NAASC Meeting for May 04, 2011

Table of Contents


This agenda is available at https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/NaascMinutes2011May04

Meeting Logistics:

  • Call date: Wednesday, May 04, 2011
  • Call time 13:00 ET or 17:00 UT
  • Duration: 1.0 hr
  • Locations: CV-ER230/TUC-N525/Soc280(SO-conf2)/JAO-Alsacia/JAO-OSF(Science)/NRC
  • Connection for Video:
    • From NRAO select "CV-ER230"
    • hub ip=192.33.117.16
    • alternative ip for Chile only, if above drops: 192.33.117.17
  • USA toll-free Number: 866-675-5385
  • Outside USA Number: +1 517-444-6916
  • Passcode: 8445333#
  • Leader: Hibbard

Attendees:

  • CV: JH, JS, JB, CB, AL, RP, TH, RI, HL, NM, KSharp, RF, AR, TB, DCK, SS, AW
  • TUC:
  • Socorro: HM
  • Canada:
  • Chile: SC
  • Other: KSheth
  • Apologies: Carol (Corsica), NRC (Training event today), MAdams

Action Items

Open Action Items:

Closed Action Items:

ACTION: Everyone
  • WHO: Send names of possible SOC members for s/w development workshop to Crystal and/or Mark L.
  • DUE: 4/14/11
  • DONE: 4/14/11
  • NOTES:
ACTION: Get any constraints from Directors Office/OSO about next NAASC workshop
  • WHO: Carol
  • DUE:
  • DONE: March 25
  • NOTES: Fred OK'd topic; prefers CV for location. OSC discussed and supported the plan. Will add SOC members from ASC and GB.
ACTION: USG review presentations for final "approved" package on Google site
  • WHO: USG
  • DUE: 4/14/11
  • DONE: 4/13/11
  • NOTES:
ACTION: USG update mousepad
  • WHO: USG
  • DUE: 4/14/11
  • DONE: 4/28/11
  • NOTES:

Agenda

  • Personnel
    • Recruiting NAASC postdoc, two Data Analysts, 3 CSV Scientists & JAO Operations Astronomer (last two are based in Chile). Kimberly Scott (Penn) accepted PD position; will start in July. Waiting on other offer. Also coming: John Tobin (Hubble), Arielle Moulee (Janksy), Amy Reines (Einstein Fellow). V. Impellizzeri will assume Commissioning postdoc position at SCO in ~August.
  • Project News (AWootten)
    • Ten 12-m antennas at AOS. First 7m antenna has been accepted; four more have arrived. All four major antenna designs are now undergoing testing within ALMA, and the total number of accepted antennas is now eighteen. See article in most recent eNews article for more details
    • exoplanets.txt: Papers on ALMA's possible role in the investigations of exoplanets
    • ALMA Monthly Reports
    • ALMA Newsletter
  • Group Reports
    • NaascManagement (Carol)
      • UC meeting May 11-12 in GB
      • PEP process is in full swing. Draft of functional evaluations due June 1
        • Which reminds me - I encourage people to produce more of their work as NAASC memos, and these can be listed on CV's etc. as "Technical Publications". e.g., Helpdesk IT3 report, Correlator slides by postdocs, "clean box" method provided to pipeline group.
        • Process: either use the NAASC memo template at (https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/ALMA/NAASCMemoSeries; also linked of main wiki page) & send to Lyndele, or send in any format to Lyndele and she will put into template format, issue number, and post.
      • ANASAC (AWootten). Last telecon: Arpil 21, 2pm ET. See Agenda. They are discussing topics for next NAASC workshop (location?). See item 4 for links to ASAC material, including charges. Suggested charge: Discuss the science case for changing the range of ALMA Band 1 from 31.3-45 GHz to 34(?)-53 GHz. What science drives the low frequency end of this band?
      • ALMA Development including text of proposed Call (internal only). Call still waiting to go out. R. Prestage will coordinate NRAO response to call.
      • Science Communications & EPO (T. Burchel/Lyndele)
        • 4 ALMA/NAASC articles in latest NRAO eNews (May 6 release)
        • At end of meeting, JS showed video footage from AOS and OSF fly-overs. EPO should send some video clips to April Burke
        • TB reported: MEXT requires public image release by July. Will use Antenna SV data. Working with BKent, KSheth, APeck
    • UserSupportGroup (Carol)
      • See USG2011May02Minutes
      • Upcoming training events: Gainsville (May 2-3), Victoria (May 4-5), Iowa (May 9-10), Charlottesville (May 9), Quebec (May 10), Arizona (May 12-13), Calgary (May 12-13), Boston/AAS (May 23-24), Amherst (May 25), Tri-state (May 27), Ontario (June 3). Sheesh!!!
      • Fred said to make sure to include good promo for GBT, EVLA during these events. Important to NSF. See "Synergy" folder on pan-ARC google site
    • DataServicesGroup (Mark)
      • See DataServicesMeetingMinutes
      • VPN tunnel from Charlottsville to Santiago is now up and ready for archive replication tests (waiting on CIPT and OS upgrades/alignments to the NGAS system here in Cville).
      • "Data Intensive Computing" meeting taking place this week in Greenbank
      • As previously reported, we have to sponsor a s/w development workshop.
    • JAOSupportGroup (John H)
      • See JAOsupportMinutes2011Apr28
      • Ed in Edinburgh meeting w/Pipeline developers. Ed & Nuria to Chile in June.
      • IT4 is on-going. Only Todd and Harvey are testers.
      • Need to submit any desired s/w changes for Cycle 1 to CIPT by May 20
        • Tomorrows JSG meeting will concentrate on desired changes to OT for Cycle 1
      • Updated version of Technical Handbook should be circulated this weekend. Final comment by next week.
      • New content in Science Portal to be deployed May 13. Major change: inclusion of Technical Handbook
      • Need to start planning NAASC-wide training on ALMA data (target date for SV data release to public=June 1).
    • Imaging/Data Tiger Team (Crystal) will meet tomorrow
      • NM, AK, RF updated CASAguides for R3.2. New stable available, version >14950.
      • Need help for June1: data & script for TW Hy B7 data needs reviewed. B9 data needs looked at
    • News from NRC (Schieven)
      • They cannot attend - conducting Community Event today in Victoria
    • News from Taiwan (Aaron)
      • Would like to hold joint workshop with us in Hawaii, Fall 2012
  • Main Topic:
    • EPO video
    • Report from Helpdesk Admins f2f meeting by ARemijan (April 13-14, Garching)
      • Big message: Read the staff manual and know the expected processes!! Staff manual posted to Helpdesk area of pan-ARC google site. We are learning as we go. Have not fully worked out process for getting bug reports into a DSO JIRA system, but we are working on it. Also Kelly is working on ways so staff can track tickets that are passed to the other ARCs. Stay tuned for details.
    • Results from "Notice of Intent" submissions:
      • Total received=601
      • Breakdown by Category
        • Cosmology & highz=22%
        • galaxies/nuc=27%
        • ISM/sf=38%
        • stellar/solar=13%
      • Breakdown by Configuration
        • Compact=63%
        • Extended=54%
      • Breakdown by Band
        • B3=50%
        • B6=53%
        • B7=60%
        • B9=37%
      • DRSPvsNoI.txt: Comparison of 2003 DRSP numbers with NoI numbers
    • Report from Helpdesk Admins f2f meeting (April 13-14, Garching)
  • Any Other Business

