Weekly Report for
Week Ending March 23, 2006
Due to the LIGO Staffing Committee Meeting March 27, 2006,
there will be no LIGO Executive Committee meeting scheduled that day.
Special Announcements:
Weekly
Report Highlights
Many people were at the LSC Meeting held at Hanford this week. Therefore, reported activity is less than normal
(and this report is a little late).
A very successful LSC meeting was held at LHO this week. There were 169
registered participants. Among the highlights were accounts of many recent data
analysis results, and sessions on Advanced LIGO as well as enhancements to
initial LIGO. At the LSC Council meeting, we
- Admitted
a new group from Montana State, Billings
(Matt Benacquista)
- Had
a very positive discussion about the draft MOU on collaborative research
with Virgo (Benoit Mours participated in part of
the discussion.)
- Approved
the new LSC Bylaws, after amending them to have the appointments made by
the Spokesperson be put up for approval by the Council.
- Discussed the new LIGO Board, and suggested that
the second LSC member (besides the Spokesperson) be elected by the
Council.
LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)
STATUS OF LSC MOUs (Lloyd)
LSC MOUs and Research Plans and Progress Reports
SITE TELECONFERENCE (Lindquist)
A site teleconference was conducted Thursday, March 23, 2006. The following were among the issues
discussed:
- Livingston
Science Education Center—reporting a little ahead of schedule
due to cooperative weather. The
roofing systems are nearly complete and interior partitioning is going up.
- Livingston
LDAS Structure Status—the computers have been moved into the
structure and powered up.
- Van
for Livinsgton—according to the NSF
the earlies for a GSA van is March 2007. Should consider purchase or lease.
- P-Card
Training at Livingston—Jennifer Mertz and Ed Jasnow
will be going to Livingston April 19 to
do P-Card training.
- There
are no open assigned actions. The
list of assigned actions updated through December 1, 2005 (the last time
that it was updated) will be found Here.
PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Luna)
>From: Rod Luna <rluna@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Provided
assistance to the Detector Group (H. Armandula)
with packing, shipping, and preparation of a Commercial Invoice for US
Customs Clearance of four Fused Silica Substrates and four Teflon Caps to Lyon, France. Account Number LIGO.OPT - 5.4 -
NSFLIGO.FY02ON.
- Prepared
new guidelines for Capital Equipment tagging.
DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER
(Turner, Mak)
>From: Linda Turner - turner@ligo.caltech.edu>
>From: Cleveland Mak mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu
COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Cunningham, Brambila, Kaufman)
>
>From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>
- Completed
change order #2 to Cangelosi Ward for the LDAS
Housing structure at LLO and submitted it to the vendor. Requested and
obtained the renewals for the Insurance certificates from Cangelosi Ward. Distributed copies. Distributed copies
of the certificates.
- Prepared
the procurement package for Galli and Morelli and routed it for approvals. Caltech approvals
were obtained. Once the NSF approval is obtained, then Caltech will sign
the purchase order and contract and send it out for distribution.
- Holding
change order to LSU #1022280 for the weather station while we are getting
information about the rate that applies to this order.
- Working
on change order #171 to Triad for an 8-month extension of the time period
for one contractor.
- Working
on several issues with the subcontract to University of Florida.
- Still
following up on a pending credit that is still outstanding for the pulse
generator that was returned for credit.
>From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman>
- Prepared
a Cost Transfer correct the payment to the Exploratorium from the Hanford
Outreach account to the Livingston Outreach account.
- Provided
a summary of travel expenditures incurred for Detector Installation and
Commissioning from 1998 to 2002 to Dennis Coyne.
- Attended
a meeting regarding classification of LIGO summer students. The appropriate expenditure type to be
used is "Stipend - Participant Support", this expenditure type
is exempt from Indirect Cost.
- Notified
PMA division that incorrect expenditure type had been used on payment in
the Visitor account, which resulted in the imposition of Indirect
Cost. Expenditure type is to be
corrected.
- Financial
reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport.
(For passwords contact Florence)
SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)
>From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>
- Nothing
significant to report.
