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.


ALSNews           Vol. 29           June 13, 1995

Table of Contents


    1. ALSNEWS MOVES TO BIWEEKLY SCHEDULE
    2. OPERATIONS UPDATE
    3. DATES FOR NEXT SHUTDOWN ANNOUNCED
    4. ANNOUNCING THE 1995 MEETING OF THE ALS USERS' ASSOCIATION
    5. CONTEST -- 1995 USERS' MEETING T-SHIRT AND MUG DESIGNS
    6. SPOTLIGHT ON STUDENTS

1. ALSNEWS MOVES TO BIWEEKLY SCHEDULE
(contact: alsnews@lbl.gov)

The first results from the ALSNews reader survey two weeks ago show that, while most of you are enjoying the content of ALSNews, a number of you feel it can be "too much of a good thing." We aim to provide the quantity of information you want as well as the content you need, so beginning this week, ALSNews will be published every two weeks. If important news items arise in an off week, we will send additional updates to keep you informed.

This and other changes you may see in the next few issues, as we finish tabulating the survey results and implementing your suggestions, are part of ALSNews' ongoing effort to meet our readers' needs by making improvements whenever the need for them becomes clear. We invite your input at any time (email: alsnews@lbl.gov) if you see something you like or if you have suggestions for improving ALSNews.

2. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(contact: rmmiller@lbl.gov)

A note on our expanding performance range: the ALS can now ramp from 1.5 GeV to 1.9 GeV in 69 seconds, providing fast and easy access to 1.9-GeV operations.

Beam availability last week was 95.4% overall and 96% during user shifts. The only outage during the week was one hour to change a circuit breaker for the storage ring sector 6 power supply racks.

Operations summary for June 13 - July 3
1.9-GeV, 250-mA, 320-bunch operations for users:
    June 14-18, 08:00-23:15
1.0-GeV, 400-mA, 320-bunch operations for users:
    June 21-25, 08:00-23:15
1.5-GeV, 400-mA, 320-bunch operations for users:
    June 28 - July 3, 08:00-23:15
Maintenance: 
    June 19 & 26, 08:00-16:00, with startup 16:00-23:15
Accelerator Physics:
    June 13, 20, & 27, 08:00-23:15

3. DATES FOR NEXT SHUTDOWN ANNOUNCED
(contact: fred_schlachter@lbl.gov)

The next shutdown for major installation work will start on September 12 (one week later than the tentative date announced earlier) and end approximately October 21. Machine startup will take place the week of October 22, and the first shifts for user operations are scheduled for November 1. The major activities of the shutdown include moving the 8-cm-period undulator now in sector 9 to sector 12, installing a new 10-cm-period undulator in sector 9, surveying the entire storage ring, and re-aligning several of its sectors.

The week before the shutdown starts, September 5-11 (not included in the previous long-term schedule) will consist of two-bunch operation, with no accelerator or maintenance shifts, for a total of 14 two-bunch shifts for users.

A shorter shutdown to install the 16-cm-period wiggler for the protein crystallography beamline is tentatively set to begin February 5, 1996. The anticipated duration of this shutdown is 3.5 weeks plus one week for machine startup.

The ALS is now developing the long-term schedule for November 1, 1995 to February 4, 1996. The draft schedule will be sent to the UEC, users, and beamline spokespersons for comments this week.

4. ANNOUNCING THE 1995 MEETING OF THE ALS USERS' ASSOCIATION
(contact: tcallcot@utkvx.utk.edu)

Scientific results, opportunities, and future directions of the ALS, as well as the other new third-generation light sources, will be the theme of the Annual Users' Meeting planned for October 23-24, sponsored by the Users' Executive Committee (UEC). The UEC, which met May 26, has decided to initiate several new ideas for this year's meeting -- many of which promise to become traditions passed on from year to year. One is a T-shirt design contest, detailed in #5 below. Although a Users' Meeting T-shirt is not a new idea, the contest is, and everyone, whether a user of the ALS or not, is encouraged to enter. Also, a number of informal awards will be presented to ALS users and staff at the dinner on Monday night, October 23.

