Weekly Report for Week Ending February 20, 2003

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  February 24, 2003 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

THIS MEETING WILL BE A STAFFING COMMITTEE MEETING
 

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

no report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

There was a site teleconferences held on Thursday, February 20, 2003.  The following issues were among those discussed:

Traffic Control Gates:  At Hanford the traffic control gate is working.  It is possible to talk to the control room from the gate.  The camera is not yet in place.  The password for entry is "I have doughnuts!"

At Livingston, presentations of alternatives are scheduled for Monday.

Livingston Storage Facility Inventory:  Plan to kick off big time on Monday

The list of current actions revised to reflect the status of open actions assigned through January 16, 2003 may be found at ACTION LIST.

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

• No report this week.  Vacation.

>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

No report.

Reminder to LIGO staff:  Please make sure that as a minimum, each document submitted has a LIGO number, author's name, and date.  It's surprising how many documents are missing one of more of these essential pieces of information!

ACTIVITY

• Concentrated mainly on processing electronic documents.  Most of the documents were HEPI and 40 M drawings.
• Processed and distributed five DCN's.
DCC Activity


WE 02/20/03	Packages	Faxes
In	29	22
Out	9	9

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

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA .

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

• Completed change order #126 to Triad, change orders 5 & 6 to University of Michigan.  Completed several internal modifications to Johanna Otto, Teknicircuits, Alllied Engeering.
• Placed and reconciled pcard orders.
• Preparing LIGO files to be submitted for audit to the CPSR auditors who will be at Caltech all of next week.
• Began discussions together with Janeen, Gina and Ed Jasnow pertaining on the RFQ which will be going out soon for Janeen's assemblies.

• Completed report for all leased equipment.
• Preparing PO’S for tape library.
• Working diligently with Janeen R. on getting quotes for Advanced Ligo Suspensions.
• Pulling PO’S for the CPSR audit (Contractor Purchasing System Review).

• Attended a meeting with Ed Jasnow and Donna Tomlinson to discuss methodology to be used for tracking and reporting of LIGO personnel.
• Attended a meeting conducted by Alan Rice regarding Faculty Research Pool Accounts.
• Prepared a Cost Transfer for costs for Low Frequency Noise Suppression that had been charged in error to the Suspensions account.
• Monitoring new encumbrances in Construction Award for Data purchases to make sure that they are appropriately classified.

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

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

• AdLIGO SEI: Letter of Interest regarding the planned procurement for in-vacuum mechanical elements was released to a number of qualified companies. Release of the solicitation is currently planned for March 14th.
• Univ. of Florida: A proposal for LIGO funds in support of two new faculty appointments is in preparation.

• Chervenell Construction Company now has the drawings for the glass vestibule and sun shades for the LHO Laboratory Building.  We are now awaiting their cost estimate for this work.

• The presentation for the LLO access control gate has been re-scheduled for 1:00 p.m., PST, Monday, February 24.

• Inventory of the storage facility in the City of Livingston is continuing, with completion scheduled sometime next month.  At the conclusion of that inventory, a decision will be made regarding retention of that facility.

>Irene Baldon

• Processed the paper work for four (4) new/revised trips and there are twenty-nine (29) trips which are in various stages of completion before ticketing can be done and/or paper work completed.  Also assisted P-Card holders with their travel plans/reservations or revisions.  Until further notice I will be doing travel for LHO travelers.
• Completed fifteen (15) Expense Reports and there are eleven (11) reports yet to be done.  I continue to contact travelers who have outstanding Expense Reports (more than one (1) month old) to ask for their cooperation in sending me their receipts so that I can close their trip(s).
• Reconciled twenty-seven (27) P-Card items which required numerous phone calls to hotels, etc. in order to track down which traveler incurred which charge, and the pulling of each traveler's file to assure that charges are correct for each fee incurred.  Assisted a few travelers with their questions in regard to their P-Card and/or reconciliation and completed month-end for another.
• Collected EFT (Electronic Funds Transmittal) forms for new direct deposit of travel expense checks.  It is hoped that we will be able to initiate this pilot program starting April 1, 2003.  Your cooperation in promptly returning the form to me (Irene Baldon, M.C. 18-34), filled out, with a VOIDED check or deposit slip attached, is greatly appreciated.
• Worked on the preparation and distribution of the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for February 19, 2002.  Arranged numerous teleconferences and entered reservations on the LIGO Calendar as needed.  Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement.
• I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities and also to assist them wherever possible.

• Processed the usual invoices for payment.  Tracked and followed up on invoice problems. Reviewed and recorded payments processed by Esther the week of February 10.
• Processed the usual requisitions, change orders and payment requests.
• Continue to monitor contract and blanket order encumbrance and notify task managers when supplements are needed.
• Attended Petty Cash training class.