>From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>
- The
construction of the LLO
Science Education
Center remains on,
or possibly ahead of, schedule due to a long string of good weather. The roofing is nearly done, which will
result in the complete enclosure of the building.
- The
LDAS structure is complete to the point that the computers have been
moved, powered, and are now in operation.
A few finishing touches remain on the structure itself.
- Three
e-mails were sent out concerning teleconferencing. The first was a list of techniques from AccuConference to make teleconferences clearer. The second was a list of countries that
can be directly dialed for the same rate as a domestic call. The third was the domestic and
international access numbers for a backup system to the current AccuConference system.
Essentially, these are the numbers to the old system, and an be used if there are any issues with the new system.
- The
contract with Galli & Morelli
for the design of the prototype HAM-SAS was approved by Caltech Purchasing
Services and forwarded to the NSF for review and approval on Tuesday,
March 21.
SUPPORT (Baldon, Hiroto, Lloyd)
>Irene Baldon
Worked on the usual new trips, expense reports,
reconciling, calendar reservations, and itinerary entries.
>
No report.
>Dorothy Lloyd
- Processed
the usual requisitions for POs and payment request, and approved and
submitted the weekly incoming invoices to accounts payable for payment.
- Jim
continued with data entry in the LIGO database and helping out in the DCC.
PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)
Advanced LIGO Review Preparations (See Advanced LIGO Review Preparations)
CHANGE CONTROL/CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (Lindquist)
- Change
request CR-060004 was submitted by Allen Sibley, March 16, 2006. This change request moves budget
previously discussed and approved into account WBS 3.12 (LDAS Maintenance)
to cover the costs for the new ground-floor LDAS enclosure. The enclosure
provides infrastructure (HVAC, electrical, lighting, communications. etc)
and sound attenuation for the LDAS complex. Using account 3.12 assures proper
allocation of taxes and overhead.
Since this request only moves budget into the appropriate account
and does not allocate any additional budget, we have not scheduled a
meeting of the LIGO Change Control Board.
There were no comments or concerns expressed, and the change
request will be forwarded to J. Marx for his signature.
HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)
>From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>
- The
next Staffing Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday, March 27. The
DRAFT agenda for the Staffing Committee has been posted on the SC web
page.
- All
files for the Staffing Committee are up-to-date and posted on the SC web
page.
- Prepared
numerous appointment and reappointment memos for various Visitors, Post
Docs, and Term Staff
- Processed time sheets and submitted to payroll.
Quality/Safety (Tyler)
>From: Bill Tyler tyler@ligo.caltech.edu
No report.
LIGO Hanford
Observatory (LHO) and Interferometer Operations (Raab)
Summary of Commissioning Activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory (compiled by M. Landry)
The LSC meeting took place this week, and our largest-ever crowd of 174
participants joined for data analysis updates, technical sessions and
face-to-face meetings. Many thanks go out to Terry Gunter, Terry Santini, Tara Brown, Corky Ray, Christine Barker, Linda
Turner, Mike Pedraza, Richard McCarthy and others for
making the meeting such a success.
Recall last week the air flow in the LVEA was brought to ~75%
of the pre-commissioning level via the starting of a third HVAC fan.
The hope was to improve lagging duty cycles through better temperature control,
which appears to have worked: duty cycles for the week were H1 - 86%, H2 - 85%,
at about 14Mpc and 7Mpc, respectively. These duty cycles meet our target
goals for S5. While we benefited from low microseism throughout the week,
there was considerable activity on the site given the LSC meeting.
Temperatures have indeed stabilized
(for a more recent trend, click here).
Some S5 elog
highlights are bulleted below:
- the
standard set of range and duty cycle plots was posted
- PulsarMon shows distinct
features compared to other FsOM, in that it
monitors the noise only at 59.5Hz (0.1Hz below the Crab)
4K IFO
- glitching on the 4k was supressed by lowering
the ISS gain. In follow-up studies, the VCO control signal was
observed to have a peak
at 249kHz.
- the unity gain frequency of the mode cleaner was again
found to be problematic, this time a factor
of 2 too low, and thus flaky electronics are suspected. The ugf is to be remeasured each
time the MC relocks.
