From SSRL Director Chi-Chang Kao: SSRL Takes on the Frontiers of Materials Science As we at SSRL continue to refine our five-to-ten-year strategic plan, our materials science goals are becoming increasingly clear. Advanced materials are at the heart of our technically driven society, and recent advances in theory, computation power, materials synthesis, and characterization tools have brought the goal of "materials by design" within reach. Synchrotron light sources, with their exceptional properties, play a critical role in the materials-by-design process, providing the powerful characterization capabilities required by the materials research community.  Read more...

Features Herding Electrons into Bright Bunches at SSRL Is it possible to combine the rapid-fire pulses of a storage ring with the brightness of an x-ray laser? SLAC is looking for a solution. SSRL Team Works Over Holidays to Ensure Beam to Users A small but dedicated team worked long days over the holidays to diagnose and fix a large vacuum leak discovered on the final work day before SLAC's winter shutdown—enabling SSRL user experiments to start as planned on January 4. Events Save the Date: SSRL School on Synchrotron X-ray Scattering Techniques in Materials and Environmental Sciences, May 29-31 The 2012 SSRL SRXRS (Synchrotron Radiation-based X-ray Scattering techniques) School will provide a practical users' guide to planning and conducting scattering measurements at SSRL beam lines, and will cover important techniques including thin-film scattering, powder diffraction, in-situ x-ray scattering, and amorphous materials. The school will address topics that are not commonly included in text books or class lectures, and typically obtained only through on-the-experiment training. Good planning and a working knowledge of beam lines, in addition to techniques, are key to conducting successful SRXRS measurements. The school will also cover new instrumentation at SSRL scattering beam lines. This year's school, which will take place May 29-31, is organized by: Apurva Mehta, Stefan Mannsfeld, Doug Van Campen, and Mike Toney. Reminder: Biological SAXS Symposium — A Tribute to Dr. Hiro Tsuruta A symposium on biological small angle x-ray scattering will be held at SLAC on February 9, 2012 as a tribute to Dr. Hiro Tsuruta, who for almost 20 years led the development and operation of SSRL's structural biology SAXS (bioSAXS) Beam Line 4-2 facility. The symposium is open to all; registration is required but there is no fee for attending. Announcements Shipping Changes Users who ship items to and from SSRL should be aware that SLAC has a new approved customs broker and freight forwarder: Kamino International Transport, Inc. Beam Time Request Deadlines March 1 is the deadline for submitting new X-ray/VUV Beam Time Requests for the scheduling period May through July 2012; April 20 is the deadline for submitting new Macromolecular Crystallography Beam Time Requests for the scheduling period June through July 2012. For the full list of 2012 deadlines, please see the SSRL deadlines webpage. Reminder: Lightsources.org Survey Lightsources.org, a resource for the global light source community, invites you to complete this short survey. The deadline has been extended to January 31, so please respond today! In the News La Recherche: Feather-color Finding Makes Top 10 List of Discoveries The French popular science magazine La Recherche lists the SSRL finding of chemical traces of pigment in a bird fossil as a top-10 discovery of 2011. Discovery News: Could Ancient Pottery Improve Spacecraft Tiles? SSRL studies of ancient Attic pottery may improve our understanding of the advanced ceramics used for thermal protection in aerospace applications. PhysOrg.com: Scientists Study How Nature Cleans Uranium from Aquifer SSRL researchers study how nature itself handles nuclear contamination in the hopes that nature's own tools could be used to speed the process.

SSRL Headlines is published electronically monthly to inform SSRL users, sponsors and other interested people about happenings at SSRL. SSRL is a national synchrotron user facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences by Stanford University. Additional support for the structural biology program is provided by the DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research, the NIH National Center for Research Resources and the NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Additional information about SSRL and its operation and schedules is available from the SSRL website.

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Questions? Comments on the new look? Contact Kelen Tuttle