Weekly Report for Week Ending July 24, 2008

Past Weekly Reports

LSC Issues (Reitze)

• The annual LSC MOU review took place at MIT on July 24 and 25.  Groups will be receiving feedback from the review shortly.

Dates for future L-V meetings:

• December 2008 meeting - the December meeting will take place at the University of Maryland from Dec. 15-18.  This meeting is a data analysis meeting.  The dates of the meeting have been shifted from the original dates due to the availability of facilities and to accommodate faculty with teaching obligations.  Note that the Texas Symposium takes place the week before the L-V meeting.  Also note that GWDAW has been moved to January.
• March 2009 meeting - the March meeting will be hosed by LIGO/Caltech during the third week of March (16th-19th).  This meeting is a full collaboration meeting with instrument science sessions and a Council meeting.

LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

PROPERTY ACCOUNTING (Luna)

• Assisted K. Mailand in making shipping arrangements for one crate from CIT to LLO.
• Continued creating a detail report for all LIGO assets located at CIT.
• Continued working with T. Freeman on the FY 2008 report for the GSA vehicles at LHO.
• Reviewed the surplus equipment list at LHO for disposal.
• Tagged and created property records for a file server at CIT.

DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner, Mak)

>From: Cleveland Mak <mak_c@ligo.caltech.edu>

• Processed a large set of drawings for the Advanced LIGO Suspension System.
• Assisted Rod with the shipment of parts/equipment to both observatories.

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS (Funaro, Oracion)

>From: "Funaro, Catherine" <Catherine.Funaro@caltech.edu>

• For ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY Press Here.

>From: Karl Oracion <koracion@ligo.caltech.edu>>

• Currently working on: cost transfers involving contract labor between LIGO Operations and Advanced LIGO, labor distribution adjustments involving UWMIL.LIGO grid project.
• Responded to various LIGO Operations financial status inquiries (on going).
• Prepared revisions to end-of-June financial review based on information provided since the Executive Committee Meeting on Monday.
• Financial reports can be found at: http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport. (For passwords contact Karl)

SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Jasnow, Salone)

>From: Gina Salone <gsalone@ligo.caltech.edu>

• Gina Salone is attending an Advanced Procurement seminar at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

>From: Rudy Arvizu

• A large amount of additional information was generated for the University of Florida Advanced LIGO subaward. This will be sent to the NSF on July 24.

> From: Guy Fish

• The two subcontracts to LSU for the services of Fabrice Matichard have been prepared, and the one for Operations has been issued.  LSU has raised some questions about the one for Advanced LIGO because of the revised terms and conditions.  Purchasing Services and OGC are addressing this.

>From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>

• The contract for Heraeus is having the new Advanced LIGO terms and conditions inserted.  These terms and conditions are being reviewed by Heraeus to see if they affect any of the exceptions they took to the old terms and conditions, which had been accepted by Caltech.
• The contract for Corning has been fully assembled, including the new Advanced LIGO terms and conditions.  Corning has reviewed the new terms and conditions and correlated the agreed-to exceptions, and has accepted them.
• Additional information regarding the Ares contract has been assembled. The noncompetitive justification has been considerably reworked to make it stronger and link it to the original competitive procurement.  The additional data, including a revised cost analysis, will be sent to the NSF on July 25.

PROPOSALS and REPORTS (Lindquist)

• Prepared an estimate-at-completion for LIGO Operations and reviewed with the Executive Committee on July 21.  The goal is to develop the best handle possible on costs to allow us to allocate available funds appropriately to ensure we reach the end of FY2008 with sufficient funds to tide us over until the next cooperative agreement is established.

CHANGE REQUESTS (Lindquist)

• CR-080008 -- Fred Raab provided information for a change request for budget to cover installation costs in WBS elements 2.8.2 and 3.8.2. The change request has been distributed.
• CR-080009 -- This change request adjusts the MIT budget to reflect a credit for an indirect rate adjustment.  The change request has been distributed.

Pending

• CR-080010 -- Submitted by G. Billingsley, this request is for funds to cover a Tinsley overrun.  This change request has not been distributed.
• CR-080011 -- Submitted by G. Billingsley, this request is for funds for coating runs on samples of three additional polishing technologies.  This change request has not been distributed.