2K IFO
- small
optic 'hold' servos were readied,
and will be tested, in order to ensure the optics remain roughly fixed in
angle relative to their cages, as this has been shown to speed relocking
CDS
- the
new Sun ilog server crashed and had to be replaced
- the Tuesday CDS maintenance summary is given here
LIGO Livingston
Observatory (LLO) and Interferometer Operations (Zucker)
No report.
Initial LIGO Detector Science & Engineering (Coyne)
CDS
See the CDS weekly meeting minutes in the commissioning archives
DMT
No report
40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)
Keisuke Goda ("Go") from Nergis' Quantum Optics group at MIT will be visiting for
the next ~ 6 months. Please make him welcome!
Fumiko Kawazoe visited from NAOJ in Japan
and gave a talk on the status of her 4m RSE prototype interferometer. She has
locked the FPMI and is moving on the PR and RSE.
Osamu presented a status
report on 40m progress at the LSC technical plenary session.
IFO Commissioning
- Because
of some jostling, the beam exiting the MCR beamline
was misaligned. Dan realigned things and re-established MC lock.
IFO Modeling
- Monica
now has all of the length control loops implemented and tested, except for
PRC (which comes next) in her e2e simulation of the full 40m/AdLIGO
optical configuration. She fixed the problem with her POX and POY loops
and the OLTF now looks fine.
- Osamu
presented some calculations by him and Kentaro
on AdLIGO shot noise sensitivity and loop couplings including
exploration of various different sensing schemes, at the LSC session on AdLIGO ISC.
DC Detection and Vacuum Squeezing Development
- Rob,
Sam, Ben and Jay have been working out the details of the DC readout
controls. Jay is drawing up detailed schematics for the digital controls,
based on PCIX technology (instead of VME).
- Rob
and Sam glued the OMC PZT to its bracket and the small mirror to the PZT.
- Go
installed some of the components of the vacuum squeezer onto the PSL
table, and installed pickoff mirrors to direct the dumped light from the meain PSL beam over to his setup.
- Go
continues to develop his conceptual layout of the squeezer system on the
PSL table.
Electronics, Controls, Computers
- Rana found that the PSL/IO Anti-Aliasing chassis from
the PSL rack was almost useless; many of the signals were railed or
extremely noisy. Dan is desoldering all the
filter chips and replacing them each with a single jumper wire.
- Rana changed the DAQ datarate
for the X and Y arm QPDs from 2048 to 16384. He
then discovered an aliasing problem that is supposed to be performed by
low-pass filtering in the front end code. He asked Rolf to fix it.
- Rob
and Rana re-commissioned the AO path of the
Common Mode servo, using REFL_DC (from SP33) as the signal.
- Rob
made some changes to the LSC code, including the addition of the REFL_DC
signal, and a re-implementation of fast input matrix ramping without incuring cpu
slow-down.
- Ben
continues testing of the noisy I&Q Demod board for ASPD 166MHz.
Lab Infrastructure
- Steve
finished the installation of protective beam tubes on all the high-powered
beamlines in the PSL enclosure, including the
MCR beamline.
- Steve
put the PSL enclosure HEPA filters on a Variac
and is running them at 40% of 120V. It is much quieter and particle counts
are zero for 0.3 and 0.5 micron at the north west
corner of psl optical table.
- Steve and Go have assembled several pairs of laser
goggles which work in both the IR and the green, for protection when
working with the new second-harmonic-generator (SHG).
Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)
Initial data from the TNI shows that, while
the ring-dampers do reduce the in-situ Q's of the mirrors as expected, they
also increase the broadband noise floor. This was not expected, and we are debugging
to make sure this is not due to some other, technical noise source.
The majority of the LASTI crew were at the LSC so we had limited progress at LASTI this
week.
Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
Simulation and Modeling (Yamamoto)
Scattering Noise (Hiro Yamamoto, Mike Smith)
The result of e2e simulation of scattering noise was discussed among Hiro and Mike. Mike
needed more injection points of scattering noise source. Hiro will finish
the calculation next week. Calculations
to confirm the result using twiddle and e2e 40m configuration
will follow.
