2010-09-10-13h-23m: download this report as PDF.

This is month 2 of the project and we are officially underway. Pre-financing has been received, work packages have held their first meetings (see their respective updates below) and the Board is set to meet in September. We hope that our experiement with wiki-based reports will succeed.

Link to the Deliverables Table

The Deliverables Table is now posted on the wiki and has started to be used. Most of the deliverables for the first two months are setup tasks that are already completed or in process. At the moment the main issue is how quickly various partners can hire individuals to fill open positions.

The bundle of Form A paperwork (Annex IV- Form A- Accession of Beneficiaries to the Grant Agreement), signed by each partner and countersigned by JIVE, has been mailed to the EC. A scanned copy of the documents is available in the “NEXPReS Contract Documents” section of the wiki direct link.

Preparations for the first NEXPReS Board Meeting are underway. We have heard back from most board members and expect about 22 total participants (board member, Work Package leaders, supporting project staff). In addition to formal meeting participants, we will have a few observers (part of NEXPReS, not board members) who are in town for the EVN Symposium which will be begin the following day.

The project received word during the month that the pre-financing process had started. On 18 August, we confirmed with the Commission that the funds had been received in the project bank account. For the initial pre-financing, we are determining the portions that will be distributed. Each partner has been asked for a summary of their spending profile for the first project year. If there is a lack of input, the project partners will receive funds in proportion to their overall allocation in the project.

Updates Posted Online- The wiki will be used to gather and publish monthly updates for the project. The template of this report will evolve, but the overall outline of individual work package updates with links to related materials (images, PDFs, etc) will be used for the course of the project.

WP1's first month deliverables dealt mostly with start up organization and have been completed as shown in the table. The consortium agreement was identified as being due in month 1, but it will end up being completed sometime in late month 2 or early month 3 due to a combination of summer holidays and partners waiting to see the final project contract. The Project Office is in contact with many of the partners and do not foresee any problems getting the Consortium Agreement completed.

The upcoming deliverables for month 3 will be completed via the Board Meeting to be held in Manchester on 20 Sep 2010.

No meetings were hosted in the first two months, but preparations are underway for the first Board Meeting. Additional details are available on the wiki page for the event.

It is a bit early to talk about publications, but this is here mostly to show the overall structure of the updates and what information will be posted as we move through the project. So nothing to report for this month.

Note, Charles is planning to participate in ICT 2010 and 8th e-Concertation meeting. Follow links to the meeting sites for additional information. More information will be provided in the updates after the meetings have been held.

Charles has also passed an invitation to speak at the EGI Technical Forum in mid-September to Mark Ketenis. He will speak about NEXPReS and the ways in which EGI may be able to assist the community in the mid to long term. More info on that from Mark as it develops.

The e-VLBI Science Advisory Group, eVSAG, coordinates the discussions linking the science and technology of e-VLBI with possible operational and policy impacts. This will be done by encouraging communications through existing channels and regular meetings. In the EVN all operational and policy changes are to be enforced by the Consortium Board of Directors, taking advice from an operations group and a scientific programme committee. By having member overlap with these groups the eVSAG will be able to prepare the policy and operational changes that the new observational capabilities demand.

At this time, a list of eVSAG members is being prepared. This will include the EVN Program Committee members, plus scientists representing the NEXPReS partners, and other eVLBI experts.

The eVSAG will continue discussions initiated during the EXPReS project. One of the tasks of the eVSAG will be to explain the activities of NEXPReS and its implications for the community at large. Discussions will continue over mailing lists and via existing e-VLBI and VLBI community resources. Eforts will be made for eVSAG meetings to be held concurrently with larger meetings. Symbiotic meetings can help to ensure a critical mass, which is important for establishing common ground. As was the case in EXPReS, the eVSAG will also organize an end-of-project science and technology meeting.

Groundwork has begun for graphic design that will be used for multiple deliverables, including the display and print and online materials.