• Jim continues with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.

• Obtained division approval for LIGO Outreach proposal
• Preparation of ADV. LIGO proposal for NSF submission
• p-card reconciliation this week

Advanced LIGO (Frey)

Progress Period from 02.14 to 02.20

Accomplishments:

Weekly Advanced LIGO Project Controls meetings were held 2/14 and 2/20.  Next meeting is not scheduled pending Gary's meetings with the NSF.

For list of documents that are being used to develop Adv. LIGO Cost and Schedule, see http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/Cost_MTG_082002/

Advanced LIGO MRE Proposal (Highest Priority)

• Continuing the development of the Cost Estimate.
• The following is a summary of status by sub system:
• COC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• PSL -  No action items pending.
• AOS - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• IO -  Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• SUS - No action items pending.
• SEI - Received revised (Version 3) data from Dennis and data input of WBS and BOE will proceed next week.
• ISC - Still need completed WBS dictionary and BOE.
• LDAS - No action required at this point in time.
• INSTALL - Dennis provided a revision and data input will proceed next week.
• DAQ - No action required at this point in time.
• PM - No action required at this point in time.
• FAC - No action required at this point in time.
• SUP - Need estimate for support equipment.  Action item to be executed by Dennis.

• ROSTER DATABASE:
• Working with Larry and Barbara to set up a process by which the roster database updates selected alias lists.
• Received updated files to post and will execute next week.

• COST BOOK DATABASE:
• Continue to verbally communicate the username and password to users.
• Will be working with BK to modify reports / web reports per comments.
• BK is continuing work on action items.
• Received updated files to post and will execute next week.
• Preparing updated reports and cost profiles in preparation for meeting with mgmt. on the 20th.
• Continue preparing updated reports and cost profiles by Subsystem as requested by Gary.
• Continue preparing cost data by NSF code by FY for Phil.
• Continue preparing resource profile data for Dennis.

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

Advanced LIGO Proposal.  Preparing budgets for submittal to NSF.

Change Request CR-030002 to adjust the FY 2003 operating budgets to reflect actual staffing during the first quarter has been prepared.  Additional information is required.

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

• Various personnel/payroll /HR related work.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

No report this week.
 

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) and Interferometer Operations (Raab)

Summary of S2 Science Run Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Both interferometers have had a cumulative science mode duty cycle since the start of S2 of 67%,
although this figure will be degraded by Friday due to sustained high and gusting winds on the Hanford
site.  Sensemon NS-NS averaged inspiral ranges were typically ~290kpc for H1, and ~190kpc for H2.
The monitor is a key indicator of ifo performance and provides a threshold for operator
intervention.

Lock duration records were broken in the first week on both ifo's: H1 (35h), and H2 (30h), with 21
hours of continuous overlap.  Opening run calibrations and in-run astrophysical injections have
been performed, impacting the duty cycle slightly.

Shift-taking has been relatively simple and quiet - we continue to sort out and update shift
procedures, and they are stabilizing.  Visitors have been taking science shifts, and LHO staff
have been backing up operators.

Perhaps the most serious impediment to stable running on H2 is occasional alignment instability.  See,
for instance, http://blue.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/ilog/pub/ilog.cgi?group=detector&date_to_view=02/17/2003&anchor_to_scroll_to=2003:02:17:07:56:57-daniel

Downtime related to DAQ problems have been minimal.

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Coles)

Interferometer: The interferometer is operating at just under 50% duty cycle. We are able to maintain lock in science mode for several hours during the day. This is a significant improvement relative to prior daytime operating experience. The Y end controller failed Wednesday night and was repaired and reinstalled during the night. Other than that event, operation is mostly routine.

LDAS admin:
1) Sent 24 tapes to Caltech.
2) Received 4 spare disk drives for beowulf cluster.
3) Running 107 channel RDS creation script keeping up to 4 hours behind
the real time.
4) Created AS_Q only RDS of injection data at both sites.
5) Created AS_Q only RDS of first few days of the run and rsynced it to
LLO. Still working out the details of AS_Q only RDS distribution.
LDAS data analysis:
1) Together with Sergey Klimenko running waveburst DSO at sites.
Preliminary results show that it is working well.
2) Fixed the bug with printf statement.
3) Fixed problems in computing power of swapped and mixed clusters.
4) Working on improving selection of clusters that go into the database.
--
Igor Yakushin

CDS: Automated script that can create the Daily Science Lock statistics files and also elog them. Checking on backups and working on the dvd backup option. Running a crude monitor (CrudMon) on AS_Q to monitor any glitches. Working on a list for post S2 work on CDS. (Chethan)

