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Conservative management (supportive care) is defined as individuals with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) who choose not to undergo dialysis (supported by their kidney team). A renal supportive care (SC) outpatient service has existed for over 10 years at this large renal unit. Dietetic management in this population is complex, with the aim being to alleviate and/or reduce the risk of symptoms associated with advanced CKD and support quality of life. This may involve dietetic interventions such as: management of blood biochemistry (potassium, phosphate and mineral bone disease), fluid status (no added salt), low protein and nutritional support. The aim is to evaluate current dietetic practice using a snapshot of the SC population The method used was a random sample of selected patients. Data collected included demographics, prevalence of abnormal blood results, low protein diet advice and nutritional support. The results for twenty patients (11% of the SC population) were used. Median age 80.5, range: 70 – 99years). Median duration under SC service: 23.5 (range: Eighteen patients (90%) had received dietetic input. Half of these patients (n=9) required a low protein diet and 33% (n=6) were given nutritional supplementation. Three patients (15%) had either a recent elevated blood potassium or phosphate level. In conclusion, the complexity of dietetic management in this SC patient population highlights the importance of a renal dietitian’s involvement to help alleviate symptoms of advanced CKD and support quality of life. Further research into outcomes including patient/carer experience surveys is warranted.

We would like to thank Dr Grosser et al1 for their continued interest in our work. While we may not agree with their arguments or their opinions of our study,2 we welcome debate in this extremely important area. We take this opportunity to address the points that they raise. First, although urine may well be a convenient compartment within which to measure markers of prostacyclin and thromboxane A2, numerous observations,3–10 of which ours is only the latest,2 indicate that they poorly reflect production within the circulation and the reactivities of endothelial cells and platelets. Second, the literature that Grosser et al1 cite is somewhat selective and in places inaccurate. For example, reference 3,11 which the authors cite to substantiate the statement “Most insights into the in vivo biology and pharmacology of the prostaglandin pathway have derived from the …

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) and acute kidney injury (AKI) are more common in the elderly due to ageing-related changes in the kidney. Renal pathology in the elderly will in future form an increasing proportion of the workload of nephrologists, specialists in internal medicine and general practitioners due to ageing of the general population. AKI in the elderly can often be anticipated and prevented. Published guidelines concerning the management of CKD in younger adults may not be universally implementable in the elderly, and may ignore complications and challenges specific to this age group. There is a growing demand for renal services to provide renal replacement therapy (RRT) to elderly patients. The decision to start an elderly person on a particular form of RRT should follow careful assessment of their biological age, function and lifestyle, and their health priorities and quality of life must be kept at the centre of decision-making at all times. Patients who are unsuited to or do not wish to commence RRT may do very well with maximal conservative management (MCM). End-of-life and palliative care remains somewhat underused in nephrology, and is an area that needs to be developed further.

The present status of the Linac Coherent Light Source as a user facility is presented. Opportunities and challenges as well as the scientific impact of X-ray free-electron lasers are discussed., The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory was the first hard X-ray free-electron laser (FEL) to operate as a user facility. After five years of operation, LCLS is now a mature FEL user facility. Our personal views about opportunities and challenges inherent to these unique light sources are discussed.

Elastic to Plastic When a crystal is mechanically compressed, it first reacts elastically (reversibly), and then enters the plastic regime, in which the structure of the material is irreversibly changed. This process can be studied with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on very fine temporal and spatial scales, but experimental analysis has lagged behind. Milathianaki et al. (p. 220 ) shocked polycrystalline copper with a laser beam, and then took successive snapshots of the crystal structure at 10-picosecond intervals. The results were compared directly with atomistic simulations and revealed that the yield stress—the point of transition from plastic to elastic response—agreed well with MD predictions.