Quantum correlation in e2e (Hiro)
During the discussion with Somuya and others last
week, it was suggested that a simple way to properly include the quantum
correlations among the radiation pressure noise and shot noise is to inject
vacuum from the dark port. The first test to be done soon is if the sensitivity
curve can be reproduced without the current explicit implementation of
radiation pressure and shot noise.
QuadFP (Hiro)
The FP setup with quad pendulum is updated to have WFSs
and QPD so that Rana will be able to test ASC which
has been designed in SINLINK using a parameterised
pendulum.
40m simulation (Monica)
The open loop transfer functions for XARM and YARM with POX and POY
demodulated at 33MHz have been simulated: the feedback filter for the arms has
been improved to get stability in order to acquire those transfer functions.
Static Interferometer Simulation (Hiro, Melody)
The script to create a distribute package of SIS software is being
developed. The object definition parser
code has been modified so that object can be defined in the code. This is to
streamline the setting of the simulation setup.
modeler code (Bruce)
Completely reorganizing the parser code.
It is a bit jumbled
from past additions perhaps.
The main problem being that some base class members are expected to
contain data which should only be
expected to be in the derived class.
Rather difficult to
disentangle, but worthwhile for when the parser needs
modification.
Data Analysis Activities (Lazzarini)
Chatterji:
Attended LSC meeting. Gave presentations on
proposed slides for the April APS meeting, details of the Q Pipeline search
applied to S5 data, and an overview of the QScan
utility.
Dupuis:
- attended
pulsar face-to-face and LSC meeting
Mendell:
Preliminary results from the Stackslide search for
continuous gravitational waves from LIGO S4 data were presented at the March
pulsar F2F/LSC meetings. The talk has been submitted to the DCC as
LIGO-G060082-00-W.
Shawhan:
- Updated
the technical details document for the S4 all-sky burst search.
- Organized
and attended the Burst Group face-to-face meeting.
- Attended
the LSC Meeting and gave a few talks.
- Updated
segwizard to allow queries for data quality
flags at or near a specified GPS time.
Sutton:
I spent all week at the bursts face-to-face meeting and the LSC
meeting. I presented the results of the
coherent network analysis test for discriminating gravitational-wave bursts
from instrumental noise. I also had some
fruitful discussions about network analysis, particularly with Rakhmanov and Heng.
LIGO Data Analysis System
Software Systems (Maros)
LDAS
A new unit test has been added to verify that LDAS can handle large frame
files (>4Gb) (PR#2135).
Efforts continue on the 64 bit port
of LDAS. Rules have been
added for building Xerces (XML parser by IBM) 64
bit. It has been demonstrated that Globus GSI authentication adds considerable overhead to job
processing. CmonClient
is now bundling requests so all requested graphs will appear. The nightly testing scripts have been updated
to submit using either gsi or non-gsi
sockets. System testing of LDAS was
performed using version 1.8.123 of the software.
TCLGlobus
The remaining problem reports for the 0.5.0 release have been closed and a
release of the software is expected early next week. The library now check
for X.509 service credentials for client program running with service
credentials. Online TclGlobus
documentation supporting LDAS's usage of Globus sockets has been completed. Nine of twenty-five Globus
GRAM Cache have now been incorporated into unit tests.
GRID COMPUTING
Attended an ITB installation and validation telecom on OSG
0.3.6. Installed
Condor 6.7.17 and OSG 0.3.6 on the LIGO-CIT-ITB cluster. Successfully ran Inspiral
pipe work flows to completion on two OSG 0.3.6 sites as part of the OSG 0.3.6
validation effort: ITB_INSTALL_TEST, and FNAL_FERMIGRID_TEST. Worked with four other OSG 0.3.6 sites to
determine problems related to the inability of those sites to execute the LIGO
application.
Hardware Systems (Anderson)
Caltech
(Dan Kozak)
- Fixed
problem with LLO's fb1:/dmt getting I/O errors
because it could no longer see the underlying device (reasons
unknown). Used devfsadm
to get the device back and then it worked again. Spent some time
- writing this up and explaining the various
FC/QFS/Solaris issues with this kind of failure to those in the line of
fire at LLO.