HUMAN RESOURCES (Akutagawa)

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

• No report.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

>From: Bill Tyler tyler@ligo.caltech.edu

• Nothing significant to report this week.

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

Summary of activities at LIGO Hanford Observatory
(compiled by K. Kawabe)

eLIGO Commissioning (Kawabe)

• Just before venting, the laser power was increased to 4 Watts and the binary inspiral range of H1 was reported to be 7.9 Mpc.
• 4k vertex and HAM6 was vented. HAM1W, HAM5 and HAM6 doors were pulled.
• HAM4 table alignment was revisited with the MC locked in air with 30 mW of power.
  • AS beam was clipping badly on the input aperture of the output Faraday, and it was also close to the edge of the second steering mirror (the one right after Faraday). This was fixed by moving the Faraday and the second steering mirror.
  • Output beam splitter in HAM4 was steered to roughly center the HAM6 beam on the septum window.
  • It was also found that the beam was very low and close to the edge of the steering mirror before the AS view port. This was partly fixed by steering the second steering mirror. Further work may be done at the end of the vent before pumpdown at the end of the month.
  • HAM5 door stays open for the weekend with the purge air on.
• Many IOO works, all done in time.
  • A large part of the "mystery loss" was attributed to the clipping on the steering mirror for the REFL beam.
  • A detailed power budget was posted. This doesn't explain everything we experienced in-vac, but looks good nevertheless.
  • Our most worrisome hypothesis that the so-called anti-REFL beam (the reflection of the forward-going beam by the thin film polarizer in the input Faraday) might have unreasonably large power was proven wrong.
  • Because of the above, it was determined that the thin film polarizer does not need to be replaced.
  • One interesting observation was that the AR coating of MC3 is very poor (400uW/30mW = 1.3 per cent).
  • Isolation check beam was realigned to it comes out of HAM1.
  • The black glass beam dump for anti-REFL beam was replaced with a metal one. MMT1 A-frame and the 2nd REFL relay mirror mount were replaced.
  • HAM1 door was put back on.
• Post-S5 vs. Today comparison of ITMX images and ITMY.
• Auxiliary optical levers were installed for ITMX and ITMY in preparation for the de-biasing.
• Also in preparation for the ITMX de-biasing and X arm baffle installation, a clean room was set up in front of HAM3.
• TCS electronics and DAQ work is in progress.
• ICST9, which used to be POX table for H2, was moved to HAM6 in preparation for OMC electronics check etc.

Astrowatch (Slutzky)

• Our low uptime continued this week, with 46% uptime and 18% science time. A variety of factors contributed to this, including earthquakes and the large amount of LVEA work over the past few days. The usual summary page is available. Range has been lower with the clean rooms on, in the range of 6 Mpc or lower.

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

Enhanced LIGO Commissioning (Valera Frolov):

• The EMTX optics was taken out of the vacuum chamber and brought o the optics lab for the magnet replacement. So far we are on schedule to replace the magnets, bake the optic, and return it to the end station at he end of the next week. The PAM magnets will not be replaced as we don't have the spare screws without magnets already glued in and the attempt to take the magnets out of the spare screws did not succeed.
• The 10 W LWE laser was decommissioned. The 35 W LZH laser was installed in the PSL room. The cooling and communication for the new laser and pump diodes were tested. The pump diodes were connected by fibers to the PSL room. The output of the fibers in the PSL was measured to be 45 W with the diode pump current set to 60 A. The PSL enclosure HEPA filters were replaced, the enclosure and the optical table were wiped and vacuumed with a HEPA vacuum cleaner. The laser was turned on with the initial power of 25 W. The tuning and alignment of the laser and the optical path into the pre-mode cleaner and the reference cavity is underway.
• The photon calibrator measurements are underway inside of the ETMX vacuum chamber.
• The HAM6 chamber was vented to lock down the OMC suspensions and returned under vacuum for the ISI commissioning.