Measuring neuron capacitance is important for morphological description, conductance characterization, and neuron modeling. One method to estimate capacitance is to inject current pulses into a neuron and fit the resulting changes in membrane potential with multiple exponentials; if the neuron is purely passive, the amplitude and time constant of the slowest exponential give neuron capacitance (Major G, Evans JD, Jack JJ. Biophys J 65: 423–449, 1993). Golowasch et al. (Golowasch J, Thomas G, Taylor AL, Patel A, Pineda A, Khalil C, Nadim F. J Neurophysiol 102: 2161–2175, 2009) have shown that this is the best method for measuring the capacitance of nonisopotential (i.e., most) neurons. However, prior work has not tested for, or examined how much error would be introduced by, slow voltage-dependent phenomena possibly present at the membrane potentials typically used in such work. We investigated this issue in lobster ( Panulirus interruptus) stomatogastric neurons by performing current clamp-based capacitance measurements at multiple membrane potentials. A slow, voltage-dependent phenomenon consistent with residual voltage-dependent conductances was present at all tested membrane potentials (−95 to −35 mV). This phenomenon was the slowest component of the neuron's voltage response, and failure to recognize and exclude it would lead to capacitance overestimates of several hundredfold. Most methods of estimating capacitance depend on the absence of voltage-dependent phenomena. Our demonstration that such phenomena make nonnegligible contributions to neuron responses even at well-hyperpolarized membrane potentials highlights the critical importance of checking for such phenomena in all work measuring neuron capacitance. We show here how to identify such phenomena and minimize their contaminating influence.

We report on the x-ray absorption of Warm Dense Matter experiment at the FLASH Free Electron Laser (FEL) facility at DESY. The FEL beam is used to produce Warm Dense Matter with soft x-ray absorption as the probe of electronic structure. A multilayer-coated parabolic mirror focuses the FEL radiation, to spot sizes as small as 0.3μm in a ∼15fs pulse of containing >10 12 photons at 13.5 nm wavelength, onto a thin sample. Silicon photodiodes measure the transmitted and reflected beams, while spectroscopy provides detailed measurement of the temperature of the sample. The goal is to measure over a range of intensities approaching 10 18 W/cm 2. Experimental results will be presented along with theoretical calculations. A brief report on future FEL efforts will be given. © 2009 SPIE.

Characterizing muscle requires measuring such properties as force---length, force---activation, and force---velocity curves. These characterizations require large numbers of data points because both what type of function (e.g., linear, exponential, hyperbolic) best represents each property, and the values of the parameters in the relevant equations, need to be determined. Only a few properties are therefore generally measured in experiments on any one muscle, and complete characterizations are obtained by averaging data across a large number of muscles. Such averaging approaches can work well for muscles that are similar across individuals. However, considerable evidence indicates that large inter-individual variation exists, at least for some muscles. This variation poses difficulties for across-animal averaging approaches. Methods to fully describe all muscle's characteristics in experiments on individual muscles would therefore be useful. Prior work in stick insect extensor muscle has identified what functions describe each of this muscle's properties and shown that these equations apply across animals. Characterizing these muscles on an individual-by-individual basis therefore requires determining only the values of the parameters in these equations, not equation form. We present here techniques that allow determining all these parameter values in experiments on single muscles. This technique will allow us to compare parameter variation across individuals and to model muscles individually. Similar experiments can likely be performed on single muscles in other systems. This approach may thus provide a widely applicable method for characterizing and modeling muscles from single experiments.

An electrospun liquid microjet has been developed that delivers protein microcrystal suspensions at flow rates of 0.14–3.1 µl min−1to perform serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) studies with X-ray lasers. Thermolysin microcrystals flowed at 0.17 µl min−1and diffracted to beyond 4 Å resolution, producing 14 000 indexable diffraction patterns, or four per second, from 140 µg of protein. Nanoflow electrospinning extends SFX to biological samples that necessitate minimal sample consumption.

