Minutes of SHUG Executive Committee Meeting of October 12, 2004
Present
members (6):
Paul Butler
Nancy
Ross
Joanna
Krueger
Paul
Sokol
Angus
Wilkinson
Kim
Tait
Meeting began at 11:00 am. Angus Wilkinson agreed to record the
minutes for this meeting.
1. Approved
minutes from meetings of Feb 5th, Feb 25th, March 18th, May 20th
and Sept. 24th.
Minutes will be forwarded to SNS to go on web site in HTML format.
2. Verbal report on EFACS meeting from Wilkinson who attended EFACS
on Wed and Th (6-7th Oct.)
JINS and its future role in neutron scattering was mentioned by
Wilkinson. Discussion amongst SHUG group concluded that we should
closely monitor how the mission and structure of JINS develops. It
is important that JINS supports the neutron scattering community
as a whole.
Wilkinson
reported that the presentations at the EFACS meeting had been informative.
They suggested that things were going well for SNS. The current sample
environment policy looks to be very positive with adequate equipment
on site at day one and a clear path to move forward.
3. Sending a representative to NUFO meeting at SLAC in Jan 2005.
There will be a meeting of the national user facilities organization
(NUFO) at SLAC in late Jan 2005. As issues such as foreign national
access will be discussed we should have a representative present.
Representative remains to be selected. We will need to find financial
support for sending a representative to this meeting. The Chair will
discuss this concern with Al Ekkebus.
4. Nominations for upcoming SHUG elections
First e-mail to SHUG list requesting nominations has been sent
out by Paul Sokol and he has set up an e-mail mechanism for collecting
the nominations. We should send the letter to a broader neutron list
as the SHUG list is relatively small compared to some other lists.
Voting will be carried out using the SNS system setup by Al Ekkebus
and Judy.
5. David Price, Jim Roberto and Gregg Smith joined the conference
call at 11:30 AM. Discussed HFIR issues.
Lunch time seminar program has been set up to promote collaboration
between SNS and CNS. First meeting will be on high field magnets.
Later meeting will cover detector technology. Anybody is welcome
to attend the seminars. The goal is generate specific action items
for collaboration on the topic being discussed.
Installation
of instruments at HFIR is limited by available technical personnel.
Powder diffractometer should be up by the end of 2005.
Triple
axis instruments continue to be the only ones in the user program,
although the reflectometer and residual stress instruments may join
soon. WAND should be up and running sometime in 2005. Single crystal
instruments may not be available until FY 2006.
Installation
of instruments on cold source will also be limited by available technical
staff. There are currently 7 technicians available at HFIR. There
is an ongoing effort to increase this number, but the budget is very
tight. Materials Science SANS will come on line before the BioSANS.
Guides
initially installed Fall 2005. They may then be temporarily moved
for installation of beam tube.
There will
be a sample prep lab in the guide hall. Input from users on what
this lab should look like was requested by Price. Krueger offered
to send existing document from previous workshop breakout session
on items users have identified as needing to be included in such
a lab.
User input on nature of future "user office
space" and
user lab space at HFIR may be needed in the future.
Dec 15-16th
there will be HFIR advisory committee meeting. 5 people will conduct
an informal review of science programs and installation/upgrade plans.
David Price requested that SHUG send a representative on the 15th
to make a presentation to the committee. It was agreed that the Chair
of the HFIR subgroup, John Turner, should work out the details of
this invitation with David.
Gregg Smith
commented that the 50% target for proposals from outside users had
not been met yet. Only 30-35% of user program experiments were from
outside. The next proposal call will probably be in Spring 2005 to
allow time for the backlog of approved proposals to be cleared.
6. Discussion
of NIST user group charter.
Discussion postponed until after draft charter has been circulated
to SHUG committee members.
7. Elections
Send out another request for nominations to more general neutron
mailing list.
Will send a final reminder by e-mail 3 days before closing date
for nominations.
Next SHUG conference call is scheduled for Oct. 29 th at 11:00
am and will focus primarily on getting our nomination list ready
for the elections.
Meeting
adjourned at 12:25 pm.
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