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.

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ALSNews           Vol. 81           July 9, 1997

Table of Contents


    1. OPERATIONS UPDATE
    2. A BIG WEEK AT THE ALS
    3. TWO NEW ALS PUBLICATIONS AVAILABLE
    4. UEC and USERS' TOWN MEETING JULY 11

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

Beam reliability for the last two weeks was 92.8% overall and 91.4% for user shifts. All outages were of short duration.

Operations Summary for July 9 - July 28

Jul 09, 00:00-08:00           User scrubbing & special operations
Jul 09, 08:00- Jul 14, 07:15  1.9-GeV/400-mA/288-bunch user operations
                                with "camshaft" fill pattern on request
Jul 14, 07:30-24:00           Maintenance & startup
Jul 15, 00:00-24:00           Accelerator physics
Jul 16, 00:00-08:00           User scrubbing & special operations
Jul 16, 08:00- Jul 21, 07:15  1.9-GeV/400-mA/288-bunch user operations
                                with "camshaft" fill pattern on request
Jul 21, 07:30- Jul 22, 24:00  Maintenance & startup
Jul 23, 00:00-24:00           Accelerator physics
Jul 24, 00:00-08:00           User scrubbing and special operations
Jul 24, 08:00- Jul 28, 07:15  1.5-GeV/400-mA/288-bunch user operations

2. A BIG WEEK AT THE ALS

If the activity and energy level seems high at the ALS this week (July 7-11), there's a good reason. The ALS will be visited by a major review panel on Thursday and Friday and will also host a Users' Executive Committee meeting and Users' town meeting on Friday (see item 4 below).

Our review visit is from members of an ad hoc panel set up by the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Headed by Robert Birgeneau of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the panel is charged with studying the status and future directions of the four DOE-funded major synchrotron radiation facilities (ALS, the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory). The panel will examine all aspects of the synchrotron facilities, including their scientific and technological impacts, educational roles, user issues, and future budget scenarios.

3. TWO NEW ALS PUBLICATIONS AVAILABLE
(contact: alsuser@lbl.gov)

Two new publications are now available on request from the ALS User Office: a brochure titled "Soft X-Ray Spectromicroscopy: Materials Characterization on a Microscale" and the ALS Compendium of User Abstracts and Technical Reports 1993-1996. To order either or both, please send an email message to alsuser@lbl.gov with "publication request" in the subject line and your name and complete postal address in the body of the message. Please specify which publication(s) you wish to receive.

The spectromicroscopy brochure introduces techniques of soft x-ray spectroscopy and microscopy, the properties of linear and circular polarization, and their combination into spectromicroscopy, which provides spatially resolved materials characterization with chemical and magnetic sensitivity. Also described are the benefits of performing spectromicroscopy at a third-generation synchrotron facility such as the ALS, with several examples from user research.

The brochure is aimed toward scientists and technical managers who are not experts in synchrotron radiation but who may be familiar with laboratory x-ray sources for solving problems in semiconductors, magnetic media, polymers, composites, and other materials. Supplementary data sheets now being prepared to accompany the brochure will describe specific beamlines and experiment stations at the ALS with spectromicroscopy capabilities. The brochure was produced by Art Robinson (writer/editor) and Greg Vierra (design/layout), in collaboration with Howard Padmore and Tony Warwick of the ALS Experimental Systems Group, and with research results generously provided by users of the ALS.

The Compendium of User Abstracts and Technical Reports 1993-1996 is designed to provide information useful to ALS users, prospective users, and others interested in the specifics of the ALS scientific program. It includes the following: - 137 research abstracts written by users, organized by beamline - Indices to abstracts by author and by general subject area - Technical reports on various aspects of ALS operation, research, and development - A list of publications related to work done at the ALS from 1993 to the present - Technical information on each beamline.

4. UEC and USERS' TOWN MEETING JULY 11
(contact: terminello1@llnl.gov)

The ALS Users' Executive Committee (UEC) will meet on July 11. Among its agenda items will be plans for the Annual Meeting of the ALS Users' Association on October 13-14, including workshops to take place October 15-16 following the meeting. One workshop entitled "Theory and Computation for Synchrotron Applications" will last two days, but most topics of interest to experimentalists will be covered in the first day to avoid conflict with the users' meeting for Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory. Suggestions for other workshop topics are welcome and should be sent to UEC Chair Lou Terminello (terminello1@llnl.gov) or to Fred Schlachter (fred_schlachter@lbl.gov).

From 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. on July 11, the UEC and members of ALS management will meet with users in a Users' Town Meeting in the Building 4 conference room. Users are invited to come to the Town Meeting with comments or requests. Please send any issues you may wish to discuss to Lou Terminello or to Fred Schlachter in advance of the meeting.