The Linac Coherent Light Source free-electron laser has now achieved coherent X-ray generation down to a wavelength of 1.2 A and at a brightness that is nearly ten orders of magnitude higher than conventional synchrotrons. Researchers detail the first operation and beam characteristics of the system, which give hope for imaging at atomic spatial and temporal scales.

The pyloric network of decapod crustaceans has been intensively studied electrophysiologically in the infraorders Astacidea, Brachyura, and Palinura. The morphology of some or all pyloric neurons has been well described in Astacidea and Brachyura, but less so in Palinura. Given the large evolutionary distance between these three groups, and the large amount of electrophysiology that has been performed in palinuroid species, it is important to fill this gap. We describe here the gross morphology of all six pyloric neuron types in a palinuroid, P. interruptus. All pyloric neurons had complicated, extended dendritic trees that filled the majority of the neuropil, with most small diameter processes present in a shell near the surface of the ganglion. Certain neuron types showed modest preferences for somata location in the ganglion, but these differences were too weak to use as identifying characteristics. Quantitative measurements of secondary branch number, maximum branch order, total process length, and neuron somata diameter were also, in general, insufficient to distinguish among the neurons, although AB and LP neuron somata diameters differed from those of the other types. One neuron type (VD) had a distinctive neurite branching pattern consisting of a small initial branch followed shortly by a bifurcation of the main neurite. The processes arising from these two branches occupied largely non-overlapping neuropil. Electrophysiological recordings showed that each major branch had its own spike initiation zone and that, although the zones fired correlated spikes, they generated spikes independently. VD neurons in the other infraorders have similar morphologies, suggesting that having two arbors is important for the function of this neuron. These data are similar to those previously obtained in Brachyura and Astacidea. It thus appears that, despite their long evolutionary separation, neuron morphology in these three infraorders has not greatly diverged.

(2007). The Idea of America: A Case Study Approach. The Social Studies: Vol. 98, No. 6, pp. 242-250.

Many observers have noted that the morphological changes that occur in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients resemble those seen in the geriatric population, with strikingly similar morbidity and mortality profiles and rates of frailty in the two groups, and shared characteristics at a pathophysiological level especially in respect to the changes seen in their vascular and immune systems. However, whilst much has been documented about the shared physical characteristics of aging and uremia, the molecular and cellular similarities between the two have received less attention. In order to bridge this perceived gap we have reviewed published research concerning the common molecular processes seen in aging subjects and CKD patients, with specific attention to altered proteostasis, mitochondrial dysfunction, post-translational protein modification, and senescence and telomere attrition. We have also sought to illustrate how the cell death and survival pathways apoptosis, necroptosis and autophagy are closely interrelated, and how an understanding of these overlapping pathways is helpful in order to appreciate the shared molecular basis behind the pathophysiology of aging and uremia. This analysis revealed many common molecular characteristics and showed similar patterns of cellular dysfunction. We conclude that the accelerated aging seen in patients with CKD is underpinned at the molecular level, and that a greater understanding of these molecular processes might eventually lead to new much needed therapeutic strategies of benefit to patients with renal disease.

A description of the Matter in Extreme Conditions instrument at the Linac Coherent Light Source is given. Recent scientific highlights illustrate phase-contrast imaging of shock waves, X-ray Thomson scattering and X-ray diffraction of shocked materials., The LCLS beam provides revolutionary capabilities for studying the transient behavior of matter in extreme conditions. The particular strength of the Matter in Extreme Conditions instrument is that it combines the unique LCLS beam with high-power optical laser beams, and a suite of dedicated diagnostics tailored for this field of science. In this paper an overview of the beamline, the capabilities of the instrumentation, and selected highlights of experiments and commissioning results are presented.

