ANASAC telecon Dec 10, 2015 (Note takers: Douglas, Alberto, Dan and Karin)

In attendance: Al, Alberto, Dan, Douglas, Karin, Rachel, Shep, Tony R., Laura

'>>> Resulting ANASAC action items / future items to discuss
'>> ANASAC priorities for Cycle 5
'>> GTO for development projects
'>> Statement on hard vs soft conflicts in call for proposals (Karin)
'>> Check with John whether there is a change to PI name placement on proposals (Karin)

'>>> NAASC
'>> Transitions
Tony Remijan appointed new NAASC Manager Lyndele von Schill appointed new Director NRAO Office of Diversity & Inclusion M. Ivory new NAASC-Admin. Asst. C. Vlahakis at NAASC from JAO S. Stierwalt begins 14 Dec 2015

'>> ALMA Cycle 4 pre-announcement on ~10 December — the pre-announcement is temporarily stuck, but will probably be released Monday next week.
Call for Proposals with detailed information on Cycle 4 (Oct 2016-Sept 2017) will be issued on 24 March 2016, with expected deadline 21 April. New modes: Compact Array stand-alone mode Large Programs Millimeter wavelength very long baseline observations Solar observations

'>> Cycle 5 capabilities start commissioning soon.
What are the priorities of the ANASAC? Spectral Scan mode is high on the list. Not commissioned so far because of lack of manpower: Tony suggests to invite people who may want to work on commissioning it. Solar was commissioned by an external team. NAASC will obtain a list of people who proposed to use it. let’s ask them if any is interested. What are ANASAC priorities for cy5? TonyR wants this from us Shep asks about VLBI as large programs. Nominally it’ll be treated as you’d expect (>50h = Large). But large can’t be non-standard modes. Need to get agreement on whether ‘mission’ observations such as VLBI count as non-standard. Note added by JH: VLBI are definitely NS for Cy4 (see OT doc Sec. 4.1) Several OT updates: OT needs to handle ACA-only Other ASAC-requested OT updates appear not to be prioritized. List of items exist and will be sent to Tony.

'>>> Discussion of NA Development proposals
'>> ALMA development studies approved by the NSF.
Approved studies include: Last slate approved by NSF. Correlator improvement - more channelization Correlator expansion in 8-10 years. (Weintroub, plus Carlson who built VLA correlator) Visualization project (Rosen, Kern and others) Al will send out full details. It will be in the E-news.

'>>> Principles of Development
document is still under revision — Pierre is in charge of committee still being formed to complete this. Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) appears in the current document, but may be going away. I.e. it is currently unclear whether GTO can be part of a development project, since different drafts have different statements. Shep led discussion on rules for VLBI proposals and his experience with working with JAO to commission mm-VLBI (including GTO discussions). Should there be GTO? It's an important motivator, but there are drawbacks. It'd be important to have an ANASAC position.

'>>> Principles of ALMA Proposal Review Process document
Details of definition of duplication vs science overlap discussed. CXO provides hard and soft conflict categories. Currently a spectrum of opinions within ANASAC on how important it is to not ‘duplicate’ e.g. continuum observations toward the same source at different frequencies, what the relative responsibilities of the PIs and panels are on catching soft conflicts, and how lack of self-reporting of soft conflicts could be policed. Karin will draft statement and send to John and circulate to ASAC on the issue of ‘soft conflicts’ vs ‘actual’ duplications.

'>>> Proposal acceptance by demographics
Some discussion at f2f. Following on HST study of gender success difference. Maybe CXO and Spitzer as well. Small HST changes (including removing PI name from proposal front page) didn’t reduce the effect. An initial study exists for ALMA and is in Pierre's hands In addition ALMA will start to gather demographic information — right now we do not have it. Based on HST studies alone, do we really need the PI name in big letters in the front page? Probably not. Has this already been addressed? Note from JH: Yes; in Cy4 will not be in big letters on front.

'>>> Registration open for "Molecular Gas in Galactic Environments", a 4-day
Workshop, 4-7 April 2016, Charlottesville, organised by NAASC

'>>> 2016 ALMA Science Meeting - need ANASAC volunteers for the SOC. Already have several from NA.

'>>> Recompetition
AUI successful in Recompetition bid for NRAO - Notified on 20 Nov 2015

-- AlWootten - 2015-12-11