ALSNews Vol. 229, September 3, 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
- A Week of SRI 2003 in San Francisco
- First Light at Molecular Biology Consortium Beamline
- ALS Users' Meeting 2003 Update
- Call for ALS Users' Meeting Award Nominations
- Who's in Town: A Sampling of ALS Users
- Operations Update
1. A WEEK OF SRI 2003 IN SAN FRANCISCO
by Art Robinson
(Contacts: HAPadmore@lbl.gov, stohr@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu)
The Eighth International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation (SRI 2003) ended its August 25 - 29 run at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco with almost as many in attendance as at the beginning. The steady attendance was surely a tribute to the quality of the program and the excitement it generated among the 767 registrants who gathered for four days of plenary talks, parallel sessions, and posters, as well as facility tours of the ALS and Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL).
On Monday, conference co-chairs Howard Padmore of the ALS and Jo Stohr of SSRL jump-started the proceedings with an introduction in the style of two television commentators setting the stage before a major sports event. Passing the microphone back and forth, they explained the structure of the meeting and the choices of topics and speakers for the plenary talks that occupied the morning of each conference day.
After the plenary talks, which were designed to be tutorial and wide-ranging in their coverage of broad topics, more detailed views of specific developments were given by speakers in afternoon parallel sessions. In addition, for still more detail, poster sessions were held each day after lunch and at the end of the day in conjunction with exhibits by 39 vendors. These vendors also generously provided for food and beverages early in the morning, during meeting breaks, and at the end of the day during the poster sessions.
On Wednesday evening, conference attendees, their partners, and the general public were treated to a free public science lecture by Saul Perlmutter (Berkeley Lab), who spoke on "Supernovae, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Universe." About 400 took advantage of the opportunity to hear this awarding-winning scientist discuss ways that observational science might help answer the question "Will the universe last forever, or someday will it come to an end?" Earlier in the day, the public and conference attendees also had a chance to view an exhibition of ALS-themed artwork created by students from the Univ. of California, Berkeley. The artwork complemented informational material and a superb mechanical model provided by Masahiro Hara of SPring-8 that demonstrated how a linear accelerator works.
Closing out the formal presentations on Thursday afternoon, Friso van der Veen (Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland) attempted to summarize the week's proceedings with remarks titled "Synchrotron light of the third and fourth generation - How to fill the generation gap." After noting that being selected as the conference closeout speaker plainly placed him well beyond the peak of his scientific career, van der Veen gave a whirlwind yet almost encyclopedic tour of the conference from sources to detectors. Many of his highlights reflected well on the ALS and its users. In the end, he concluded, there would be no problem filling the gap by the next SRI conference because every three years synchrotron performance increases by an order of magnitude in one parameter or another, thanks to the instrumentation scientists who make it all happen.
Padmore and Stohr then returned to the podium to end the conference and to report two pieces of news. First, the International Advisory Committee, consisting of the directors of operating synchrotron light sources, would be developing a formal constitution with an eye toward possibly widening its role in the synchrotron radiation world beyond its role in selecting the site of the triennial SRI conferences. Second, the ninth international conference, SRI 2006, was awarded to Korea. Hosted by the Pohang Light Source, the conference will be held at the Bomun Resort in Gyeongju, about 30 minutes from the PLS. Check http://www.gyeongju.gyeongbuk.kr/en/ for information about this area, which was the site of Korea's capital in centuries past.
With the formalities completed, some 300 conference attendees repaired to the Yank Sing restaurant at the nearby Rincon Center in San Francisco for a multicourse feast as well as a dramatic performance by two pairs of Chinese lion dancers. On Friday, those interested were invited to tour either the ALS or SSRL. About 110 people chose to visit the ALS. Divided into ten groups, each with its own guide, the visitors were able to tour several beamlines before breaking up to spend more time at specific beamlines of their choice. The conference proceedings will published by the American Institute of Physics, with Tony Warwick (ALS) and John Arthur (SSRL) as the editors. Organizers are also planning to post viewgraphs from the plenary and contributed talks online. Check the conference Web site (http://www.sri2003.lbl.gov/) for the latest information.
2. FIRST LIGHT AT MOLECULAR BIOLOGY CONSORTIUM
BEAMLINE
(Contacts: EWestbrook@lbl.gov, Matsumur@UIC.edu)
At 11:15 A.M. PDT on August 19, 2003, ALS Beamline 4.2.2, also known as the Molecular Biology Consortium (MBC) beamline, received its first x-ray light from the ALS storage ring. This new beamline is funded by a unique consortium of universities and medical schools whose member faculty, while not necessarily crystallographers themselves, require crystallography-based structural information at the nanometer scale of the complex molecular machines that direct life. The beamline's "Yellow Hutch" will be a workhorse, generating high-quality structural molecular biology information quickly, to solve structures that are important for our understanding of life processes at the molecular level. The other important theme of the MBC beamline will be the development of detector technology for synchrotron science.