Safety & Security (Rich Riesen):

• Completed installation and check out of the Emergency Shut-down and Laser Interlocks for the 35 Watt laser system. All Laser Safety functions are fully operational and on-line. Posted all required Laser Safety signs.  All signs meet ANSI and OSHA regulations.

Livingston Outreach (Deborah Muhammad):

• Conducted Day 1 of the Project MISE 3-day Workshop Conducted Friday Public Tour for 30 visitors. Designed a new snack for the Light Island Exhibit Designed program for Bossier City Parish teacher PD August 4 -5, 2008. Scheduled field trips for summer 2008 and school year 2008-09. Order supplies for light filter activities. Purchased supplies for workshops. Scheduled Public Tours for Fridays. Managed SEC documents in share folder.

LIGO computing and network security (Roddy)

Reported under General Computing, see below

General computing and LDAS admin (Giardina)

Reported under General Computing, see below

Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below

Data analysis & computing (Yakushin)

Storage/Condor/LDAS admin:

Reported under LDAS System Administration, see below

Data analysis:

Reported under Data Analysis activities, see below

Mechanical and Optical Systems (Coyne)

See Advanced LIGO

Controls and Data Systems (Bork)

See Advanced LIGO

40-Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

From Rana Adhikari (rana@ligo.caltech.edu)

• The fiber noise experiment has been moved out of the 40M and into the sub-basement of Bridge to take advantage of the digital control system. Seiji is also helping out on this while he is visiting Caltech.
• The 40M FSS bandwidth was found to be too low. This was traced to somehow, again, using the wrong beam after double passing. We were using the correct +1 beam after a single pass but using the -2 after the double pass. We checked it by driving the VCO and making sure there was no wiggle on the double passed beam. This should get us back into shape.
• Work is ongoing with the image processing with GigE camera and feedback to the masses for beam centering. ezca libraries have been incorporated and now the thing is getting some testing.
• 166 MHz sidebands are getting tuned around in frequency to see if we can get better locking onto the +166 MHz SB instead of the anti-spring -166.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Black)

• Akira solved last week's mode cleaner problem by replacing the bad OSEM head. All active damping is now working to spec. The arm-cavity discriminants are much lower than expected, in spite of the increased modulation depth from the rotated Pockels cell. We are working on finding the cause of that.
• Our zinc-selenide window arrived for the upgraded photothermal experiment, and Greg and Eric Cahoon are ready to start setting up the pump laser.

LASTI (Mittleman)

BSC-ISI

• We have started the position sensor alignment process. This is where we put the position sensors through a matrix to correct the mechanical alignment, particularly in the tilt directions (i.e. X=>rY) Fabrice has post a nice first result in the LASTI ilog.

Fiber Pulling-Welding

• The articulated arm setup for welding is now nearly finished.  We have been making test welds on the bench using this and these seem to be working well.  The optics for the fiber pulling machine have been aligned and we have been pulling fibers for strength testing.  A little more work on alignment is needed to get higher laser power through.  Fibers pulled from laser polished rods have shown average breaking strengths around 38kg.  We currently have a fiber suspending a 12.5kg proof mass.

CIT Science Group (Weinstein)

________________

Antony Searle:

• Bayesian analysis with Omega pipeline run on cluster (but buggy).
• Now returning to work on outstanding normalisation and conditioning bugs.
• Produced conditioning test suite and corrected conditioning bugs (Sam).
• Worked on platform portability.
• Reviewed papers for LSC and CQG.

________________

Kent Blackburn for the Grid R Team:

GRID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

• Wrote agenda and lead LIGO-Pegasus and OSG-USERS telecons
• Write minutes for LIGO-Pegasus telecon.
• Attend DASWG, Inspiral Coding, OSG-USERS and LIGO-Pegasus telecons.
• Gratia testing at 4 OSG sites --> e-mailed results to Anand.
• Upgrade LIGO software on osg-itb-se.ligo.caltech.edu.

EINSTEIN@HOME ON THE OSG

• Running at 7 OSG sites with devel code --> BNL_ATLAS_1, AGLT2, Pudue_RCAC, TTU_ANTAEUS, SBGrid-Harvard-Exp, SPRACE-CE, CIT_CMS_T2.
• Monitoring daily runs and troubleshooting RC 106/107 ( at CIT_CMS_T2, SPRACE_CE), RC 127.
• Monitoring disk usage at remote end large.

