Weekly Report for Week Ending December 13, 2001

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  December 17, 2001 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

Open meeting 10:30 - 11:30

1. Announcements
2. LSC Issues (Weiss)
3. Comments on Weekly Report
4. WBS 1 LIGO I Construction (Lindquist)
• Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests
5. WBS 2 LIGO Lab Operations
• Administration (Lindquist)
• Sites (Raab, Coles, Shoemaker, Sanders)
• Detector (Whitcomb, Coyne)
• Campus Research Facilities (Weinstein (40 Meter), Libbrecht (TNI), Zucker(LASTI))
• Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
6. WBS 3 and 4  Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Sanders)

Special Items:

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Operations--Administration

A Site Teleconference was held on Thursday, December 13, 2001.  Discussion centered on the status of NSF funding and the establishment of FY 2002 accounts, as well as the status of building at the two sites.

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through December 13, 2001 may be found at ACTION LIST.

From: Ed Chargois <chargois_e@ligo.caltech.edu>

• Nothing Significant to report.

>From: Linda Turner - turner@ligo.caltech.edu>

Web pages for the DCC give simple how-to's for document numbering, easy access to the latest on-line documents, and search capabilities for the DCC database. Take a look. . .

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Most of the week was spent finalizing all the preparations for LIGO's Christmas Party.  The party went well and involved significant work for decorating, set-up, food pickup, clean-up and repackaging of all the supplies following the party.

ACTIVITY

• electronic document activity was not as busy this period but steady
• processed seven DCN's that still need distribution
• progress continues on conversion of old charge account files to electronic form

 

12-06-01	Packages	Faxes
In	39	33
Out	6	44

Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.

From: Esther Cunningham <esther@ligo.caltech.edu>

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA.

From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>

• Completed the change order to Lawrence Berkeley.  The invoice was faxed today for payment.
• Working on adding funds to Butler, Galli & Morelli, Brunt Construction, and Heraeus Optics.  At the time the change orders are being made, I am closing any purchase order lines that are fully paid so that these extra lines do not show up in OGM with a zero balance.
• Working on no-cost extensions to WavePrecision, Louisiana Tech Univ., Oliver McCullough, NYMA, Goodrich Corp., Ray Beausoleil, Research Electro Optics, and Wyko Corp.
• Closed out additional PO's requested by Florence so that they do not show up in OGM.

• Worked on spreadsheets for Fiscal Year 2002 report.
• Prepared a summary of P-card charges to inappropriate expenditure types and submitted them for corrections.
• Costs and encumbrances have been transferred to the new Fabrication accounts for Site Improvements, resulting in a savings of $26,000 in Indirect Charges.

 
• The reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)

• G&M: CO No. 16, adding a purchase of mechanical components for CNC -3 axis milling machine (under development at Univ. of Pisa), was released to Purchasing.
• SIOM: Second progress payment was released.
• Heraeus: CO No. 06, adding a purchase of additional pieces of Heraeus 311-SV glass for use in the 40M interferometer, was released to Purchasing.
• SLU: CO No. 02, restructuring the cost-share for on-site support at SLU and extending the subcontract through Sept. 30, 2003, is in LLO review.
• MIT: CO No. 15, allocating funds for the projected level-off effort for Dec, Jan and Feb, is in the works.
• The no-cost extensions through 09-30-02 were released to Purchasing for the following subcontractors: McCullough, MLD, NYMA, REO and WYKO.
• LaTech Univ., Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of Oregon and Univ. Syracuse.

No report this week.

SUPPORT

• Processed the paper work for zero (0) new/revised trips.  I have four (4) trips in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done.  Worked on several trips that were changed or modified for various reasons.
• Completed six (6) Expense Reports and there are seven (7) reports yet to be done.  I'm holding four (4) that need a check from the traveler before submitting.  I continue to contact travelers with outstanding trips as time permits.  There are twelve (12) still outstanding.  Some progress is being made.
• Reconciled ten (10) items on my P-Card, requiring telephone calls to vendors to track down which traveler incurred each charge.
• Spent some time tracking down information for Hertz Corporate Office.  Hopefully we have things working now.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itineraries for December 10, 2001.  Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement.  Also performed miscellaneous duties as requested by various members of  the LIGO Project here at Caltech as well as from members of the staffs of each of the two (2) sites.  I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities and also to assist them wherever possible.

