NECAT Beamline

The Northeastern Collaborative Access Team (NE-CAT) facility at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory is managed by Cornell University and consists of seven member institutions:

  • Columbia University
  • Cornell University
  • Harvard University
  • Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Rockefeller University
  • Yale University.

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    Primary funding for this project comes from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences(NIGMS) , a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Additional financial support for NE-CAT comes from the member institutions.

    NIGMS Fast Facts

    Supported by:

    National Institutes of Health
    National Institue of General Medical Sciences

    Status of NE-CAT Sector 24 Activities

     

    February / March 2012

    Data Quality Comparison Between the PILATUS-6MF and ADSC Q315

    Users have been collecting data on the PILATUS-6MF during the latter half of February.  Systematic comparisons and anecdotal evidence show a marked improvement over the ADSC Q315, especially at higher resolution and/or weak diffraction.   At higher resolution where weak diffraction spots were lost due to background noise on the ADSC Q315, the almost noise-less PILATUS-6MF allows recovery of these diffraction spots.  Weak diffraction spot recovery can occur in flux-limited or anisotropic crystals.  It will also be possible to use less incident dose to obtain reasonable data.

    ADSC Pilatus

    Fig. 1 A) First image - Diffraction image of thaumatin taken using Q315. B) Second image - Diffraction image of thaumatin taken using PILATUS.  Both images are of the same crystal, at the orientation, and exposed to x-rays under similar conditions.


    Survey Tracker

    Due to the speed at which images are collected by the PILATUS-6MF, it is no longer possible to see each image as it comes off the detector.  To compensate, a survey tracker has been implemented in the control software of both beamlines.  The survey tracker takes a snapshot of every looped crystal and stores a bitmap of the image with the diffraction images.  A table allows the user to select a filename and see both crystal snapshot and diffraction image on the screen.  The table will also display RAPD-calculated statistics about chosen image.  Finally, the entire table can be exported as a space-delimited file and saved for future reference or converted to an Excel spreadsheet.


    PILATUS-6MF Site Visit

    At the beginning of March, it was noticed that at certain energies, the background was elevated in one module of the PILATUS-6MF.  A site visit from Dectris was scheduled for module replacement at the end of the month.  During the visit, it was found that the module had a loose connection.  The connector was replaced, solving the elevated background issue, but the module was not changed.  In addition, during the site visit, we received new software for the PILATUS-6MF which eliminates the 3 second shutterless exposure limit.

     

    Defective Module

    Fig. 2 A closeup of a 1 sec exposure at 1.3884 Å showing the elevated background on the defective module.
     

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