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. 64           October 30, 1996

Table of Contents


    1. OPERATIONS UPDATE
    2. ALS USERS' MEETING DRAWS A CROWD
    3. STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY SUPPORT FACILITIES DEDICATED
    4. CALL FOR INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATOR PROPOSALS
    5. REVISED DATA SHEETS AVAILABLE

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

Beam availability for the last two weeks was 92.5% overall and 91.7% for user shifts. Beam current for 1.9-GeV multi-bunch operation has been increased to 300 mA during the last week. Beginning October 30, the standard multi-bunch fill pattern will be changed from 320 to 304 bunches in response at a user's request. This change should have no effect on beam quality or lifetime for other users.

Operations Summary for October 30 - November 18

Oct 30, 00:00-08:00           User scrubbing & special operations
                              (1.5 GeV/400 mA/304-bunch requested)
Oct 30, 08:00- Nov 04, 07:15  1.9-GeV/300-mA/304-bunch user operations
Nov 04, 07:30-24:00           Maintenance and startup
Nov 05, 00:00-24:00           Accelerator physics
Nov 06, 00:00-08:00           User scrubbing and special operations
Nov 06, 08:00- Nov 11, 07:15  1.3-GeV/400-mA/304-bunch user operations
Nov 11, 07:30-24:00           Maintenance and startup
Nov 12, 00:00-24:00           Accelerator physics
Nov 13, 00:00-08:00           User scrubbing and special operations
Nov 13, 08:00- Nov 18, 07:15  1.5 GeV/400-mA/304-bunch user operations
Nov 18, 07:30-24:00           Maintenance and startup

2. ALS USERS' MEETING DRAWS A CROWD

The 1996 meeting of the ALS Users' Association, October 21-22, attracted 220 participants from 12 countries for talks, a chance to view the ever increasing number of beamlines, vendor exhibits, and the poster session. On October 23, users turned out again in large numbers for the well-received "Accelerator Physics for Users" tutorial and five afternoon science workshops.

The Users' Meeting was privileged to have Patricia Dehmer, who directs the Office of Basic Energy Sciences at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as a speaker on Monday morning. She gave an informative talk about the structure and mission of the Office of Energy Research (ER), and the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) within it. The contribution of ER to funding basic research is approximately equal to that of the National Science Foundation (NSF), but whereas NSF funds basic research in broad categories, ER's funding is targeted to specific areas that show promise for having an impact on energy technologies. The excellence of ER-funded scientists shows in the awards they have received: ER-funded researchers have been named in five Nobel prizes and the first ten awards for organometallic chemistry from the American Chemical Society, among other honors. Dehmer spoke about a study to begin soon under the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee that will likely set the course of synchrotron-based science for the next decade. After giving her talk, Dehmer (a chemical physicist) remained on site for most of the users' meeting, attending talks and speaking with many researchers about their work.

Monday morning's talks continued with an update on the Washington scene and funding prospects, reports on ALS progress and projects from various ALS staff, and a short Users' Executive Committee business meeting. After a box lunch and vendor exhibit, there were talks on synchrotron-radiation science at home and abroad and on scientific results in atomic and molecular physics. (The list of talks appears in ALSNews Vol. 62, October 2, 1996.)

Monday evening's banquet gave participants time to relax, enjoy each other's company, and witness the presentation of a few more and less serious awards. The Halbach Award for instrumentation at the ALS was presented to Berkeley Lab's Wim Leemans (Accelerator and Fusion Research Division) and Robert Schoenlein (Materials Sciences Division), whose team devised a method of generating ultra-short x-ray pulses (~300 femtoseconds) using interactions between a relativistic electron beam and an infrared laser photon beam (more detail in Currents, in a future issue of ALSNews, and in P. Eisenberger and S. Suckewer (1996), "Subpicosecond X-ray Pulses," Science vol. 274, p. 201). The User Service Award went to Wayne Oglesby, Dennis Hull, and Charles Knopf for their outstanding assistance in the installation of user equipment on the experiment floor. The lighter-toned "Fickle Finger" award for solving a major ALS malfunction was given to Egon Hoyer, representing the team that solved the jammed roller screw in the Beamline 8.0 undulator (described in ALSNews Vol. 61, September 18, 1996 and Vol. 62, October 2, 1996).

Tuesday's talks covered several areas of new research opportunity and a number of results from user beamlines, including several that made use of the high degree of linear and/or circular polarization available from ALS beamlines. During Tuesday's lunch break, vendor exhibits continued and dozens of ALS users presented posters on their work.

The Users' Meeting is planned each year by the ALS Users' Executive Committee (chaired this year by Jeff Bokor) and carried out by ALS and Berkeley Lab staff. Thank you to all who contributed!

3. STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY SUPPORT FACILITIES DEDICATED

In an October 21 dedication ceremony, Berkeley Lab Director Charles Shank, Deputy Director Pier Oddone, Structural Biology Division Director Sung-Hou Kim, and Roland Hirsch of the Department of Energy's Office of Health and Environmental Research (OHER) cut the ribbon on the new Structural Biology Support Facilities at the ALS. The $7.9 million, 1000-square-meter (11,000-square-foot) facilities, funded by OHER, will enable the application of a full range of molecular biology, biochemistry, and computational tools to the complex problems of biological systems. Included in the facilities are wet laboratories, cold rooms, a cell culture laboratory, dark rooms, and a computer lab. See item 5 below to request more information on the Structural Biology Facilities.

4. CALL FOR INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATOR PROPOSALS

The ALS has two cycles per year for soliciting proposals from scientists who wish to conduct research at the facility as independent investigators: April-September and October-March. The next submission deadline is December 1, 1996, for beamtime from June 1997 to September 1997. (The ALS will be in a scheduled shutdown during May 1997, so April was scheduled in the last round of proposals.)

To request a proposal form, contact:
Elizabeth Saucier, ALS Administrator
Tel: (510) 486-6166
Fax: (510) 486-4960
Email: alsuser@lbl.gov

For beamline and Participating Research Team information, contact:
Fred Schlachter, ALS Scientific Outreach
Tel: (510) 486-4892
Fax: (510) 486-6499
Email: fred_schlachter@lbl.gov

5. REVISED DATA SHEETS AVAILABLE
(contact: alsuser@lbl.gov)

Three revised data sheets are now available from the ALS User Office.

  - ALS Macromolecular Crystallography Facility
  - ALS Structural Biology Support Facilities
  - ALS Infrared Spectromicroscopy Beamline