• Received encumbrances so Ruth could transfer encumbrances to new fabrication accounts.
• Received and processed ~60 invoices for payment on-line. The total incoming invoices received for this period can be seen in  "Cost Schedule Control Systems" report by Esther Cunningham. Tracked and followed up on various invoice problems.
• Processed the usual requisitions and change orders on-line.
• Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of December 3.
• Continue to monitor contract and blanket order encumbrance and notify task managers when supplements are needed.
• Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, and supports Linda and Cleveland (DCC) the remainder of the week.

• Scanned several ACIGA and Syracuse documents, and updated the LSC database with info from their respective Attachments Z.  Listed file names of documents currently in docspublic, passed these on to V. Kondrashov who will post on the web site.
• Established a spreadsheet to better track the location of in-house LSC documents.
• Obtained DCC numbers for electronics travelers that go with circuit boards.  Updated the database with board information.
• Finally got a chance to update the database with info for exit eye exams.  Filed away those records.
• Submitted to R. DeSalvo a report showing part number and cost for each component purchased for the LVDT boards.  Placed several Pcard orders, reconciled some.

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Progress Period from 12.07 to 12.13

Accomplishments:

• Out of the office on Monday the 10th.
• Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting was not held this week.  Next meeting TBD.
• Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority)
• Continuing the development of the Cost Estimate.
• Continue to pursue all other sub system schedules.
• Updated web site with latest data.
• The following is a summary of status by sub system:
• COC - Work on action items per second review continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• PSL - Issued cost and resource loaded reports and awaiting comments.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• AOS - Work on action items continues.  Inputting data provided by David S.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• IO -  Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• SUS - Working with SUS group to incorporate current comments.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• SEI - Work on action items continues.  Next meeting date has not been scheduled.
• ISC - Continue to review data.
• All other subsystems have yet to be scheduled for their first review.  These dates are pending per direction from Gary Sanders and Dennis Coyne.
• Continue to update the TNI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 12.14.01 and  post to site by the 18th.
• Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 12.14.01 and  post to site by the 18th.
• Project Plan for the 40-Meter Lab Upgrade continues.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 12.14.01 and  post to site by the 18th.
• Continue to test the Cost Book Tool.
• ROSTER DATABASE:
• Started work on procedures for data gathering.
• Continue working with Rita and Cindy to input the roster data.
• No comments or changes to meeting minutes and posted to DCC.
• COST BOOK DATABASE:
• Continue to run tests on reports using other sub-system data.
• Continue review of changes and updates to procedures / online help.
• Had to send data to BK again this week.  Her ISP was having an issue with the size of the file.  Review pending.
• Mapping and formatting of OPS cost data for input on hold pending finalization of co-operative agreement.
• Followed-up on incident with Primavera regarding actual finish dates for finish milestones being dropped from the update files through email. (No Change or Solution yet).
• Development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guidebook continues.
• Project Web Site for posting schedule and progress related data continues to be updated with the latest and greatest.
• See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html

• Next weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting to be determined.
• Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority Task)
• Highest priority is the development of the Cost Estimate.
• Will continue to pursue all other sub system schedules.
• PSL - Will schedule next meeting.
• AOS - Continue inputting changes to and prepare for next meeting TBD. (New data from David to be input).
• IO - Continue inputting changes to and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• SUS - Continue inputting changes to and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• SEI - Continue inputting changes and prepare for next meeting TBD.
• COC - Work on action items by Garilynn continues.  Anticipate schedule changes prior to next meeting TBD.
• ISC - Finish review of data.  Input data and change WBS as requested.
• Will import cost data and complete schedule integration.
• Will Continue to update the TNI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 12.14.01 and  post to site by the 18th.
• Will Continue to update the LASTI Schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 12.14.01 and  post to site by the 18th.
• Will continue updating the 40 meter schedule and incorporate any changes.
• Will update the plan with progress as of 12.14.01 and  post to site by the 18th.
• Cost Book Tool development continues.  (Highest Priority Task)
• Will continue ops cost data input when available.
• Will continue to work with BK importing data and executing action items.
• Meeting scheduled for Friday the 30th at 1pm to go over the roster database.
• BK will be in the office on Friday and I will work with her on any outstanding action items.
• Continue to work with roster database development and action items.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Web Site.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guide Book.

