1. COMMISSIONING PROGRESS
- Beam current of 100mA has been achieved this month for 4 hours. A current of 100mA represents one of the performance acceptance criteria for the machine and is halfway to the maximum design beam current.
- The last vertical panel of the hutches for the first four beamlines has been installed.
- Electron beam lifetime has been increased to 12 hours.
- The Fill Pattern Monitor was commissioned and now provides a very precise measurement of the relative bunch currents in each of the 360 RF buckets.
- Single bunch injection was performed for the first time into the Storage Ring.
2. SYNCHROTRON COMMUNITY NEWS
2006 Joint ASRP–Australian Synchrotron Users Workshop, 29 November–1 December
The 2006 Joint Australian Synchrotron Research Program (ASRP) – Australian Synchrotron Users Workshop will be held in Melbourne from Wednesday 29 November to Friday 1 December 2006.
The main Users Workshop website is at /content.asp?Document_ID=4675
The program is being finalised and will be posted on the website soon. Two international keynote speakers are:
- Gene Ice, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee. Gene is an internationally recognised leader in the areas of material science and advanced x-ray optics;
- Stefan Vogt, Advanced Photon Source (APS), Chicago. Stefan will talk on imaging trace metals with x-ray fluorescence microscopy and the latest developments at the APS in micro- and nano-focussing.
The Users Workshop is free but you must register to attend. Please register at /content.asp?Document_ID=4455
Workshop Venue
The Users Workshop will be held at Rydges Hotel, 186 Exhibition Street, Melbourne. This is in the Theatre district between Bourke and Little Bourke Streets, and close to Chinatown. For more details, see:
http://www.rydges.com/hotel/2/RVMELB/Rydges-Melbourne.htm
Accommodation
Rydges Hotel is offering attendees a special rate of $160 for delegates attending the Australian Synchrotron Users Workshop who request the special rate.
Budget accommodation is available through Melbourne University’s St Mary’s College, for $54 ($47 students) including breakfast. Bookings through Margaret Edmonson at the ASRP office, email: [email protected], phone: (02) 9717 9012).
Travel Support
Thanks to the support of the ARC Molecular and Materials Structure Network, travel assistance is available on a limited basis for delegates not based in Victoria. The assistance is only available for PhD students, post-docs and early career researchers who have submitted an abstract to the Workshop.
The travel support provides $300 to delegates from NSW, Queensland and South Australia, and $500 for delegates from WA. The funds are limited and will be allocated to PhD students first. Please contact the ASRP Office as soon as possible to apply for this travel support (Margaret Edmonson, email: [email protected], phone: (02) 9717 9012).
Science Minister’s Prize for Life Sciences
Synchrotron scientist Dr James Whisstock from Monash University won the Commonwealth Science Minister’s Prize for Life Scientist of the Year for his work on serpins. James is keen to start using the Australian Synchrotron for protein crystallography next year.
Synchrotron user wins Chemistry Nobel
Roger Kornberg, Stanford University, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription”, did his prize-winning research at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory and the Advanced Light Source in California. Kornberg used crystallography beamlines at ALS to identify some of the substructures of RNA polymerase in action, the protein that converts DNA into RNA through the process known as transcription.
Australian Synchrotron operator
The Tender Evaluation Group representing investors and Australian science have completed their evaluation of the submitted tenders and recommended that negotiations continue with ANSTO/Worley Parsons Joint Venture.