BINARY INSPIRAL IHOPE ACTIVITIES

• Download latest Pegasus nightly build.
• Test run with old site schema (but with underlying code changes for new schema) at CIT_CMS_T2.
• WS-GRAM testing/debugging at AGLT2, LIGO_UWM_NEMO in progress
• Test Pegasus dynamic cleanup of LIGO sire/coire files.

OSG INTEGRATION & VALIDATION TESTBEDS

• Continued to gather quotes and speak with vendors regarding upgrade of the hardware associated with these testbeds Recieved approval from staffing committee to make offer for the grid admin position associated with these testbeds.

GRID MANAGEMENT

• OSG annual report submitted to fastlane last Friday.
• Continued to work on agenda for OSG Council Face to Face Meeting and on logistics for teleconferencing, etc.
• Wrote quarterly (second quarter 2008) report to OSG for Caltech as institutional PI.
• Worked with Caltech OSR to get approval to upgrade ITB/VTB Testbeds.
• Attended the DASWG, CompComm, LIGO-Pegasus.

________________

Kipp Cannon:

• Continued working with Ashley King preparing a study on the source localization capabilities of Adv. LIGO detectors for merger waveforms.
• Began investigating possible performance improvements in the coherent stage of the inspiral pipeline, making use of the spherical harmonic correlator code I previously wrote.
• Continued with S4 cosmic string paper/code review.

________________

Diego Fazi:

• Compared SPA and PTF efficiencies in recovering spinning injections with low kappa.
• Started fixing lalapps_sned to make sure the effective distance normalization is started at the correct frequency.
• Completed a background estimation job for PTF (now fighting with plotting routines to avoid memory failures).

________________

Anand Sengupta:

• High mass search: test run iHope over 105 sec of my 3 months - which can be found in <http://ldas-jobs.ligo.caltech.edu/~anandss/823255302-823355302/index.shtml>.
• Started the full 3 months data 3. Helped Satish with the SURF project.

________________

Joseph Betzwieser:

• Getting information together for a wide parameter Crab pulsar search using data from the second half of S5. Also starting to organize a search for known pulsars at frequencies other than twice the rotation frequency.

________________

Amber L. Stuver:

LIGO Research

• Continued working on fine tuning the IFOtest scripts to be used on all coils of each ETM, ITM and BS. The work is nearly complete (I estimate ~1 more day of work needs to go into completing this).
• Continued working on the h(t) validation and made a presentation to the review committee.

SEC Work

• Gave a public tour to ~25 people.
• Gave a nearly 2.5 hour question and answer session and control room tour to a groups of ~25 teachers.
• Presented a LIGO science overview talk at BabelCon, a local sci-fi convention. It was well attended (~19 humans and a Klingon). I haven't had the chance to exercise my limited Klingon vocabulary in a long time and it earned some respect from the audience too.
• Drafted my research application for IRB review for a new education research project to be conducted through the SEC. This will be the first quantitative study in the SEC and will identify the efficacy of resolving common misconceptions about gravity and wave interactions during a student's visit to the SEC.
• Completed the required NIH training course needed for IRB research approval.

Other

• Participated in a telecon (with the FGSA chairs, FIP chairs, APS president and an APS programming member) to discuss a FGSA/FIP joint session at the next APS March meeting. It was decided that this would be a desirable session and collaboration. Planning is ongoing.
• Completed CPR/AED/First Aid training.

________________

Igor Yakushin:

• Generation of L1H1H2 cWB triggers on the second year of S5 is complete; the very preliminary results are available at http://ldas-jobs.ligo.caltech.edu/~igor/S5_ second_year/.
• Generation of H1H2 cWB triggers on the second year of S5 is complete, no postproduction is done yet.
• Generation of L1H1H2 cWB simulation triggers on BRST3 and HWB2 MDC sets on the second year of S5 is complete; no postproduction is done yet.
• Per reviewers request working on the documentation and tests regarding DQ segment usage by the coherent waveburst pipeline in the first year of S5.

