A team of scientists working at the Advanced Light Source’s femtosecond beamline 6.0.2 have taken the first step toward controlling how matter interacts with x-rays, shaping x-ray pulses with other x-ray pulses, and eventually directing the paths chemical reactions can take.

Part Three of a five-part series outlining the proposals awarded “Discovery” Laboratory Research and Development funds for 2010. This part describes a search for a fundamental property of electrons that’s never been seen before.

The “Discovery” track of Berkeley Lab’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development proposal review encourages bold, highly innovative concepts with strong potential for impact in their fields, independent of divisional programs and lab-wide initiatives. The winning proposals for 2010 are described in a five-part series, beginning with research for a new way to deposit high-quality, transparent, metal-oxide films on the industrial scale, with implications for energy applications.

The structure of a protein that helps relay electrical pulses between neurons has been fully mapped using the Advanced Light Source. This much-anticipated milestone could lead to new treatments for neurological diseases and a better understanding of how the nervous system works.

From their humble beginnings as offshoots of the ordinary electric light bulb, particle accelerators have evolved in surprising directions. Among the most productive and promising developments have been light sources, first in the form of electron storage rings — of which the Advanced Light Source is the world’s premier source of soft x-rays — and increasingly as versatile and sophisticated free electron lasers, the next generation of light sources now being studied at Berkeley Lab.

In the span of a few minutes, scientists at Berkeley Lab’s National Center for X-ray Tomography can produce three-dimensional CAT scans of entire cells. The facility promises to expedite drug discovery and biofuels research.

Tomorrow’s free electron lasers will use superconducting linear accelerators to accelerate a million or more electron bunches a second. Key to high brightness and high repetition rates is the accelerator’s electron injector. Berkeley Lab scientists are building a revolutionary injector prototype of the kind the new generation of light sources will require.

The Advanced Light Source — one of the world’s brightest sources of ultraviolet and soft x-ray beams — will maintain its position at the cutting edge of soft x-ray science thanks to $11.3 million in funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

A particle gun tested at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source and soon to be installed at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source fires liquid droplets less than a millionth of a meter in diameter, hundreds of thousands of times a second or faster. The sample jet sends the droplets across a tightly focused x-ray beam in single file, each droplet so small it contains only a single protein or virus.

The structure of a protein in days — not months or years — ushers in a new era in genomics research. Scientists have developed a high-throughput protein pipeline that could expedite the development of biofuels and elucidate how proteins carry out life’s vital functions.