We are doing a standard Annual Report for the Construction Project as of the end of November.  I have requested contributions from Task Managers by Friday, December 21, 2001.

The following change request has been submitted:
 

Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.

From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>

• Assisted Florence Kaufman when needed with accounting details.
• Lots of various personnel/payroll related work

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

No report.
 

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)

-------------
Facilities
-------------
For the LHO new building the stem walls and the footers are 80% complete,
rough grading is 100% complete, sewer pressure main is 80% complete. The
irrigation main added by change order for $3200.00 is 100% complete.
Started on underground plumbing and fire protection.
 

----------------
LHO General
----------------
(Doug Cook)
        Dedicated power sources are being wired up for the laser safety hardware
panels. These panels will also house the loose components like the modems
and shutter drivers etc. Next week we should complete a walk-through and
start to commission the system.
        We have a new procedure and spreadsheet for calibrating the optical
levers for the core optics. We will null the QPDs to the aligned core
optics, adjusting the beam diameters and measuring the beam powers at the
same time. The MEDM screen will display the angle per unit for the power
level that it was calibrated for.
        We are trying to better stabilize the 2k laser cooling problems by
improving the heat transfer from the amplifier base. We will attempt to
clean out the water channels in the amplifier heat sink with gun brushes to
remove any scaling etc. We have been characterizing the PSL lasers monthly,
checking visibilities of the PMC, the RC and tuning the alignment,
recording the power levels at various places, changing the oil etc. and I
have been posting the assessments in the e-log.
 

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)

CDS Software: Sucessfully ported the PEM Epics to the vacuum processor in the mechanical room to add a dust monitor to the purge air line (so we can monitor any infiltration in the lines the next time we vent. These purge lines are a suspected source of the dust influx we observed during the last vent). Working on making similar changes
at the end stations.  Upgraded all except one of the control room machines to 1GB memory. (Chethan)

Networking: We are working with LSU on the final stages of configuring our router, which connects to LSU over two T1 lines. The configuration is almost complete, but requires co-ordination with them to implement. (Tom Evans)

GC: The evaluation of CA's Unicenter software did not go well. There are several requirements that my salesman neglected to tell me about. It is somewhat excusable, as he is new to CA, however, My entire experience with Computer Associated has been less than pleasant. I would recommend to anyone in the computing group to look elsewhere before they evaluate CA's software.

LDAS: finished upgrading all of the kernels on the linux machines last week. Beowulf had some problems and had to be redone this week. Restarted LDAS last night due to a ssh problem with beowulf. Showed Jay where the CDS link will attach to the t3's that we have set aside for them. Adjusted the delay time for the Big Brother warning messages. I want to make sure that it works well, and then I will change the notification messages to go to the ldas_admin list. (Shannon Roddy)

CDS Electronics: Completed extensive testing on the Pentek D/A boards. Details of the result are in the e-log.Installed accelerometer cables in the corner station mechanical room for monitoring the blowers. Built the cross connect for the 1X6 digital suspensions. Fixed MC3 oscillation problems. (Rus Wooley)

Interferometer: We replaced the temperature controller for the reference back with the old one since the new one with higher sensitivity and gain was oscillating. We made measurements of the coil current noise going to the test masses for various configurations of the digital signal processing system that converts mixer error signals to control signals. We see a definite increase in noise when the digital processing is engaged, but need to study it further.
We did lock statistics during the day. It seems a single arm can run well during the day. On Thursday, 12/13/01, after several rain showers, the ground noise was significantly lower than normal (40 counts/Hz^1/2 vs 200 counts/sqrt Hz at 2 Hz), and the full recombined interferometer was locking all day long.

Preparation for E7: We are beginning preparations to support the E7 run. The E7 run is still two weeks away, but the holiday will take a lot of that time. We are updating and restructuring the operator shift checklist to reflect recent changes in the controls. An operator schedule for site staffing of E7 has been written, reviewed with site staff, and forwarded to Keith Riles.

