Chi-Chang's Corner

Reduced-Hour Operation Schedules Now Available

March 13, 2008

Chi-Chang Kao
NSLS Department Chair
kao@bnl.gov

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The X-Ray and VUV-IR long-range schedules for the summer cycle and the beginning of the fall cycle are now finalized. As part of the overall strategy to cope with this year's unexpected budget shortfall, the total operating hours for FY08 will be reduced by about 10 percent. After seeking input from the user community, we decided to schedule most of this downtime in a single block from mid-August to early September, when universities are busy transitioning into the new school year. We hope this will have a minimum impact on our users.

Coming out of the winter shutdown, one of the four radio frequency (RF) systems (XRF3) in the x-ray ring was experiencing intermittent electrical trip problems resulting in dumps of the stored beam during 2.8 GeV operation. Investigating this RF problem required taking the cavity and transmitter out of service, and the ring was operated at 300 ma at 2.584 GeV with the remaining three RF cavities. We made sure to keep the user community up to date on the progress of the repair, and we appreciate your cooperation as these complex RF issues were resolved by the NSLS staff. Repairs of the 125 KW RF amplifier that generates the RF power, and the co-axial waveguide that transports this power to the XRF3 cavity, have been completed. The ring returned to 2.8 GeV operation on March 13.

On the safety front, the NSLS is playing an important role in Brookhaven's "human performance" initiative. While all work at the Laboratory is planned to control risk and assure efficiency, human performance principles add to that effort by focusing on how people respond to different situations and on helping to assure that work assignments include evaluation of personnel qualifications and "error-likely" situations. It's based on the idea that most incidents involve human error. The goal is to understand and anticipate the various pressures on staff and users, and then improve the work environment to minimize accidents. Stay tuned for more information about this important initiative.

We received valuable feedback during our triennial beamline reviews, which were conducted under the guidance of the NSLS Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). The reviewers found that most of the beamlines are productive and operated safely – even though most of them are under-staffed. They also identified room for improvement: in particular, the way laboratory space is utilized. We'll work to address all of their comments and recommendations in the coming months after consultation with the SAC. I understand that extensive preparation went into the preparation of this review, and want to thank the NSLS User Administration Office, facility beamline staff, and the participating research teams for their hard work. Through critical evaluation of our work, we can ensure the continued success of the NSLS as a world-class research facility.

Several professors from our newly created Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) User Consortium are visiting again this month. During the visit, they'll work on a National Science Foundation proposal to create a new curriculum with emphasis on synchrotron research and instrumentation for HBCUs, and a new graduate program that will host students at the NSLS while they work toward a master's degree in instrumentation at Stony Brook University. This is an exciting program that would be valuable for the NSLS, Stony Brook, and the HBCU Consortium, and I look forward to working with them.

Finally, a team of researchers from Durham and Oxford universities in the United Kingdom, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and BNL recently used x-ray experiments at the NSLS to show that a nanometer-thick layer of oil can be induced to spread on the surface of water by adding a minute amount of surfactant. Their study, which was published in Physical Review Letters, also sheds light on a phenomenon known as surface freezing. You can read more in this issue of eNews.