{"id":4353,"date":"2025-03-04T13:56:48","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T12:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/?p=4353"},"modified":"2025-03-04T13:56:49","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T12:56:49","slug":"mouse-performance-2018-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/4353","title":{"rendered":"MOUSE performance 2018-2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Operational statistics are a good way of getting insight on the health of the lab. Let&#8217;s take a look at how the MOUSE did in 2024 and compare this to previous years. This is the first year we have not been able to further increase the efficiency, landing in third place in the rankings&#8230; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>In 2024, we put a lot of effort into changing the machine again, with, amongst others:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>considerable <a href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/4153\">effort by Anja<\/a> on putting together a broadly applicable methodology for grazing incidence X-ray scattering, <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the <a href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/4082\">visit of Moeez<\/a>, who helped write EPICS IOCs for a few of the instrument components, <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the breakdown and subsequent replacement of the downstream slit block in autumn, which led to <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the <a href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/4208\">comprehensive changeover<\/a> from SPEC to EPICS for the main instrument control in winter.  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This changeover also meant that we had to change our scripting and data processing. December was spent trying to get at least the measurement collection back on track, and January and February to iron out the bugs and get the data processing mostly operational again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"922\" height=\"552\" src=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4356\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image.png 922w, https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-300x180.png 300w, https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-768x460.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 922px) 100vw, 922px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong>Figure 1:<\/strong> <em>The per-month usage over the operational time of the instrument. 2024 ended up third from the top this year with 58% effective operation. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>That puts 2024 at almost 60% efficiency, with a significant effect observed of the breakdowns and subsequent fixes towards end-of-year (Figure 1). With the instrument in this continued heavy use, the toll of time is starting to show on the components. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/4015\">Last year<\/a>, I feared that there would be a dramatic slump in productivity due to the reduction in full-time staff supporting the MOUSE. This slump has so far fortunately been mild, partly thanks to <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>the increased use of the instrument for grazing incidence efforts by Anja, <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>because the automation efforts from the last five years have paid off, and <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>because I am still measuring through the 1<a href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/3844\">200 metal-organic framework samples<\/a> to build up the database.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>While the slump is not as bad as I initially feared, the effects are clearly visible also in the other metrics: number of samples measured and <a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/citations?user=YKnAFTcAAAAJ&amp;hl=en\">number of (peer-reviewed) MOUSE-papers published<\/a> (Figure 2). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"292\" src=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-1-1024x292.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4357\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-1-1024x292.png 1024w, https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-1-300x86.png 300w, https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-1-768x219.png 768w, https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-1-1536x438.png 1536w, https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-1-2048x585.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Figure 2: The metrics of efficiency, number of measured samples and number of peer-reviewed papers published, over the operational lifetime of the instrument. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of these metrics, such as papers published, will lag behind current events as we are still seeing mostly papers published from one- to two-year old projects. That means the effects of the resource hit on this particular metric may well continue over the coming years, though we are writing furiously to output more papers as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nonetheless, with the heaviest instrument changes now behind us, the improvements should start paying off next year. Many of the bugs have now been ironed out of the new instrument operation methods, and we are again able to measure for days if not weeks on end. With the new <a href=\"https:\/\/blueskyproject.io\">Bluesky<\/a>-ready backend infrastructure in place, we can set our minds to <a href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/4303\">exploit the newly enabled functionality<\/a>, and hopefully run some amazing experiments in the process. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Operational statistics are a good way of getting insight on the health of the lab. Let&#8217;s take a look at how the MOUSE did in <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/4353\" title=\"MOUSE performance 2018-2024\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gZ2v-18d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4353"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4360,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions\/4360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}