A LIGO Holiday Party at the site is planned for the afternoon of Dec. 27, the day before the E7 run, so that our colleagues from out of town can enjoy the festivities.

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)

no report

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• PSL (Abbott, Ugolini, Vass, Smith, King): Dennis and Mike are completing a list of parts required to put the PSL table in its final form, including the pockels cells, mode matching into the input mode cleaner, the periscope, steering mirrors, beam diagnostics, etc.
• Optics (Billingsley): Polished MC optics, due to have been received from Wave Precision by mid-November, are already a month late, and it's hard to tell when they will be delivered. IFO core optics are at CSIRO for polishing and are due back by Feb; they could even arrive before the MC optics. SO, we will probably ship them all out to REO for coating at the same time, and it is unlikely that we'll be able to hang MC optics before March or April. This represents a 1, or more likely, 2 month schedule slip.
• Input mode cleaner sensing (Smith): The optical layout for the IO, input mode cleaner_transmitted, and input mode cleaner_reflected ISC optical system is being finalized. A parts list will be generated so that off-the-shelf- components can be purchased.
• Optical lever telescopes (Smith): A preliminary design for mounting the identical zoom objective lens and quad photodiode sensor assembly on the 40m zoom optical lever receiver table has been completed. The Gaussian beam propogation for the entire optical train, from the transmitter to the zoom receiver is being modeled.
• Suspension controllers (Ben Abbott, Heefner): Ben's suspension controller wiring diagrams are complete, and can be found on Ben Abbott's web page.

Electronics for the 40m suspensions are being fabricated in the Wilson house back shop. Some of the modules along with the VME crates and Eurocard crates have been installed in their correct places in the suspensions racks.
Eight ICS 110Bs have been ordered.
Ben will talk with Jay about assembling the electronics for the MC LSC and ASC system.
Ben's trip to Hanford was educational and beneficial in his understanding of how a digital suspension functions, and how it should be installed.
• Facilities (Vass, Jones, Smith, AJW):
• Cables, feedthroughs, cable clamps, etc, are being assembled by Larry Jones; should have most parts by mid January. They will be sent to Hanford for clean/bake.
• At least one oven in the South Annex will be commissioned, by a new tech, for baking of 40m optics.

Larry is designing light-tight enclosures for all sensing optical tables, and beam tubes that connect them to the IFO vacuum. They will be made from panels of aluminum, roughened and anodized. They require some small re-arrangement of the optical layout, which Mike Smith says should be no problem.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

This week we turned our attention to the North Arm cavity in an
attempt to implement common-mode rejection of laser frequency and
seismic noise.  The North cavity's noise is approximately ten times
higher than that of the South cavity, and it does not exhibit an f^-0.5
spectrum anywhere in our region of interest.  Ringdown tests of the
North Output mirror give its Q at 700,000, somewhat better than the
South Output mirror's, placing the North cavity's expected thermal noise
well below its observed noise floor.  We are in the process of trying
several strategies for reducing the noise in this cavity.

LASTI (Zucker)

no report

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

End to End simulation (Bhawal)
==============================

E2E Physics Meeting
---------------------------
Luca Matone talked about 4K DSC system and the implementation of the
output matrix filters to reduce the coupling between actuation of the
mirror along the beam axis and its pitch.

Mechanical simulation
-------------------------------
(Virginio) Worked mainly on the HAM Stack simulation:
Using the beam object to simulate the coil springs the simulation was able
to give a good result just for the vertical dof which is really the easy
one. For the transverse and longitudinal dof it failed.
The reason of this is because the way how the beam is implemented is
not completely right. The coupling between the horizontal dof and the
angular dof is supposed to vanish when the beam is represented with one
element. patches trying to modifying the beam code did not give a complete
right answer.

Qualitatively the longitudinal transfer function shows the same
shape of the measure transmissibility, but resonances and notches are
quite largely misplaced.

I'm working now to cure the problem by implementing a new object a
generalized spring to cure the problem.

Some objects like beams blades and the elastic line still need a
a quite deep debugging.

Started working seriously on the mse lib to be able to make substantial
modifications.