1) Continued the work on setting up a local cds network for testing and
debugging purpose
2) Working on the design requirement for the Watchdog Controller, to be used
in CDS control room
Ash

General Computing: Fixed a few bugs that were created by the Solaris Management Console. There are a lot of bugs that are introduced by this tool. However, Solaris is moving in the direction of using this for everything. Perhaps it is time to get serious about moving away from NIS+. Working on getting an audio conferencing device added to the auditorium. Hopefully this can be done before the LSC. Fixed a couple of mailing list entries. Reset some passwords. Made some firewall changes for Ash.
Audited the ldas-jobs server. There are a lot of ports left open on this machine that need to be shut down. Ordered a new projector for the new conference room across the street. If it works well, I will order two more. Instead of using LCD technology, it uses a TI technology called DLP. It will be interesting to see how well this works.
(Shannon)

Seismic Amelioration: I have continued to support the RFQ efforts by providing Larry Jones with Key information. This week we spent more time on the spring flexures and the problems that we encountered with the fabrication and installation. Discussion continued on the POD design and the rotary actuators. Additionally, my efforts have continued in properly configuring digital content for the seismic isolation for LIGO 1, HEPI, and advanced LIGO. (Marcel)

Modelling:  We continued modeling with E2E. Under coordination with CIT E2E group, we started to create a macro file to describe the LLO 4k interferometer. The structure of this file will be identical to LHO4k.mcr file. When the creation is completed, this file will be placed in the same directory as e2edb.mcr file in E2E home directory (/home/e2e/SimLIGO/SimLIGO/Boxes). Under collaboration with H. Yamamoto, Tiffany Findley (SLU student) simulated the motion of a model suspension that she set up on SLU campus and investigated in the past several weeks. The calculated transfer function of the pendular motion shows very good agreement with measurement (perfect agreement within the margine of the experimental eror). She will continue the analysis for yaw and pitch motion. (Sany)
 

Detector/Technical Support (Coyne)

