1. MODIFIED MAGNETISM AT BURIED INTERFACES
by Art Robinson
(Contact: JBKortright@lbl.gov)

As we enter into the era of nanoscience, where effects due to surfaces and interfaces often dominate, researchers more than ever need experimental techniques that allow them to discriminate between what goes on at the boundaries and in the interior of nanostructures. A team of two Berkeley Lab materials scientists has used x-ray standing waves generated with circularly polarized soft x rays at the ALS to do just that for palladium/cobalt/palladium trilayers similar to those that exhibit perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). With their technique, the two researchers demonstrated quantitatively that the magnetic properties at a palladium/cobalt interface differed from those in the center of the cobalt layer. Other groups are already adopting this approach in their own studies of buried interfaces in nanolayer structures.

Read the full story at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/50magnetism.html.

Publication about this research: S.-K. Kim and J. B. Kortright, "Modified Magnetism at a Buried Co/Pd Interface Resolved with X-Ray Standing Waves," Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1347 (2001).

2. UEC ELECTION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO NOVEMBER 18
(Contact: harald_ade@ncsu.edu)

The deadline for voting in the Users' Executive Committee (UEC) election has been extended to Sunday, November 18. All ALS users should cast their votes online at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/uec/vote/index.html. You will be asked to provide your ALS ID number and an email address to prevent unauthorized voting. The election is being held to select three regular representatives and one student/postdoc representative to serve three-year terms on the UEC starting in 2002. Short biographic sketches of the candidates can be found at the voting site.

3. DIGNITARIES FROM REPUBLIC OF CONGO VISIT ALS

A delegation from the Republic of Congo visited the ALS last week to learn about research and educational opportunities at the facility. The group, which included Pierre Nzila, Minister of Education, Henri Ossebi, Education Advisor to the President, and Charles Gombe Mbalawa, Chancellor of the Marien Ngouabi University and Director General of the University Hospital Center, Brazzaville, was given an introduction to the ALS by Deputy Division Director Ben Feinberg before touring the x-ray microscope at Beamline 6.1.2. Beamline scientist Greg Denbeaux showed the visitors several examples of recent research in materials and biological sciences. Following a brief tour of the ALS experiment floor, Michael Barnett of the Physics Division gave an overview of QuarkNet (http://quarknet.fnal.gov/), an educational Web site for high school students and their teachers, and Elizabeth Moxon discussed educational outreach activities at the ALS.

4. REMINDER: GENERAL SCIENCES PROPOSALS DUE DECEMBER 1
(Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov)

The User Services Office is still accepting proposals from scientists who wish to conduct research as independent investigators in the general sciences during the running period from June to November 2002. The deadline for submissions is December 1, 2001. (This information does not apply to protein crystallography proposals, which have a separate process and schedule.) Scientists wishing to renew a previous proposal must fill in a one-page Experiment Report/Beamtime Request and submit it to the User Services Office by the December 1 deadline. The numeric rating for each proposal will be communicated to the investigator along with comments from the Proposal Study Panel, where appropriate. The cutoff rating for each beamline in the previous proposal cycle is published on the Web (see below). The following resources are available for further information:

ALS User Services Administrator

alsuser@lbl.gov

Independent investigator process

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/independinvest.html

Beamline information

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/datasheets.html

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/bl_table.html

Proposal Study Panel (PSP) scores

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/pspscores.html

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
Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab)
Kelly Knutsen (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Upal Ghosh (Stanford Univ.)
Ted Raab (Carnegie Institution of Washington)
Felicia Betancourt (Berkeley Lab)
David Sigee (Univ. of Manchester)

Beamline 4.0.1-2
Jo Stohr (Stanford Synchrotron Radiaion Laboratory)
Hendrik Ohldag (Stanford Univ. and Berkeley Lab)
Andreas Scholl (Berkeley Lab)
Steve Cramer (Univ. of California, Davis, and Berkeley Lab)
Tobias Funk (Berkeley Lab)
Hongxin Wang (Univ. of California, Davis, and Berkeley Lab)
Stephan Friedrich (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

Beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2, and 5.0.3
Steve Bellon and Wuyi Meng (Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.)
Julian Chen, Peter Nollert, Bill Harries, Sherry Laporte, Sabine Borngraeber, Mary Jane Budny, Maia Vinogradova, Pan Hu (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Weiru Wang, Dong Hae Shin, Shengfeng Chen (Berkeley Structural Genomics Center)
Jenny Stamos, Sarah Hymowitz, Matthew Franklin, Charlie Eigenbrot (Genentech, Inc.)
Karolin Luger, Rajeswari Edayathumangalam, Uma Muthurajan (Colorado State Univ.)
Mike Hanson and Michael Bracey (The Scripps Research Institute)
Glen Spraggon and Andreas Kreusch (Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation)

Beamline 7.0.1
Karsten Horn (Fritz-Haber-Institute, Germany)
Robert Bartynski (Rutgers Univ.)
Brian Tonner (Univ. of Central Florida)
Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.)

Beamline 9.3.2
Miquel Salmeron (Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 10.0.1
Francois Wuilleumier (Univ. Paris-Sud)

Beamline 10.3.2
Alain Manceau, Frederic Panfili, Geraldine Sarret (Univ. Joseph Fourier, France)

6. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)

For the user runs of October 31 - November 5 and November 6 - 11, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 97.4%. Of the scheduled beam, 84.7% 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/accelinfo.html). Requests for special operations use of the "scrubbing" shift should be sent to Bruce Samuelson (BCSamuelson@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.

LBNL/PUB-848
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.