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Users Group: Board of Directors Minutes

Minutes of the meeting on March 3, 2000

Attendance: G. Adams, W. Boeglin, D. Day,G. Dodge, C. Glashausser, K. Hokansson, R. Miskimen, R. Roche (observer)

The UGBoD meeting started at 8:30 AM.

Hermann Grunder presented an overview of lab operations. Polarized electrons are a success, and the lab is getting ready for G0. CLAS has increased its DAQ rate by 2. Hall C has completed 5 experiments in '99 and is getting ready for G0. The long range planning process will begin in Sept. 2000, with an interim report out in April 2001. This will influence the FY 2003 budget. It's important for the lab to get it's act together this summer. There will be a town meeting in January, and the rest of the spring will be used for the preparation of the long range plan.

Nuclear physics needs an infusion of money. RHIC and JLab operating funds are too low. If the money had been there all along, JLab would be getting its new construction project much sooner.

Almost surely, JLab will be asked to take responsibility for the superconducting linac for the spallation neutron source. Around 50 new people, mostly technical in the accelerator division, are to be hired for this project. This hiring has already begun. JLab will be involved in design, prototyping, and commissioning. The project is expected to have some impact on the availability of technical people for the next few months, but little negative impact in the longer term or on the 12 GeV upgrade. We will benefit in several ways.

Because of security concerns, badging has become an issue. The lab is looking at options that range from:

  1. Having a badge
  2. Wearing the badge
    • 2.1 on the accelerator site
    • 2.2 on campus
  3. DOE badges
  4. Non-citizens wear separate badges

The lab is willing to take a stand against anything beyond 2.1.

Larry Cardman will be notified when users from sensitive countries come to the lab. Their exposure to dual use technology will be limited.

Rolf Ent gave a summary of the planning process for the 12 GeV upgrade. There is a web page that shows the mini-workshops planned from now to the June 2000 users meeting. He expects about 14 physics presentations and 4 equipment proposals to be presented at the users meeting. He estimates that only 5-8 proposals can go forward to the PAC. His criteria: better to do a few things well, must be compelling to a large audience, utilize 12 GeV and high luminosity.

Gary Adams gave a report on the valence quark structure group (high x group). There's a workshop at Temple March 30 to April 1. The experiments are spin independent structure function, spin dependent sptructure functions, parity , semi-inclusive reactions, higher twist.

Nathan Isgur suggested that proposals coming out of the working groups to be presented at the June Users meeting have two possible paths to follow:

  1. They represent important physics which will be used to sharpen the scientific case for 12 GeV and included in the white paper.
  2. They are flagship experiments defining the key physics for the 12 GeV upgrade. They will be highlighted in the white paper and presented to the July PAC.

Donal Day gave a report on the threshold charm group. About 25 people participated, and there were 4 talks. Eugene Chudakov has a web page for the group. They're looking at the MRS and HMS for this experiment. A workshop is planned for April.

Gail Dodge reported on the exclusive reactions group. There's a workshop April 13-15. The group is planning experiments on the pion form factor, Primakoff measurements of eta and eta' radiative widths, skewed parton distrubutions and VCS.

Werner Boeglin reported on the hadrons in nuclear medium group. About 14 people will participate in a workshop in early March at FSU. Another workshop is planned for the spring. They are currently planning two experiments on S.R.C., and 2 experiments on color transparency.

Rory Miskimen reported on the duality working group. A planning workshop will be held April 17,18. There is a core group of approximately a dozen people working on this area. They expect two broad programs to emerge:

  1. structure function measurements to test duality,
  2. semi-inclusive physics that will test duality plus factorization and flavor decomposition.

Charlie Glashausser led a discussion of the proposal selection process at the June users meeting, to pick propsals for PAC presentation in July. It was decided that a steering commitee for the JLab 12 GeV white paper would be formed. This committee would be involved in the selection, and might invite others. The Steering Committee of about 6-8 people would include Lab management and users. Thus Christoph Leeman, Larry Cardman, and Nathan Isgur are on this committee. The BOD (in executive session) selected Rolf Ent, Curtis Meyer, J.M. Laget, and Z.-E. Meziani to represent the users on the committee {and each has agreed to serve, as of 3/7}. For the Users meeting, the present plan is to have 45/45 minutes for presentation/discussion of working group summaries, and then additional talks on a few key experiments. It will be a three day meeting, June 21-23. Rooms will be reserved for a 4th day, if necessary.

There was discussion of the e+p,A colliders being discussed in the community. John Cameron and several others will come to JLab to talk about one of these projects. The UGBOD welcomes this and hopes that discussions lead to a strong united front in the long range planning process.

Ricki Roche, the student observer on the UGBOD, discussed the results of a graduate student survey. Some of the student comments included,

  1. would like access to a gym (either CNU or discounts at local gyms)
  2. better medical services/referrals
  3. getting fees for conferences waived
  4. information packet when students arrive here
  5. not getting priority for video conferencing
  6. more graduate student activities.

