[These notes are unedited and freely paraphrase the discussion; corrections are welcome. SD]
T Stephens, J Carson, J Chiang, T Burnett, D Band, J McEnery, J Peachey, D Davis, P Nolan, M Hirayama, R Dubois (8:30
SD - [Summary of discussions at Symposium regarding data products - see link
on agenda page]
DB - The documents (ICD and File Format Document) currently posted have not been
updated yet with these changes, including definition of the livetime cubes
TS - No database news - getting ready for GRT 6 - happening yesterday and today
JC - No news in terms of new versions in the RM. Last week got some advice
from Andy Strong about adding up large numbers of small values - improving
numerical accuracy - possibly solving some 'bumpiness' problems that Jean has
been seeing.
SD - Is there a bias in summing if nothing special is done?
JC - Direction is always shifting toward smaller values - always rounding down a
little bit
DB - At the symposium, I sat in on a meeting of the GBM team and they
discussed a tool for putting together the response matrices for the GBM and this
is looking late. We want to put together a tool for people to be able to
generate these things. Even within the GBM team they are not ready yet
SD - We had something for DC2, right?
DB - What we have been using for years has been very preliminary, calculating
only the direct component - photons that come directly to the spacecraft and
maybe a little bit of blockage by the LAT. But plan to have much more
complicated - scattering off the LAT and scattering off the atmosphere - can be
very significant effects - atmosphere acts like a mirror - bursts near horizon
can get a lot of extra flux from atmospheric scattering - still working on these
developments and checking with calibration - no delivery schedule yet - but will
have something before launch.
SD - We'll use whatever is available for SC simulations, I guess
DB - Yes, Valerie is in the loop with Los Alamos
MH - Still more or less the same regarding pulsar tools - A4 tool application
runs - it is not complete yet but gets to the point of giving a plot - not done
but it is coming pretty soon. And next will be documentation.
SD - For blind search how much guidance do you give it?
MH - Actually similar to gtpsearch - takes ephemerides from user or database for
p, pdot - it will run an FFT on plain time series if you don't know those
values. Actually what matters is just the ratio of p/pdot.
SD - Was wondering a little about how long it will take to run and the trials
factor question
MH - Have not got an answer yet - just simple test cases so far - will try it
out on DC2-type data when we are ready (soon).
SD - [Said some words about Max's PulsarSpectrum. He's just about got it simulating binary pulsars and timing noise and now has reproduced the bug that we encountered trying to run the SC1 sky model.]
JC - During the catalog meeting this week, Jean mentioned an effect with the
SC simulations that was in the test pattern simulations - and outcome was to
decide to investigate whether energy dispersion was the culprit - so now energy
dispersion is optionally turned off with a hidden parameter
SD - Any effect on Jean's problem?
JC - Only simple tests so far
JP - Finished making the changes for HOOPs to use APE instead of PIL - so
will deliver APE to science tools then the new version of HOOPs, eventually to
remove PIL. For a time will have an option to switch between them at build
time.
JC - Are there any tools out there now that use APE or documentation online that
we could look at to see new functionality
JP - No documentation on line. The tools that use it are the latter-day ftools
- they start with 'ft'. They will be using the new interface as of FTOOLS v6.3
and later. Now I'm wondering how difficult it would be to make PIL vs APE a
possibility for run-time switch.
JP - Changes that a user will notice should be changes for the better - the kind
of thing that people complain about with PIL - like in JIRA notices - so things
like the command line behavior will be improved. Also, APE lets you put in ndef
for a real-valued parameter
SD - [Mentioned the discussion that will take place tomorrow on VRVS after
the software meeting about the possibility of Marco & Riccardo (of mrvcmt and
fred) of developing a GUI for the science tools. Not clear yet if it would
be something that the GSSC would be willing/able to distribute and support
DB - This sounds worrisome - proprietary issues and maintenance issues if they
disappear.
JM - Is that an issue?
TB - Yes
[My typing didn't keep up with the discussion here. Richard joined the meeting and more or less said No.]
SD - [Not aware of an Science Tools-related news in the Workbook; asked David about Cicerone]
DB - Cicerone has been on a back burner to many issues.
SD - [Words about the week of the collaboration meeting at Goddard turning
out to be a bad time for finding time for face-to-face discussions with the GSSC
about Science Tools and ISOC-related topics in general. Chris is
canvassing the GSSC and will propose some possible dates for visits to SLAC or
GSFC.]
DB - Is the agenda for collaboration meeting online yet?
JM - In confluence
SD - Findable via the search box
SD - We'll next meet in 2 weeks, to be confirmed closer to the date.