The wiki is being populated and most of the work groups have started to add content:

• WP1- Management
• WP2- EVN-NREN
• WP3- eVSAG
• WP4- Communications
• WP5- Cloud Correlation
• WP6- High Bandwidth on Demand
• WP7- Computing Shared Infrastruc
• WP8- Storage on Demand

• D4.1 - Kristine Yun has been appointed Communications Manager.
• D4.2 - Online resources
  • A basic web page announcing NEXPReS was posted in July; the full site was launched in August. See http://www.nexpres.eu.
  • The wiki was in place prior to month 1 and used for proposal preparation. It has since been fleshed out and is in use by activity leaders. See http://www.jive.nl/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=nexpres:project.
• D4.3 - WP4 is providing support, as needed, for the board meeting in September.
• D4.4 - Design of the display is underway and should be produced on time in September.

No meetings are necessary for this single-person work package.

There are no publications to report this early in the project. WP4 does not usually give presentations and talks, but a list of NEXPReS related papers and presentations will be maintained on the NEXPReS web site. A list of upcoming meetings at which NEXPReS participants will speak has been started at http://www.nexpres.eu/meetings-events.

As a result of the start of the project coinciding with the summer holidays, very little activity took place in July. At MPG a software engineer was hired on the first of August, he will be formally employed by TUM from the first of September on. Currently the efforts at TUM and MPG concentrate on creating a road map and project plans. A poster was created for the EVN symposium about the first shared observation test on the basis of remote control with the current software between Wettzell and Concepcion. At JIVE, work started on modifying the Mark5 control software to enable simultaneous recording and transmitting at the stations, the first deliverable of this work package. Work also started on the second deliverable, the definition of metrics and the use of user feedback. A position for a software engineer has been advertised. Work at AALTO has not started due to the holidays.

On Aug. 27th, we held a kickoff telecon where we discussed both short-term and long term planning for the tasks and deliverables in this WP. Minutes of this meeting can be found on the WP 6 - High Bandwidth on Demand. Wiki page. All partners have assigned personnel to contribute to this workpackage, and several have started recruiting additional manpower.

Work has started on a first draft document for our first milestone, MS601. This architecture document is a prerequisite for the architecture and design needed for the tasks and deliverables in this WP.

We are investigating whether we can hold a short face-to-face meeting in Manchester for those in WP6 who are present at the EVN symposium.

None yet.

A Kickoff Telecon was held on August 18, 2010. Upcoming deliverables were discussed, as was a preliminary agenda for the face-to-face meeting in Manchester. Minutes of this meeting are available on the WiKi.

At JIVE work has started to integrate VDIF support in the software correlator. This is a prerequisite for making the distributed correlation work, since the traditional VLBI data formats don't allow individual subbands to be split out and sent to different locations. Prototyping for some of the correlator feedback mechanisms (weight display, fringe display) also has started. A preliminary conclusion is dat Python seems to be fast enough to do the necessary calculations (mostly FFTs) for this. Some discussion on how to present the information in the workflow manager is necessary before we can proceed with this.

The team at PSNC led by Dominik Stoklosa has been joined by Kasia Bylec and Tomasz Rajtar. They have started to do a redesign of the workflow maneger. VENT is expected to join their effort when the design has evolved a bit further.

At OSO Simon Casey, will start work on the workflow manager deliverables document by interviewing telscope operators.

Work on deliverables D7.1, D7.2 and D7.3 has started, but apart from the activities mentioned above, there is nothing to report yet.

A face-to-face meeting between representatives of JIVE, OSO and PSNC has been planned for September 20, 2010, co-located with the board meeting. This meeting will be used to clarify the requirement and flesh out the ideas about distributed correlation.

None yet. A short presentation about NEXPReS, focussing on WP7 will be presented in the Virtual Research Communities session of the EGI Techical Forum in Amsterdam (14-17 September 2010).

Due to the summer vacation period coinciding with the project start not much besides hiring people for WP 8 has been commencing. This means that the actual RTD activity for WP 8 will start to ramp up in September.