NaascMinutes2009Nov04

This agenda is available at https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/NaascMinutes2009Nov04

Contact Information

  • Call date: Wednesday, November 04, 2009
  • Call time 13:00 ET or 18:00 UT
  • Duration: 1.5 hr
  • Locations: CV-ER209/TUC-N525/Soc280(SO-conf2)/JAO-Alsacia/JAO-OSF(Science)/NRC
  • Connection for Video:
    • From NRAO select "Conf Hub IVR"
    • hub ip=192.33.117.12
    • alternative ip for Chile only, if above drops: 192.33.117.17
  • Non toll-free number: 434-244-6834
  • USA toll-free Number: 866-675-5385
  • Outside USA Number: +1 517-444-6916
  • Passcode: 8445333#
  • Leader: Hibbard

Attendees

  • CV: MT, ML, AW, RF, BK, CB, HL, JM, CL, MA, RI, KS, JH, AE (phone)
  • Soc: Nick E.
  • GB:
  • Canada: BM, GS, DJ
  • Tuc:
  • Chile: AR, JdF
  • Other:

Action Items from past meetings (RED=OPEN)

  • ACTION: Send possible CSV support travel dates for CY2010 to JHibbard
    • WHO: Brogan, Hunter, Indebetouw, Mangum, Lacy, Liszt, Sci13-15
    • DUE: Nov 13
    • DONE:
    • NOTES: see NAASC2Chile. Only need JM & Sci13-15
  • ACTION: Collect input from all NAASC for update to ALMA primer
    • WHO: DJ/GS
    • DUE: Nov 13
    • DONE:
  • ACTION: Send any changes made to ALMA primer material as it is incorporated in NAASC webpages to DJ/GS
    • WHO: A.Evans
    • DUE: Nov 13
    • DONE:
  • ACTION: Develop & deploy "who are we" page for the NAASC
    • WHO: Shanika
    • DUE: Nov 15 (with new NAASC science web pages)
    • DONE:
  • ACTION: Post FAQ for new hires
    • WHO: Shanika with input from Kartik, Mark L., Aaron, other recent hires
    • DUE: Jan 1, 2010
    • DONE:

Action Items from this meeting:

Agenda

  • Project News (APeck/RHills)
    • There is a NA ALMA antenna at the high site!!
    • October ALMA Newsletter is available
    • With DST, this meeting time now conflicts with the JAO Daily Coordination meeting, so Alison and all on-duty JAO scientists would be unable to attend. Should we consider moving to an earlier time? No, Alison thinks it is not worth moving
    • ALMA Operations Astronomer positions are posted at AAS Job Register and NRAO Careers site. Please encourage qualified people to apply.
    • Status Report
    • ASAC Matters.
    • AIV Status
    • ALMA Biweekly Calendar

  • NAASC News (Hibbard/Lonsdale)
    • New application developer hired - Kelly Sharp. Will start just before Thanksgiving. Will work on ALMA User Portal and helpdesk solution, and will be based in e2e office
    • NRAO is trying out installation of kayako helpdesk. Take a look. File a ticket. Will be used for EVLA, and most likely ALMA.
    • Tony is on the home stretch of working in Chile - expected back Nov 13
    • Harvey back from trip to Edinburg to meet with OT group. Sent summary around (distribute more widely?) Yes; send to Gerald. SENT.
    • AOP is being updated to VersE. JH will travel to Chile 12/6 to work on this. Bigger meeting in Chile Jan 19+ to finalize it
    • NAASC will use basecamp for project management
    • NAASC plan writing assignments will be (are?) posted in basecamp. Drafts needed by Nov 23
    • People have been invited by OSAA to join search committee for next NAASC scientists. These people should make a point to meet with all scientific visitors who may be likely candidates
    • Socorro is planing for Synthesis Imaging Summer School in June. Expect many of us to contribute (give lectures and/or tutorials). Usually 2nd week in June. Any constraints from us? (AAS summer meeting will be in May in Miami, so that is not a conflict). Will be June 8-15

  • NRC News (Schieven)
    • James dF is in Chile for CSV support Nov1-Nov24
    • BM will work on CASA primer before AAS

  • ANASAC (AWootten)
    • Report distributed to Lo and Lonsdale.
    • Meeting schedule posted at above website; check for consistency with our needs.
    • Chair moving to U. K. next year.

  • Reports from Working Groups
    • Pipeline (from eSSR wiki)
      • User Test 6 (UT6) is on schedule to start in mid Jan2010. UT6 is the primary focus for pipeline testing right now. Pretesting (done by the developer) is expected to finish up this month (this is a critical step in test preparation). The test scope includes calibration, imaging improvements, small mosaics, and will involve outside users. There may be 6-8 testers (very preliminary number). There has also been significant changes to the user documentation, which will certainly result in user feedback to improve it.
      • NAASC testers: Official - Rachel, Crystal. Unofficial - John, Brenda, Kartik. JH: ask Ed Fomalont
    • CASA (Crystal)
      • Next release (3.0) will be December. This is a VERY IMPORTANT release, as it will be the version used for EVLA early science. Will need LOTS of real-world testing. Developer freeze in Oct, test in Nov.
    • ObsPrep (incl. ObsTool=OT) (Harvey)
      • OT "Auto-Deployed" version. Can be used now to get experience with OT, but its a very unstable version and not always available
      • Beta release April 2010.
    • Technical Assessment WG (Harvey, Todd, Jeff, Crystal):
    • Casapy simulator (Remy)
      • Nov 23: vidcon about current capabilities, planning for sim library (EU ARC), connections to ASDM and OT. This is being coordinated with a single dish meeting in SOC, so the date may change slightly. Need input from Elias.Moved to Nov19, 10:30-12:30 local time
      • Jan 11/12 CV: implementation workshop - more detailed tutorials on working with simdata and Simulator, work on web interface (EU), discussion of atmospheric corruption with Bojan, etc.
      • Early science configs will be delivered in 3.0 - updated examples are being posted at the https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/SimulatorCookbook wiki
    • ALMA Archive (Mark L)
      • UP developer hired; DBA, Archive Tech jobs being defined
      • Group planning a trip to Garching early next year
    • Splatalogue (Tony)
      • Once Tony gets back from Chile, will start process of defining subset of spectral lines that should be included in CASA & Obstool for offline use (email from CIPT).
    • EPO (J. Stoke)
    • Science User Outreach/Webpages (M. Adams/A.Evans)
    • NAASC Workshops (Aaron)
    • Upcoming Science Meetings: (Al)
      • A 'Science with ALMA Band 5' (163-211 GHz) workshop will take place in March in Rome.
      • Other Meetings are now listed on the google ALMA Science Meetings calendar
    • Upcoming NAASC Science Visitors (see google calendar NAASC Visitors)

