User Access

EMSL's Response

EMSL continues to expand its reputation as a world class facility by coupling unique sets of capabilities with outstanding teams across multiple platforms and disciplines. The power and quality of our resources, such as the high field NMRs, and the expertise and dedication of all the scientific staff are invaluable to our user program. We especially want to call out Heather Brewer, Sarah Burton, Alice Dohnalkova, Nancy Isern, Ravi Kukkadapu, Ljiljana Pasa-Tolic, and Si Wu who received special recognition for their knowledge, commitment, and outstanding help to our users.

EMSL's Response

EMSL continues to work on minimizing long queues for run times and analysis with new staff hires and instrument acquisitions—especially in the mass spectrometry capability. As we mentioned in the last survey, we're making every effort to reduce queue times in the mass spectrometry capability, and with funding largely from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we added additional measurement platforms to increase throughput. We are also adding additional monitoring and tracking capabilities to our informatics system to enable more optimal distribution of the work load across our resources, and we think you'll see improvement this fiscal year.

We seek to address scientific needs relevant to many disciplines and sub disciplines within our user community, including those areas that require capability development prior to full implementation. The biological user community has communicated their desire for a magnetics resonance metabolomics capability, and we are working towards meeting this need. Currently only one of the five liquid state NMR spectrometers is dedicated to this endeavor, leaving the remaining four spectrometers to meet the needs of the structural biology community. Staff support given toward metabolomics work is directly tied to the user proposals that were favorably reviewed and approved in this area as part of our FY2011 Call for Proposals cycle.

For our users who are also PNNL staff, we understand it can be frustrating to be required to report information to both your organization and to the user facility. In many cases, EMSL has been able to integrate our reporting system with PNNL's data systems. We are currently working with the ERICA system owners to investigate the possibilities and costs of further integrating our systems to allow ERICA to push your latest publication entries to your EMSL proposals. Our hope is to implement this improvement this fiscal year.

In the NMR capability, we now conduct basic testing of the equipment requested prior to the user's arrival. Due to the complexity of the spectrometers and the breadth of experimental setups requested by users, it is also sometimes difficult to switch between operational modes within a short time frame. To address this, we have increased the time allocated for switching the spectrometer between one user and another, and we anticipate a significant decrease in downtime experienced by the user. In addition, to address the drift on the 900 MHz NMR, a solid-state lock capability has been developed and deployed for the bio-MAS probe. A second solid-state lock is being developed for the 1.6 mm HXY probe, also on the 900 MHz.

EMSL's Response

We're not sick of hearing this–because we completely understand! The bulk of frustration with user training is related to the extensive and time-consuming PNNL orientation that is required for any non-staff working onsite. In many cases, it is targeted for PNNL employees rather than non-staff. As we reported last year, PNNL began a concerted effort to re-evaluate and re-scope the training plans. As of today, PNNL has identified the base requirements needed for non-staff to work onsite and are in the process of re-writing and re-designing the orientation module. They expect the revised orientation to roll out in mid-April and take less than one hour to complete (a significant reduction from the previous 3-4 hour time commitment).

In addition, we continue to work with Cyber Security on the development of a streamlined course for non-staff, although the final design will wait until after the orientation module is complete. We're also evaluating the courses being assigned to users working in specific laboratories, and have identified some modules that we believe can be streamlined and targeted to only a subset of users and still maintain a safe working environment.

EMSL's Response

"EMSL" can be confusing for PNNL staff because we're 1) a PNNL directorate, 2) a building, and 3) a national scientific user facility. While PNNL staff normally work across directorates and buildings without additional requirements, EMSL must follow guidelines established by the Office of Science for national user facilities. These guidelines require a peer-reviewed proposal process, and all proposals (whether from PNNL staff or external non-staff) compete for access based not only on the science but on the fit to BER's and EMSL's mission and science directions. Work package numbers are requested for PNNL staff simply to ensure the proposal type selected meets the project scope (for example, a non-proprietary proposal should not be selected on a restricted project).

Last year, we implemented a new notification/response process for our users to expedite decisions to reassign the proposal to new reviewers if a reviewer cannot complete the review in two weeks. Following a Call for Proposals, we find our reviewers often ask for a break, which can impact the turnaround of a proposal review. Nevertheless, we find that the overall response time is improving. In addition, we've added some internal management tracking activities and will continue to identify ways to expedite the review process.

EMSL's Response

The Radiochemistry Annex, which would allow users with radioactive samples to conduct their research, is currently being constructed. A number of capabilities have come on-line within the last 6 months, including a dual beam FIB/SEM system and a TEM with an electron energy loss spectrometer. Additional capabilities, including NMR, EPR and XPS spectrometers; electron probe and scanning probe microscopes; and an x-ray diffractometer will become available once construction is complete and these capabilities are installed. We anticipate full operation of this capability in February 2013.

Walltime limits on Chinook have been set to maximize throughput for the majority of users. For jobs with less than 16 nodes, the walltime limit is 96 hours. When there is clearly a need for more nodes and longer run times, the Molecular Computing Capability staff will work with researchers to provide more nodes and/or longer run times. In addition, connection speeds between EMSL computers and those researcher's computers outside our firewall are dependent on many factors--not just our firewall. Depending on the routing, number of segments, server speeds and loads, and the encryption method used all have an effect. We have experts that can investigate the source of slow data transfers and sometimes orders of magnitude improvements have been realized. If you have specific issues or needs related to these issues, please contact Erich Vorpagel at 509-371-6448.

Users who are experiencing problems in obtaining their data can contact the USO with specifics. We'll work with the staff to identify the issues and provide you with an estimated delivery date.

EMSL's Response

The Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS) and the Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) will make measurements similar to those from a SQUID. If you don't see something on the website that you're interested in, or want to pursue specifics related to the experiments you have in mind, we encourage you to ask the Capability Lead (http://www.emsl.pnl.gov/contacts/) or your host.