ANASAC telecon Sept. 3 notes by Laura Chomiuk, supplemented by Rachel Osten
attending: Phil Jewell, Al Wootten, Karin Oberg, John Carpenter, Laura Chomiuk, Carol Lonsdale, Alberto Bolatto, Rachel Osten


1. NAASC (Jewell)
Transitions
--John Carpenter will be leaving ASAC and ANASAC to assume his new role as Observatory Scientist.
-Thanks to John!
--Rachel Osten proposed for his seat as vice-chair on ASAC.
--Replacement for Rachel's position as chair of ANASAC needed.
-vice-chair of ASAC can't also be chair of ANASAC (as ASAC vice-chair becomes ASAC chair)
-Rachel emailed ANASAC looking for volunteers. Perhaps has one.
--We are also moving ahead with filling vacancies on ANASAC. NRAO cognizant of ANASAC suggestion to have more people involved than ASAC+Taiwan.
--John Hibbard will be stepping down as NA ARC Manager around 1 Oct. Interviewing for replacement.
-Likely filled in next few days. Will be internal.
-John did a great job! Thanks, John! Please forward ANASAC's gratitude to him.
We all hope he will stay involved in ALMA.


Cycle 2 Project & Data Delivery Status
--Please see attached ppt prepared by John H. on Cycle 2 project completion projections and data delivery status
--Cycle 2 estimated project completion projection is ~81% (John H. projection, with assumptions shown)
-perhaps optimistic. assumes 65% observing efficiency (we've been a bit below this recently)
--About 50% of NA OUSs (cycle 2 data) have been delivered to PIs with another ~20% in the queue (in process or awaiting
assignment)
-Phil's impression from community/IAU- European community getting data faster than NA community.
statistics imply NA is behind Europe in data reduction/release by 8--10%. Not all that significant a gap.
-NAASC is hiring lots of data analysts.
rate of QA2 passes has recently doubled! Will hopefully get more caught up.
-Q: Are you getting lots of requests for ACA+12m combined data?
NAASC doesn't do the combination, but will help out if people ask via helpdesk. Often get a request per week.
Lonsdale will look at statistics of how often requests happen.
-Q: And requests for total power data?
A little bit. Not too much yet.


ALMA Construction-Vertex Antenna Plan
--Two Vertex Antennas, one with good surface vs temp performance (DV06) and one with out-of-spec performance (DV09) were
equipped with an array of thermocouple sensors in the receiver cabin and yoke arms.
started logging data around 2015 Aug 1
--Temp measurements were logged in conjunction with a series of astro-holography measurements using these two antennas
and two additional "control" antennas
--Temp data is being compared with assumptions of thermal models used to construct antennas, namely that telescope
structure was at uniform ambient temp, and cabin was at a different uniform temp maintained by the HVAC system.
--Any gradients found will be modeled by Vertex to determine if they can account for surface rms / astigmatism departures
observed (principally at low temps)
-First look at data from NAASC implies some temp gradients.
-No gradients should be there in specs. Something is amiss and needs to be examined. Hopeful lead!
-Vertex is primarily responsible for interpreting data.

--Q: average delivery time for QA2?
-there is the time to go through pipeline. This is the hands of JAO.
-if it needs imaging, can be 1--2 weeks of imaging time.
-the manual reduction that doesn't go through pipeline can be more like 4 weeks.
-it would be good to have the numbers in hand. What is typical, and standard deviation?
quite variable depending on pipeline backlog.
will try to present numbers in future.

1. Program Scientist (Wootten)
--September eNews copy for ALMA
-Additional SV data on M100 (combining 12m array, ACA and TP data) and 3C238 (polarization) was published at end
of July.

--Right now on the array: It is Cycle 2 the final EoC week.
-Weather conditions last night: Wind speed: 1.1 - 11.3 [m/s], PWV: 2.9 - 4.2 [mm], Temperature: -4.5 - 2.5 [∞C]
(all 13 executions at 3mm, 82% efficiency)
-Several antennas have now been moved to the extremities of the array in preparation for the 2nd Long Baseline
Campaign.

--ALMA Proposal Review process redux (a report on Cycle 3 will appear soon in the Science Portal)
-ALMA Cycle 3 highest priority project abstracts are published
-User Survey for Cycle 3 proposal submission published to Science Portal.
high rate of response!
-ALMA Status Report: August 2015 A status report was published which includes the Cycle 2 observing progress,
project components that can no longer be observed, completion and data delivery summary, and an EOC activity update.
-Cycle 3 panel rankings were announced. Feedback?

--Q: impressions from user survey?
-similar comments about OT behavior. not too many surprises, much is reflected by helpdesk tickets.
-complaints about technical justification, complexity of information and organization.
-same survey goes to all alma regions.
-there is a document about summary results are in the alma portal.
-overall user satisfaction is good.
-most mediocre rankings - OT template library and ease of use of finding information on portal
-not much difference region by region.
-focused on proposal process this time.
-50% response rate from PIs.
sent survey out faster, seemed to help.

