7^th Annual Users' Meeting Success

The Canadian Light Source 7th Annual Users' Meeting and Associated Workshops were held at the University of Saskatchewan, November 17-21, 2004. The meeting attracted a wide range of users and exhibitors, with a record setting total attendance of 350 people from across Canada, North America and overseas.

The Associated Workshops began on Wednesday with a two-day workshop on XAFS data analysis. Associated workshops on Friday were held at the NRC Plant Biotechnology Institute. There were three full-day workshops entitled "Synchrotron Radiation Applications in Environmental Science", "Medical Imaging" and "Protein Crystallography" as well as one half-day workshop entitled "Applications of Elliptically Polarized Synchrotron Radiation".

Saturday's Annual Users' Meeting opened with a warm welcome from the User Advisory Committee Chair, Alan Anderson. Alan went on to introduce Bill Thomlinson, Executive Director of the Canadian Light Source who gave an overview of 'Progress and Promises' at the CLS (Presentation Available Here). Bill's presentation was followed by an update on the Storage Ring Status from Les Dallin, CLSI Accelerator Physicist.

The remainder of the day was divided into four sessions; Protein Crystallography, Materials Science, X-ray Scattering and X-ray Spectroscopy, with several speakers presenting on each topic. Before lunch the UAC took care of business with a few announcements and nominations for the 2005 User Advisory Committee membership. This year there are four spots available on the committee, and the polls will be open December 8th to December 16th. The issue of moving the AUM from November to July was raised and generated considerable discussion; it was decided that this issue would be brought to the polls during the UAC elections.

There were two short lunchtime discussions, the first presented by Lavina Carter and Jordan Hamel of the CLS User Services Office, on the process of accessing the CLS (Presentation Available Here). Lavina and Jordan were followed by Bruce Gaulin, Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) Chair who led an informal SAC question and answer period.

After the meeting officially ended, the wine and cheese (and the fun!) commenced. This year there were over 60 scientific posters displayed, and the competition for the CISR Student Poster Award was fierce. It was a short walk across campus (in unseasonably warm Saskatchewan November weather) to the Annual Users Meeting Banquet. It was a delicious meal in a relaxed environment as meeting attendees unwound after a busy few days. At the banquet, the CISR Student Poster Prize was awarded. There was a tie for the Poster Award and each student received a $1000 travel allowance. Melanie Adams and Claudio Andrade of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario for their posters "Synchrotron SAD-ness" and "Synchrotron based micro-XRF mapping, micro-XANES and micro-XRD of As-rich sub-aqueous gold mine tailings and lacustrine sediments from Yellowknife Bay, NWT, Canada". The evening ended with calls of 'See you next November…or maybe June!'

Once again we would like to thank our exhibitors and sponsors for making this event possible.

XAFS Workshop using Ifeffit, Artemis and Athena
Organized by: Farideh Jalilehvand

The two-days workshop on XAFS data analysis was one of the highlights of this year's CLS Annual Users Meeting, with 30 participants from across Canada, US, Australia and Swiss. Dr. Bruce Ravel from Naval Research Laboratory (U.S.), who is the author of the software programs Atoms, Athena and Artemis, was the sole speaker for this workshop. The workshop, which was a combination of lectures and hands-on sessions, was very well received by the attendees.

Synchrotron Radiation Application in Environmental Science
Organized by: Ingrid Pickering, Jeff Cutler, Brett Moldovan

This workshop, organized by Jeff Cutler (CLS), Ingrid Pickering (University of Saskatchewan) and Brett Moldovan (Cameco Corporation and University of Saskatchewan) attracted over 90 registrants and showcased a variety of applications of synchrotron radiation (SR) in the environmental sciences. Speakers presented on a broad range of topics of significant impact to the mining industry, environmental geochemistry and ecosystem health, such as the accumulation of metals in the biosphere.

The workshop opened with an overview of Environmental Sciences at the CLS given by Jeff Cutler, who introduced SR and the range of techniques which can be applied to environmental systems. Satish Myneni of Princeton University presented work on reactive behavior of anions in solution. The acid dissociation constants of these species critically govern how they behave in the environment, including the type of complexes which form on mineral surfaces. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) can be used to investigate such behavior. A complementary technique was highlighted by Lynda Soderholm of Argonne National Laboratory, who presented work using novel high energy scattering techniques to probe metal ion speciation in solution.