The primary beam will be provided by the Sector 4 superconducting bend magnet. The MBC beamline's x-ray optics, designed and fabricated by Gerold Rosenbaum (Univ. of Georgia) and Larry Rock (LR Design, Scottsdale, AZ), are closely derived from optics implemented at highly productive lines at Brookhaven and Argonne storage rings. It is noteworthy that the 4.2.2 beam is horizontally focused with a sagittally bent second crystal in the monochromator, whereas vertical focus is provided by bending a flat mirror, so horizontal and vertical foci are independently controlled by the user. The endstation features a Rosenbaum-Rock mini-kappa goniostat that permits the user to arbitrarily orient the sample crystal relative to the beam. The entire superbend beam will focus onto a 120- by 40-micrometer stage, thus providing a flux density commensurate with the brightest structural biology beamlines at any synchrotron light source. The beamline is controlled with the same software (Experimental Physics and Industrial Controls System, or EPICS) used to control the ALS itself. The beamline will feature advanced detectors being developed by MBC with funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy.
Members of the MBC Science Advisory Committee typify the community's philosophy: John Kappler (National Jewish Medical Center, Denver), Mel Simon (California Institute of Technology), and Dan Koshland (Univ. of California, Berkeley) are all National Academy members who are not crystallographers but need the information that crystallography provides. Thus, the MBC beamline will provide a high-quality facility that can be used by nonexperts, with 25% of the beam time allocated for general users. In addition, 10% of the beam time will be used for technology development, particularly in the field of x-ray detectors.
Edwin Westbrook (EWestbrook@lbl.gov) and Philip Matsumura (Matsumur@UIC.edu) are the lead research scientists. Lin-Bo Yang (LBYang@lbl.gov) and Darren Sherrell (DASherrell@lbl.gov) are MBC scientific staff on-site at ALS. The beamline is currently in a 4- to 6-week commissioning period and is expected to begin operation in late October. Additional information about the MBC can be found online at http://www.uic.edu/orgs/mbc/. The MBC is a nonprofit corporation incorporated in the state of Illinois and dedicated to basic and applied research in biological science and synchrotron technology.
3. ALS USERS' MEETING 2003 UPDATE
(Contact: alsum2003@lbl.gov)
General information, meeting deadlines, and online registration for this year's ALS Users' Meeting, to be held at Berkeley Lab October 6 - 8, is available on the Users' Meeting Web site at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/. The early registration deadline is Monday, September 15. Information about accommodations for meeting participants in local hotels is available at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/accommodations.html.
Abstract Submission
The abstract submission deadline for oral presentations and the student poster competition is Monday, September 8. See instructions for online submission at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/abstracts.html.
Workshops
This year, five focused workshops will follow the formal Users' Meeting program on Tuesday, October 7, and Wednesday, October 8. The workshop topics are listed below:
- Applications of Variable Polarization in Soft X-Ray Microscopy and Spectroscopy
- Inelastic X-Ray Scattering and Ultrahigh Resolution Photoemission
Studies of
Strongly Correlated Systems - Macromolecular Crystallography
The following workshops are being held jointly with SSRL:
- Probing Mechanical Deformation and Failure via Synchrotron X Rays
- Recent Advances in Synchrotron-Based Microscopy
Interested participants are encouraged to contact the workshop leaders directly at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/workshops.html for more detailed information about workshop agendas and speakers.
4. CALL FOR ALS USERS' MEETING AWARD NOMINATIONS
(Contact: EJMoxon@lbl.gov)
Each year, the ALS Users' Executive Committee (UEC) presents awards to scientists and staff who have made significant contributions to the ALS scientific and user support programs. This year, the UEC invites ALS users and staff to submit nominations for any or all of the following awards:
- David A. Shirley Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement at the Advanced Light Source
- Klaus Halbach Award for Innovative Instrumentation at the Advanced Light Source
- Tim Renner User Services Award
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. 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 deadline for nominations is Tuesday, September 30. The awards will be presented at the ALS Users' Meeting dinner/buffet on Tuesday, October 7.
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
John Bradley (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
Dan Fried (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Ted Raab (Carnegie Institution of Washington)
Beamline 4.0.2
Chuck Fadley (Univ. of California, Davis)
Beamline 5.3.2
Gary Mitchell (The Dow Chemical Company)
Adam Hitchcock (McMaster Univ., Canada)
Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.)
Beamline 7.0.1
Elaine Seddon (Daresbury Laboratory, UK)
Steve Kevan (Univ. of Oregon)
Sergei Butorin (Uppsala Univ., Sweden)
Beamline 7.3.1.1
Kai Starke (Freie Univ. Berlin, Germany)
Jo Stohr (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)
Beamline 8.0.1
Alexander Moewes (Univ. of Saskatchewan, Canada)
Jeffrey Kortright (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 8.2.1
Shigeo Matsuda, Kenichi Hitomi (The Scripps Research Institute)
Beamline 8.3.1
Evette Radisky, Justin Lee, Kaoru Yoshida, Zeon Chen (Univ. of California,
Berkeley)
Stephanie Wang (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Tom Lee (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Maria Borovinskaya (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 9.3.2
Frank Ogletree (Berkeley Lab)
Bongjin Mun (Berkeley Lab)
Glenn Waychunas (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 10.0.1
Z.-X. Shen (Stanford Univ.)
Michael Lubell (American Physical Society)
Beamline 10.3.2
Brandy Toner (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Andrei Istratov (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 12.0.1
Alexei Fedorov (Berkeley Lab)
Michael Shumway (Berkeley Lab)
Kris Rosfjord (Berkeley Lab)
6. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)
For the user runs of August 19 - 24 (two-bunch mode) and 27 - 31, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 94%. Of the scheduled beam, 88% 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,
ejmoxon@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.