Ab initio calculations were performed on 18 fluorinated and unfluorinated alcohols at the B3LYP and HF levels with the 6-311G∗∗ basis set. Molar volumes of the alcohols were computed at each level and averaged to produce a scale of relative size. From this, various isosteric replacements of potential use in drug design were suggested: ethyl by FCH2CH2 or HCF2CH2, propyl by CF3CH2, isopropyl by CF3(CH3)CH or (FCH2)2CH, isobutyl or t-butyl by (CF3)2CH, and 3-methyl-2-butyl by CF3(CH3)2C. Calculation of the charge on oxygen and the Wiberg index of the CO bond allowed an electronegativity scale to be constructed for the fluoroalkyl groups. Electronegativity decreased in the order: (CF3)3C>(CF3)2CH>C2F5CH2>CF3CH2>CH3(CF3)2C>HCF2CH2>CF3(CH3)CH>(FCH2)2CH>FCH2CH2>CF3(CH3)2C. This ranking agreed with literature acid dissociation data for the alcohols studied.

This manuscript serves as a reference to describe the optical laser sources and capabilities at the Linac Coherent Light Source., Ultrafast optical lasers play an essential role in exploiting the unique capabilities of recently commissioned X-ray free-electron laser facilities such as the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). Pump–probe experimental techniques reveal ultrafast dynamics in atomic and molecular processes and reveal new insights in chemistry, biology, material science and high-energy-density physics. This manuscript describes the laser systems and experimental methods that enable cutting-edge optical laser/X-ray pump–probe experiments to be performed at LCLS.

International audience; The advent of few femtosecond x-ray light sources brings promise of x-ray/optical pump-probe experiments that can measure chemical and structural changes in the 10-100 fs time regime. Widely distributed timing systems used at x-ray Free-Electron Laser facilities are typically limited to above 50 fs fwhm jitter in active x-ray/optical synchronization. The approach of single-shot timing measurements is used to sort results in the event processing stage. This has seen wide use to accommodate the insufficient precision of active stabilization schemes. In this article, we review the current technique for "measure-and-sort" at the Linac Coherent Light Source at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The relative arrival time between an x-ray pulse and an optical pulse is measured near the experimental interaction region as a spectrally encoded cross-correlation signal. The cross-correlation provides a time-stamp for filter-and-sort algorithms used for real-time sorting. Sub-10 fs rms resolution is common in this technique, placing timing precision at the same scale as the duration of the shortest achievable x-ray pulses.

Today's brightest coherent X-ray sources, X-ray free-electron lasers, produce ultrafast X-ray pulses for which full-width at half-maximum durations as short as 3 fs have been measured(1). There has been a marked increase in the popularity of such short pulses now that optical timing techniques have begun to report an X-ray/optical delay below similar to 10 fs r.m.s. errors. As a result, sub-10 fs optical pulses have been implemented at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray beamlines, thus warranting a push to reduce the error in X-ray/optical delay measurements to the ifs level. Here, we report a unique two-dimensional spectrogram measurement of the relative X-ray/optical delay. This easily scalable relative delay measurement already surpasses previous techniques by an order of magnitude with its sub-1 fs temporal resolution and opens up the prospect of time-resolved X-ray measurements to the attosecond community.

X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) sources enable the use of crystallography to solve three-dimensional macromolecular structures under native conditions and free from radiation damage. Results to date, however, have been limited by the challenge of deriving accurate Bragg intensities from a heterogeneous population of microcrystals, while at the same time modeling the X-ray spectrum and detector geometry. Here we present a computational approach designed to extract statistically significant high-resolution signals from fewer diffraction measurements.

The reactions of thiirane with ammonia, a series of primary amines and aniline have been studied by means of ab initio Hartree-Fock calculations at the 6-31G* level. The transition state geometries were characterized and used to determine the relative rates of reaction. In all cases, anti attack by the nucleophile was favored. Relative rates for the aliphatic amines varied by a factor of less than twenty, with ethylamine being most reactive. Ammonia reacted more than twenty and aniline almost 8 x 10 4 times slower than tert-butylamine. The results can be rationalized on the basis of relative nucleophilicity and nonbonding interactions.

