STAR NEWSLETTER NUMBER 33

1. From the spokesman:

Reported by John Harris

The "Open Discussion on STAR Physics and Data-Taking" took place at LBNL on June 5. It was very educational, with much discussion and a good start at understanding the data-taking constraints and scenarios for STAR in the first year. A copy of the transparencies will be sent to institutional representatives in STAR.

Tim Hallman has been spearheading the STAR effort to identify the STAR operating needs at BNL once RHIC commences operations. He will be making a presentation before an NSAC Review Sub-committee, which is reviewing the RHIC operating costs on July 17 - 19 at BNL.

The STAR Manpower Committee which consists of Jerry Hoffmann (chair), Tom Cormier and Hank Crawford is awaiting the last MOU's from STAR institutions prior to commencing their work. The information from the Project Leaders on the needs and work that is going on in each of the Projects has been accumulated.

The STAR Collaboration Meeting announcement for the August collaboration meeting at BNL (August 11 - 17) has been sent out and a preliminary agenda and registration information can be found on the STAR webpages.

Excerpted from the STAR Monthly Report for May 1996.

Project Management Summary and Highlights

The permanent part of the shield wall between the Wide Angle Hall and the Assembly Building was completed this month. Nearly half of the Magnet steel has been delivered to the new Assembly Building (AB). All the rail plates are also on hand. Installation will begin very shortly.

After much discussion, the SVT group has decided to utilize a dual beam scenario for installing and removing the SVT and its associated support cones. The dual beam scheme provides for greater stability and reduces the likelihood of damage to the TPC IFC.

The mounting holes for the EMC end cap have been finalized and are currently being worked into the magnet pole tip drawings. In preparation for the platform review, a meeting took place at BNL to discuss the current platform layout. Action items involving the routing of AC power were generated. The proposed STAR standard VME crate arrived and acceptance testing has started.

TPC Summary and Highlights

Magnet Summary and Highlights

Electronics Summary and Highlights

Computing Summary and Highlights

3. Notice of Meetings:

Workshop on Event by Event Physics in Nuclear Collisions, July 24-26, 1996, at the University of Washington (Seattle). For further information please contact Tom Trainor (UW).

STAR Collaboration meeting. August 11-17, at BNL. Further information on the meeting can be found via the STAR home page on the WWW (Calendar section).

Conventional Systems Plan Review, somewhere in the late summer to early Fall time frame, at BNL. For further information please contact Bill Edwards (LBNL) or Bruce Miller (BNL).

The STAF/MOAST Workshop

The workshop began with an overview of the STAF development by Doug Olson and a review of the STAR library tools by Bruce Moskowitz for the few participants who were new to STAR computing. Craig then described the philosophy of STAF and led the way to the elementary tutorial tasks that demonstrated the capabilities. The emphasis of the workshop was on using the opportunity to convert the existing library of TAS based modules to run under STAF. The tutorials remain available on the WWW for the benefit also of future users who were not at the workshop.

The format was a plenary session each day ending usually before lunch with hands-on work at terminals each afternoon. Lanny Ray exhorted programmers to exercize care in the use of some features of the table-based code development and set a goal of a complete STAF based version of the fast simulation/event reconstruction chain by this Fall. Al Saulys showed how a much better code documentation could be semi-automatically generated if programmers would follow a few standard practices. Doug Olson showed the draft RFC computing facility proposal and proposed a production schedule that ramps from 1000 event capability this year to 30,000,000 events in the year 2000.

At the final plenary session on Thursday there was much discussion of the main features of STAF, including the attempt to increase the programming flexibility by moving a lot of the logic and flow of the programs into a controlling shell (currently based on the CERN developed KUIP language) with the resulting need to write quite elaborate KUIP scripts. Craig assured us that the mature STAF will include new tools that will make it more useable by non-experts with much simpler scripts. We wer much encouraged by an excellent demonstration of STAF in action by Mike Lisa, who guided us through his STAF application to analyse the TPC Cosmic ray data from the system test runs. A feature of the workshop which should be emulated in the future was a halftime break on Tuesday afternoon for a picnic. The discussions with beer in hand were (productive?) and the weather cooperated to give the hard workers a pleasant respite.

Most of the transparencies are available (as paper copies rather than computer files).

Early in June the first of the two outer rings for the STAR magnet arrived at the STAR Assembly building. This hugh ring gives one a real feeling for just how massive the STAR magnet will be. The concrete blocks necessary to construct a single layer radiation shielding wall between the WAH and the AB were placed in the WAH.

There was a ribbon cutting ceremony held for the Assembly building on June 12th. In addition to the ribbon cutting itself (a picture can be found via the STAR WWW page, STAR->News->Newsletter->Photos) there were speeches, tours of the facility, and refreshments.

The activity that is coming in July includes the installation of the steel plates that STAR will roll on, the arrival of four main and two trim coils for the magnet, the arrival of one of the main support carriages for the magnet, and the arrival of the four 1,000 ton hydraulic jacks that will be used to position STAR vertically.

Bob Soja - New mechanical tech for the SVT at BNL.

Fritz Heistermann - New engineer working on DAQ at BNL.

The Ohio State University

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Group at The Ohio State University invites applications for a postdoctoral research position available immediately. The successful candidate will spend approximately half of his/her time on the RHIC STAR experiment carrying out software development for physics simulations and hardware control for the Silicon Vertex Tracker (SVT) and the other half on the E896 experiment at the AGS (H0 search) scheduled to have its first run this Fall. The candidate should have strong programming skills. The OSU Relativistic Heavy Ion Group currently consists of three faculty members, one postdoctoral researcher, four graduate students, two undergraduate students and an electrical engineer. Interested candidates should send an application consisting of a curriculum vitae, a description of research experience and interest and the names of three references to Professor Thomas J. Humanic, Department of Physics, Smith Laboratory, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210 or via E-mail to humanic@mps.ohio-state.edu. The Ohio State University is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer and encourages all qualified candidates to apply.