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• Suspended optics:
• The 40m has been vented since Thursday to install suspended optics.
• Steve, Dennis, and Osamu installed ITMx in its chamber on Friday, and cabled up the the DSC. Several problems with the DSC cables were discovered (flipping of connectors), which blew out the whitening board. The cables and board were promptly fixed, with help from Rich and Ben, and DSC damping was established. The table was levelled and all OSEMs read in the middle of their range.
• BS was installed, DSC damping established, and table levelled for OSEM centering, on Tuesday.
• ITMy was installed, DSC damping established, and table levelled for OSEM centering, on Thursday.
• Dennis used DI N2 to blow dust off of the mirrors before installation.
• Steve checked that the suspension wire was in the correct place, after installation.
• Steve will try to set up in-vac mirrors for oplevs on these 3 newly installed optics, before pump-down.
• Steve will also see if he can install in-vac mirrors for camera views of the optics, before pump-down.
• Bob has assembling one of 2 SOS's (for PRM and SRM) and one of 2 MOS's (for ETMx and ETMy), in preparation for suspending the optics. The OSEMs are ready. Janeen will do some mechanical tests on the MOS.
• The old (green light) BS, in its SOS suspension, was removed from the chamber. It is available to whoever might need it.
• Suspended mass mode cleaner (Ugolini, Miyakawa, Vass, Abbott):
• Osamu measured the MC noise one last time before venting. It was ~ 5-10 dB worse than usual, above 1kHz. Not sure why.
• Osamu, Dennis, and Ben are reviewing the modifications that Daniel Sigg suggested to our MC servo board, to increase our UGF from 67 kHz to ~ 100 kHz, and are preparing to implement them.
• Ben has moved the MC length control to MC2 from an ICS110B to a Pentek ADC. He and Bob are now working on rewiring to use a universal dewhitener instead of the current SOS dewhitener for the MC2 output to the coil driver.
• Ben has obtained all the electronics required to complete the WFS ASC for the MC. He will work with Bob on all the cabling. Jay says that Lori is almost ready with the ASC software.
• PSL and ISS (O. Miyakawa, B. Abbott, R. Abbott, F. Nocera, D. Ugolini, S. Vass):
• We are planning on making the mods to our FSS that are recommended by Rick Savage, to our FSS board and RF summing box, to increase our UGF from 300 kHz to 600 kHz.
• The ISS PD is now downstream of the PMC. It continues to work well, but an out-of-loop PD reads more noise, and extreme sensitivity to acoustic and mechanical vibrations on the PSL table.
• Using a QPD, Rich has established that the apparent intensity noise is strongly correlated with beam jitter on the sensing PD.
• Rich continues the struggle to obtain -160 dB, with help from Dennis and Ben (Flavio is on vacation).
• Core digital suspension controllers (DSC), and other Electronics (B. Abbott, Heefner, Taylor):
• Rolf proposes a complete re-layout of our DSC system, using a commodity PC rather than a VME Pentium to do the filtering, leaving the VME Pentium to do IO only. A fiber link shuffles data between the 2 computers. Instead of 4 VME crates to run 8 DSC's, (limited by the filtering in the VME Pentium), only 2 would be needed. And, there'd be cpu cycles to spare (unlike the present situation). This has already been tested at Wilson House. This will require significant re-wiring. Jay will take the opportunity to split analog and digital between the two racks (1Y4 and 1Y5).
• Ben and Jay will review the necessary mods to get gps timing signals to the MC ASC system, the end racks, and the future LSC system.
• Jay is drawing up a LIGO-I-like LSC system for the 40m dual-recycled IFO, including 8 I/Q demod boards from LSC PD's. He is considering incorporating a redesign of the LSC whitening filter boards. He's also thinking about a redesign of the IQ demod boards, to fix known problems and to easily incorporate double demodulation.
• Optical sensing (Smith, Ourjoumtsev, Goggin, Miyakawa):
• Alex and Lisa completed the installation of the optics for the AP1 beamline, and are nearing completion for the SP beamline. Alexei gave a list of missing parts to Mike, who is updating the parts list.
• Alex is nearing completion of his code and a nice GUI for calculating the beam size and Guoy phase for all beamlines in the main IFO.
• Alex will soon begin the assembly and commissioning of an electro-optic shutter for the MCR beam (they are also needed for the AP and SP beams).
• OPTICS PARTS LIST, Orders pending: Input mode-matching telescope off-axis parabolic mirrors are expected 3/10/03 from SORL; drive electronics to drive the x and y axes of the 2nd PZT vacuum IFO steering mirror are expected 3/3/03 from Piezo-Jena; repair of two damaged tilt platforms expected week of 4/7.
• IFO MODE-MATCHING TELESCOPE: All the telescope parts were assembled okay. However, the PZT tilt platform was damaged during assembly into the MMT. I have decided to remove the tilt mirror from the MMT assembly, because the assembly is risky and the parabolic mirror presents too large a cantilevered load on the PZT mechanism. An adapter that attaches the mirror holder directly to the secondary mirror mount was designed. The PZT tilt mirror will be mounted separately.
• FARADAY ISOLATOR: The reworked Faraday isolator is awaiting assembly and alignment. An alignment procedure is being written.
• OPTICAL LEVER ASSY: Reworked parts were received and are awaiting checking and assembly.
• VAC STEERING MIRROR: A light-weight mirror holder for a 1.5 in dia x 0.25 in thick steering mirror, instead of the original 2 in mirror, was designed to be used for the IFO steering mirrors that are mounted on the PZT tilt platforms in separate DLC mirror mounts. The first steering mirror, SM1, will be located next to the MMT and an additional turning mirror willbe used to return the output beam from the MMT back to SM1. The second steering mirror, SM2 will be located near the PRM as before, but will utilize a smaller 1.5 in light-weight mirror holder on the PZT tilt platform.
• Facilities and vacuum envelope (Ugolini, Vass, Jones):
• The 40m has been vented since Thursday, for optics installation. We'll pump back down sometime in the next week.
• The TP3 dry scroll forepump failed on Sunday night, causing the pressure to rise in the RGA and annulus regions. CC4 did not switch off, as it should. Steve is investigating the cause for both these failures.
• Steve realized that the counterweights used to balance the optical tables in the chambers are not vented; so they trap air in the table holes. He is now placing the counterweights on washers to prevent this.
• Osamu plans to measure the horizontal transfer function of the small MC2 stack, before we pump down.
• South Annex Bake Ovens (Taylor, Cardenas):
• Bob completed bake jobs on Janeen's OSEMs for GINGIN and Ken's HAM spacers.
• Bob baked in-vacuum camera mirror parts for the 40m.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

no report

LASTI (Zucker)

no report

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

------------------------------------------------------------
LDAS Software (Kent Blackburn)
------------------------------------------------------------
 
 

LDAS has been closely monitored since the beginning of the Science Run. On
Friday of last week, we added pager email addresses to the LHO and LLO LDAS
systems so that critical messages in the system would contact Kent Blackburn
or Ed Maros day or night. During the first three days of the Science Run, the
two systems generated a critical message about once every four hours. These
were primarily due to the frameAPI core dumping, but there was one core dump
of the dataConditionAPI, one socket connection failure in the managerAPI and
one time out in the eventMonitorAPI. These typically occurred late at night
or very early in the day, leaving Kent and Ed exhausted by the end of the 3
day weekend. For some unknown reason the systems have since greatly stabilized
on their own, the last frameAPI coredump at LHO occurring 5 days ago and the
last frameAPI coredump at LLO occurring 4 days ago.
 