Lock acquisition in presence of mode mismatch
-----------------------------------------------
(Biplab, Hiro, Matt) Several methods have been tried to acquire lock in presence
of mode mismatch in Han2k model. Sources of some problems have been
identified and are being looked into.

Code development & maintenance
---------------------------------
(Hiro) spent most of the time working on low level stuff of modeler.

Alfi
----
(Bruce)
- Finishing work on model for updating bookkeeping objects from changes the user
  makes in the GUI.
- Edit window updating nearing completion.

(Melody)
- Continuing on the node settings dialog and disabling menus based on the view
  and selection.

FFT papers by TAMA (nothing to do with e2e)
----------------------------------------------------------
TAMA group has written two draft papers using the FFT software. One is an analysis of the
effect of the as-built TAMA mirrors, and the other is an estimation of the thermal effect for
LCGT (future Japanese Cryogenic Interferometer). Both draft papers were reviewed by
relevant LIGO scientists, mainly to make sure that the contributions by LIGO is properly
quoted and acknowledged. Brett Bochner and Yaron Hefetz will be included in the author
list of the first paper.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
=======================

Software System (Blackburn)
=======================
The week has been spent testing LDAS and fixing bugs in preparation for
the alpha release of the version of LDAS to be used in the E7 engineering
run. So far about 15 bugs have been identified and fixed. Almost all bugs
have been in code that required us to restart from the beginning all of
the test suites. There is still a very big bug in the mpiAPI which is a
source of concern. This causes jobs to timeout and jobids to be confused
when the frequency of dataPipeline searches is high. It looks like we
will need a couple of extra days to finalize the release. This has been
passed on to the LAL/LALwrapper development groups. They will begin working
with our pre-release images of LDAS starting tonight so as to not hold up
there plans for testing search codes with this release of LDAS.

An additional discovery made this week was that the custom memory manage-
meant tool (dlmalloc) that is being distributed and built with LDAS was not
properly configured for inclusion in the running LDAS system. What was
happening was that the LDAS systems were picking up the memory management
tools associated with the operating system. The first attempt to correct
this problem identified bugs in the dlmalloc software. We have begun the
investigation of newer releases of dlmalloc and will be testing these with
the hopes of having a working dlmalloc for the next release of LDAS.

The implementation of the resampling functionality in the frameAPI proved
to be too unstable to support in this release of LDAS. It will be in the
distribution released for E7 but no documentation to enable it will be
made public. If we identify specialized needs for this functionality in
the E7, then experts can be brought in to use it in controlled environments,
otherwise, users will be able to use the full resampling functionality
found in the dataConditionAPI.

We have had a very active will of meetings with the LSC as plans are
being developed for running search codes on line at the sites during E7.
There are still a lot of questions but actions are being generated to see
to it that we are ready to carry out searches online during the E7 run.

The modifications to the metadataAPI to allow fully threaded requests to
the database were completed and tested this week. This will improve our
ability to respond to database requests during the engineering run.

The database table designs were updated for all LIGO LDAS systems this
week to incorporate the requested changes to the periodic search table
design as recommended by that search's upper limits group.
 

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)
=====================================

Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)

Continued to migrate data from (mostly) 3590 tapes to 9940 tapes.  Did
some work with Redwoods (i.e. lots of LIGO and Pulsar data) as well,
but the larger size of the Redwood tapes makes them not not work as
smoothly (because it takes longer to stage them to disk, the first
files on the tape often get purged before the whole tape has been
staged to disk;this causes the change class of service thread to grind
to a crawl).  Am reworking the scripts to get around this problem.

It's still possible to run Encina out of memory (from queuing up too
many change class of service requests), but less likely that it was
before.

All the LIGO-purchased 9940 tape cartridges have been labeled and put
in the silo.  Importing them into HPSS continues.

Assisted with install of Sunfire 880 and associated equipment in Powell
Booth.
 

(Al Wilson)

Completed and did some minor tweeks at some site on the Linux kernel
upgrade. All sites are now running 2.4.9-12. Will complete the week with a
practice rpm build. The machine tester (gwave-75) is now going to be the
ldas systems test machine.
 

(Stuart Anderson)

Worked with Sun to diagnose and replace some bad memory in one of the new
SF880 servers which is now working well.