Andrea Foster of the US Geological Survey gave a wide-ranging presentation on the utility of XAS in the assessment of trace metal mobility in pristine and perturbed ecosystems. Her case studies included arsenic in Bangladesh aquifers, cadmium in arctic willow plants, and selenium in phosphate deposits. Suzanne Beauchemin of Natural Resources Canada presented studies of metal species, especially zinc, in mining wastes and their stability in the environment. Ingrid Pickering's investigations of an arsenic hyperaccumulating fern used XAS and XAS imaging to probe the localization of chemical forms of arsenic within the living fern tissues.

The final three presentations involved applications relevant to the province of Saskatchewan, in which the CLS is located. Brett Moldovan focused on studies of the fate of arsenic in uranium mine tailings from northern Saskatchewan. Stan Shewchuk of the Saskatchewan Research Council gave his perspective on mercury contamination from power plants. Steve Whittaker, of Saskatchewan Industry and Resources, reported on the role of SR microtomography in characterizing the porosity of sediments as part of an international CO2 sequestration project which is located in southern Saskatchewan. The workshop concluded with a panel discussion where attendees shared views and opinions on the future directions of environmental research using SR techniques.

Medical Imaging Workshop
Organized by: L. Dean Chapman, Colleen Christensen, Elisabeth Schültke

The Medical Imaging Workshop was very well-attended with well over 100 registrants. The 12 invited speakers represented eight countries and a broad array of scientific applications of synchrotron radiation imaging and therapy to biomedical problems and systems. The objective of the workshop, organized by BMIT beam-line team members Dean Chapman (University of Saskatchewan, Anatomy and Cell Biology), Colleen Christensen of the CLS, and Elisabeth Schültke (University of Saskatchewan, Anatomy and Cell Biology), was to demonstrate the potential techniques and applications envisioned for use in the BMIT facility that have been used at other synchrotrons. This effort is part of plans to help build strong scientific programs for the BMIT facility.

Presentations were made by the biomedical team at ESRF, Alberto Bravin and Francois Esteve. Jean Laissue from the University of Bern as well as Ralf-Hendrik Menk (ELETTRA), Avraham Dilmanian (BNL), Stefan Fiedler (EMBL) rounded out the morning's presentations. Other presenters were Chris Hall (Daresbury), Robert Lewis of Monash University, Melbourne Australia (who came the farthest distance for the Meeting!); Paul Johns of Carleton University, Ottawa; D.J. Connor of North Carolina State University at Raleigh; Carol Muehleman, Rush University in Chicago and Chris Parham of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The titles of the presentations can be viewed here.

A reception at the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Club was held the evening prior to the workshop to mark the recent announcement of a Canada Research Chair in Medical Imaging for Dean Chapman, to celebrate the signing of a MoU between the ESRF and the CLS and act as an opportunity for a meet and greet between the Saskatoon health related community, BMIT funding partners, CLS staff, University faculty and workshop presenters.

Also, a pre-workshop meeting was held on Thursday in which many of the invited speakers were present to introduce them to our plans for the BMIT facility. At this and subsequent meetings, a number of helpful discussions and suggestions were made. These suggestions have been implemented in our planning for the beamline. Also, planning was initiated regarding development of an international exchange of information and personnel between the established biomedical facilities, the facilities being developed (BMIT) and future facilities (Australian Synchrotron).

Protein Crystallography Workshop
Organized by: Pawel Grochulski, Stan Moore, Michele Loewen and Gerald Audette

The Protein Crystallography workshop was organized by Pawel Grochulski (CLS), Stan Moore (U. Saskatchewan.), Michele Loewen (National Research Council) and Gerald Audette (U. Alberta). It was sponsored by the CLS Users' Advisory Committee, Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, Canadian Institute for Synchrotron radiation, Alberta Synchrotron Institute and University of Saskatchewan Molecular Design Group.

