News and Information

Please inform Lyndele of any visitor you might have. She will coordinate with the wider NRAO and can help with arrangements, including getting an office assigned.

Alison will be visiting the week after Thanksgiving, to improve communications between JAO and the ARCs. She’ll attend all group meetings that week.

NAASC staff should provide a calendar of their absences. The USG has established such a calendar so this will be broadened to all NAASC staff. Please send information about absences, including contact information, to Lyndele.

AAS regular registration closes tomorrow. Please get your registration done if you haven’t already done so.

There is an opportunity for a small number of NAASC staff to attend the Science Operations IPT face-to-face meeting at HIA on January 18-19 (and afternoon of the 17th). Contact John if you might want to attend. Kartik , Al and Crystal may attend for the first.

Tomorrow, Thursday, is NAASC attendance day at the pipeline meeting that has been ongoing all week.

Main Event (John)

John mentioned the most important issues for each of the 5 policy WGs to deal with (see Agenda2010Nov16). The progress will be maintained on the Science Ops Policies wiki.

There is not yet clarity about how users will be able to ensure that they will get adequate u-v coverage and dynamic range as well as adequate sensitivity. John stated that the SBs will be allowed to be contiguous, but not to be cadenced. Baltasar was quoted as having stated that users will be able to fully meet their needs by specifying required sensitivity and dynamic range, explained in the technical section. This issue needs to be resolved and a summary written for the the Primer, which needs to be printed for the AAS. Crystal recommended that a good way to force the issue would be to generate a proposal that tests Baltasar's statement.

Science and CSV (Al and Stuartt)

A few SBs for the cosmic eyelash and beta pic were done, both at band 7, despite problems with the band. Richard has been working on ES modes and on estimating data rates. Al will circulate the list of modes that Richard is presenting to the Board this week. Calibration in band 3 is not working; there has been difficulty getting on source. WVR is coming along slowly.

Tiger team: TNC-1 data with HCN brought over by Tony. Scott is working on it.

Stuartt: band 7 data is not entirely usless because can toss out the antennas with large cross terms.

User Support Group (Crystal)

Tony summarized registration (now closed) for the meeting and tutorial: ~100 outside participants for the meeting, and 63 for the tutorial (46 of whom are attending the conference). There are 14 trainers; 6 haven’t paid yet. There will be an LOC meeting soon; there also needs to be an SOC meeting very soon.

TTT was really successful and people learned a lot. We need more training; it would be nice to train on a specific tool next time, but that causes difficulties for our international colleagues.

The primer is needed for AAS and there is concern that the ES capabilities can be firmed up enough in time for the AAS publication timescale. Kartik is working on the mousepads.

Scott has drafted a visitor policy document, which can be reviewed at the ESG page. There is a new NRAO facility brochure under development and we need to update the two ALMA pages, deadline Dec. 8.

Adam has sent out an email about conference attendance. Staff are encouraged to attend conferences of interest in the US and talk to people about ALMA.

Data Services Group (Mark)

Mark is on travel and there was no report from DSG except that the CASA release is expected very soon.

JAO Support Group (John)

Integrated Test 3 will be discussed on tomorrow's SciOpsIPT on telecon; JAO may want to push it back into Jan or Feb. Everyone is expected to participate in IT3.

JAO would like to announce the ES timeline at the AAS; the ARCs have requested a soft announcement in December.

John asked who owns OT guides? There is confusion on this because it crosses all three groups. Moreover Europe is writing more help for OT, and EA will upgrade the walkthrough, therefore it is not clear that OT guides are needed. The management team needs to sort this out. Should be a WG for joint documentation.

The Jira system will also be an item for IPT telecon; neither OT nor the ASA have a Jira system.

AOB

Carol and John are working on the WBS numbers for each staff member; we will distribute a WBS cheat sheet so everyone knows what they're charging to. However most of the time you can just use percentage entry and not worry about the codes. Exceptions are Chile duty and volunteer EPO effort. Crystal requested that we have an ETK training session.

-- CarolLonsdale - 2010-11-17
Topic revision: r3 - 2010-11-18, JohnHibbard
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