The other known issue with the release was the random failures at startup of
parallel wrapperAPI jobs on the Beowulf Cluster due to a bug (or bugs) in the
mpiAPI. These have been occuring at a rate of about 0.2% of jobs, close to the
expected from pre-release testing at Caltech. NOTE: Overall, the version of
LDAS running now is about 100 times more reliable than the version run in
E9. However, it is also about 100 times less reliable than the one used in
Science Run 1.
 

The createRDS command has not been able to keep up with the significantly
larger RDS frame at LHO. At LLO, LDAS is able to handle the smaller RDS frames,
needing about half of real time to generate. At LHO, LDAS is almost able to
keep up, but with the occasional frameAPI core dumps early in the run, added
delays have put the RDS generation about 40 hours behind.
 

This week, we have focused on fixing the issues that could not be addressed
in the last LDAS release prior to the start of the second science run.  This
is primarily the frameAPI core dumps and the mpiAPI start up bug, but it also
includes fixes to problems restarting APIs and some clean up of control and
monitoring functions in the controlMonitorAPI.
 

We have not been able to find a cause for the frameAPI core dumps on Solaris.
However, a similar frameAPI core dumping problem on Linux was traced to TCL
source code and a patch has been made. We are currently testing this patch on
Solaris to see if it removes the problem on that platform as well. If so this
would be allow for a significant improvement in reliability of the frameAPI
during the remainder of the run if we can get it in place soon. We have a
lead on the issues in the mpiAPI and have seen that the failure rate for this
bug is much higher on the UWM LDAS system with its much larger Beowulf cluster.
We are testing a possible improvement and working closely with UWM to assure
that the fix is universal.
 

In addition to the activities mentioned above, we have been working very hard
to migrate LDAS to the newest GCC compiler release. This is in part motivated
by the scary list of bugs that were fixed in this release that could impact
LDAS, and also motivated by a prospect that this new compiler will significantly
improve the performance of LDAS. It has already been seen that LDAS components
running under Linux run twice as fast with this new compiler. We are now making
the port to Solaris to see if similar performance boosts will materialize on
that platform. If so, we should be able to solve the problem of keeping up
with the data during the generation of RDS frames at Hanford.
 

Other background activities include:
 

 - instrumenting the eventMonitorAPI with additional debugging and logging
   code to trace a memory leak issue
 - instrumenting LDAS to use the /proc file system to determine process
   state information
 - improved API shutdown management
 - removed unnecessary LAM schema files from mpiAPI
 - patched TCL and FLEX
 - removed almost all warning messages from LDAS compile
 - corrected much of the "how to build LDAS" documentation
 - fixed problem in dataConditionAPI for
   a) response filters with zero values in gain
   b) fixed broken links for dataConditionAPI documentation
 - updated crawlink script to more successfully check for bad
   links on the LDAS web sites.
 - began testing LDAS against waveburst DSO on nightly bases
 - began tracking test suite in preparation for new release
 - modified ldasjob package in LIGOtools to support submission
   of jobs from machines on the LDAS network.
 

------------------------------------------------------------
LDAS System Administration (Stuart Anderson)
------------------------------------------------------------
 

Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)
 

* Exchanged more email with Qlogic trying to get the old 1Gb host config
  to work with the new switch.
 

* Have now labeled and put into the silo all but 3 boxes (90 tapes) of
  the 420 tape order.
 

* Put into the silo all but 9 boxes (270 tapes) of our prelabeled 1200
  tape order.
 

* Helped with move/hook up of AIT2 tape robot to Powell-Booth (ldas-archive).
 

* Confirmed that all S1 data is in SAM-QFS/HPSS before it's deletion from
  IDE-RAID.
 

* Worked on SAM-QFS issues related to ingestion of S2 data, mostly housekeeping
  related to only having 200 tape slots with our evaluation license.
 
 

(Al Wilson)
 

* Completed reliability checks for the IDE Raid units. All units check out
  ok. No disk failures.
 

* Finished building MOE, a Linux computer for a desktop workstation.
 

* Increased the warning and red alert levels on BB for the CPU usage
 

* Starting to work on a history graphing plug-in for BB
 

* Reverse engineering a way to monitor drive failures for the 3ware cards
 
 

(Stuart Anderson)
 

* Started archiving S2 data to SAM-QFS only--no more HPSS.
 

* Rewrote tape archive script to use both AIT-2 drives in parallel and
  to run directly on the main SAM-QFS server to avoid disk-to-disk copying.
 

* Placed an order for 3 years of SAM-QFS software maintenance.
 