________________

Pinkesh Patel:

• Fixed a bunch of glaring memory leaks in the resampling code, but there are still some 32-bit vs 64-bit issues, which need to be addressed.
• Bug-hunting for large spindown errors.
• Took over astrowatch supervision duties from Jacob Slutsky for an indefinite period. These duties include scheduling shifts, reporting to the site/the LSC in general about the progress of astrowatch. It is a monthly rotating position, although I might have to keep it for a couple to three months.

________________

Gregory Mendell:

• Nothing significant to report this week; I will be starting to generate more SFTs for the CW group soon.  

Laboratory Computing (Anderson)

(Compiled this week by Kozak)

LDAS Software Systems (Maros)

(Lei reporting for Maros)

cntlmonAP:

• Suppress logging purple balls when the /ldas_outgoing/logs/ cmonClient link is not found in a log filter file as the url is absent in the file.
• Testing:
  • dev nightly loop testing - continues to run with metadata being monitored by a standalone script. One or two gcores are seen during some nights. Had to restart db2 one time because db2 detected a deadlock in gds_trigger.
  • dev system testing - regression test all behaved as before with only mpi errors; other errors were remained the same: getFrameElements channel_not_found, 11 failed in frame accessor, fr2ilwd getFrameDetectorProc failures. lsyncTest got 1 mismatch in the middle of the test.
  • ldas-test running DB2 8.2.7 running with special build 1.9.357 that links against DB2 8.2.7. Runs fine with only datacond no such symbol errors since being restarted when Dan finished updated file system.
• ldas-suntest1 (sunopteron) running DB2 9.1.4 - Run stardalone db2 monitor along with jobs involving metadata. No ipcrm was observed until after Stuart patched ldas-suntest1 again. DB2 got restarted but there is a file path security issue that sysadmin needs to fix.
• tandem-iv running DB2 9.1.5 - Stowed build 1.9.363 on tandem-iv and run loop set that has jobs involving metadata which is on ldasbox4. Running ok since weekend without issues. Working with mysql to test ldas tables on ldasbox4: using ilwdtypes tables convert db2 data types to mysql data types, export data from db2 and load into into mysql tables. Export data out from mysql tables and compare against original db2 values. Except for lob (cannot be imported via load command) and char(13) bit for uniqueId, all data types agree. char(13) unique Id shows difference in padding: db2 pads zeros to right while mysql pads leading digit to the left. Have not resolved this issue yet.

LDAS System Administration (Anderson)

(Kozak reporting for Anderson)

Caltech

(Dan Kozak)

• Installed new LDR local storage module (as tweaked by Kipp Cannon).
• Hashed out details on LLO disk shuffle planning.
• Attended Sun QFS con call (6 people on an emergency con call to get <300 bytes of data).
• Compiled list of tapes for shelf storage at LHO.
• Got some feedback on our open ssum case with Sun (finally!). Tim Whalen was able to duplicate our problem on an x86 (works fine on Sparc) and passed it along to engineering. He said he'd forgotten to update me, which implies that engineering has had the problem for a while. Good news.
• Worked on tracking down LHO corrupt frame file and/or dd (in Disk2Disk) errors. Probably caused by another machine on the SAN rebooting;we already have an open case with Sun.
• Implemented LDR storage module mod to ssh to opterondata-cit to do the md5sum on files over 100MB in size.
• Got Virgo V2 data flowing to CIT (edited storage module and collections.ini).
• Responded to DASWG email about bad Burst-MDC bad frame;this frame has been bad since the beginning and I've told Keith Thorne about it repeatedly.
• Helped Robert Schuler at ISI with an rsync issue (he couldn't remember the pass-
  word :-).

(Phil Ehrens)

• Finished up MOU reporting support.
• Replaced all fans in cluster node 34.
• General support for SURF students and staff.

MIT

(Fred Donovan)

• Adding virtual interfaces to nodes/servers (10.9.x.x).

