Paris Meeting Preparation of EU FP6 Proposal Violent Star Formation, Massive Stars & Feedback ================================================ 11./12. Sept. 2003 Notes on our discussion on Legacy Tools ============ (Sept. 12. morning session) Elena Terlevich: (history and reasons) The Mexican group needs to be ``indispensable'' to be admitted as a partner in a EU network. There are many codes that are public and widely used and needed for interpretation of data. However, many of them are not (well) documented and in a shape that is difficult to understand. Hence our idea to develop something similar in spirit to Starburst99 but extending much further. E.g. -- Daniel Schaerer -- Miguel Mas-Hesse -- Miguel Cervino -- Angeles Diaz -- Grazyna Stasinska -- Sandro Bressan have codes that could be put together into this legacy tool. These codes would need to be homogenised, made compatible and interfaces are to be produced to use either of them or combinations to analyse integrated spectra, color-color-diagrams, etc. A first step would be to include the codes as they are, in a second step the codes should be improved upon with the aim of better compatibility (preferentially by or under close supervision of the authors). Mexico has a strong group of computer scientists with strong astrophysical interest, publishing papers in the specialized journals for astrophysics. We estimate that we would need 1 PhD and 1 Postdoc to build the legacy tool. They are expected to work part of their times with the authors of the respective codes to get familiar and then come to Mexico and integrate the codes into the legacy tool, improve upon documentation, performance and confidence and visualization in the presentation of results. The positions can/should be splitted among different persons. Richrad de Grijs: You should be careful not to duplicate what is done in Europe by Virtual Observatory (=VO) initiatives. Roberto Terlevich: What is lacking at the VO and should be an important part of our legacy tool is analysis & interpretation tools for various kinds of data, in particular of large data sets. Elena Terlevich: Sure, otherwise, in the end, the student won't be an astrophysicist. Daniel Kunth: You also have to show that it will not only be a legacy but also be useful for the project within the network itself. Miguel Cervino: no or at least not too many asumptions need to be in the tool but rather should come out as results of application of the tool (e.g. the IMF). Richard de Grijs: VO wants to combine large datasets -- at present mainly observations, but in the future also theoretical data (e.g. from cosmological simulations). Linda Smith/Elena Terlevich: maybe we can sell/offer our work/developments to the VO people. Artemio Herrero: we have to show that Mexico is the best group to do it, i.e. that Mexico is already 1 step ahead of European efforts, have at least already developed a concept/design. Suzanne Madden/Marc Sauvage: we are still worried because all the codes are in Europe. You should make clear the particular skills/potential of your Mexican computer scientists, i.e. that they are astrophysicists at the same time. Daniel Kunth: The codes should not only be black boxes but allow for a physical understanding. Manfred Pakull: Things change fast and this will affect the basis of some codes. The codes should be continuously updated. Roberto Terlevich: Sure, the idea is to construct a modular interface that alows to include new codes/versions as they come. Daniel Kunth: Will Artificial Intelligence ideas/concepts be added/included? Roberto Terlevich: To give you an example: Supervised Analysis allows to completely revise your prejudices (e.g. it convinced me that HII galaxies which I thought were young do indeed contain an older stellar population). Elena Terlevich: E.g. the code Cloudy includes a set of values for solar abundances and Ferland includes every new set of solar abundances as soon as they are released. Daniel Kunth: The Legacy tool should be a central point to our proposal and should be made a particularly strong case on the front page already. Note(Elena): During the previous discussion, Linda Smith said something that was presented so well, in such a round form, that we plan to write it ``verbatim''. We think it should be included in our Mexican part of the application, or