The meeting program will feature recent ALS activities, an update on the funding situation in Washington, new scientific results from ALS users, innovations in beamline and instrumentation design, and reports from other third-generation light sources. A poster session and a vendor exhibit are also planned. All suggestions for speakers and topics are welcome, especially in the areas of beamline design and other light sources. Please send suggestions to UEC Chair Tom Callcott (email: tcallcot@utkvx.utk.edu).

For those who may be traveling from one meeting or workshop to another this fall, here are some dates for October meetings of interest to the synchrotron community.

--  10/12-13: 22nd Annual Users Conference, Stanford Synchrotron 
Radiation Laboratory, Stanford, CA.
--  10/12-13: Synchrotron Radiation Center User's Group Meeting, 
Stoughton, WI.
-- 10/16: Advanced Photon Source X-Ray Centennial Symposium, 
Argonne, IL.
-- 10/17-18: Seventh Users Meeting for the Advanced Photon Source, 
Argonne, IL.
-- 10/17-20: Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation `95, Argonne, IL.
-- 10/23-24: Annual Meeting of ALS Users' Association, Berkeley, CA.
-- 10/29-11/3: 1995 International Conference on Accelerator and 
Large Experimental Physics Control Systems, Chicago, IL.

5. CONTEST -- 1995 USERS' MEETING T-SHIRT AND MUG DESIGNS
(contact: jccross@lbl.gov)

Help launch an ALS tradition -- gain fame (without fortune). The ALS Users' Executive Committee is sponsoring a T-shirt design contest for this year's Annual Meeting. The winner will have his or her signed artwork featured on the meeting T-shirts and will serve on the committee to judge designs in next year's contest. Also under consideration is an ALS mug, so mug designs are also welcome.

T-shirt designs should be no larger than 22 cm high by 28 cm wide (8.5 by 11 inches) and should use four or fewer colors. Mug designs should be no larger than 7.5 cm by 7.5 cm (3 by 3 inches) and should use one or two colors. Rough drawings or concepts are acceptable as well as more polished artwork. The words "Advanced Light Source" or "ALS" must appear somewhere in the designs.

Send your designs by August 1 to:

Jane Cross
Advanced Light Source
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, MS 2-400
1 Cyclotron Road
Berkeley, CA 94720
or fax to Jane Cross at (510) 486-7696.

6. SPOTLIGHT ON STUDENTS
(contacts: danychen@uclink2.berkeley.edu, emc@uclink.berkeley.edu)

Part of the mission of the national laboratories is to train future generations of scientists. LBL finds many of its trainees at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), just blocks away. A steady stream of UCB graduate and undergraduate students contribute quick intelligence, creative thinking, and sometimes just a much-needed extra pair of hands, while gaining valuable experience working with internationally known scientists and engineers. Two such students, Danny Chen and Eugene Chow, have been working with Rupert Perera and others at the ALS since their first years at UCB.

Chen's goals of getting hands-on experience in science, learning scientific theory, and becoming familiar with a research environment have been well-met. The training he has received at LBL in basic vacuum science and clean room work is transferable to almost any scientific field. Chen hopes to work in LBL's Materials Sciences Division as a graduate student in 1997, and later to join the semiconductor industry.

Chow values LBL as a source of the research experience he feels is an essential part of education, but unavailable in the classroom. He is impressed constantly by the opportunity for students at LBL to ask questions of people who are at the top of their fields. Chow has received a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and will be studying electrical engineering at Stanford University next year.

Students at the ALS learn skills for working with a project team: scheduling meetings, assigning work, deciding whom to consult, and using tact -- all in the context, says Chow, of "a real project, not a school homework assignment." Chow has used SHADOW and other computer programs to model the optical properties of two beamlines and to determine the tolerances which must be engineered into the beamline designs. Chen, working with Khanh Nguyen, has studied the sources of contaminants in a sputter machine for making multilayers. Both students have co-authored scientific papers and gained hands-on experience in building beamlines and taking data in beamline experiments. They enjoy being part of all phases of a project, from the initial brainstorming to performing an experiment and obtaining results never seen before. The excitement of scientists is contagious, the students said, "even from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m."