- Talked
to Kevin Flasch a bit about the LDRdataFindServer SQL query.
- Did
much work associated with the LLO LDAS room shutdown. Besides the normal "make sure
everything is on tape" I also ended up repacking some tapes that
SAM-QFS had strewn data across.
This work will continue when the system comes back up.
- Called
in, received and installed power supply for 3510-10 at CIT.
- Normal
ingestion stuff, but discovered a bug/misfeature
in Ben's Disk2Disk script. While it
correctly flagged last week's bad LLO frames and didn't copy them, it did
write their md5sums to the .md5 file.
Ben has fixed this at LHO and I'll remind him to do so at LLO once
we're up and running again there.
(Phil Ehrens)
- DOE
cert enabled Apache on ldas-test and documented
procedures in sysadmin wiki.
- Added
"tripwire" module to log_scan.tcl
unified log monitor, ID, and reporting tool. log_scan will now report any modification to
critical system config and binary files.
(Erik Espinoza)
- Moved
node151 to node327 (reccuring raid issues).
- Building
and documenting kickstart servers for other
sites (should be completed early next week).
- Ran
temperature probes for LIGO CIT data center, http://ldas-kickstart.ligo.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/realtime
- Wrote
email notification script for high temperature alerts.
- Rebooted
node247 (kernel panic).
- Looked
into sendmail vulnerability.
(Stuart Anderson)
- Finished
copying S4/S5 L1/L3 RDS frames into the CIT cluster for quicker data
access. These data are not yet published into LSCdataFind.
- Helped
coordinate the LLO LDAS equipment move.
MIT
(Keith Bayer)
- With
help, the 80 node cluster has been wired for 100Mb/s and Gigabit ethernet.
- Cluster
nodes have been configured for running at MIT.
- Condor
cluster has been brought on-line.
Livingston (Stuart for Igor and Dwayne)
- Moving
the LDAS equipment (including electrical and HVAC) to a new location in
the same building.
Hanford
(Ben Johnson)
- Attended
a few sessions of the LSC meeting including the DASWG discussion.
- Consolidated
and inventoried tape cabinet in LDAS room. There are now 1013 tapes in the
cabinet, and I have record of each tape's slot and VSN. I took about 45
minutes to perform the inventory: 30 for the scanning, 15 for the verification
later (number in drawer == number scanned in drawer + fixes).
- Nearly
finished with the tape catalog software. I have already used it to insert
the initial inventory of tapes as well as to find and remove 3 previously
missing tapes.
General Computing (Wallace)
MIT:
(Keith)
- Ordered
SCSI enclosures for upgrading GC fileserver
- Rebuilding
sendmail 8.13.6 to incorporate security patch
- Wrote
some documentation on LDAP
- Supplied
data taking pc and new static ip for Eugeniy's lab project
- Received
copper gig-eth cards for SB1000's
Livingston:
(Shannon)
- This
has been the week for disk failures.
One RAID controller died on Monday AM. The RAID is completely dead and had only
been in service for a couple of weeks.
I initially suspected power supply issues, so had the vendor send
out a power supply. Replaced it and
this did not fix the problem. I
will likely have to send this unit back.
Unfortunately there was a bit of probably irreplaceable data
there. Then on Wednesday morning, I
found a failed drive on the file server RAID. I replaced the drive, then during
reconstruction, a second drive failed.
Irrecoverable for a RAID 5 unit...
This machine was also the backup server, and as such all of the
tape indexes, etc. were on the RAID. Luckily I had originally set it up so
that there was a standalone tape drive installed dedicated solely for
backup up the backup software. The
software was installed on its own slice on the RAID drive, so restoring
the backup software was relatively easy after the RAID finished
rebuilding. I lost a total of 4
drives on this RAID in one day. The
drives are about 2 months from the warranty expiring. After I had the backup software
restored, I was able to start restoring the rest of the data that was on
the RAID. I lost my software mirrors
since I intentionally did not have them being backed up. This data is easily replaceable from
various repositories (CIT, Open Source stuff, etc.). For some reason I had to restore twice,
since the first pass only restored the directories? Haven't figured this out yet in the last
few hours.
