)
Adam Hitchcock (McMaster Univ., Canada)
Stephen Urquhart (Univ. of Saskatchewan, Canada)
Beamline 7.0.1
Changyoung Kim (Yonsei Univ., Korea)
Kai Starke (Freie Univ. Berlin, Germany)
Lars Johansson (Karlstad Univ., Sweden)
Z.Q. Qiu (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Beamline 7.3.3
John Bargar (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)
Alain Manceau (Univ. Joseph Fourier, France)
Beamline 8.0.1
Thomas Callcott (Univ. of Tennessee)
David Ederer (Tulane Univ.)
Jin Nakamura (Univ. of Electro-Communications, Japan)
Yasuji Muramatsu (Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute)
Beamlines 8.2.1,
8.2.2
Thiang Yian Wong (The Burnham Institute)
Ailong Ke (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Joseph Mougous (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Beamline 8.3.1
Shahram Khademi, William Harries (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Kevin Slep (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Joy Huffman, Magnar Bjoras, Kenichi Hitomi, Atsushi Yamagata (The Scripps
Research Institute)
Graeme Card, Kam Zhang, Abhinav Kumar (Plexxicon, Inc.)
Evette Radisky, Justin Lee, Karen Lu (Univ. of California,
Berkeley)
Sibyl Baladi (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Beamline 9.0.1
Janos Kirz (Stony Brook Univ.)
Beamline 9.3.2
Piero Pianetta (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)
Phil Ross (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 10.0.1
Dan Dessau (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder)
Z.X. Shen (Stanford Univ.)
Laurent Duda (Uppsala Univ., Sweden)
6. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)
For the user runs of September 16 - 22 and 24 - 29, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 91%. Of the scheduled beam, 79% 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.