APS User News-at-a-Glance
Issue 7; April 20, 2001

Contents:

1.

Last Call for Submissions to the APS Activity Report 2000

APS Users Organization Maintains Electronic Employment Bulletin Board

APS CATs Adopt Uniform Cycle for II Proposal Submission and Review

Operations Update

1.

Last Call for Submissions to the APS Activity Report 2000
(Contact: fenner@aps.anl.gov)

The deadline for submissions to the APS Activity Report 2000 has been extended by two weeks to May 4, 2001. NO REPORTS CAN BE ACCEPTED AFTER THAT DATE. Submission instructions are located at http://www.aps.anl.gov/ald/test/webars2.html.

NOTE: Please include e-mail addresses for all co-authors who are NOT Argonne employees. Although the publication clearance process has been greatly simplified, e-mail addresses are still required for all non-ANL authors. Questions? Call R. Fenner at 630-252-5280 or send e-mail to fenner@aps.anl.gov

APS Users Organization Maintains Electronic Employment Bulletin Board
(Contact: carlson@aps.anl.gov)

The APS Users Organization (APSUO) maintains a Web-based employment bulletin board for the benefit of APS Collaborative Access Teams (CATs), APS users, and students. Employers with synchrotron-related job opportunities can post openings by going to the Web site and following the instructions. Similarly, resumes can be submitted to the registry either on line, by mail, or by fax, following the instructions provided. Ten job postings are currently listed on the board, which was updated on March 29, 2001.

The Web address of the board is as follows: http://www.aps.anl.gov/apsuo/employment/opp.html

APS CATs Adopt Uniform Cycle for II Proposal Submission and Review
(Contact: strasser@aps.anl.gov)

APS CATs recently agreed to adopt a uniform cycle for submission and review of proposals from Independent Investigators (IIs) beginning with the first run of fiscal year 2002. For this run, which begins on October 31, 2001, II proposals should be submitted no later than August 1, 2001. CAT Directors emphasized, however, that IIs can and should continue to submit proposals at any time. All II proposals must be submitted to the APS User Office via a Web-based proposal submission and tracking system. Proposals will continue to be forwarded to the first-choice CAT and reviewed as they are received. Proposals for innovative work or work that requires rapid access can be scheduled at any time at each CAT's discretion.

Seven CATs (BESSRC-, DND-, IMCA-, PNC-, SBC-, SRI-, and UNI-CATs) are now accepting proposals from IIs, with CARS-CAT and MR-CAT expected to begin shortly.

For further information on the APS II program, go to the following Web address:

http://www.aps.anl.gov/xfd/communicator/useroffice/II_proposal.html, or contact Susan Strasser (strasser@aps.anl.gov).

For further information on APS CATs and their capabilities, go to the APS CAT Guide and Beamline Directory:

http://www.aps.anl.gov/xfd/communicator/useroffice/catguide/table.html

4.

Operations Update
(Contact: avr@aps.anl.gov)

At the halfway point of the current fiscal year, the APS has completed half of the scheduled user operating runs. During this period (since October 2000), the APS has delivered 2451 hours of beam out of a scheduled 2528 hours, resulting in an availability of 96%. The mean time between faults is 25 hours; although this is less than 1 fault per day, it is still short of our long-term goal of no more than one fault every two days.

The schedule for the rest of this fiscal year contains an 18-shift period of low-emittance operation scheduled for September. Machine studies have been underway to decrease the horizontal emittance by 50%. This reduction of the horizontal emittance will improve the overall beam brilliance by at least a factor of two. The increased brilliance will be of direct benefit to those groups using coherence and/or microfocused beams because it will result in a smaller horizontal source size and divergence. Further machine studies with reduced horizontal emittance are planned to both optimize the storage ring operation and to provide machine studies time for "sneak previews" by the users during the next user run.

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