may be in the justification for including Mexico: ``listen to what is being said: Mexico can produce a unique blend of computing scientists and astrophysicists that adds a dimension to the network that no other Astrophysics department in Europe has.'' The page about the legacy tool will be written by Elena Terlevich, Miguel Cervi\~no, Daniel Schaerer and Roberto Terlevich. Pakull: What about the multiwavelength? New instruments (and experiments) and the training of young people to use them. ad hoc training sessions should be specifically included in the proposal. Uta: All the presentations up to now are too theoretically oriented. We must write explicitely in our contributions, the observations we need to perform in order to achieve our goals. Write it clearly, and include, as well as the existing instruments, those that need to be made. Roberto: It may be because we are mostly observers, we took it for granted. Daniel Kunth: We need to plan explicitely task oriented workshops, e.g. HST data mining, preparation for ALMA, LMT Herschell, Apex (the last one as an exercise for ALMA). Gerhard Hensler: We have to be realistic and consider our access capabilities to those instruments and to the new ones to come. Artemio Herrero: Notion of perspective is important. We have 2 years to get data, leaving 2 more years to use them. Linda: There is a place in the proposal, (in our node strengths) to put that we regularly get telescope time in... and name the facilities; or guaranteed time, or whichever is the case. Suzanne: What about mm observations? training workshop? APEX (not enough resolution but in the South) before ALMA. IRAM is a training place. Daniel K. We have identified 12 objectives, and many ARE observational. Here is the list, plus who is in charge of collecting, nucleating those interested in them and preparing the docummentation: 1- Stellar evolution models + atmospheres (Daniel Schaerer) 2- Stellar populations (Miguel Cervi\~no) 3- Stellar feedback (Linda Smith) 4- Galactic feedback (Gerhard Hensler) 5- Dust, gas, ISM (Suzanne Madden) 6- Isolated vs.interacting SF (Uta Fritze) 7- IMF issues (Richard de Grijs) 8- Age-Z degeneracy for SF interpretation (Roberto Terlevich and Sandro Bressan) 9- Bolometric SFR (Michel Dennefeld) 10- Lyalpha (Daniel Kunth) 11- AGN-SB (Rosa Gonzalez-Delgado) 12- Legacy tool (Elena Terlevich) Organizational topics. Daniel Kunth presented all the items referred to the application, what do they mean, what do we have to do to fill them in, etc. He strongly advised everyone to study the documentation: The Guide for the preparation of proposals, and the Handbook (link from the WEB-page). We discussed first: Number of nodes Management and management duties of each node, that have to include + students + visitors + computing facilities and expertise and transfer of knowledge + schools organization It is suggested to have an Executive Committee (ExC) which monitors all the financial activities of the node. Integrated perhaps by all the PIs who can also have some internal networking duties. Its composition has to be well balanced. The other duties of the ExC have to be specified. like e.g. describe the steps to be taken to disseminate results during and after the life of the network, to build an executive financial group... Still the organization of the administration is not fully identified. Perhaps it will be left to the PI and his entourage (Daniel, Enrique and Richard) to decide.If one include all nodes that will make a very large ExC. May be to have it like that, but with a core and halo organization. The A2 form, has to be filled by each team (or perhaps by each site... to be cleared afyter consultation with administrators with this kind of experience, at IAP, IAC, etc). Do we need to create sub Committees per Country? Now, to the discussion of the actual individual forms: A1, to be filled by DK + everyones abstract, so it will be done at the end A2, as well, one per site A4 Detailed requests, per year (DK, RdG, EP) in WORD, all have explanatory notes. We need to know clearly the meaning of "transfer of knowledge" it is a bit subjective. The 12 tasks have to keep clearly in mind the requirements for the application, and answer to all possible items for each form. *** We need to read VERY carefully the call documents*** DK suggested to have an ExC and