Search

The article discusses the 10th anniversary of the NSLS-II (National Synchrotron Light Source II) facility, which has seen significant growth and development over the past decade. The facility now has 29 operational beamlines, compared to the initial 6, and has hosted thousands of users and published numerous papers. The article also highlights the recent addition of the HEX beamline and the ongoing construction of three new beamlines as part of the NEXT-II project. The NSLS-II facility is focused on advancing clean energy technologies, materials science, and various scientific disciplines. The article concludes by emphasizing the facility's commitment to continued growth and delivering cutting-edge science in the future. [Extracted from the article]

The Soochow University Beamline, located at the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in China, is a Soft X-ray beamline designed for studying energy-related materials and devices. It operates in the energy range of 45 eV–1100 eV and is specifically tailored for investigating Li, B, C, N, O, F K-edges, and most L-edges of transition metals. The beamline offers various capabilities, including X-ray absorption, photon in photon out, and in situ/operando studies of energy materials and devices in gas/liquid environments. It has been successful in producing high-quality research papers and is open to users worldwide. The beamline is a collaborative effort between Soochow University and the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, with funding from Soochow University. It is the first synchrotron radiation beamline in China to be funded by a university. [Extracted from the article]

The 2013 ALS User Meeting, held from October 7–9, began with a welcome from Users' Executive Committee chair Corie Ralston and Berkeley Lab director Paul Alivisatos. ALS director Roger Falcone followed with a “state of the ALS” presentation that reminded everyone of the ALS mission: “Supporting users in doing outstanding science in a safe environment.” Falcone gave the 400-plus meeting attendees an update on ALS beamlines, which included good news about increased user numbers thanks to the new RAPIDD access system, enhanced robotics, and remote capabilities. Falcone reflected that ALS metrics continue to represent the highly productive users—the number of journal articles and papers per user based on ALS research has continued to grow in the past year. Looking forward, Falcone touched on how a proposed ALS upgrade to a diffraction-limited light source would increase scientific capabilities. The Lab's government relations representative, Don Medley, followed with a presentation on how to talk about science with elected representatives. Medley spoke about framing discussions in terms of the “value of our country's science ecosystem.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ALBA is a low-emittance, 3 GeV synchrotron light source located near Barcelona. It is funded equally by the Spanish central and the Catalan autonomous governments. Seven state-of-the-art beamlines (BL), comprising soft and hard X-rays, are in operation to satisfy the requirements of the user community. This paper updates the status of the facility, focusing on its transition from commissioning to user operation, which has taken place during the last two years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The free-electron laser (FEL) sources FLASH in Hamburg, LCLS at Stanford, and FERMI in Trieste provide XUV to soft X-ray radiation (FLASH and FERMI) or soft to hard X-ray radiation (LCLS) with unprecedented parameters in terms of ultrashort pulse length, high photon flux, and coherence. These properties make FELs ideal tools for studying ultrafast dynamics in matter on a previously unaccessible level. This paper first reviews results obtained at FEL sources during the last few years in the field of magnetism research. We start with pioneering experiments at FLASH demonstrating the feasibility of magnetic scattering at FELs [1, 2], then present pump–probe scattering experiments [3, 4] as well as the first FEL magnetic imaging experiments [5], and finally discuss a limitation of the scattering methods due to a quenching of the magnetic scattering signal by high-fluence FEL pulses [6]. All of the presented experiments exploit the X-ray magnetic circular dichroism effect [7, 8] to obtain element-specific magnetic scattering contrast, as known from synchrotron experiments [9–12]. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Held only weeks after the SRS had delivered its last photon beams (from September 11-12, 2008), the 2008 UK Synchrotron Radiation User Meeting was a mixture of nostalgia, news and next steps. Prof. Chris Hardacre, Chairman of the User Forum, welcomed everyone to the meeting and opened the session reserved for updates from the sources mostly used by the UK community. Dr. Tracy Turner began by showing a short video clip of the last seconds of multibunch user beam at the official SRS switch off ceremony on August 4. Highlighting several recent results to illustrate the point, she described how the SRS had been productive right up to the end with a late surge in operational reliability in both multibunch and single bunch modes. Over 400 papers have already been published this year, and many of these in high impact factor journals. She announced the imminent publication of the final Annual Report and a survey of the economic impact made by the SRS over its lifetime which had been prompted by the impending closure and which will be informative to government and other bodies in assessing the benefits that accrue from investment in large-scale facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the "Frontiers of Synchrotron-Based X-ray Microdiffraction" Advanced Light Source User's workshop which was held to acknowledge the contributions of Professor Jamshed R. Patel to the field of synchrotron-based X-ray microdiffraction. Jim Patel's first paper which emphasized on the effect of applied stress on the temperature of martensitic transformation was discussed. The said paper was published in 1953 in the "Acta Metallurgica" journal.

A wide spectrum of topics and ideas united by the common theme of operation of synchrotron light sources in special modes is covered in this edition ofSRN. The collection of articles opens with a paper by M. Aiba and co-workers from Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland. They describe the Swiss Light Source that, over one decade of operation, has reached the exemplary reliability and beam stability to provide a base for ambitious development tasks for new operation modes like short X-ray pulse generation by laser slicing, synchrotron light polarization switching with a rate of 1 Hz employing large local orbit manipulations, and obtaining an ultra-low vertical emittance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian Light Source's 11th Annual Users' Meeting (AUM), held June 9 and 10 in Saskatoon, marked several firsts for the regular gathering of the Canadian synchrotron community. It was the first time the meeting was held in conjunction with an international meeting hosted by the CLS, sharing joint workshops with the Fifth International MEDSI workshop and 15th Pan-American SRI conference. In addition, for the first time all of the papers presented at the AUM described results obtained with data from the CLS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at a workshop on hybrid systems is presented. Hiroshi Matsui of City University of New York presented the use of peptide or protein assemblies in material synthesis and device fabrication. Elaine Dimasi of Brookhaven National Laboratory discussed the mineralization of self-assembled networks of extracellular matrix proteins while David Pine of New York University described the method for synthesizing a spherical colloidal particles.