* Removed all E9 and S1 data from the disk cache at Caltech to make
  room for S2 reduced data set. E9 and S1 data remain in both the
  HPSS and SAM-QFS tape archive.
 
 
 

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
 

* Continuing to tape off S1 ASQ data in prep for S2 data.
 

* Still having troubles with pc raid device scsi timeouts.
 
 
 

Livingston
----------
(Igor Yakushin)
 

* Sent 24 tapes to Caltech.
 

* Received 4 spare disk drives for beowulf cluster.
 

* Running 107 channel RDS creation script keeping up to 4 hours behind
  the real time.
 

* Created AS_Q only RDS of injection data at both sites.
 

* Created AS_Q only RDS of first few days of the run and rsynced it to
  LLO. Still working out the details of AS_Q only RDS distribution.
 
 
 

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)
 

* The tapecontrol scripts have been running smoothly since Feb 10 to
  record on tape all the raw full frame data at LHO and LLO.  Three
  shipments of tapes have been sent from LHO to Caltech.
 

* The creatrds loop script has been running at LHO, generating the
  "level 1" rds frames.  The LHO rds frames are 42 behind real time and
  losing ground slowly.  However, this is not a panic situation yet, and
  we have plans to catch up before we fall to far behind.  (And all rds
  frames for all S2 times will be regenerated from raw data at Caltech
  regardless.)
 

* Ran the burntest on node23 and node25 with recently replaced hard
  drives; node25 passed by node23 crashed again during the test.  The
  manufacturer will be contact about the failed node.
 

* Working with Robert Schofield to save some of the PEM injection data
  on disk at the sites.  (All pre-S1 injection data was archived onto
  tape, and the tapes have been sent to Caltech.)
 
 
 

------------------------------------------------------------
LDAS Data Analysis (Stuart Anderson
------------------------------------------------------------
 
 

(Igor Yakushin)
 

* Together with Sergey Klimenko running waveburst DSO at sites.
  Preliminary results show that it is working well.
 

* Fixed the bug with printf statement.
 

* Fixed problems in computing power of swapped and mixed clusters.
 

* Working on improving selection of clusters that go into the database.
 
 

(Peter Shawhan)
 

* Spent several nights doing hardware signal injections into the three
  interferometers, mostly just before the S2 run began.
 

* Updated the dfm utility (in the LIGOtools 'dataflow' package) to make the
  'getFrames' utility work again.  This was necessary because LDAS no longer
  makes frame-cache information available via http.
 
 
 

Data analysis activities at MIT (Erik Katsavounidis):
 

Laura Cadonati:
 

Set up a web page that loads the Burst triggers (AJW's online ETG
production) and produces daily/weekly summary plots, updated every hour
or so - see:
http://lancelot.mit.edu/~cadonati/S2/BurstProd/S2-burstETGplots.html
 

Looked at the pre-run and first intra-run hardware burst injections:
http://lancelot.mit.edu/~cadonati/S2/Inject/S2injections.html
 

Now setting up for an online playground Burst analysis. Also on the
playground, investigation of the nature of the triggers produced by the
ETGs (Event Trigger Generator).
 

Erik Katsavounidis:
 

Re-did S1 playground and production pipeline analysis for TFCLUSTER
and SLOPE triggers. Working on understanding discrepancies with
numbers reported in the S1 Burst report and streamlining same analysis
on S2 data.
 
 
 

(Alan Weinstein)
 

- Running tfclusters, slope and power ETG's online
  during S2 on h1,h2,l1.
  Maintaining a summary web page at
  http://lancelot.mit.edu/~ajw/S2/dsorun/contrib/burst/web/burstS2.html
  in addition to  the online search status pages:
  http://ldas-jobs.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/dsorun/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=index
  http://ldas-jobs.ligo-la.caltech.edu/dsorun/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=index
- Feeding back to LDAS and ETG authors on problems during online running,
  and fixing some bugs in my scripts.
- Assisted Laura in running daily and weekly summary plots, in:
  http://lancelot.mit.edu/~cadonati/S2/BurstProd/S2-burstETGplots.html
- Gave an updated list of hardware burst injections to Szabi and Peter
- Ran LDAS jobs on hardware burst injections from 2/13 and 2/17,
  and assisted Laura in preparing and interpreting summary plots:
  http://lancelot.mit.edu/~cadonati/S2/Inject/S2injections-1302.html
  http://lancelot.mit.edu/~cadonati/S2/Inject/S2injections-1702.html
- Working with Shourov and Joe Giaime in evaluating the
  filtering done on the data before passing to the ETG.
 
 
 
 

(Kaice Reilly)
 

I have been working on the stochastic playground analysis this week
(and last).  The playground analysis has been completed and results
are looking reasonable (no more 10^9s). Joe Romano
and I have been spending hours each day on the phone getting this
worked out. I am working on a matlab code to create a time-frequency
plot of the FFTs of the CC spectra from this analysis.
 

