Chi-Chang's Corner

NSLS-II Construction Begins

July 8, 2009

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

Archives:
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007

Construction on NSLS-II has officially begun, marked by a recent groundbreaking ceremony held next to the open field that's soon to be the facility's home. U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Congressman Tim Bishop joined the celebration, which included remarks by representatives from Brookhaven, the Department of Energy, Battelle, and Stony Brook University, as well as live music and a special, science-inspired dance performance. This is an extremely exciting time for Brookhaven and the NSLS. I'm excited to watch NSLS-II take shape across the street, and if you want to join me in monitoring its progress from off site, take a look at this webcam.

The NSLS recently received an additional $3 million in stimulus funding for two exciting projects: construction of a full-field x-ray microscope and acquisition of several advanced x-ray detectors. The x-ray microscope, which received $2 million, will be able to image objects with a spatial resolution of 35 nanometers. This capability will be particularly important for new initiatives in energy research and will prepare our users for the projected 1-nanometer resolution benchmark at NSLS-II. In addition, the detectors project, which received $1 million, is expected to increase the throughput of several high-demand beamlines by an order of magnitude as well as enable new classes of experiments.

Thanks to this year's healthier budget, we are soliciting user input about additional equipment needed in the NSLS laboratories around the experimental floor. If there's anything that would help you use your beam time more efficiently, please let division heads Lisa Miller or Ron Pindak know.

Our second Joint Photon Sciences Institute workshop, "Energy Storage Research Opportunities at the National Synchrotron Light Source," was held on June 4-5 at Brookhaven. The one-and-one-half day event, which attracted participants from universities, industries, and national laboratories from across the state and the country, demonstrated the ways that synchrotron and electron techniques can help solve important scientific problems in energy storage research and pinpointed the roadblocks slowing progress in the field. The participants also provided input on short-term infrastructural needs for battery research at the NSLS.

We have a large group of summer students working at the NSLS for the next couple months, many of whom are part of Faculty and Student Teams (FaST) - teams comprised of at least one faculty member and two to three undergraduate students from universities and colleges serving populations that are underrepresented in science. Thanks to the help of Brookhaven's Office of Educational Programs, some of the FaST professors have returned to the NSLS year after year, and now have gained enough experience to submit independent research proposals. This research experience is invaluable for both faculty members and their students, and I hope that they'll all continue to be familiar faces here in the future.

I'd like to draw your attention to the most recent Users' Office Update column, which responds to questions and concerns raised in the End-of-Run Survey forms. One of the goals of the NSLS is to respond to our users' feedback as quickly and as thoroughly as we can. We hope this will allow users who submit anonymous complaints or suggestions to find out what's happening. Further, we envision that this open communication will help identify common concerns. Please continue to fill out these forms, because input from users ultimately affects our decisions and our allocation of resources.

Finally, a group of researchers has used diffraction-enhanced imaging - an x-ray technique developed at Brookhaven - to visualize a class of tiny plaques that are a hallmark feature of Alzheimer's disease. The results revealed detailed images of the plaques in mice models and also showed that the technique can be used on whole brains without a contrast agent. Although the radiation dose used in this study is too high to image plaques in humans, the technique could eventually be developed into a method for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.