3. FORTHCOMING EVENTS
AUSTRALIAN EVENTS
Joint ASRP–Australian Synchrotron Users Workshop 2006
29 November – 1 December 2006, Melbourne
See details listed under “Synchrotron Community News”
/content.asp?Document_ID=4675
Email: [email protected]
AIP 17th National Congress 2006
3–8 December 2006, Brisbane Convention Centre, Qld
Australian Institute of Physics National Congress
www.aipc2006.com. Email: [email protected]
INTERNATIONAL USERS CONFERENCES
For additional information and listings, see: http://www.lightsources.org/cms/?pid=1000068
ASCA06
Joint Conference of the Asian Crystallographic Association and Crystallographic Society of Japan
20–23 November 2007, Epochal Tsukuba, Japan
http://www.realize-at.jp/AsCA2006/AsCA2006-CrSJ.htm
1st Asia–Oceania Forum for Synchrotron Radiation Research 2006
24–25 November 2006, KEK, Tsukuba, Japan
http://pfwww.kek.jp/AOF2006/index.html
Laue 2007: Advanced Laue Diffraction in Frontier Science
23–27 January 2007, Grenoble, France
Registration closes 15 November 2006
http://www.ill.fr/Events/laue2007
2007 National Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation (SRI) Conference
25–27 April 2007, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
http://www.camd.lsu.edu/SRI/sri07home.htm
VUV 15TH International Conference on Vacuum Ultraviolet Radiation Physics
July 29 – August 3, 2007, Konzerthaus Berlin, Germany
http://www.bessy.de/VUVXV
World Biomaterials Congress—2008
28 May–1 June 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.wbc2008.com/
4. SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
News and recently published research assisted by synchrotron science
Australian synchrotron scientists reveal food-poisoning toxin
Scientists from the University Adelaide, Monash University and the United States have revealed important new information to advance understanding of how bacterial toxins cause severe gastrointestinal diseases.
The scientists, led by Dr Adrienne Paton from the University of Adelaide’s School of Molecular and Biomedical Science, have discovered that a highly potent bacterial toxin kills cells by inactivating an essential component in the endoplasmic reticulum, part of the cell that is essential for packaging newly-synthesised proteins.
The toxin, called subtilase cytotoxin, is produced by certain strains of E.coli bacteria responsible for severe intestinal disease in humans. Dr Paton discovered the toxin in 2003 in a bacterium responsible for an outbreak of severe food poisoning in South Australia. Subtilase cytotoxin is so potent that it is a potential bio-terrorism agent.
The findings were published recently in Nature.
The researchers determined the 3-D structure of the toxin which will help in the development of treatments for toxin-related diseases.
There may also be implications for understanding age-related and degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, which also involve defects in endoplasmic reticulum.
Fellow researchers included James Paton and Ursula Talbot (University of Adelaide), Jamie Rossjohn, Travis Beddoe, Matthew Wilce and James Whisstock (Monash University) and Celeste Thorpe (Tufts New England Medical Center, Boston).
[See additional story about James Whisstock above in ‘Synchrotron Community News’]
Source: http://www.newswise.com/p/articles/view/524061
Synchrotron discriminates arsenic in Phar Lap’s hair
Forensic analyst Dr Ivan Kempson from the University of South Australia’s Ian Wark Research Institute and Museum Victoria’s Senior Collection Manager (Sciences) Dermot Henry announced preliminary results of synchrotron x-ray fluorescence and x-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy studies of six hairs taken from the preserved hide of Australasian horse-racing icon, the race-horse Phar Lap.
The New Zealand-born horse won 32 of his last 35 races, including the prestigious Melbourne Cup in 1930, but died suddenly in California in 1932 after winning the wealthy Agua Caliente Handicap in Mexico in record time. His hide was mounted and is a favourite display at Melbourne Museum. The skeleton is at Te Papa Tongawera, the National Museum of New Zealand in Wellington.
The aim was to test Phar Lap’s hair for signs of ingested arsenic, as hair incorporates products from the blood supply and, as it grows, can present a historical time-line of exposure to toxins. The possibility that arsenic had been used as a preservation agent in the preparation of Phar Lap’s hide in New York was expected to complicate the characterisation.
Preliminary results from several tests at the Advanced Photon Source synchrotron in Chicago in 2005 and 2006 indicate that it is possible to distinguish arsenic that has been ingested from arsenic used in tanning skins.
The results show a distribution of arsenic within Phar Lap’s hair that is consistent with ingesting a single, large dose of arsenic within 30–40 hours of death.