Did a preliminary analysis of the stochastic hardware injections
from Wednesday night. The analysis will have to be redone when
better pre-S2 calibration files are available.
 

Also I am going through the reading of the Phys 237a course (week 1)
on gravitational waves.
 

More quotidian tasks, related to configuring my new box (I lost all my
email at one point),  required some attention this week. In this
category
I took care of some travel arrangements for Livingston and subscribed
to multiple new LIGO related mailing lists.
 

I have been working on a matlab script to make time frequency maps of the
cross correlation statistic (between the three IFOs) . This work
is being done for the Stochastic group.  Learning much about matlab.
 
 
 

------------------------------------------------------------
E2E (Biplab Bhawal)
------------------------------------------------------------
 

Mode mismatch
---------------
(Biplab) completed FFT runs for a number of intermediate states between
 Hot and Cold states of LHO4k. Finally these would be compared with
 Melody and SimLIGO locked state results with limited number of modes.
 

Code development
------------------
(Melody) Continued on the optimization of the modeler's FUNC_xxx modules.
 

Alfi
-----
(Bruce)
        - Worked on implementation of automatically managed data path
          junctions.
(Melody)
        - Started creating the web based manual for alfi5.
 
 
 

------------------------------------------------------------
General Computing (Larry Wallace)
------------------------------------------------------------
 

MIT:
(Keith)
-Fixed backup scripts using rsync/ssh
-Updated wireless hubs with new MAC addresses
-Installed 2nd NW22 wireless hub in printer room
-Troubleshot cisco mini-pci wireless hardware with Orinoco hubs
 (it appears that 128bit security will not work successfully)
-Installed sun Fortran compiler (CSR's) on straw
-Re-ordered extra matlab toolbox licenses for PCs
-Added new urop students to gc computers
-Troubleshooting virtual control room software
-Following up on purchasing trouble with Office XP software
-Adjusted Calendar software on emvogil-2
 
 

Livingston:
(Shannon)
-Fixed a few bugs that were created by the Solaris Management Console.
 There are a lot of bugs that are introduced by this tool.  However,
Solaris is moving in the direction of using this for everything.
 Perhaps it is time to get serious about moving away from NIS+.
-Working on getting an audio conferencing device added to the auditorium.
 Hopefully this can be done before the LSC.
-Fixed a couple of mailing list entries.  Reset some passwords.  Made
some firewall changes for Ash.
-Audited the ldas-jobs server.  There are a lot of ports left open on
this machine that need to be shut down.
-Ordered a new projector for the new conference room across the street.
If it works well, I will order two more.  Instead of using LCD
technology, it uses a TI technology called DLP.  It will be interesting
to see how well this works.
 

(Larry)
-It should be noted that since the run has started the two T1 lines have been
saturated pretty much most of the time. Check the following url for the
information LSU is keeping on the network traffic to and from the Observatory.
 

http://kahuna.net.lsu.edu/mrtg/ligo.html
 

Hanford:
(Christine)
- Dealt with a broken monitor that is still under warranty.  Called the
manufacturer for an RMA and shipped the monitor back to the
manufacturer.
- Fixed some problems with ssh1 on various computers.
- Purchased a new laptop for one of the operators.
- Worked with a Dell technician to troubleshoot display problems on a
laptop.
- Continued upgrading to Solaris 9.
 

CIT:
(Bruce Sears)
-(BS) Ilog maintenance.                         (0.5 day)
- Adding tons of scimon users.  Uhhggg.  I will need to put
some time into batching this job in the future.
 
(Mike)
-Reloaded a laptop for the loaner pool that included OS and GC software.
-Received a replacement laptop for Helena and am just about finished
loading GC software and a few additional packages that she requested.
-Michael Lloyd - I setup a workstation for him; this consisted of moving a
sun workstation to another office and replacing it with a pc workstation.
Plus I had to update all security/os patches on pc, in order for solid
works to run correctly.
-Stefano Tirelli - I setup his workstation for him that setting up users
preferences and loading some additional software.
-A few users up on the 3rd floor W/B were having problems with their
Ethernet connections after troubleshooting I ended up activating different
ports and switching them over; everything seems to be okay for now.
-Activated a few more Ethernet ports for some users with
laptops/workstations in their cubicles.
-Onsite/phone support,
This included networking, software, and printing issues; plus ran some
service pack/security updates on some user workstations.
 