Coordinating the effort to get the LDAS disk storage reorganized for the
E7 data run.

Reconfigured the LDAS admin machines to support a unified location for
system administration scripts.

Ordered and installed a Sun 18.1" LCD monitor in the ldas-test system.

Installed 2 5000VA UPS units

Finished ingesting the E6 raw frames, still working on the trend frames.
 

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)

updated all linux node kernels to 2.4.9-12
 
 

Livingston
----------
(Shannon Roddy)

finished upgrading all of the kernels on the linux machines last
week.  Beowulf had some problems and had to be redone this week.
Restarted LDAS last night due to a ssh problem with beowulf.  Showed Jay
where the CDS link will attach to the t3's that we have set aside for
them.  Adjusted the delay time for the Big Brother warning messages.  I
want to make sure that it works well, and then I will change the
notification messages to go to the ldas_admin list.
 

(Igor Yakushin)

*  Visiting LHO;
*  Read The Solstice DiskSuite Users Guide and The Solstice DiskSuite Reference Guide to understand what metadevices are and how to configure them;
*  Installed, together with Greg, Solaris 8 on the new Sun Fire machine and configured mirror metadevice;
*  Learnt about tape control tools and scripts;
*  Learnt about controlMonitor tool.
 

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)

1) AIT 2 tapes have been received for the E7 run.

2) The operating system on all LDAS linux computers were upgraded to the
2.4.9-12 or 2.4.9-12smp Redhat Linux 7.1 kernel.

3) Igor Yakushin, the new LDAS staff scientist at LLO, visited LHO this
week. I worked with Igor on LDAS issues.

4) Installed Solaris on the new Sun Fire 880 server, with Igor.  Igor
then set up a mirror of the root file system.

5) Contacted Sun about missing items in the Sun Fire 880 order.  Sun is
tracking down these items.

6) Updated script to synchronize times between T3s and ldas admin box.

7) Preparations to archive the E7 data are under way. The LDAS T3 file
systems and tapecontrol script will be upgraded and reconfigured. We
should be testing the system by the middle of next week.
 

General Computing (Wallace)
========================
MIT:
(Keith)
-Investigated vnc and cygwin/xfree86 as windows X server apps
cygwin/xfree86 appears to be easier to use / install
-Investigating networking over to NW22
spec-ing out fiber converters / switches
-Updated software on lancelot for J.Z.
-Added users to PortMaster modem server

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-The evaluation of CA's Unicenter software did not go well.  There
are several requirements that my salesman neglected to tell me about.
It is somewhat excusable, as he is new to CA, however, My entire
experience with Computer Associated has been less than pleasant.  I
would recommend to anyone in the computing group to look elsewhere
before they evaluate CA's software.

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Completed comments to Albert's Security document.
- Continued trying to get the new tape robot and new backup software
talking to each other.
- Continued installing memory in Ultra 10s.
- Started writing "How To" and "Where is it?" documentation for Lisa and
others to use while I am on medical leave.

CIT:
(Mike)
-Performed ghost backups of multiple user computers, for restore purposes in
case of hardware or software failures.
-Printer problems on the 6th floor of Millikan
HP4500N color, fuser needed replacement.
Irene's printer just needs to be replaced.
-Loading software on a laptop to put back into loaner pool.
-Issued a New Dell Laptop to Virginio S..
-Loaded all engineering and general computing software on to a Dell for
engineering support.

(Veronica)
- Updated various parts of the LIGO website.
- Posted updates to the Project Science website.
- 2002 GWADW Conference: working with the Organizing Committee on the
contents and structure of the conference website. Tested various
graphics/layouts. Have set up a registration submit-form; linked it to a
database to write to; configured the (new) Amaldi server to host the new
website. Waiting for a written permission to use proprietary images on the
website. I've prepared 2 layouts, with and without the images; depending
on whether (and when) this permission is granted, I'll use either one.
- CaJAGWR: The seminars schedule for the Spring '02 term is shaping up.
Will record the Dec 14th seminar; this is a JPL talk, so I will need to
wait for clearance before posting it on the CaJAGWR website. The previous
talk by a JPL LISA team is still in the process of getting the clearance;
will post it as soon as this is complete.

