| Director's
update: Building on the vision
by Roger Falcone
 On
September 1st, I moved into the Director's Office in Building
80. During my first few weeks I have been meeting and working
with an expanding group of ALS staff, users, and Berkeley
Lab managers as well as talking with our supporters in Washington.
The enthusiasm and quality of our ALS family, our facility's
excellent reputation, and the support we enjoy from other
divisions have reinforced my view that I made a great decision
to join the leadership team at the ALS.
I echo the sentiments of all of us in
noting my profound sadness at the sudden death of Neville
Smith. Neville was dedicated to the people of the ALS, and
we will miss his wisdom, integrity, and friendship. In my
early discussions with Neville about the possibility of my
becoming director, we talked about how we could do much together,
and I am grateful for his advice. We plan to recognize and
celebrate Neville's scientific contributions at the upcoming
Users' Meeting.
I am continuing the efforts of Daniel
Chemla and Janos Kirz to implement the Strategic Plan, and
I will build upon the vision they developed together with
ALS users and staff. For example, current indications are
that we will be able to go forward with plans for beamlines,
staffing, and the User Services Building, as well as other
activities (see the ALS
Strategic Plan). I am extremely grateful for the leadership
that Daniel and Janos provided during important growth years
at ALS, and hope to benefit from their counsel in the future.
We are augmenting our environment, health,
and safety activities, consistent with our mission, which
is to "support users in doing outstanding science in
a safe environment." These efforts include some new hires
and restructuring of the organization.
As we await confirmation of the fiscal
year 2007 budget, I will work to optimize the utilization
of our resources to best support users and our common scientific
goals. I am convinced that during this interim period we can
build on our successful programs and continue to more forward
with decisions on staffing, space, and resource allocation,
as well as planning.
I am particularly enjoying daily walks
around the beamlines, offices, and other operation areas.
Please stop me and introduce (or reintroduce) yourself, and
let's talk. Also, I am fond of email, so please send me your
ideas.
Contact: Roger Falcone, RWFalcone@lbl.gov
UEC Corner: Notes
from the Users'
Executive Committee
by Clemens Heske
 As
the date for the ALS Users' Meeting (October 9–11) nears,
please make sure to register. Online
registration will be available until October 2. After
that, last-minute registration must be done in person at the
reception desk on the morning of October 9.
Please see the Users'
Meeting Web site for the latest information about the
meeting. On that Web site, you will also find a nomination
page for the UEC Awards:
- David A. Shirley Award for Outstanding
Scientific Achievement at the ALS
- Klaus Halbach Award for Innovative
Instrumentation at the ALS
- Tim Renner User Services Award
for Outstanding Support to the ALS User Community
Please take the time submit your nominations;
the deadline is October 1.
The UEC has drafted a revised version
of the UEC Charter, which is posted
online with all proposed changes marked. Since the inception
of the ALS, the charter has not been revised, and the current
UEC felt that it would be important to update the document.
According to the existing charter, the charter can be amended
by a mail ballot of the members of the ALS Users' Asssociation
(note: that's all of the ALS users!) conducted by the UEC.
A two-thirds majority of those members voting in the balloting
must vote in favor of an amendment for it to be adopted. In
order to minimize (postage) costs, we will conduct a Web-based
ballot in conjunction with the Web-based vote for new UEC
members in October 2006. Please review the drafted revised
version and please don't hesitate to contact me (heske@unlv.nevada.edu)
with further suggestions. Note that to be eligible to vote
in the UEC election, you must have an up-to-date email address
on file with the ALS User Services Office by October 20. If
your email address has changed recently, go to the UEC voting
site referenced above for contact information.
The UEC is looking forward to welcoming
all of you at the upcoming 2006 ALS Users' Meeting!
Contact: Clemens Heske, heske@unlv.nevada.edu
Users' Meeting
program update:
Remembering Neville Smith
 It's
just over a week until the start of the 2006 ALS Users' Meeting,
and the latest information about the program
is now posted on the meeting Web site. Users and staff are
invited to review this year's exciting lineup of keynote speakers
and the wide variety of science highlights to be presented
during the meeting, including talks given by the winners of
the student poster competition and the Halbach and Shirley
Awards. In addition to the regular activities and thirteen
workshops, a special session dedicated to Neville Smith will
take place on Monday afternoon.
There are still a few days remaining
to register online. After October 2, however, you must wait
to register on-site at the reception desk on the morning of
October 9. Additional meeting information, including workshop
listings, online registration, and a tentative program, is
available on the ALS
Users' Meeting Web site.
Contact: alsum@lbl.gov
Electron-state
hybridization
in heavy-fermion systems
Heavy-fermion systems are characterized
by electrons with extremely large effective masses. The corresponding
heavy-electron "quasiparticle" states are close
to the Fermi energy and govern the thermodynamic, transport,
and, in part, magnetic properties of these materials. In the
case of rare-earth compounds, the quasiparticle states arise
from the interactions (hybridization) of valence states with
strongly localized 4f states. The question as to
whether it is sufficient to treat the f states as
localized impurities (single-impurity Anderson model) or whether
the periodic crystal symmetry must be considered (periodic
Anderson model) has been the subject of extensive debate.
An international team of researchers from Germany, Ukraine,
India, and the U.S. has performed angle-resolved photoemission
spectroscopy (ARPES) studies of the heavy-fermion system YbIr2Si2.