a ScC (Richard, but isn't that going a bit too far, burocracy-wise?) Artemio suggests the ExC with 1 member per node, with a scientific "core", no more than 6 members, more balanced, etc and considering within each node, some sub-networking activities. Part A will have to be finished AFTER part B anyway. Part B (to be provided as a .tex file) (Enrique will prepare a simple template to put in the WEB-page, including the subsections and subsubsections) B.1 Deals with the science quality. B.1.1 research topic 1 page (DK, after all contributions) B.1.2 project objectives 3 pages (12 people=> ~15 lines or 1/3 page each) B.1.3 Science originality 2 pages (12 people=>1/4 page each) B.1.4 Research method 2 pages (" " ) B.1.5 Work plan 2 pages ( "" "" plus 2 iterations with the 12) B.2 Training and/or transfer of knowledge (T+ToK) B.2.1 Content and quality of T+ToK 3 pages (12 people + all the teams. To explain what resources, etc, their own Institution has; 2 iterations) B.2.2 Impact 2 pages (DK) B.2.3 Planned recruitment PhD and postdocs (2nd iteration) Suzzane: a point: some groups CAN NOT participate if they don't get overheads (e.g.Saclay, Sheffield, ...) need to specify the political frane in the input to DK... We are driven by science, but groups need reasurances. Also, we can apply fo something like 9students and 4 postdocs in total (numbers by Enrique) because of the total amount to request and the relative percentages allowed. Solution, try to share the resources. taking into account as well EU policies regarding balance. Linda: coming back to a question discussed in April, who can be listed as members? They will be "Senior" people, either with permanent positions or with senior kind of longer term contracts (like 5-10 yrs e.g. Advanced Fellowships or RS Fellowships in the UK, or similar schemes elsewhere). There will be a core-halo frame per node, core members to be listed and CVs considered etc. Halo will participate and contribute afterwards, once we get it. B.3 Quality/capacity B.3.1 Collective expertise of team 1 page/team (all teams) to include members list, expertise, graduates per year and 2 most significant publications) B.3.2 Intensity and quality of networking 1 page (DK 2nd iteration) to include less favoured regions B.3.3 Relevance of partnership composition 1 page (DK) to include outssiders B.4 Management and feasibility B.4.1 Proposed managerial scheme 2 pages (DK, RdG, EP, twicky) B.4.2 Know how of node with coordinator 1 page (DK, RdG, EP, twicky) B.4.3 Know how of the teams 1/2 page (all teams) B.5 Relevance 2 pages (RdG) B.6 Added value (RdG) B.7 Financial (EP, 2nd iteration) B.8 Previous (DK) B.9 Other (DK) Afternoon session ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dead-lines, title, etc Dead-lines: ~~~~~~~~~~~ 1st= 3rd October B.1.2 \ B.1.3 > Group of 12 B.1.4 / B.2.1 \ B.3.1 > Teams (=nodes) B.4.3 / 2nd= 10th October and 17th October (2 iterations) B.1.5 B.2.3 B.3.2 B.3.3 B.4.1 B.5 B.6 B.7 B.8 B.9 A.2 When preparing the contributions, READ CAREFULLY evaluation criteria (p.33 of the Notes) to realise what are the relative "values" for each part of the proposal e.g. B.2 is very high, B.3 takes only 15%, B.5 takes up to 30%, etc. .Try to make clear what is the contribution to "overcome the fragmentation of science" .Highlight the status of the doctorates of quality (EC) for UAM, Toulouse, Padova (?) .Propose training activities: SAAS-FEE, annual scientific meettings to extend a couple of days (with the PhD students) for some specific training, task-oriented workshops, winter schools? La Palma? Guillermo Haro extended advanced workshops? (the case for the latter should contain an estimate of the costs, to show why it is cheaper than to make it in Europe)... These proposals have to be as specific as possible. EP will include in the template, examples and instructions for the schools. If we are going to make a point about the present stage of atomization of the group due to luck of international funding, it will be interesting to ask for funds to organize a new School. It will help to know in advance B2 to prepare our pages of contribution. DK, RdG and EP to circulate a draft as soon as possible. Back to the title ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ... back to Violent star formation. Notes taken by Uta Fritze and Elena Terlevich