Collision-induced dissociation of metal-cationized N-CBZ-Gly-Pro-Gly-Pro-Ala was studied by Fourier transform mass spectrometry. Lithium-, sodium-, potassium- and rubidium-cationized peptide species were generated by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) using 2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid as matrix, together with appropriate metal salts. The experimental mass spectrometric results were interpreted with the aid of Monte Carlo conformational searches using the Amber * force field, together with ab initio molecular orbital calculations with Gaussian-94 for the singly lithium- and potassium-cationized peptides. It is concluded that metal coordination plays a key role in guiding the gas-phase fragmentation of the cationized peptide. In contrast to lithium and sodium, potassium and rubidium apparently do not coordinate to the C-terminal carbonyl. When the peptide is cationized with the two smaller alkali metals, losses corresponding to alanine and CBZ are observed, while the coordination of potassium and rubidium results in only CBZ loss upon dissociation.

The hydrolysis of phosphorus fluoridates was studied by semiempirical and ab initio methods. The reaction proceeds through a metastable intermediate separated from the reactants and products by transition structures. Both methods gave similar qualitative results; however, the first transition (formation of the trigonal bipyrimid intermediate) occurred earlier and the second (loss of F-) later with semiempirical methods. Including solvation in the calculations is critical. The AMSOL program generated reasonable energies especially when the limitations of the semiempirical Hamiltonian are considered. The Onsanger model was not a significant improvement over calculations on isolated molecules.

A neutral gas phase reaction pathway for the reaction of methanol with dimethylphosphinic fluoride is presented. This reaction pathway occurs via a proton transfer from methanol to the fluorine leaving group through the phosphinyl oxygen. Gas phase ab initio level calculations at the RHF/6-31G(d), RHF/6-31G(d,p), B3LYP/6-31+G(2d), and B3LYP/6-311++G(2d,p) level of theories were used to follow the complete pathway for this reaction. A 41.2 and a 30.9 kcal/mol gas phase energy barrier was determined for both the RHF/6-31G(d,p) and B3LYP/6-311++G(2d,p) levels of theory, respectively.

We report experimental results of x-ray amplification of spontaneous emission in a Ni-like transient collisional excitation scheme. The Ni-like plasma formation, ionization, and collisional excitation requires irradiation of a slab target by two laser pulses: a formation beam with 5J energy of 800ps duration and a pump beam of 5J energy in 1.1ps. A gain of 35 cm{sup {minus}1} and a gL product of 12.5 are measured on the 4d{r_arrow}4p J=0{r_arrow}1 transition for Ni-like Pd at 147{Angstrom} with an 8mm line focus. The high efficiency of this scheme at {open_quotes}table-top{close_quotes} laser energies is a direct consequence of the nonstationary population inversion produced by the high intensity picosecond pulse. {copyright} {ital 1998} {ital The American Physical Society}

This study examines the equity consequence of school finance policy changes in Kentucky. It incorporates traditional school finance concerns regarding equity targets, objects, principles, and statistics. It utilizes adjustments for district economies of scale and interdistrict price differences. Findings indicate that Kentucky experienced marked improvements in equity as a result of school finance reform, including a narrower dispersion of pupil revenue and greater fiscal neutrality. Equity improvements resulted from policy changes that effectively addressed disequalizing attributes of the pre-reform state aid formula. Manipulating this formula further could produce additional marginal gains in system equity but at substantial cost.

One Protein, Two Probes A central challenge in the use of x-ray diffraction to characterize macromolecular structure is the propensity of the high-energy radiation to damage the sample during data collection. Recently, a powerful accelerator-based, ultrafast x-ray laser source has been used to determine the geometric structures of small protein crystals too fragile for conventional diffraction techniques. Kern et al. (p. 491 , published online 14 February) now pair this method with concurrent x-ray emission spectroscopy to probe electronic structure, as well as geometry, and were able to characterize the metal oxidation states in the oxygen-evolving complex within photosystem II crystals, while simultaneously verifying the surrounding protein structure.

