A study by scientists from South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, Princeton University, and the ALS looks at the reduced abundance of sea life and phytoplankton in the photic zone of the Southern Ocean, suggesting that a lack of iron in an easy-to-use form is affecting the ecosystems.Read more…
Nanocrystals have attracted much scientific interest lately, but recent ALS research has shown that their tiny size does not safeguard them from defects. Nanocrystals subjected to high-pressure experiments suffered dislocation-mediated plastic deformation even when the crystals were only three nanometers in size. Read more…
Beamline scientist Alastair MacDowell has pioneered several hard x-ray science programs in his 17 years at the ALS. Currently working on the ALS tomography program at Beamline (BL) 8.3.2 and the high-pressure x-ray diffraction station at BL 12.2.2, MacDowell has helped develop many of the other hard x-ray programs during his tenure here. Read more…
Industry @ ALS: Enabling Thin Silicon Solar Cell Technology
The effort to shift U.S. energy reliance from fossil fuels to renewable sources has spurred companies to reduce the cost and increase the reliability of their solar photovoltaics (SPVs). But thinner silicon has a higher propensity to stress and crack, leading one researcher from SunPower Corporation to mount a fundamental approach to systematically find stress and enable solutions for next-generation crystalline silicon SPV systems.Read the article.
Jim Floyd Named Director of Berkeley Lab’s EH&S Division
Jim Floyd, who has served as EHS Program Manager at the ALS since 2006, will be moving into a new role this July: Berkeley Lab Director Alivisatos recently appointed him Director of the Environmental, Health and Safety Division. Jim’s excellent leadership has served the ALS well over the years; our facility is known and respected across the DOE complex for the tight scientific integration and continuous improvement of its EHS program. As chair of the Lab’s Safety Advisory Committee, Jim also leads several ongoing improvement efforts, including an effort to develop more risk-based approaches to EHS policies in areas as diverse as electrical equipment and biosafety. His experience and leadership will certainly continue to serve the ALS and the Lab well. Read a message on the appointment from COO Glenn Kubiak, and a profile on Floyd that ran last year.
More than 100 representatives from national user facilities met June 19-21 at Berkeley Lab to discuss best practices in user administration, financial services, data management, and communications strategies. The organization represents the interests of all users who conduct research at the more that 45 user facilities across the nation. View the meeting agenda, and find out more about NUFO.
Events
ALS Science Café, NOTE DATE CHANGE: Thursday August 29, User Support Building, R15-253
Speakers include Christine Beavers, Eoin Brodie, and Xiaodan Gu
VUVX2013: 38th International Conference on Vacuum UV and X-Ray Physics July 12-19, 2013; Hefei, China
ISWAMP2: 2nd Conference on Intense Field, Short Wavelength Atomic and Molecular Processes July 20-22, 2013; Xi’an, China
The UEC received many excellent workshop ideas for ALS’s 2013 User Meeting. There were in fact too many to accommodate, and the UEC had to make tough choices about which ones to accept. Listed below are the selected workshops, which the UEC feels represent the interests of the broadest group of ALS users:
Advances in infrared spectroscopy and imaging: Broadband vibrational nano-spectroscopy and spectro-micro-tomography. Michael Martin (ALS-LBNL), Hans Bechtel (ALS-LBNL), Carol Hirschmugl (Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), Markus Raschke (Univ of Colorado, Boulder)
Can x-ray crystallographic diffuse scatter reveal protein dynamics? Nicholas Sauter (PBD-LBNL), Paul Adams (PBD-LBNL), James Fraser (UCSF), Michael Wall (LANL)
Current and future directions for atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) and chemical physics research at the ALS. Daniel Rolles (DESY, Hamburg), Musa Ahmed (CSD-LBNL), Alex Aguilar, David Kilcoyne, Wayne Stolte (ALS-LBNL)
Energy sciences of AMBER: demonstrations and perspectives. Jinghua Guo, Zahid Hussain, Zhi Liu, Wanli Yang (ALS-LBNL)
In-situ synchrotron studies of the dynamics of nanostructured, self-assembled thin films. Lee Richter (NIST), Stefan Mannsfeld (Stanford)
New monochromatic hard-x-ray scattering and spectroscopic opportunities at the ALS. Martin Kunz (ALS-LBNL), Nobumichi Tamura (ALS-LBNL), Alastair MacDowell (ALS-LBNL), Josep Roque-Rosell (ALS-LBNL)
Resonant soft x-ray scattering for mesoscale science: New research perspectives and advanced data analysis. Cheng Wang, Alexander Hexemer, Anthony Young (ALS-LBNL)
For the user runs from May 14 to June 17,2013 (which included two periods of two-bunch mode operations), the beam reliability [(time scheduled – time lost)/time scheduled)] was 96.8%. For this period, the mean time between failures (MTBF) was 37.6 hours, and the mean time to recovery (MTTR) was 82 minutes. There were no significant interruptions.
More detailed information on reliability is available on the ALS reliability bulletin board, which is located in the hallway between the ALS and the control room in Building 80. Questions about beam reliability should be directed to Dave Richardson (DBRichardson@lbl.gov, x4376).