Additional Supporting Material

NAASC items submitted to JAO for October Monthly report

Hiring activities
  • Hired Software Application Developer to work on ALMA helpdesk and User Portal solutions
  • Continued interviews for Web Content Manager
  • Set up search Committee for next three NAASC science hires
  • Drafted FAQ for new NAASC hires

JAO support
  • Continued CSV liaison duties in Chile including turnos to the OSF
  • Provided feedback on report from Science Operations review.
  • Worked on revision of ALMA Operations Plan
  • Drafted FAQ for NA support to Chile
  • Provided JAO with NA ARC staffing plans and memo on 2009 budget and spare procurement plans

Software Development & testing
  • Participated in face-to-face meeting with Obsprep development team & Subsystem Scientist to work on Technical Assessment and proposal reports and guidelines, and OT usability issues
  • Continued working on 2-D fitting task in CASA. Added feature for fitting multiple Gaussians
  • CASA pre-release testing for release 3.0, particularly tasks related to imaging, simulation, and image analysis
  • developed mediawiki platform & content for CASA use cases (casaguides.nrao.edu)
  • Lead discussion on ALMA data rate needs
  • User support of CASA, including the ALMA simulator ("simdata")
  • Developed use cases for NA ALMA mirror pipeline

Conferences and workshops
  • Attended & gave presentations at ESO workshop: "Data Needs for ALMA"
  • Attended & gave presentations at "2009 CARMA Science Symposium"
  • Gave colloquium on ALMA status and capabilities at U.Az
  • Published article on 4th NAASC workshop ": Assembly, Gas Content and Star Formation History of Galaxies" in NRAO eNews and compiled "Lessons Learned"
  • Developed multimedia content & Town Hall planning for winter AAS meeting (to be held Jan 2010)
  • Developed material for Supercomputing 2009 conference (to be held Nov 2009)
  • Planning for international meetings on ALMA simulation effort and future development

Other
  • Participated in NRAO Open House in Charlottesville (1200 visitors)
  • Continued redesign & content generation for NAASC Science User web pages
  • Installed & evaluating "basecamp" as collaborative work environment
  • Investigated potential ALMA development projects

Notes on NAASC Science Web - A.Evans

The redesigned NRAO science website is located at http://science.nrao.edu/beta/index.shtml

Mark Adams can speak in more detail about the new NRAO pages as a whole.

The redesigned ALMA/NAASC science website, in its present form, is under the "Research Facilities" tab, i.e., http://science.nrao.edu/naasc/index.shtml

Note that the sidebar tabs are identical to those of other NRAO facilities pages. Examining the other facility pages will provide a better picture of what a filled-in ALMA/NAASC page will look like just prior to the early science call.

Specific comments -

1) The "Outreach" link under "About ALMA/NAASC" currently has nothing to do with Outreach. We should decide what we really want here. (Note that we may want to preserve some of the links to presentations presently here and put them under "Publications -> Presentations".)

2) Several of the sections ("Helpdesk", "Early Science", "Science Data Archive") contain "stayed tuned" text, and require beefing up after solid progress has been made in these areas. A couple of the links ("Financial Support", "ALMA Project Status") are currently inactive.

3) The "Observing Proposals" and "Observing" links contain, to a large part, text taken from the NRC "ALMA Primer" document. This text needs to be trimmed. These links should eventually contain links to OTC and CASA User Guides and Tutorials.

4) The "Science Software and Tools" contains links to various packages. It's not clear if these links are necessarily the correct ones. This section can be beefed up as the software approaches its early science release versions, and as tutorials are written.

5) The "People" link contains links to NAASC members' individual home pages. I assume that a short description of NAASC duties and science interests will be listed below each name. I think we can also remove the trailing "Ph.D." from each listing.

6) The "Publications" link is woefully incomplete.

7) The "Science with ALMA" link on the Main ALMA website http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/about-alma/science-and-technology/science-with-alma?showall=1 is worth adapting in some form for the NAASC site. Note that Academia Sinica has a similar site http://alma.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/AS/AS.html

General Comments -

8) Many of the links take the website user out of the /naasc/ directory. Some of the content already has been copied to /naasc/, but it's not clear we want to do this in all cases (e.g. the CASA website). Do we?

9) Where should the internal staff page links go (e.g. wikis)? The outside world doesn't need to see these pages.

-aa

-- JohnHibbard - 2009-11-30
Topic revision: r3 - 2009-12-02, JohnHibbard
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