Minutes USG May 2, 2011

1. Review of Pending Items:
  • CLOSED Review and comment on new draft technical handbook (all - comments to JH by COB last week Thursday)
    • John reported that all the comments were there and sent on to the JAO. New draft of the Technical handbook will be circulated in about a week. No new action item needed.
  • CLOSED Review and recommend any changes to Science Portal (all - due COB last week Thursday to Jim)
    • No comments were sent to Jim who reports that all this material has been vetted many times so the lack of comments is not surprising.
    • CLOSED: Kartik had a comment about misleading or incorrect wording on the ALMA Basics page - emailed Jim & Tommy. Tommy reports that this is already fixed and will show up in the May 15 release of the Science Portal.
  • OPEN Write Knowledge base articles on recommended pwv's and central observing frequencies (Scott)
    • Scott reports that while getting a handle on the pwv is pretty straightforward (can be obtained from the OT), the delta pwv is not well-understood, or at least well-documented. Suggestions were made for tracking down the official documentation from Al or the JAO.
    • Scott also reports that Todd may have some suggestions for the central observing freq.
  • OPEN Helpdesk tracking issue with the Ephemeris tickets (Tony)
    • Ticket has been put to draft; has not been tested or implemented; No documentation on how to put ephemeris into OT yet. Waiting on CSV or and/or Richard for further guidance. Tell people - we will try and do this on a best efforts basis - if pushed can say, the capability does not exist yet.
  • OPEN Development of an on-line mm course or creation of chapters for basic astrophysics for non-mm experts.
    • Jim Braatz has agreed to lead this. He will design the framework of what this course or chapters etc. should contain. He will recruit Carilli's help at the moment and then involve Keohane (sabbatical visitor) in this work. The framework may involve different approaches (ppt slide show, chapters added to other radio interferometry courses, etc.) for different audiences.
  • OPEN Develop a single, master ppt presentation template for CDE tutorials (Lyndele w/ Mark Adams)
    • Mark, Lyndele, Purav will do it this week.
  • CLOSED WITH FUTURE SUGGESTIONS FOR ENHANCEMENTS: Adam updated the general ALMA meeting poster.
    • It has been posted on the Google Site. May want to consider developing another one for science highlights.
  • CLOSED: Jim and Dong Chan have posted pdfs of the CDE talks on our webpages.
  • DONE BUT NEEDS TO BE REDONE: PDFs from AAS (Aaron) - were posted a long time ago but links ARE broken as we switched to Plone last week. Dong Chan is working on fixing this.
  • OPEN Review Plone website for problems (all)
    • Many broken links. Send problems as you discover them by following this link.
  • BEING DONE / NO INPUT NEEDED: Responded to NSF postdoc mentoring memo (Scott)
    • Scott reports that NSF was concerned about the level of mentoring but for the NAASC postdocs we are doing everything we said in the proposal but we need to be better about reporting it. For the other postdocs, this may still be an issue. Scott is working with Chris Carilli on this. Quarterly and yearly reporting will be improved.
  • BEING DONE / NO INPUT NEEDED: Make and publish a long term visitor program plan (Scott and Aaron)
    • Scott and Aaron are developing a plan for selecting long-term visitors and trying to determine if it will be separate or incorporated into NRAO plan? Fred is in favor of one NRAO plan to which the NAASC would contribute. John notes that we do NOT have any money for anything but data reduction visits in our budget. For now, visitors are to use the NRAO plan (T. Bastion).
  • BEING DONE / NO INPUT NEEDED: Progress on SIMGUIDES/CASAGUIDES
    • Amy has completed updating the casaguide for simdata for v3.2
    • Crystal requested that no one make changes to hierarchy of the webpages (DCK may have made some - needs to be corrected so there are no broken links)
    • Kartik noted that based on Crystal's suggestion at the Tiger team meeting, whomever ends up taking charge of science verification data, should come up with a script in the same format at that used in CASAGUIDES currently so that it can easily be ported into a new casaguide with screen shots. John recommends involving the post-docs in this data reduction and casaguides production process.

2. Task leads reports / new business
  • Documentation (Jim)
    • Oversaw ALMA reference materials carried over to the Green Bank data meeting.
    • New business - develop the framework for a mm-course / ppt / etc. for non-mm experts. Lead the team with Carilli / Keohane
  • Helpdesk (Tony)
    • Recommends that everyone reviewing the Staff Guide which is on the Helpdesk wiki which can be accessed from the Google site.
    • KB article drafts; still waiting for some items / info to complete these.
  • Visitors (Scott)
    • NRAO potential hires coming in the next couple of weeks.
  • Postdoc mentoring (Scott) - see above - working on NSF response w/ Carilli + developing reporting plan.
  • Workshops / meeting attendance (Adam) - No news
  • Tutorials (Kartik)
    • European Community Day has material that we may want to consider adding to our training. More detailed info on how the proposal review might occur should be included in the remaining community day events. John noted that the EU-CDE showed test data/antennae so we should include this in our training? Kartik checked Alison's email and notes that anyone who reduced SV data can show it as long as they have (a) send the script and images to the central imaging group, and (b) cleared this with Richard / Alison and local group leads. It would safest to NOT call things SV data but instead call it test data. Also note that NO data can be LEFT anywhere if it does NOT have a watermark on it - so if a workshop is being filmed or pdfs are being posted - do not include non-watermarked images (EU-ARC did violate this).
    • Charlottesville ES training May 9th only, Auditorium (Robin, Nuria, Scott)
    • OPEN: need to check that presentations are up to date (Kartik)
    • CLOSED Program created for AAS training - will involve: Kartik, John and Stuartt on Day 1, and Al, Tony and Antonio on Day 2.
    • CLOSED Dongchan has set up process for registering for one of two trainings (M & T)
    • Community Day in Amherst on Wed, Community Day at Columbia on Fri
    • CLOSED New mousepad ready and is being created. Many many thanks to Todd and Al for the help with baselines and changes to the mousepad at the last minute. It is in production mode and is posted to the google site. 500 Mousepads being made and paid for by Mark Adams through AUI funds.
    • Pat has requested streamlined process; go through Lyndele to make sure that the right number of primers is ordered.
  • Science web (Aaron)
    • Sci-web meeting on Thursday. Would like photos from AAS for inclusion.
    • OPEN: Add sentence about registering for one of two AAS trainings (Mark - for e-NEWS).
  • NRC
    • This week - W & T event - about 12 registered.
    • Next week - 1 day event in Laval and 2-day event at Calgary
    • OPEN: Brenda will upload her new teaser presentation to interest non-traditional ALMA users into using ALMA and this went over very well at UVic /HIA - she will enhance it with other science and upload it or send it to Kartik for posting..
    • FONT COLOR="GREEN"> CLOSED Mark A sent primers (120) to NRC


3. New Business * Your spanish word for the day: "Nada" (Nothing).

-- LyndeleVonSchill - 2011-05-02
Topic revision: r2 - 2011-05-03, KartikSheth
This site is powered by FoswikiCopyright © by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
Ideas, requests, problems regarding NRAO Public Wiki? Send feedback