(Lisa)
- Fixed the daily backups for the NTs
- Looked into whether our backup software will support win2k.  It does.
Currently working with sun to get a support contract for it.
- Restored Albert's crontab on canopus.
- Installed pcard updates for various users.
- Pushed out a new access table to the wireless APs.
- Resolved some .cshrc problems for Hongyu.
- Installed and compiled sendmail 8.12.1 on becrux.  Currently working on
creating a cf file.
- Updated the DNS tables.
- Installed hp web jetadmin on kuma.

(Larry)
-Worked on a video conference setup with the NSF. Presently, their ISDN system
works better than the IP (H.323) system which we use. We are testing out
different s/w products that are H.323 compliant to see if performance can be
improved.
We have tested a number of small web cams and have found one that has acceptable
quality. We will have a few more people test it out before we distribute it out
to those that travel extensively.
-Resolved a couple of procurement issues. This has become a standard item the
past few months. The latest vendor to have a problem blamed it on their
transition to Oracle.
-Setting up another web server for internal use.
-Reviewing documentation covering policy and security.
-Installed new OS on a couple of SUN boxes. Spent a little time working on the
new SUNFire box that will be the new sargas (sand box) unit. All of the internal
hardware has been installed and now working on the disk system. It looks like a
pretty good box.
-Working with the group to get a few more tools in place to handle viruses and
other security related issues. Along with e-mail configuration changes.

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

From: Helena Armandula <ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu>

Coating effect on mechanical "Q"

Received 4 substrates from Wave Precision; they need to have their "Q" measured for before coating.

Sent 4 substrates coated by 4 different vendors to have the film structure analyzed by Scanning Electron Microscope.  The instrument has also x-ray capabilities that can give some information on surface composition.
The work will take place next Friday.

Ergonomic arm
We had a preliminary meeting with the possible manufacturer of the ergonomic arm to be used to handle Advanced LIGO Optics.
A teleconference is scheduled for next Monday to finalize the specs and the different applications for this tool.
 

From: Riccardo DeSalvo <desalvo@ligo.caltech.edu>

@ Pasadena
Charlotte
Measuring more thermal conduction of existing glassy metal and maraging
samples.
Finally converged on old problem of ribbon effective flex joint.

Charlotte, Riccardo, Gianni
Designed reed Q-factor measuring setup, now in production
Creep measurement ongoing.

Jan
Preparing to melt this week the first four samples of MoRoB, they will
go to Carnegie Mellon for spin cast into ribbons before Christmas

Hareem
LVDT paper submitted to NIM.

@ Pisa
Alessandro, (Riccardo), Francesco
Ultra Sound Milling Machine in construction by Faimond .

Alessandro, Franco Frasconi, Gianni
Refurbishing the Virgo stress strain machine for ribbon measurements .

Alessandro
Continuing tests on thinning of glassy metal ribbons by
electro-polishing with alternative solutions.  Getting ready for
differential etching of shaped flex joint using photoresist provided by
Rita Torres and with conventional photoresist photoresist and
alternative etching solutions.  Testing different brazing techniques.

Alessandro, Riccardo, Gianni
Almost engineered flex joint structure for mirror hook-up.

@ Hongo
Akiteru, Ida
First lock TAMA-SAS Michelson interferometer.  Only one mirror is
suspended and seismic isolated while the Beam Splitter and second end
mirror are on shaky ground.  The DSP controlled hierarchical mirror
controls system in SAS, designed for low frequency operation, has hard
time providing enough bandwidth to lock the suspended mirror to the
moving target of the grounded mirror.  The 100 Hz bandwidth is barely
sufficient while in Virgo, locking between suspended mirrors is  done
with 30 Hz bandwitdh and a very large safety margin.   Life will be
different when operating the Fabry Perot between two SAS towers in the
full 3 meter experiment.

Nishi, Riccardo
Commissioning the second SAS tower for FP tests with both suspended
mirrors.

Kenji, Riccardo
Discussing quartz mirror improvement prospects.

Kimio, Akiteru, several others and Riccardo,
Discussing technical problems for implementation in TAMA 300.
 

For additional information about this report, contact sanders@ligo.caltech.edu