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.

NIH establishes NCATS and dissolves NCRR

As a part the NIH plan to start a new center on translational medicine (NCATS), as of December 23, 2011, NCRR has been dissolved by order of Congress and the President of the United States.   With the cessation of NCRR, NE-CAT has been transferred to the new Division of Biomedical Technology, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).

PILATUS-6MF installation on 24-ID-C

Hardware has been built and software has been written to integrate the PILATUS-6MF with the beamline.  Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the PILATUS-6MF was temporarily installed on 24-ID-C to test the hardware and software.  The PILATUS was tested for 2 days.  Data collection was performed in both shutterless and shuttered modes.  Initial tests show almost no background, excellent statistics, and the possibility to detect crystal diffraction at higher resolution with lower x-ray dose.