Additional Supporting Material

NAASC items submitted to JAO for April 2011 Monthly report

Hiring activities

Job ads for NAASC Data Analyst positions were posted.

JAO support

Stuartt Corder & Kartik Sheth provided support to the JAO Science team in Chile, including: execution & reduction of Science Verification data; improvement of observing scripts & data reduction scripts including application of Tsys for FDM modes in CASA; gave lectures at JAO on CASA reduction, analysisUtils, and Simdata; completed a workplan for calibrator catalog work & coordinated the effort for filling the catalog. The NA Imaging "Tiger Team" continued the review and evaluation ALMA SV datasets (TW Hyd, NGC 4038/9, HD107146) and analysis of "birdies".

Contributed and reviewed drafts of Technical Assessment Guidelines and Technical Handbook. Produced Helpdesk IT3 test report.

Software Development & testing

Software testing for CASA release 3.2 and planning for R3.3 cycle; refinement of CASA imaging tasks. Provided write-up in clean-box algorithm to pipeline group. Updated CASAguides for R3.2. Posted ES configuration files for use with ALMA simulators. Updated and added molecular and atomic transitions in splatalogue. Discovered & rectified spam vulnerability on ALMA science portal.

Finalized remote site fail-over for ALMA Helpdesk and NA instance of ALMA Science Portal.

Conferences and workshops

The NAASC supported ALMA Community Day events at STScI in Baltimore (Apr18; ~50 participants), at the University of Toronto (Apr 18-19; ~25 participants), at the Harvard-Smithsonian CfA (Apr 20; ~90 participants), and at the NRAO Charlottesville (Apr 26-27; ~20 participants). ALMA-related colloquium at University of Kentucky. Planning and preparation for the summer AAS-Boston meeting,

Other

Participated in face-2-face meeting of Helpdesk administrators in Garching, April 13-14. Fielded ~1 dozen helpdesk articles. Wrote "knowledgebase" articles for the ALMA Helpdesk. Contributed ALMA articles to the NRAO Newsletters. Telecon with ANASAC, discussing progress for ALMA Early Science, next NAASC science workshop, current ASAC charges.

Revised call and management plan for NA Development Studies program & provided to NSF for review.
Topic revision: r2 - 2011-05-08, JohnHibbard
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