(Veronica)
- LIGO website: made and posted a page with AAAS'03 presentations.
Working with the DMC on converting LIGO VHS tapes to DV. Tested the
quality of the DV on our camcorder; requested that the DMC redo the
original batch for better quality to compensate for tape degrading.
Posting Aspen conference transparencies as they arrive.
Posted various updates.
- LSC website: updating the March meeting page as the information becomes
available. Posted a few updates to other LSC-related pages.
- CaJAGWR website: working on smil combos for past seminars. Compressed
one of the past talks, awaiting JPL clearance required for publishing.
Provided admin support and updated the website.
 

(Larry)
-Spent a deal of time working on maintenance contracts. Most of the issues with
Foundry and SUN have been cleared up and should be wrapped up next week.
Campus has also sent in their yearly request for money to cover the Campus
maintenance contracts.
Procurements took some extra time since I had a number of items to reconcile
this past week.
-Worked on the network replacement boxes. Still testing them out. We had one
that was DOA and had to swapout a number of parts between two of the edge
switches to get the replacement one working.
Mike will replace the 3rd floor edgeswitch early in the morning and the core
switch swap out is on hold for now.
-Cleaned up a number of accounts and working on a few different lists of people
that will be contacted for various reasons. One list is for those that need to
signoff on the GC policy and the other is for accounts that need to be cleaned
out.
-Resolved a number of PC issues. Most dealing with spam and viruses.
- File restoration was also in the rise this week.
- Over 100 sites has been added to the block list this last week.
 
(Lisa)
- Mostly worked on the replacement server for www.ligo.  It is ready for
testing.
- Helped Larry with some quotes for software and replacement parts.
- Cleaned up the DHCP leases.
- Higher number than usual of file restores from tape backup.

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

Jay Heefner
Advanced LIGO Suspension: The electronics for the adv LIGO suspension prototype in the synchrotron building are installed and operational. The transimpedance of the GEO receiver module needed to be adjusted from 120K to 60K ohms

40 Meter LSC: Initial designs of the LSC have begun.
 

From: "Mark Barton" <mbarton@ligo.caltech.edu>

This week I continued the integration and testing of the LASTI MC
prototype electronics but encountered a moderately serious problem: many
of the coils are shorted to the coil former and thus to the structure
when mounted. i worked with Calum on a plan to send some back for rework
and to make others usable in the short term with an arrangement of
insulating spacers.

I also released v3.0 of my triple and quad suspension models in
Mathematica, along with a user manual, T020205-00.
 

From: Phil Willems <willems@ligo.caltech.edu>

Sapphire Q Tests
----------------

Satisfied that we can safely and precisely suspend the 40kg monster sapphires,
we disassembled the structure, refinished it, polished and greased a steel wire,
cleaned the good sapphire, and resuspended it.  We have data for several modes
but the best value so far is 2.0e8 for an antisymmetric radial mode.  This value
is reproducible in the sense that, for fun, we globbed some extra lard on and
saw the Q drop to 5e7, but cleaning the sapphire in situ restored the Q to the
initial value within 10%.

[GHS note: This is an amazing high Q!  Very impressive result on a 40 kg sapphire piece!]
 

This Q might improve with finer or better suspension wire, and we are preparing
tests.  We also will analyze the data for all modes and see if surface polish
losses are consistent with the observed variation.
 
 

From: ctorrie <ctorrie@ligo.caltech.edu>

ADVANCED LIGO SUSPENSIONS

VISIT
Mike Lloyd is visiting from the University of Glasgow until mid-March he is sitting opposite Janeen in west Bridge and can be reached on 6263952071.

MODE CLEANER

Janeen and I prepared 4 sets of drawings and assemblies for a complete controls prototype suspension. These are now with Gina ready to be set out to various vendors.

Mark, Janeen, Helena and I have been looking at possible upgrades to the coil design. These came about due to several of the coils having a short to ground. Several of these coils are already back in Glasgow for re-works and will be re-wired and re-assembled on their return.

RECYCLING MIRROR
Janeen, Mike and I met with Norna and Mike Plissi in Glasgow to discuss aspects of the RM design. Once a design has been chosen Mike will start a 3-D representation of the masses later this week.
 

From: Janeen Romie <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>

AdLIGO Suspensions
Ken Mason's HAM spacers should be out of the oven tomorrrow. I have a large optics carrying case ready to ship them back to MIT.
Three mode cleaner suspension drawing packages were given to Gina and Ruth for RFQ. They expect quotes in 3-4 weeks. This costing will back up our proposal estimates.

Calum, Mark, Helena and I have been working on optimizing the hybrid osem design. Calum and I have been working on updating the documentation.

Gin Gin
Helena has assembled the dirty ITM suspension structure. She and I will glue on the magnets and guide rods. Bob Taylor reports that the osems should be ready Thursday of next week. Jay reports that the electronics should also be done next week.
 
 

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