Summary of activities March 2014 - May 2014

100 - Management

• Trimester report for December 2013 - February 2014 sent to Project officer (Luri, Balaguer)
• First deliverable: Semestral Report 1 (Oct 2013 - March 2014), uploaded to Participant Portal (Luri, Balaguer)
• Preparation of GENIUS content for the 6th call brochure, as requested by Sylwia Borowiecka (Luri, Balaguer)
• Meeting at ESAC for the start of the first archive prototype with the Science Archives Team (4th April 2014)- Luri
• Prototype archive: follow-up teleconference with CU9 WP managers for the prototype preparation (11th April 2014) - Luri, Arenou
• Organisation of the 1st regular teleconference after the 6-month initial set-up period (Luri, Balaguer)
• Acquisition of 2 microphones for teleconferencing, as agreed in the kick-off meeting (Molina)

• The Commissioning Phase of Gaia has been prolonged three months. Some news can be read: http://blogs.esa.int/gaia/2014/04/24/commissioning-update/
• A general updated agenda of the data reduction is now being discussed. Those delays will impact on the different developments of the GENIUS project. Those details will be studied and actions will be taken at the plenary meeting in Viena (July 7 -8).

200 - User community

• Two postdocs recruited for WP 200: Gráinne Costigan and Arkadiusz Hypky. Will start in May and September respectively
• Yamada visitied to the University of Tokyo for discussing hardware evaluation of Nano-JASMINE and data quality, and also visited to the National Astronomical observatory Japan for discussing hardware evaluation test of Nano-JASMINE in March 2014. Also visited National Astronomical Observatory japan and the University of Tokyo for scientific requirements of Nano-JASMINE / small-JASMINE data for scientific output. Also visited Dresden for participating AGIS20 (http://wiki.cosmos.esa.int/gaia-dpac/index.php/CU3:Core_Processing:Meetings:AGIS_20) and Nano-JASMINE data processing meeting (http://wiki.cosmos.esa.int/gaia-dpac/index.php/Nano-JASMINE_data_processing) in May 2014.

300 - System design

• UEDIN: Hambly (0.15) Morris (0.65) Voutsinas (0.65)
• INAF-OATs: Molinaro (0.5) Smareglia (0.5)

• (T3.1) Organised System Architecture bi-monthly telecom (25th March 2014) which included GENIUS developers
• (T3.1) Represented GENIUS system design team at CU9 crossmatch teleconference (11th March 2014)
• (T3.3) INAF-OATs team continuing development of VO-Dance for generic TAP functionality; new developer recruited
• UEDIN team continuing development of
  • (T3.4) Distributed Query Processing generic design: draft Interface Coordination agreement (ICD) under development
  • (T3.2) Working on enhancements to Gaia CU9 Data Modelling UI application to aid in CU9 interface control
• (T3.3) UEDIN developers attended IVOA meeting at ESAC and liaised with ESAC-SAT members
• (T3.1) UEDIN management contributed to CU9 archive prototype data model from a systems design perspective

• Deliverable 3.1. Management part covered by the SDP already produced and at the Participant Portal. Technical aspects are work in progress. it has been agreed to write several interface coordination agreements with ESAC-SAT. We have been working on the Distributed Query Processing ICD in the first instance in order to iterate with ESAC-SAT on the presentation and content.

400 - Data Exploitation

T4.3 - Data mining

• Teleconference: data mining options and planning 27-5-2014 (Julbe, Sarro, Luri)
• We have re-deployed a larger test environment with the necessary framework for initial data mining tasks (Cloudera Framework and Spark).
• A High level design of the datamining framework have been designed in order to have a long term development plan.
• A significant dataset have been generated to evaluate the first test case (PCA over spectra), two level 4 HTM regions.
• The PCA over GOG spectra has been executed both with Mahout and Spark technologies on a local scale with a very small data sample.
• We are finishing the setup to test the sample code on the CESCA cluster over the BP/RP spectra dataset generated (two HTM level 4 regions).
• A first "challenge" use case has been identified and discussed with partners (Evaluation of galaxy models with GAIA data).

T4.4 - VO Tools and services

• Taylor has been working on interfacing TOPCAT to Gaia archive data. Progress so far is on two fronts:
  • Firstly, establishing access through the GACS TAP service at ESAC, which requires assessing and ensuring correctness of that service. 10 Mantis issues have been filed, 7 so far resolved, 3 still under investigation by ESAC staff.
  • Secondly, providing direct access from TOPCAT/STILTS to the Xmatch service run by CDS. This work is ongoing.