Livingston

(Igor Yakushin)

• Disk 9 in 3511-3 failed; the replacement disk should arrive tomorrow.
• The new gateway box passed burntests; looked into a problem with DQ segments discovered by John Zweizig: it appears that when version 10 was inserted for some DQ segments, the validity interval was cut at about August 18, 2007.
• Some segments at the end of S5 might have to be corrected.
• Archived the last couple weeks of raw data per Valera's request.

Hanford

(Gregory Mendell)

• I have released the LIGO Data Grid (LDG) 4.7 Client, ClientPro, and Server packages. See: http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/lscdatagrid/.
• I have also been tracking down and fixing some minor short-lived data corruption problems at LHO and LLO.

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT

(Fred)

• Labview licensing issues.
• Spec'ed purchase of 16GB intel for globus monitoring.
• Additional vmware installation.
• More ilog work.
• Two o/s reinstalls.

Livingston

(Dwayne)

• Replaced tapes in GC tape library.
• Ordered and installed a KVM in rack outside my office.
• Installed Ubuntu and Solaris on the two servers repurposed from LDAS, patched both systems.
• Installed more software on the SEC PC.
• Converted a POP user to IMAP.
• Renewal of Matlab support.
• Installed VPN software for a user.
• CPR/First Aid training.
• Set up Staging Building conference room with a dedicated PC for EVO, to be tested today during GC call.
• Further discussion with Shannon regarding new authentication system Kantech troubles with both the main gate and new laser diode room, both resolved.
• Created web space for the DetChar group.
• Numerous usual/unusual user support requests.
• Cleared spam trap.

Hanford

(Larry)

• Working on a couple of document issues.
• Worked with Dave B. on some mail issues.
• Modified a couple of user accounts, reset a few mail aliases and updated their account.
• Debugged a couple of h/w items over the phone.

(Mike)

• Continued work on managing dhcp server.
• Some work on their mail server flushing out the queue.

Caltech

(Veronica)

• LSC, LIGO: Ongoing work on the ligo.org redo -- Working through various implementation issues (a hybrid css layout, browser compatibility). Updates of lsc-related publications database/webpages, misc web updates.

(Christian)

• Gina Salone - Configured loaner laptop for Gina to use on travel.
• Ed Jasnow - Removed malware program from Ed's workstation.
• Called Dell support to have monitor in the display case replaced.
• Surplus old monitors and cpus this week.
• Re-imaged 2 laptops that were returned to the loaner pull this week.
• Helped run additional network cables.
• Testing/debugging of the Clearone equipment on the EVO and phone system.
• Other misc.: Continued onsite software/phone support.

(Mike)

• Work with Larry on the new mail server.
• Continued work on SolidWorks 64 bit version 2009. Having some issues with loading the pdmworks vault. "On going project".
• Working on a test ADVLIGO server 64bit version of server 2003 with Terminal server services running. I have prismpm working, I'm having some issues with primavera.
• Helped group with surplus/storing a lot of equipment that was located in our area.
• Helped run some additional network cables in B/A server room 18 and one for Veronica.
• Some testing with group on new conferencing equipment for EVO.
• Other misc user support and sysadmin tasks.

(Melody)

• New DCC: Addressed several issues posted by the group. Worked on substring content searches. Started looking into incorporating the current DCC's numbering scheme with DocDB's.

(Larry)

• Finished up the paperwork on a number of procurement items and now working on new ones. Getting quotes for different items.
• Worked with Christian on testing out the Clearone system with EVO and the phone connection. It has passed the tests and now checking on getting it installed.
• Installed the new server. Because of all the different issues that would/were causing it to drag out we bit the bullet and put in the new system. The only major casualty was the mailman system. It is barely limping along, I am in the process of fixing some of the items while building a new one with the latest versions of s/w but it will still take some time to get things moved over to it.
• Worked with the group in getting equipment moved and removed. Basically cleaning up some of the junk.
• Helped run some network cables and did a quick check on others that need to be replaced.
• Multiple modifications on user accounts.
• Worked with Mike on tracking down different problems on different machines. Went over a lot logistical issues with Mike on the projects that he is working on.
• Working with a number of people on different logistical issues with their setups and needs.

For additional information about this report, contact Albert Lazzarini