We present a new method for probing photoexcited molecular dynamics based on the site selective ionization via ultrafast x-rays followed by Auger decay.

Nucleobases absorb strongly in the ultraviolet region, leading to molecular excitation into reactive states. The molecules avoid the photoreactions by funnelling the electronic energy into less reactive states on an ultrafast timescale via non-Born-Oppenheimer dynamics. Current theory on the nucleobase thymine discusses two conflicting pathways for the photoprotective dynamics. We present our first results of our free electron laser based UV-pump soft x-ray-probe study of the photoprotection mechanism of thymine. We use the high spatial sensitivity of the Auger electrons emitted after the soft x-ray pulse induced core ionization. Our transient spetra show two timescales on the order of 200 fs and 5 ps, in agreement with previous (all UV) ultrafast experiments. The timescales appear at different Auger kinetic energies which will help us to decipher the molecular dynamics.

A PM3 and SM3-PM3 semiempirical molecular orbital study of the 2,2′-dichlorodiethyl sulfide conventional S N 2 and neighboring group hydrolysis reaction mechanisms in the gas phase and in aqueous solution is described. The calculations predict substantially faster reactions in aqueous solution, with the neighboring group mechanism always being preferred. Detailed consideration is given to the geometries, relative energies, and partial atomic charges of all species involved in the reaction mechanisms considered and the extent to which aqueous solvation impacts these quantities. The results are consistent with expectation and with reported calculations concerning the intramolecular S N 2 reaction of 2-chloroethyl methyl sulfide. We also present the lowest energy mustard chlorohydrin structures according to PM3 and AM1 conformational analysis.

The fully optimized structures and relative energies of all possible methoxy-1,3,5-cycloheptatriene (MCHT) isomers have been determined by semiempirical, ab initio, and density functional theory (DFT) molecular orbital calculations. All methods identify the boat conformation of 1-methoxy-1,3,5-cycloheptatriene as the most stable species in this group of compounds. In order to evaluate boat interconversion barriers, optimizations of the planar isomers were also performed. For comparison purposes, we applied the same computational methodologies to boat and planar conformations of 1,3,5-cycloheptatriene (CHT). Among the semiempirical methods, the SAM1 approximation was found to best reproduce the ab initio and DFT results. Examination of rotational energy profiles allowed for identification of the factors controlling the preferred orientations of the methoxy group in these compounds. The calculations predict that methoxy substitution has little influence on the preferred conformation of the seven-membered ri...

We report measurements of laser absorption for high-contrast ultrashort pulses on a variety of solid targets over an intensity range of ${10}^{13}$ to ${10}^{18}$ W/ ${\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$. These data give an experimental determination of the target energy content and an indirect measure of dense plasma electrical conductivity. Our calculations accurately reproduce the behavior of aluminum targets, while the other materials show signs of additional absorption mechanisms. At high intensity all target materials reach a ``universal plasma mirror'' state and reflect about 90% of the incident light.

The matter in extreme conditions end station at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a new tool enabling accurate pump-probe measurements for studying the physical properties of matter in the high-energy density (HED) physics regime. This instrument combines the world's brightest x-ray source, the LCLS x-ray beam, with high-power lasers consisting of two nanosecond Nd:glass laser beams and one short-pulse Ti:sapphire laser. These lasers produce short-lived states of matter with high pressures, high temperatures or high densities with properties that are important for applications in nuclear fusion research, laboratory astrophysics and the development of intense radiation sources. In the first experiments, we have performed highly accurate x-ray diffraction and x-ray Thomson scattering measurements on shock-compressed matter resolving the transition from compressed solid matter to a co-existence regime and into the warm dense matter state. These complex charged-particle systems are dominated by strong correlations and quantum effects. They exist in planetary interiors and laboratory experiments, e.g., during high-power laser interactions with solids or the compression phase of inertial confinement fusion implosions. Applying record peak brightness x-rays resolves the ionic interactions at atomic (Angstrom) scale lengths and measure the static structure factor, which is a key quantity for determining equation of state data and important transport coefficients. Simultaneously, spectrally resolved measurements of plasmon features provide dynamic structure factor information that yield temperature and density with unprecedented precision at micron-scale resolution in dynamic compression experiments. These studies have demonstrated our ability to measure fundamental thermodynamic properties that determine the state of matter in the HED physics regime.