--Q: are there any trends with time reflected in the user survey (compared with past?)
-not sure yet.

--ACA query from Deputy Director S. Corder.
-Proposal for ACA: Stand alone operations and Executive Balance: Proposal for ACA stand alone operational model
and executive balance Note Do not Distribute this document outside of ANASAC
-Purpose of document- in cycle 4, ACA will likely be offered as stand-alone to fill in under-subscribed time.
Corder asked how ACA-only time should be charged to regions?
across all ACA time or ACA-only time?
Concluded ACA-only time should be divided amongst regions as its own thing (not combined with ACA+12m)
-12m+ACA time would be top priority on ACA. ACA-only is filler.
-not necessarily ranked so that best science is always highest priority.
-does anasac agree this is the right thing to do?
-Q: doesn't the tac rank aca science at the same time as other alma science? why not just let science
priority stand?
-otherwise worried that ACA becomes its own stand-alone telescope.
-some concern that if ACA-only can be prioritized, it increase the risk of double jeopardy for those
requestiong ACA+12m?
-so- we disagree with European/EA position. how much do we want to push back?
would be good to understand why they favor this position.
probably not in a position to push back very hard.

--Q: there are two surveys that have been approved, in same part of sky, same band.
what is alma's plan to reconcile these two teams?
-there was a lot of angst in approving them.
-not sure what was concluded.
there should be guidelines for such conflicts.
-it seems like it was sort of left to proposal review panel to deal with the question, which isn't really
appropriate.
-conflicts in deep fields will continue to arise.

--ASAC f2f meeting October 14-15, 2015, in Mitaka, Japan
-ASAC Charges for October 2015 meeting in Mitaka: Charges from ALMA Board
-would be good to have a telecon to check in about charges beforehand.
-Status of ANASAC Proposal for (non-)rollover at end of Cycle - ANASAC expressed concern that for our yearly
cycles there will always be 5mo of uncompleted observations at the time of the call. 401 A+B ranked proposals were
accepted; 25% of these were ranked 'A' decreasing the chances of those proposals needing resubmission.
-Principles of the ALMA Proposal Review Process (Rev6): Principles of Proposal Review Process v6

--Development: The deadline for submissions in response to the ALMA/NA Call for Development Studies issued in March was
12 June. 15 valid proposals were received from 56 proposers representing 20 institutions requesting a total of $2.528M;
$1M is available. The proposals have been reviewed and ranked by referees as nominated by ANASAC. The funded studies are
expected to begin on 1 October 2015.
-can probably fund top 6.
-good representation by community.
-gets complicated---often times projects depend on developments that still need to occur.
-process could be improved.

--ANASAC, NAASC Meetings and Workshop
-Next NAASC Workshop. Molecular gas beyond the Milky Way: astronomy and astrochemistry in extragalactic
environments April 4-8 2016, Charlottesville in process.
-ALMA Conference
-Tokyo: Proceedings were submitted last month. NAOJ approved color printing of the 350 page volume.
-Next one in the US at a place and Time to be determined (Sept 2016 timeframe) Last one was 1999.
Looking at venues in S. California.
-NAASC workshop is east coast, some love to west coast seemed warranted.
-Others of note:
-High Frequency Science Workshop 21-23 September, Green Bank. Registration open.
-Observational Evidence of Gas Accretion onto Galaxies Charlottesville, 9-10 October 2015. Registration open.
-The future of U.S. radio-millimeter-submillimeter science Chicago, Ill 15-17 December 2015. Registration open.
-AAS Kissimmee, Florida 4-8 January 2015 Registration open. Early bird deadline next week.
-Next Generation Very Large Array Workshop: Monday 4 January
-NRAO Town Hall Thursday evening 7 Jan.
-2016 AAAS Annual Meeting(12-15 February 2016, Washington).
-180 Minute Symposium: Planet Formation Seen With Radio Eyes speakers Meredith Hughes, Andrea Isella, &
David Wilner.


--256 ALMA publications in refereed journals so far.


2. Science Operations (Lonsdale)
--Timed Out projects - PIs have been notified. Incomplete datasets will be delivered.
--Data processing: see John's charts.
--The first batch of Cycle 3 SBs are now being prepared: long baseline studies


3. Astronomer Outreach
--Future Planning:
-ALMA Cycle 4 - Documentation review and update
-CDEs for ALMA Cycle 4 - Spring, 2016.
--Other Astronomer Outreach: NAASC TV, JAO ALMA Webpages; ALMA Newsletters; ALMA Science Meetings; ALMA Training Events;
NRAO eNews; NAOJ News.

playing down outreach in favor of data reduction; getting people data quickly deemed more important


4. Date of next meeting
-Late Sep 2015? (TBC)
please fill out doodle poll!
-Proposed dates for 2015 telecons: late September, 5 Nov. Comments please.

--2 NAASC memos-
-Correlator upgrades
-rate of data release



ASAC documents are at edm.alma.cl Usual userid then arc2007
Topic revision: r2 - 2015-09-22, AlWootten
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