Aug 9, 2016 Minutes

Present: Karin Oberg, Alberto Bolatto, Al Wootten, Phil Jewell, Loren Anderson, Douglas Scott, Apologies: Dan Marrone, Rachel Osten, Tony Remijan

Topics - Notes from previous meeting: https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/28Apr16Minutes - New Business under Discussion: https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/9Aug16Agenda

Specific action items for ANASAC members: - collect feedback from community on feedback to PIs in Cycle 4 and send to Karin/anasac - send comments on C4 proposal process - give (specific) feedback on interactions with SnooPI - read ANASAC response draft and comment, i.e. is anything missing that should be addressed/included in the final version?

Specific action items for NAASC: - need data on how NA did compared to other executives - ANASAC would like to see distribution of time requests for submitted and accepted proposals - ANASAC would also like an updated C3 progress report, including a completion and carry-over projection

Discussion Items

1. NAASC Cycle 4 proposal outcomes: 707 total approved. 202 approved NA projects (A: 54, B: 101, 47:C from Project Tracker). 243 NAASC responsibility (includes Chile, Other). Two large proposals approved, one about substructure in disks with NA PI (Sean Andrews), EU, Ch involvement, another about deep observations of the UDF with EU PI (Fabian Walter), NA, Ch involvement.

- Beginning in October, projects will be observed in the following priority order: (1) any remaining Cycle 3 Grade A projects, (2) Cycle 4 Grade A, (3) Cycle 4 Grade B, and (4) Cycle 4 Grade C. - New for Cycle 4: PI generates SBs; See Science Portal News Item, Contact Scientist assignments ongoing, will contact PIs soon. Why the change? The pressure of 706 proposals is too much for the P2G group so there's a new plan. If you have trouble, please contact your CS. Most SB generation should be straightforward, however. Use the new Cyc4 OT, released late last week. If using the webstart, close it and restart to download the new one. Or get a new tarball from the science portal. The new version should have PhaseII(u1) in the name on the title bar when the OT is running. The deadline for submission of the Scheduling Blocks is September 15, 2016, at 15h00 UT. - Results up on SnooPI before the e-mails came out by 8-9 hours. Project Tracker no longer publicly available, so if community wants it they should ask. NAASC will look into restoring access if requested. Is there a middle ground between the oversimplicity of SnooPI and the complexity of the PT? Again, the community should request it. ANASAC did ask Al to to request that PI (and co-I) access to the project tracker is restored ASAP, since SnooPI does not display the relevant information. - Aaron to post the titles and abstracts of accepted Cycle 4 projects soon on the Science Portal. - Karin would like to collect feedback about how PIs are informed and bring to the ASAC. The feedback appears to be more thoughtful in this round than in previous rounds - thanks possibly to John Carpenter's influence. Summarize grumblings from community, since there's probably no post-review survey planned. Maybe too much information is given? Hard to judge since little specific feedback can be even more annoying. Please give Karin info before ASAC meeting. - Rankings took a while to finish because the software for determining RA pressure needed to be perfected. This process needs to be sped up in the future, and it should be if the software now works. - How did NA proposals rank against those from other partners? Need some feedback on that. Al may be able to extract such info from the PT. - Typical length of a proposal? Not known as info is not in the PT but the information may come later. A rough estimate is 4-6 hours. Informal estimate of 2900 scheduling blocks has come from from P2G.

- News: Taiwan has signed an agreement to join the ALMA NA Operations Partner-ship, replacing their constructions partnership. Their contribution will be on software. Arrangement is somewhat analagous to that with Canada, have an ASIAA CASA centre and in-kind support for ARC activities and cash for Chilean operations.

- Charges to ASAC Oct 2016 - Eva Schirriner is now the Chair of the ASAC - ASAC suggestions for plots/documents for standing ASAC standing charges - we don't have the material yet to properly discuss the charges. As they become available Karin will prepare an editable document to collect the ANASAC opinions to be presented at the ASAC f2f meeting. There is a charge about the proposal process for which info should be collected soon while the process is fresh in everyone's mind. Any specific comments about the charges would be welcome. Please email to anasaconly email list - ASAC telecon last week: Douglas attended and it was short, not much dramatic was discussed. Minutes sent to the ANASAC. - permanent charges same as always - ad hoc charges are on development roadmap, some discussion before on how this works with the ALMA 2030 documents. Also, improvements on the proposal process, seems that feedback was thoughtful but maybe too long. Feedback on SnooPI needed, since seems occasionally unreliable and non-intuitive to use. - The project does not do a good job of checking the software that it deploys (e.g., OT, SnooPI, etc. are buggy). - Problem still exists entering the PI info online (demographics). A ticket exists but there has been slow progress on it (clicking submit deletes the information!)

- Preliminary Response to the ANASAC f2f May 2016 Report now posted on the wiki just prior to the meeting, probably too soon for everyone to have digest it. Lots of information in there. If there are particular issues or questions you'd like addressed now, we can do that now. Karin: anything NRAO should bring to our attention? Phil: we have addressed everything the ANASAC requested. Please look at it over the next few days and provide feedback so we can move it its final version. - Cycle 3 progress update: - most recent progress is about one month old. At that point, there 408 A+B+C proposals accepted, 236 have at least one successful execution block performed. Projection of how many projects will be carried over to Cycle 4? 80% of projects will be likely carried out. - any idea of why Band 10 has only ~1 hour of successful execution? It's been difficult weather-wise this Cycle. There are also very few projects for Band 10 and only a subset had the right RA for when the array was in the compact configuration. Amount of Band 9/10 time in compact configuration is very small. Thought to return to that configuration later to pick up those projects but other pressures kept array at more extended configurations through the end of Cycle 3.

- Meeting updates: Futures II(just ended), Development Workshop, ALMA5Years - Futures II report from Alberto: very few young people and few women around at the meeting. Considerably more interesting than the previous one, more focus. Very nice presentations given, good presentation about NGVLA. Also a session on small, new add-ons to telescopes. Tony Beasley putting together a Science Advisory Committee for the NGVLA. Call for the community to help with projects related to NGVLA. Plan to fund ~6 study projects, at the $10-25K level with a call coming out very soon, and proposals written by September. Maybe too fast? Nominal brightness temperature sensitivity for NGVLA at 100 GHz not as good as ALMA. Moving configurations can help but that is expensive. Maybe there's a compromise somewhere. Meeting presentations are available online. - Development workshop, here in CV on August 24-25. See schedule online at meeting website. Pierre Cox and John Carpenter will be present and discussions about ongoing development progress. Titles not yet given. Possible to attend remotely. Successful Cycle 4 Development Study and Projects will be announced soon and will incorporated into the workshop, but not until approved projects are known. Plans for next Cycle is in the works. Upcoming call will emphasize the high-impact ideas for ALMA2030. - ALMA5Years meeting upcoming. Schedule has come out (see website). There will be a discussion there on development led by Pierre Cox. As of this morning, there are 206 registrants in total with a goal of 250. There will be a workshop about the Japanese correlator and a postdoc symposium associated with the larger meeting.

- Look forward to Cycle 5: process of determining what capabilities will be available for Cycle 5 has begun and a preliminary plan will be decided in a few weeks, at the time of the capabilities deadline.

2. ALMA Development - No specific updates beyond what was given above.

3. News - Al is planning a Cycle 4 proposal wrap-up for the NRAO eNews to come out on August 15. -- AlWootten - 2016-08-15
Topic revision: r1 - 2016-08-15, AlWootten
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