The ultrabright femtosecond X-ray pulses provided by X-ray free-electron lasers open capabilities for studying the structure and dynamics of a wide variety of systems beyond what is possible with synchrotron sources. Recently, this “probe-before-destroy” approach has been demonstrated for atomic structure determination by serial X-ray diffraction of microcrystals. There has been the question whether a similar approach can be extended to probe the local electronic structure by X-ray spectroscopy. To address this, we have carried out femtosecond X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) at the Linac Coherent Light Source using redox-active Mn complexes. XES probes the charge and spin states as well as the ligand environment, critical for understanding the functional role of redox-active metal sites. Kβ 1,3 XES spectra of Mn II and Mn 2 III,IV complexes at room temperature were collected using a wavelength dispersive spectrometer and femtosecond X-ray pulses with an individual dose of up to >100 MGy. The spectra were found in agreement with undamaged spectra collected at low dose using synchrotron radiation. Our results demonstrate that the intact electronic structure of redox active transition metal compounds in different oxidation states can be characterized with this shot-by-shot method. This opens the door for studying the chemical dynamics of metal catalytic sites by following reactions under functional conditions. The technique can be combined with X-ray diffraction to simultaneously obtain the geometric structure of the overall protein and the local chemistry of active metal sites and is expected to prove valuable for understanding the mechanism of important metalloproteins, such as photosystem II.

A recently demonstrated single-shot measurement of the relative delay between x-ray FEL pulses and optical laser pulses has now been improved to ~10 fs rms error and has successfully been demonstrated for both soft and hard x-ray pulses. It is based on x-ray induced step-like reduction in optical transmissivity of a semiconductor membrane (Si 3 N 4 ). The transmissivity is probed by an optical continuum spanning 450 - 650 nm where spectral chirp provides a mapping of the step in spectrum to the arrival time of the x-ray pulse relative to the optical laser system.

Most of the dioxygen on earth is generated by the oxidation of water by photosystem II (PS II) using light from the sun. This light-driven, four-photon reaction is catalyzed by the Mn 4 CaO 5 cluster located at the lumenal side of PS II. Various X-ray studies have been carried out at cryogenic temperatures to understand the intermediate steps involved in the water oxidation mechanism. However, the necessity for collecting data at room temperature, especially for studying the transient steps during the O–O bond formation, requires the development of new methodologies. In this paper we report room temperature X-ray diffraction data of PS II microcrystals obtained using ultrashort (4 CaO 5 cluster in PS II at room temperature. We show that these data are comparable to those obtained in synchrotron radiation studies as seen by the similarities in the overall structure of the helices, the protein subunits and the location of the various cofactors. This work is, therefore, an important step toward future studies for resolving the structure of the Mn 4 CaO 5 cluster without any damage at room temperature, and of the reaction intermediates of PS II during O–O bond formation.

We present our first results of a UV-pump X-ray-probe study of the photoprotection mechanism of thymine. The experiment used element specific Auger spectroscopy and was carried out at the LCLS.

The K -shell emission from porous aluminum targets is used to infer the density and temperature of plasmas created with 800 and 400 nm, 140 fsec laser light. The laser beam is focused to a minimum spot size of 5 μm with 800 nm light and 3 μm with 400 nm light, producing a normal incidence peak intensity of 10 18 W/cm 2 . The effects of design, laser characteristics, and diagnostic needs is discussed.