The results show a strong momentum (directional) dependence
of the hybridization that clearly rules out the single-impurity
model in favor of the lattice model. Full
story.
Publication about this research: S. Danzenbächer,
Y. Kucherenko, C. Laubschat, D.V. Vyalikh, Z. Hossain, C.
Geibel, X.J. Zhou, W. Yang, N. Mannella, Z. Hussain, Z.-X.
Shen, and S.L. Molodtsov, "Energy dispersion of 4f-derived
emissions in photoelectron spectra of the heavy-fermion compound
YbIr2Si2," Phys. Rev. Lett.
96, 106402 (2006).
Contact: Serguei Molodtsov,
molodtso@physik.phy.tu-dresden.de
Mapping the nanoscale
landscape
For the first time, researchers have
successfully mapped the chemical structure of conjugated polymer
blend films with a spatial resolution of better than 50 nm
using scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM). This
is not just another application of STXM. It is a breakthrough
experiment on several levels. Correlating local composition
to electronic/optical device characteristics will pave the
way to characterizing a whole new class of materials with
STXM—multicomponent organic electronic devices that
have intrinsically nanoscale dimensions. Understanding where
charge transport and recombination occur in these materials
helps explain the efficient performance of polymer-based light-emitting
diodes (LEDs) and will lead to a new avenue of research on
organic electronic devices, supporting emerging technologies
such as molecular computing and promoting increased efficiencies
in existing organic technologies (organic LEDs and solar cells).
Full
story.
Publication about this research: C.R.
McNeill, B. Watts, L. Thomsen, W.J. Belcher, N.C. Greenham
and P.C. Dastoor, "Nano-scale quantitative chemical mapping
of conjugated polymer blends," Nano Letters
6, 1202 (2006).
Contact: Paul Dastoor, phpd@alinga.newcastle.edu.au
First light for
x-ray microscope XM-2
A new high-resolution soft x-ray microscope
for biological and biomedical imaging received its first x
rays on Wednesday, August 23, 2006. The XM-2 microscope at
Beamline 2.1
is being built by the National Center for X-Ray Tomography
(NCXT), a Biomedical Research Resource funded by the Department
of Energy and the National Institutes of Health.
 The
relatively short wavelength and relatively high energy of
x rays give rise to images of biological cells with higher
spatial resolution than is possible using light-based techniques
and greater penetration depth than is achievable using electron-based
microscopies. Moreover, the use of x rays in the "water
window" produces images of biological materials with
very high contrast. This characteristic allows imaging of
whole cells in their natural state and eliminates the need
to use time-consuming staining procedures typically required
for electron microscopy. XM-2 can also be used localize specific
molecules inside the cell using x-ray detectable probes. This
is the first soft x-ray microscope in the world to be designed
specifically for biological and biomedical applications.
This milestone of achieving first light
signifies the end of the construction phase and the beginning
of the microscope commissioning phase and the scientific program.
The target date for availability to the biomedical community
is Spring 2007. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held during
the upcoming ALS Users' Meeting in conjunction with the workshop
titled "Tomography
with Soft and Hard X Rays at the ALS." Professor
Carolyn Larabell, NCXT Director, will also be giving a public
science lecture during the Users' Meeting titled "Imaging
the Cellular Universe." The NCXT is a joint program
between the University of California, San Francisco, and Berkeley
Lab; it is funded jointly by the Department of Energy and
the National Institutes of Health. For more information, go
to ncxt.lbl.gov.
Contacts: Carolyn Larabell, CALarabell@lbl.gov;
Mark Le Gros, MALeGros@lbl.gov
David A. Shapiro
named Seaborg Fellow
 ALS
user David A. Shapiro, a postdoctoral scholar at the Center
for Biophotonics Science and Technolology (University of California,
Davis) has been named a Berkeley Lab Seaborg Fellow. Seaborg
Fellowships are awarded in honor of Berkeley Nobelist Glenn
Seaborg to outstanding recent Ph.D. recipients. Upon appointment,
a Seaborg Fellow may choose to particpate in any aspect of
the Laboratory's research program, receiving a $20,000 annual
research supplement in addition to his or her salary. This
is a three-year appointment for David, starting on October
1.
Since receiving his Ph.D. in Physics
from Stony Brook University in 2004, David has been a key
player in the development of a coherent x-ray diffraction
microscope (XDM) at Beamline 9.0.1
that has produced the world's highest-resolution three-dimensional
x-ray image of a nonperiodic object. He as also been working
on developing an x-ray diffraction apparatus, also at Beamline
9.0.1,
for imaging single proteins by serial crystallography. In
serial protein crystallography, proteins are delivered to
the x-ray beam in a single-file stream of submicroscopic water
droplets moving at roughly 50 m/s. In future experiments,
the proteins will be oriented by an intense laser field that
interacts with the anisotropy in the polarizability of the
protein's nonspherical shape. With the Seaborg Fellowship,
David will continue to work at Berkeley Lab with experts in
x-ray and electron microscopy, protein crystallography, nanofabrication,
and small-angle x-ray scattering to further develop the techniques
of XDM and serial crystallography with the aim of producing
results at the forefront of science and bringing revolutionary
tools for the cell and molecular biology communities to the
ALS. Congratulations David, and welcome!
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