Science IPT 13Jan 04
Wootten, Conway,  Hills, Mangum,James, 
Guilloteau, Sterling, Richer, Lucas, Pety, Hogerhe, Hasegawa, Bacmann, Dutrey

The Quarterly Report was discussed, along with the Antenna CfT/RfP.   The latter occurred just
before the holidays; owing to that copies were not available to the Project Scientists.  ACTION:
WOOTTEN.  Subsequent to the telecon Wootten secured copies for examination.

Attention was drawn to the list of milestones, though discussion of individual elements was deferred
to the group reports.

The Calendar was discussed.  ACTION: WOOTTEN The AMAC meeting will be held 11-12 March at the NTC in Cville.
The nature of the system review needs clarification.  Technically inclined scientists should be 
represented on the committee; several such people were proposed to SE.

Hasegawa presented information on the status of Japanese participation.  Now that Cabinet support
had been achieved, the funding needs to pass the Diet.  An agreement between the bilateral partners
and Japan needs to be reached.  To this end, Tarenghi will visit Japan during January, followed in
February by convocation of a miniminiALMA Week.  The plan is for an agreement to be ready for
signature at the June Board meeting.

An operations plan was delivered to the JAO on 31 Dec 2003 by the Operations Group.  This plan will
be discussed at a face to face meeting in Charlottesville 22-23 January.  It will be submitted to
external reviewers.  It is not at present a public document.

The ASAC will meet 10-11 May in Cambridge England to consider charges to be produced by the Board.

The Antenna CfT/RfP was issued about 18 December.  It is planned to have a production antenna contract
ready for signature by early Fall.  The AEC antenna is moving and has had the holography receiver
mounted; it has seen the transmitter.  The contractor is at the site; software issues are under
address.  Radiometric tests continue on the Vertex antenna.

Discussion over the new System Design document from D'Addario ensued.  Lucas noted that sideband
separation and use of both sidebands B8,9,10 was not a feature.  Hasegawa noted that JP plans to
try to build sideband separating receivers for B8&10 but cannot demonstrate this currently.
Hills provided several comments, and 
some discussion occurred on phase stability.  It was felt that the project book goals for phase
correction by the WVRs should be maintained.  This puts short timescale losses 'coherence' at
88% at 950 GHz rather than the 83% in the proposal.  Wootten to discuss these items with SE. ACTION: Wootten.

The Science Requirements document is in a final editing process before being considered by the
Change Control Board on 19 Jan.  As this is a revision to PB Chapter 2, it needs to pass the CCB.
The SSR document is also to be placed before the CCB on 19 Jan.  Please send comments to Wootten.
ACTION: All.

Reports
 Wootten reported good attendance at the AAS Town Meeting-about 60-70 people attended even though
 this was the penultimate session of the last day of the meeting.
 Wootten announced plans for a NA Science Meeting on 14-15 May at U. Md.  This will be an ALMA
 Workshop, to focus on elements of the Operations Plan and particularly on the DRScience Plan.
 
The Calibration Plan has suffered from a lack of a few chapters.  However, work has restarted on the
missing chapters and they should be available soon.  Bacmann will provide a chapter on bandpass
calibration within a few weeks.  ACTION: BAcmann.  Some management may be needed to complete the
plan on schedule--a workshop perhaps?  There was discussion of a Science IPT meeting, for which this
may form a focus.  An optimum time would be adjacent to mini-ALMA Week.  Wootten and Wilson will
follow up.  ACTION: PS.  The item on calibration gain horn was missed; should be discussed next meeting.
ACTION: PS.

Michel gave a brief report on the DRSP.  Plans will be made soon for an Early Science version of this,
anther possible subject for a Science IPT meeting.  The SSR has made data rate and dataset size
estimates for about 30 of the 128 projects.  Robert reported that on the average, the data rates do
not tax the system--perhaps 3 MB/s.

Holdaway reported on a fast switching memo to be issued soon but available on his website.
Adopting the System Design goal of using 5th percentile atmospheric statistics, the phase jitter
expected over these moderate time scale calibration cycles is about 110 fs with about 25fs of drift
in 5 minutes.

Lucas reported on the SSR, which will meet tomorrow.  The data format review is urgently needed,
though the assignees for the task have not yet completed it.  ACTION: Gueth, Holdaway.

Conway reported on configurations.  The reconfiguration plan and Y+ plan remain in IPT comment.
He reported that progress should be made on the antenna relocation plan, with a target date for a
report in mid-February.  This will include atmospheric effects on the accuracy of measurement.
A plan for the Early Science Array will be formulated.  There will need to be some iteration between
this, the Operations Plan, and the Early Science DRSP but a plan for the first array stations will
help get the process started.  ACTION: Conway.

Neither Radford nor Nyman were available for a site characterization report.  In a subsequent telephone
conversation, Wootten asked Radford to proceed with development of specifications for the 'ancillary
instruments' necessary for ALMA components to obtain information needed on atmospheric and other
conditions at the site.

The next meeting was announced as 4 Feb 2004 but this was an error; this is the time of the next
ASAC telecon.  The next Science IPT telecom will occur at 1500 UT on 10 February.

Respectfully submitted,
Al Wootten