• Deliverable 4.1. has been delayed with an expected delivery by the plenary meeting in Viena.(July 7 - 8).

500 - Scientific Validation

T5.1-Technical coordination

• The Validation Test Specification document taking into account all planned tests is being issued
• Teleconferences have been organised with WP managers
• The software environment is being defined

T5.2-Definition of problem cases, validation scenarios and tools

• Adding to the data model the validation flags for the VTS WP942-VAL-210-0X0 to -260-0X0 (March 2014) - Boudreault
• Corrections on the validation test designs for VTS WP942-VAL-210-0X0 to -260-0X0, and comments given to Fabricius+Antiche for VTS WP942-VAL-110-0X0 to -150-0X0 (March 2014) - Boudreault
• Developing codes for validation test 210-010, 210-020, 220-010, and 220-030. Developing new codes for validation test 230-010 and 240-010 (March 2014) - Boudreault
• Writing Mantis issues 0024798, 0024801, 0025023, and 0025095 (March 2014) - Boudreault
• Teleconference on validation test designs for WP942-VAL-1X0 and -VAL-2X0 (March 2014) - Antiche, Arenou, Boudreault, Fabricius

• Corrections in the numbering of the VTS in WP942 for GAIA-C9-SP-OPM-FA-061 (April 2014) - Boudreault
• Adding and corrections done in the data model to reflect the current VTS in WP942 (April 2014) - Arenou, Boudreault
• Developing codes for VTS ; now WP942-110-0X0, -120-0X0, and -210-0X0 are working/ready with corresponding JUnits (April 2014) - Boudreault
• Working on a technical note to present our work on the artefacts in the catalogue due to the presence of bright stars, which is VTS WP942-VAL-220-010 (April 2014) - Boudreault
• Writing Mantis issues 0025107, 0025320, 0025775, and 0025776 (April 2014) - Boudreault
• Teleconferences on VTS (April 2014) - Antiche, Arenou, Boudreault, Fabricius, Romero-Gomez

• List provided on how to include errors in GOG; this is now included in GAIA-C9-SP-OPM-FA-061 for each VTS (May 2014) - Boudreault
• Developing codes for VTS ; now WP942-110, -120, and -210 are ready, or ready and needing only minor updates, with corresponding JUnits (May 2014) - Boudreault
• Technical note on the bright stars problem still ongoing (May 2014) - Boudreault
• Writing Mantis issues 0026655, and 0026909 (May 2014) - Boudreault
• Teleconferences on VTS (May 2014) - Antiche, Arenou, Boudreault, Fabricius, Romero-Gomez

T5.3-Simulation versus reality: from models to observables

• Houri Ziaeepour has been recruited, starting from April 1st on
• After a configuration step, test comparing the galaxy model to the IGSL are beginning (April)

T5.4-Confronting Gaia to external archives

• In this work package, Laura Ruiz-Dern, on a PhD position, is starting implementing the tests concerning the proper motions (April)

560-Transversal tools for special objects

• Definition of an engineer post-doc profile and successful selection of a candidate: M. Kudryashova for 24 month at IMCCE, starting in August 2014. The work will be performed within WP560. First step is to acquire expertise in ephemerides computation, Gaia observations of SSOs, and then define the various specific tests (before their design in a second step).

600 - Support

T6.3-Science Alerts testbed

• Teleconference on science alerts data model, 14-3-2014 - Luri, Hambly, Hodgkin (on behalf of Nic Walton)

700 - Dissemination

T7.2 - Community portal infrastructure

• Public first version of the project portal for internal use http://genius-project.csuc.cat (March, 28th)
• Project's profile created on Twitter, @Genius_pr (March, 7th).
• Creation of a new section (references) and content provision in the different sections

T7.3 - Community portal, outreach and academic activities

• User survey for the design of the GENIUS portal completed (T. Via)
• First users with editing rights to access the community portal: http://awindowtotheuniverse.csuc.cat (March, 24th).
• First public version of the community portal (March, 28th)
• Editor users sent to GENIUS WP leaders (March, 30th)
• The Executive Board is considering the creation of an Editorial Board to carry out a high-level supervision of the portal contents. A second level of collaborators might be defined when the Editorial Board is set up (March, 14th).