Science IPT telecon Tatematsu, Butler, Mangum, Wilson, Guilloteau, Robert, Fred, Jerome, Richer, Morita, Peter, van Dishoeck, Hasegawa, Vilallefond. Milestones presented, along with action items. Richer gave a summary of the ASAC Meeting, particular concentration on the charges on system stability especially the front end. The current spec will affect calibration. Stability may be improved slightly by detuning slightly at a small cost in sensitivity. There will be a significant science loss if this spec applies to all receivers. We must find a pragmatic solution so that work may proceed, however. Amplitude calibration--what is the impact of not achieving 1-3% which is the current goal. The ASAC agreed that this goal is oversimplified and needs some clarification. Most projects probably do not require absolute physical fluxes but repeatability is important example variability of sources. Also relative calibration between bands is critical. Example protostellar envelopes. Also note that ACA flux calibration between it and ALMA must be within a few per cent or the ACA benefit is somewhat washed out. A memo on this will appear. Draft DRSP looks extremely interesting. However, a new suite will be needed for planning early science. Butler: Simulations did not include a cal offset between ACA and the main array but a fluctuation of the scale between receivers of several per cent. They will investigate the offset. This is an interesting question since the two arrays may observe at different times. MW: Cross calibrate by borrowing ALMA antennas JR: But this is not a part of the current plan. SG: The stability level has a severe effect on polarization--probably this is not good enough to do good calibration. Has the ASAC commented on this? JR: We would like to see simulations on this to help to quantify this. SG: To first order this is strictly a linear problem. With time averaging you will get an inaccuracy on the order of 0.2%. Don't sign a contract for something you do not want? JR: Ask CC about tests on the stability and detuning. SG: Cryostat is a separate issue as both polzns are in the cryostat and will be correlated. MW: If they are in sync we can do integrations in such a way as to try to cancel them out. SG: The numbers agreed on in Nov have just vanished. TH: A web site is ready for comment with an address to be distributed. Results shown at ASAC were made without pointing errors included. In the case of 230 GHz minimal pointing errors do not affect the results so the presented results 3% reduces the merit of the ACA by half, up to 10% merit almost vanishes. At 850 GHz pointing dominates and results show insensitivity to amplitude errors up to 10%. http://www.nro.nao.ac.jp/~imaging/ACA/gildas-results.html Operations: ANASAC ESAC: Much discussion in Madrid, discussion of manpower elements, Testi looked in detail at core and non-core additional functions which resulted in a detailed document and prioritization. My presentation is online. Sci Reqs and System Engineering Description-- BB this is a System Design document. JR: Is out of town and will send his comments in via email soon. The main point is that Larry's has taken the spec as it is currently written and degraded it, and then followed that by degrading the system spec to the point where coherence from the system is 82% at the highest frequency rather than the pre-revision spec of 90%. We think we should do much better and would like to avoid loss in electronics if that could be avoided. Hills will comment on wind speed, stability goes as fourth power of this so there is a large gain at low wind speed which we would want to allow ALMA to take advantage of. Is SSB separation required? Larry's document says it is not required while it is required; Specifically put into science requirements. ACTIOn: put into requirements. EvD: Link to presentation on ASAC gives a good summary of this. We had double the goal of entries. This results in a document perhaps less focussed but with a better overview of different types of projects. This will be very useful. We are missing some sections and look to remaining people to provide those. CSEs and SZ still needed. Briskin will provide pulsar input. We will send this to the ASAC for review of the 120 proposals, so each member will get about ten for an overview. We will get that back by early October; the Board will want to see this before release to the community so there will be a presentation at the ALMA Board. ACTION: Distribute username and password for the DRSP website. No new news on the EU Science IPT lead. Calibration: Delay on Calibration Plan. Also discussion on getting change request along for the front end amplitude calibration device. Minutes of yesterday's telecon are on the web. We also discussed bandpass memo? SG: We are moving to Bordeaux; after that we will be finishing this. SG: Wobbler simulations. Try to use this. We may have to redesign the wobbler to chop faster. RL: SSR discussed the data rates document forwarded to it by the SSR. Phase 3 finished. Test plan discussed and reaching a good state. Use cases to be written and used for testing. This is going well; cover nearly all possibilities. Data rate discussion not very conclusive. We will gather up comments and decide whether we should have a request to increase the maximum data rates for ALMA. Face-to-face mid-Nov at the AOC. JR: My understanding was that BG favors to make a data rate change asap. This is a live topic. I had not appreciated that the spec at the moment of 6/60 MB/s is a very small fractin of the total datarate which the correlator is capable of producing. 12/72 is under discussion. Many reasons why we might want a higher mean datarate. Certainly ALMA is being conservative. ACTION: discussing this with Brian and Larry. Configuration: Comments to John and Mark please.