Chi-Chang's Corner

6-Month Continuing Resolution Presents Major Challenges

October 15, 2008

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

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You've most likely heard that all U.S. science agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy, are expected to be under a continuing resolution, probably until the beginning of March. This means that the NSLS will have to operate for the first half of this year under last year's budget. In addition, the continuing resolution will not include the $1 million that the NSLS later received in supplemental funding, a boost that made it possible to maintain staffing levels, enabled the purchasing of critical spare parts, and helped recover some of the operating hours that were cut when the original budget shortfall was announced. Under the current conditions, there's likely to be a very harmful impact on the operation of the NSLS as well as to our user program. I urge you to talk to your local elected officials about the consequences of this continuing resolution and the importance of securing supplemental funding to support the nation's scientific programs until a budget is passed by the new administration.

The NSLS has interesting link to this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The prize was given to two American scientists and a Japanese researcher for their discovery and development of a protein called green fluorescent protein (GFP). GFP, which glows green under ultraviolet light, has become a ubiquitous tool in bioscience. It turns out that the structure of GFP was first solved with the help of x-ray studies at NSLS beamline X4A. Roger Tsien, who won a third of the Nobel, was an author on that seminal paper. You can read more about this connection in this edition of eNews.

The deadline for the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) grants recently passed and quite a few innovative proposals were sent out by NSLS users. This process was a valuable exercise in forming large collaborations between researchers at U.S. academic institutions, industries, and national laboratories. We hope they all are successful in receiving approval.

Both rings are now up and running after a productive summer shutdown period. Please note that the current operating cycle was recently extended by two weeks into early December. You can view the full schedule here. I hope users will take advantage of this extra running time.

We're working with a group of x-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) experts to develop web-based short courses for users at several levels of experience, from beginners to those with more knowledge about synchrotron techniques. If this trial exercise works well, we'll develop similar courses for other widely used synchrotron techniques. I hope these courses will help tailor training for individual experiences and backgrounds, and ultimately, lead to better research proposals and increased efficiency in beam time usage.

It was great to see so many new and familiar faces at our annual Light Sources Directorate awards picnic, where we celebrated another year of smooth operation at the NSLS and great progress made toward securing NSLS-II. Thanks to the staff members who helped make this a memorable event and congratulations to the many Service Awards and Spotlight Awards winners.

A high-pressure science workshop was recently held at the NSLS in honor of Jingzhu Hu and Quanzhong Guo, beamline scientists who are retiring after many years of dedicated support of the high-pressure facilities at the NSLS. Numerous participants from across the country and the world attended the workshop, which focused on recent achievements of and future plans for dedicated high-pressure beamlines at the NSLS and other synchrotron facilities. The participants also reminisced about learning high-pressure and x-ray techniques from Hu and Gu at the NSLS while working in the facility as students, post-docs, and researchers from other fields. They will be missed and we wish them luck.

Finally, a team of researchers from the New Jersey Institute of Technology recently used x-ray absorption spectroscopy at the NSLS to study an alternative thermal treatment for contaminated sediments dredged out of navigable waterways. The team investigated how the treatment makes this waste environmentally safe for re-use in products such as cement, lightweight bricks, and ceramic and glass tiles - a step that would reduce costs and conserve resources.