- updated the IDS rulesets.
- updated
the IDS web interface with the newest version - More pouring through logs
(IDS, syslog, etc.) - Set the mail server to
check against the sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org lists. This should cut down a fair amount of
spam. Still haven't managed to get
the logs to work though. I will
have to open a support case with Sun.
- Received
the contract info from Sun on our support contracts. One is expiring this month. I will have to review what is under
contract and decide what can be dropped and what needs to be added for
hardware support.
- Matlab licenses are up for renewal this month. Will have to work with Mathworks on a quote.
- RMA'd a couple of hard drives. Maxtor as usual is nearly impossible. Western Digital is a piece of cake. Total of six drives dead this week.
Hanford
(Christine)
- LSC
meeting support: Two incidents of
computer misuse by LSC attendees were reported by ESnet. This LSC had the most attendees of any
meeting held to date at LHO. The
wireless network was intermittent and there wasn't enough of most
everything. The break
out meetings were spread all over the site in three buildings which
required a lot of walking and carrying equipment.
- Backup
network troubleshooting: Replaced
the media converters between PNNL and LIGO with 100 mb
converters instead of 10 mb. We are now seeing receive and transmit
traffic through the media converters, but I am still unable to get to ESnet over the backup circuit. PNNL thinks the problem may be at my
router as they are able to ping ESnet from their
end over the backup circuit. Amerion is able to ping both ESnet
and LIGO over the backup circuit.
PNNL has suggested some configuration changes to try on the router.
CIT
(Sears)
- iLog Maintenance: Working
with Dave Barker at LHO to port iLog to a new
server.
(Mike)
- Loaded
an updated server to replace our current media server; this is an going project.
- Continued
work on spam-filters with Larry W.
- Worked
at LSC conference most of the week.
(Veronica)
- LSC: Ongoing support of the March
meeting. Installed the
presentations webpages. Updates of the Technical Papers website,
other LSC-related pages.
- LIGO: Ongoing work on the Elba
meeting website. Configured and
troubleshoot the database backend, this part is ready to go. Working on the rest of the
scripting. Updates of the CIT /MIT
websites. Did more video editing
per Stan's request. User support.
(Christian)
- Created
a backup of Julie Hiroto and Florence Kaufman
workstations.
- Irene
Baldon- Replaced toner cartridges on Irene's
local printer.
- Worked
with Dwayne on getting Solidworks installed on Janeen's workstation.
- 3flr
W/B - Replaced toner cartridges on HP 5500 printer.
- Larry
and I mounted two new servers on a rack mount to be configured in the
server room.
- Re-imaged
laptop that was returned to the loaner pull this
week. Also, a laptop was returned to the loaner pull this week with a dead
hard- drive.
- Waiting
to see if I can find any extra drives to reconfigure the laptop.
- Other
misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support
(Larry)
- Continual
work with different procurement items. Wrapped up a few orders for
different groups. Streaming-video
s/w license has been renewed and the upgrade should be installed next
week.
- Assisted
DCC in posting of documents. The web service for one of the document
directories was having some performance problems. The directory was moved
to another machine to eliminate the performance problem, which did work,
however the investigation continues on why the first machine was not
performing as it should.
- Worked
a number of LSC meeting logistical issues with Christine and Mike. A
change of procedure by the GC group in support of the conferences has
already been changed. Basically, more support will be provided for these
meetings.
- Installed
a couple of new s/w pkgs. for different people.
- Worked
a couple of h/w installations including a couple of units with Christian.
- Assisted
Barry B. with various issues. Time to look at some new tools for the
mobile users.
- Continual
work on the spam filters. We had a nice
spam storm this past week. Over 3000 spam messages in less than 5 minutes.
- Reviewing and updating the GC usage policy with
Albert.
Advanced LIGO and Supporting R&D (Shoemaker)
AdL
report absent due to intensive networking at the LSC meeting.
For additional information about this report, contact S. Whitcomb or P. Lindquist