Gail Dodge presented a draft proposal to be submitted to SURA to establish a $1000 annual thesis prize. Preliminary discussion indicates that SURA is likely to support this proposal. Students who have been awarded their Ph.D. within the previous year would be eligible for the award. There would be no publication requirement for the award, although clearly publication of both letters and archival papers is encouraged. The BOD enthusiastically and unanimously endorsed this proposal.

Gail also discussed getting in-state tuition at local state universities for JLab grad students. It is proving hard to get action on this.

Charlie Glashausser led a discussion on experiment installation. The initial experiment post-accounting forms have been returned. It was decided that the BOD should make a prioritized list of improvements suggested in these forms for presentation to management. Dick Madey reported no serious problems. Donal Day reported that the lab is learning a lot, getting better at installation. Bernhard Mecking reported that the Hall B cryo group is getting the polarized target ready for installation in Aug. They have distractions from working on the high power cryo target.

Rory Miskimen reported on EH&S issues. The EH&S exam is taken just once, and the ODH test once every two years. These are computer based exams taken in the Users office. The trailer for the radiation worker exam isn't set up yet. They just started working on the trailer a month ago. They should be using the trailer in a couple of months for the practical exam. This exam is taken just once. Right now this exam is offered only on Thursdays in the ARC. In the future it can be taken at any time with advance notice. They are still using a paper exam for the radiation worker test. By the end of the summer they'll be using computer based tutorials and testing.

Donal Day reported on the quality of life. New badging should start next week. When everyone is badged the lab will go to a system where doors are badge operated. That might be around mid April.

Werner Boeglin reported on computers. There's a long delay in getting data from the silo. Most of the silo access is from halls A and C. No smart software to coordinate access is used, but it's not clear if it would help. Users need to be aware of this bottleneck and coordinate tape access. Bernhard Mecking commented that Hall B expects to get much higher data compression using DST's.

Gary Adams reported on the PAC. The UGBOD recommends that in the call to proposals it should be made clear to the users that the PAC recommends time to achieve the error bars for physics. If conditions improve between submission and running, so that these errors can be achieved in a shorter time, the Lab management will generally renormalize the time awarded by the PAC. Rory Miskimen pointed out that the Chiral Dynamics workshop was being held at the same time as PAC 18. There's a possibility that the PAC might enhance attendance at the workshop.

Dennis Skopik reported on planning for jeopardy at PACs 18 and 19.

There are 15-17 experiments in Hall A, and 5-7 in Hall C under jeopardy. It was decided that proposals under jeopardy that are not submitted to the PAC will be considered withdrawn, and given a "W". The spokesmen are considered to have given up these experiments as intellectual property. The beam time for these experiments will go into the pool of beam time to be alloted to other experiments, as if the experiment had been presented and not approved.

Kees DeJager discussed Hall A issues. A high power 3He target is installed for (e,e'p), and (e,e'pn) parasite studies are also underway. Two PRL's were published last year. There have been some initial studies of the MAD ( 30 msr, 6 GeV/c, 10^-3 res), magnet which came up at the 12 GeV workshop.

Bernhard Mecking reported on Hall B activities. They're getting ready for a polarized target run that will start this Fall. In Feb-march 2001 they plan to run g8, the polarized photon experiment. Data analysis has not kept up with DAQ speed, which is now up to 3 kHz. Codes need to be optimized and there's a move to dST's so that the tape silo doesn't become a limiting factor. There's progress on technical publications, with the tagger paper just coming out. g6 has submitted a letter to the collaboration for review.

Roger Carlini reported on Hall C activities. They did 5 experiments in 1999. In 2000-2002 they plan to do Madey's GeN, G0, and Day's GeN. Tang is on the floor right now with the hypernuclear experiment.

Karen Hokansson reported on the problems with collecting user dues. More money is needed, so that users might provide refreshments at workshops like the 12 GeV one, eg, or contribute to a thesis prize or scholarship, etc. No convenient way was found to collect $10 from each user. We will try e-mail solicitation, in addition to collecting it at the annual users meeting.

Gary Adams discussed options in video conferencing. Hall B is testing a system developed by Dave Heddle and Dave Doughty called WEB4M. It is purely for web presentation, no cameras are involved. The contact person in Hall B is Will Brooks. JLab has a 20 user license, all you need is the password to use the system. Expansion of tests to other Halls is suggested.

The nominations committee has almost completed it's job. [Note: Completed, as of 3/22.]

In the executive session the user representatives to the white paper steering committee were selected (previously reported in these minutes) It was requested that Donal Day be kept informed of security issues at the lab and that he be asked for advice on these issues. The Lab agreed. Donal will report back to the BOD as apropriate. An early visit of Cameron et al to JLab should be encouraged. Unity is very important.

The meeting adjourned at 4:30.

Minutes reported by Rory Miskimen.