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Extreme-ultraviolet to x-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) in operation for scientific applications are up to now single-user facilities. While most FELs generate around 100 photon pulses per second, FLASH at DESY can deliver almost two orders of magnitude more pulses in this time span due to its superconducting accelerator technology. This makes the facility a prime candidate to realize the next step in FELs-dividing the electron pulse trains into several FEL lines and delivering photon pulses to several users at the same time. Hence, FLASH has been extended with a second undulator line and self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) is demonstrated in both FELs simultaneously. FLASH can now deliver MHz pulse trains to two user experiments in parallel with individually selected photon beam characteristics. First results of the capabilities of this extension are shown with emphasis on independent variation of wavelength, repetition rate, and photon pulse length.

Benjamin Libet's work paved the way for the neuroscientific study of free will.Other scientists have praised this research as groundbreaking. In philosophy, the reception has been more negative, often even dismissive. First, I will propose a diagnosis of this striking discrepancy. I will suggest that the experiments seem irrelevant, from the perspective of philosophy, due to the way in which they operationalize free will. In particular, I will argue that this operational definition does not capture free will properly and that it is based on a false dichotomy between internal and external causes. However, I will also suggest that this problem could be overcome, as there are no obvious obstacles to an operationalization of free will that is in accord with the philosophical conception of free will.

non-conductive element having been used in making a connection; or to the connecting link being missing; or to the design being faulty for the purpose.Converting such factors into the Aristotelian four cause classification: efficient, material, formal and final, it is clear that privative causality is not so much a fifth kind of cause, as one of two modes (the other provisive) in which each of the four might operate. Perhaps 'cause' is a yet more extensively analogical notion expressed in the diversity of analogically related uses of 'because'; of which there are certainly greater than four. That is my own view; but even if it is restricted to the venerable four or held to be a univocal notion applying only to efficient causality, the fact remains that privations as well as provisions may truly be said to be effective. No causality without actuality; but not every cause is actual.

Abstract. Benjamin Libet's empirical challenge to free will has received a great deal of attention and criticism. A standard line of response has emerged that many take to be decisive against Libet's challenge. In the first part of this paper, I will argue that this standard response fails to put the challenge to rest. It fails, in particular, to address a recent follow-up experiment that raises a similar worry about free will (Soon et al. 2008). In the second part, however, I will argue that we can altogether avoid Libet-style challenges if we adopt a traditional compatibilist account of free will. In the final section, I will briefly explain why there is good and independent reason to think about free will in this way.