The workshop focused on both communicating recent research results and discussing techniques of beamline design, data collection, processing, and user access, including their application at the CLS protein crystallography and macromolecular beamlines. The morning session started with an update on the Canadian Macromolecular Crystallography Facility (CMCF) at the CLS by Pawel Grochulski. In particular, Pawel detailed the design of the 08ID-1 beamline, updated the community on the status of the small-gap in-vacuum undulator, and looked forward to the second CMCF beamline to be located at 08B1-1. Clemens Schultze-Briese then introduced the audience to beamline X06SA at the Swiss Light Source (SLS). The situation of the booster ring within the shielding wall of the storage ring at the SLS allows for top-up mode with maintenance of a good thermal equilibrium resulting in very low drift of the beam over time. Clemens showed representative examples of structures for which data had been collected at the SLS PX beamline and preliminary results from a novel pixel array detector being developed at the SLS for PX work. The third speaker of the morning, Alba Guarné of McMaster University, presented recent research results in the field of DNA replication. In particular, she discussed the role that the protein SeqA plays in maintaining the replication fork for proper DNA replication. The next speaker was Jim Phlugrath of Rigaku/MSC who presented an excellent tutorial on the intricacies of data collection. The take home message from Jim's talk was: Think about your diffraction experiment; it's the last experimental step in the process. Good data collection will lead to good structures. The morning session ended with Clemens Schultze-Briese detailing experiments examining radiation damage occurring during data collection at a 3rd generation synchrotron source using insulin and thaumatin as model crystals. The afternoon session began with Steve Mossimann from the University of Lethbridge, who described their work in phosphorous metabolism. He highlighted their results into the structure-function relationships of a novel phytase, an enzyme that metabolizes a phosphorous containing compound in the stomaches of ruminants. Bart Hazes from the University of Alberta then highlighted their group's progress into developing high throughput methods to deal with the crystallization bottleneck. In particular, he highlighted the use of a crystallization robot to greatly increase the throughput of crystallization available to the academic researcher, both in initial screening and the optimization of crystallization "hits". The third speaker of the afternoon, Michael Murphy of UBC, highlighted how protein crystallography can aid in the understanding of the mechanism of nitric oxide (NO) metabolism. Dieter Schneider of Brookhaven National Laboratory presented the BNL's modification of the ALS auto-mounter for protein crystallography beamlines. The goal for the PX program at BNL is to have similar auto-mounting systems located on all their beamlines to allow for consistency and ease of use, both by users and by staff. The last speaker of the afternoon was Charles Weeks of the Hauptman-Woodward Institute. He introduced the software package BnP, which can be used in the process of structure determination employing experimental phases. The afternoon ended with a hands-on session of BnP, as well as a tutorial by Jim Phlugrath in the processing of diffraction data using the program d*trek. The workshop was well attended, and the excellent presentations and ensuing discussions led to the success of the session.

Applications of Elliptically Polarized Synchrotron Radiation
Organized by: Alexander Moewes

This workshop, organized by Alexander Moewes of the University of Saskatchewan, explored the possibilities and capabilities of polarized synchrotron radiation for the study of magnetic materials. Presentations discussed the use of SR spectroscopy, elastic and inelastic soft x-ray scattering as well as Speckle as they can be applied to magnetic anisotropy, semiconductors and magnetic dichroism.

Giacomo Ghiringhelli (Politecnico di Milano) kicked off the workshop reporting on progress in resonant spectroscopies with circularly and linearly polarized soft X-rays. His presentation showed X-ray emission measurements of unprecedented spectral resolution for dichroism in a series of transition metal elements.

Gap Soo Chang (University of Saskatchewan) reported on spectroscopic studies of Co/Pt films. When Ar+ ion irradiation was applied to Co/Pt and Fe/Pt multilayered films under external magnetic field, it was found that the magnetization of transition metal thin films can easily be modulated to point in any desired direction.

Steve Kevan (University of Oregon) motivated how complex properties exhibited by both soft and hard materials often result from delicate hierarchies. Understanding these hierarchies, and particularly the interesting ways in which properties evolve from one scale to another, is a key goal of modern materials analysis. He gave a few examples of such hierarchies in magnetic systems, and showed how one can probe them statistically using coherent soft x-ray magnetic scattering with unique contrast mechanisms.

Stefan Eisebitt (BESSY) presented images of magnetic domain patterns formed in thin film Co-Pt multilayers, obtained by spectroholography at a wavelength of 1.59 nm. The spectroholograms were successfully numerically inverted by a single fast Fourier transformation to show the pure magnetic sample structure, such as labyrinth or stripe domains and a spatial resolution of 50 nm in the magnetic image was demonstrated.