Minutes of the

FGST International Finance Committee Meeting

SLAC 31 August 2010

 

The International Finance Committee met at SLAC

 

In Attendance:

 

IFC Members:

 

Chair –  David MacFarlane

France – IN2P3: Stavros Katsanevas

France – CEA: Pierre-Olivier Lagage

Italy – ASI: Elisabetta Cavazutti

Italy – INFN: Benedetto D’ettorre

Japan – Hiroshima: Yasushi Fukazawa

USA – DOE Kathy Turner

USA – NASA Jaya Bajpayee

 

Others:

 

USA: Stanford: Peter Michelson

NASA: Julie McEnery

SLAC: Rafael Alva, Rob Cameron, Seth Digel, Richard Dubois, Harvey Lynch, Linda Price

UCSC: Steve Ritz

 

Minutes 31  August 2010

Opening – P. Drell

 

      Persis welcomed the committee, and said that we are very proud of the LAT performance.  There was a meeting of Lab directors, and there was a call from the White House asking for Office of Science Events.  One of the responses was the spectacular performance of FGST.

 

LAT Status and Overview – P. Michelson

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/glast/doc/8_10/IFC+and+Collaboration+Meeting+(08_31_10).pdf

 

      The LAT has just completed the second year of its mission, and it has been very successful.   Our first source catalog (1FGL) containing 1451 sources has been published, and that was a major event for the year.   See p. 7 of the presentation.

      We have published our 100th paper.

      We are continually finding millisecond pulsars; see p. 12.

 

Mission Status – J. McEnery

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/glast/doc/8_10/mission_mcenery.pdf

 

      The observatory is operating smoothly.  Is has operated mostly in “survey” mode, but there have been 7 autonomous re-points. 

      Data collection has been exceptionally good; only 2 packets out of 10⁹ have been lost!

      The first “Target of Opportunity” request came in April 2010.  See p. 4 et seq.

      The collision avoidance mechanism was exercised due to the close passage of a  Russian satellite.  There is other debris at higher altitudes than the LAT, but in the course of time that debris will descend. The situation is believed to be under control.  See p. 9 et seq.

      The reaction wheels continue to be monitored.  Other satellites have had trouble with reaction wheels.

 

LAT Analysis Coordinator – S. Digel

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/glast/doc/8_10/ACDC_Report_Sept_2010_v4.pdf

 

      The LAT is running reliably and well.

      A LAT Statistics Board has been set up offer help and guidance for statistical analysis of the numerous new discoveries. 

      There are 8 Science Working Groups, and they are quite active.  On average each member of the collaboration is subscribed to 2.6 working groups.  A measure of the productivity is that we have published 102 papers so far; see p. 14.

 

ISOC  Status – R. Cameron

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/glast/doc/8_10/Cameron-ISOC-IFC2010aug31.pdf  

 

      LAT up-time for physics is excellent, 99.2%.  We did 3 restarts for new builds; there were 3 hours spent on calibrations, and 3 hours for tests of new calibrations.

      Page 5 of the presentation summarizes the data collection.  In all, about 132 x 10⁹ events have been detected since launch.  Of them 26 x 10⁹ events were transmitted to the ground.  Of these, 400 x 10⁶ events were classified as photons in L1 processing and delivered to the public.

      The hardware is functioning very well.  There are 340 strips that have been masked off , representing only 0.04% of the total.  Of the 340, only 137 occurred after launch, and there have been none after the first year.

 

Minutes of March 2010 Meeting – D. MacFarlane

 

      The minutes of the meeting of 20 March 2010 were approved without change.

 

Collaboration Computing – R. Dubois

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/glast/doc/8_10/Collab201009-SAS-v00.pdf

 

      Page 2 of the presentation has an overview of the computing resources available at SLAC and Lyon to the Collaboration. 

      A review of the computing model shows that the new tape silos have much higher throughput than the older ones, and tape is no longer a bottle neck.  Tape storage space is less expensive than disk space. As a consequence, we are visiting the storage model. 

      Oracle bought Sun Computing, and that has had a negative effect on pricing of equipment to us.  We are considering alternative hardware.

 

Action Items from the March 2010 Meeting – All

 

      The situation of the cost of disk storage:  SLAC purchasing requested the 50% reduction in price that it previously received from Sun.  That was not accepted.  LCLS chose a different vendor for a large amount of disk space.  Their solution is not suitable for us, because of the different way that we use disks.  We are looking at a different alternative, but Oracle may not  permit Sun-OS on other hardware.

 

Budget – P. Michelson

(not posted)

 

      Paper copies of the budget information were distributed.

      There is an under-run of $17 k of the CY 2010 budget.

      The request for CY 2100 budget is $1.192 M.  This budget assumes the pessimistic disk costs.  The IFC approved this proposal.  The IFC agrees to apply the carry-forward from CY 2010 to the CY 2011 budget.

      The spreadsheet distributed shows the assessments. There are some countries that have small numbers of members.  It was agreed that the US would “adopt” them and fold their numbers into the US OCF count in order to simplify the accounting.

 

Round Table – All

 

Yosushi:     The situation in Japan is uncertain.  There may be a reduction in support. 

Stavros:      We expect some cuts (ca. 5%), but nothing drastic.  We expect more post-docs for the next year,  because of fellowships.

Kathy:  The President’s request for 2011 is up by 1.9% from 2010.  The Senate mark-up is lower.  We do not expect a budget before January 2011.  DOE will fully support FGST.

Pierre:  IN2P3 does not know the financial situation, but FGST is a high priority.

Jaya:     The NASA budget is unclear.  There will be a 2012 “sensor review” of FGST.  Their recommendation will be used for 2013 and 2014 budgets. 

Elisabetta:   We are under a new umbrella MOU with NASA that extends to 2013.  The budget will be set with that new MOU, so we see no problem at this time.  ASI will be affected in a manner to be determined by a reorganization.

Benedetto:  We congratulate the LAT collaboration on the performance.  INFN has budget problems like others.  We do not know our budgets for 2010 or 2011; we are waiting for information from the government.  We consider FGST to be a very good investment, and we will try to support it.  The proposed organizational changes to INFN are small; we hope to hear the result by September 2010.

David:  Fundamental Science is facing a flat-flat budget for FY 2011 and 2012.  We feel that the FGST science program is very important.  SLAC has moved to a multi-program model in 2010, that changes the cost structure with a new burden on our HEP budget.  We have a carry-forward into 2011 that helps.  Scientific computing is a large issue.  We expect progress in the next few weeks to clarify.  In any case, computing costs for FGST are covered.

 

Next Meeting – All

 

      The next meeting will be in Rome in conjunction with the Fermi Symposium that takes place 9 – 12 May 2011.  It was proposed that the next meeting would be a mixed format of the IFC meeting and the collaboration meeting.

      The proposed date for the meeting is 11 May 2011, in the evening.