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Shift accounting, dues for Run 15 and findings

Updated on Thu, 2014-12-18 14:53. Originally created by jeromel on 2014-12-09 13:03.

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Dues

Shift dues are typically calculated at first, council feedback is seek and the dues are adjusted. All documents that have served as the basis for shift dues and calculations are available in this section. Please read carefully. The past run shortfalls are also provided in case your institution so desire to provide more shift coverage for the coming run (and hence, recover from the shortfall).

Requests to serve additional shifts should be made PRIOR to the final calculation of the dues to the shift committee (R. Fatemi and J. Lauret). Please, refer to the important date section in this document for the "until when" you could make such request.

Past shortfalls, shift coverage by institution

Below is a table of shift coverage shortfalls for Run 14. Only the institutions having missed shifts last year are documented (in parenthesis, the number of shifts missed). If your institution appears there with a high percentage of missed shifts, consider taking additional shifts THIS year to compensate otherwise, authors may be excluded if the shortfalls are sustained.

Institution Missed %tage in Run 14
Institute of Modern Physics, Lanzhou 71% (5)
Moscow Engineering Physics Institute 50% (2)
Alikhanov Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics 40% (2)
University of Zagreb 33% (1)
Indian Institute of Technology. Mumbai 25% (1)
University of Rajasthan 25% (1)
Michigan State University 25% (1)
Institute of High Energy Physics - Protvino 25% (2)
Panjab University 20% (1)
Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies FIAS 14% (1)
Temple University 12% (1)

The below table shows a different information. Author exclusion also look at the past 4 years average shift misses. The below table shows what would be considered for the author exclusion in Run 15. Note that if your institution fails again to fulfill their dues and the 4 years average is below the threshold defined by our author exclusion policy, author would be excluded.

Institution Missed percentage, historical
Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) 50%
Pusan National University 33%
Instituto de Fisica da Universidade de Sao Paulo 25%
University of Zagreb 21%


Initial proposed dues (as per 2014/12/09)


For history preservation, the initial shift dues were saved as a generated PDF attached here.

They are based on
  • the authors and listings as collected up to 2014/12/09 noon EST - the current listing is available on the same page showing the dues.
  • the following expert list. Please, mouse-over the names to make sure of the expert credits (in case of A or B, sometimes either A or B gets a 1 unit expert credit while the other gets 0).
Since the records are council issues, please address any concerns to your council representative (not the shift sign-up committee). Your council representative will work the issues through either the council or the STAR Spokesperson (he/she could then CC us to speed up the process).


Final dues (after council feedback)

On 2014/12/15 at 12:47 (consitent with the noon deadline give in the important date section), the new import was made from the PhoneBook and dues were re-computed considering the special requests for additional shifts to be served.

The dues are now considered finaland  are available as this link.
The final expert list is available as a PDF and at any point in time here.


Shift sign-up - Run 15

Important dates

  • 2014/12/09 - initial shift dues calculated - council feedback requested.
  • 2014/12/10 - Shift sign-up opens for TESTING purposes only - you may exercise the interface by emulating a sign-up (formally, it was opened and ready on the 5th)
  • 2014/12/15 - The shift sign-up committee needs all council feedback by noon the 15th of December. Final shift dues will then be re-computed and provided (they should not change much and will account for all reported changes by that date)
  • 2014/12/17 - The testing interface will be turned OFF that day and all test records flushed/removed. The countdown will begin.
  • 2014/12/18 - Opening will occur at 10 AM BNL time - please, remember to log prior and wait for the countdown to open the signing as discussed below.

Shift Layout, Period Coordinators and special arrangements

Shift layout

STAR shifts begins January 13th with cosmic data taking shifts. There will be 3 weeks of those with only 2 slots opened - there will be NO Period Coordinator during that time.

Real data taking shifts will begin February 3rd and end June 23rd. The crew will be fully staffed after two weeks in this period. There shall be no training slots for the first week and last week (following standard practices).

QA shifts will begin hence begin February 10th (when the crew is fully staffed) until June 23rd.

Period coordinators

As usual, period coordinators are pre-assigned / pre-signed as selected by the Spokesperson office.
The period coordinators were all entered in the sign-up - remains a two weeks gap.

Other considerations and requests

In blue, the request attended by the shift sign-up coordinators within the boundary of their responsibilities.
In green, the items passed on to other and attended/answered positively.
In orange, the items passed on to other and declined.

  • UTA has requested for Lanny Ray (QA coordinator) to have the first QA shift.
    Status: the shift sign-up coordinators have had flexibility for such arrangements and agreed and will pre-sign as requested. Done.
  • Bob Tribble (BNL/ALD) would like to take a STAR shift on behalf of TAMU - due to his busy agenda, he has requested the March 10-17 as shift leader.
    Status: the original request came from the Spokesperson, the shift sign-up coordinators agreed. The time slot was not specified.
  • Institute of Modern Physics, Lanzhou asked to do 5 more shifts to compensate for Run 14 shortfalls (and hence, restore their average shift missed to a perfect score).
    Status: Approved (as per the author exclusion policy, shift excess may be requested by institution for this purpose)
  • Purdue University requested to do +3 shifts in Run 15 to accomodate for a future projection (giving those shift credits later to Yale which may do 3 shifts less - this is part of a cross-institutional arrangement)
    Status: we agreed (our policies allows for shift excess without specifying pre-conditions are needed and we have already considered arrangements where institution A takes shifts for institution B but credits go to B)
  • Warsaw requested to attend +1 more shift to account for possible shift reshape (extensions or otherwise)
    Status: Noted and agreed
  • OSU requested to cover for +1 shift for Run 14 to cover for an author declared past the deadline (we would then not substract that +1 from the due at the end of the run)
    Status: Agreed
  • ...
     
  • On 2014/12/09, ITEP (ru) requested information on shift shortfalls.
    Status: this information was provided in this blog at this link.
  • Yale asked for Nikolai Smirnov to have an expert credit of 1 (as Richard Majka).
    Action: this request was passed to the spokesperson.
    Status: on 2014/12/09, the answer was provided - for small sub-systems, only a reduced expert credit (in total) would be provided especially when the expert is A or B.
  • Kent State asked why Sonja Kabana was put right away under their author list. They agreed for her to join under the umbrela of KSU but after the membership to SUBATECH expires.
    Status: All records concerning this member and SUBATECH were restored as it was
  • On 2014/12/09, Alexei Lebedev noted experts were missing for the TPC gas.
    Action: the information related to several missing experts this year (comparing to previous year) was passed on to STAR management during the assembling of the expert list (Friday the 5th), explicit reminder of Alexei's point was made on the 9th.
    Status: Agreed to add the ame back with for now, a 1-2 expert credit for the 3 names.
  • Jana Bielcickova noted Miroslav Simko moved from CTU to NPI and additionally, that they have agreed for Miroslav to serve as a ZDC on-call expert.
    Action: This information was passed to the Spokesperson on 2014/12/10.
    Status: Approved with 1 expert credit (BNL expert gets 0)
  • ...
     

Interface changes comparing to Run 14


The interface has NOT changed comparing to previous years.

However, grouping have changed for convenience and as follows:
  • If a user X is part of an institute B but that institute depends on the institution A, the name of user X will now appear under institutions dropdown menu generated when you select institution A.
  • Example 1: US Naval Academy is hosted by Yale. User Richard Witt would find his name now under Yale (there will not be an USNA appearing in the dropdown)
  • Example 2: All members of the Egyptian group's members would appear under the Brookhaven National Laboratory institution dropdown selection as the Egyptian institutes are hosted by BNL.
The convenience is that before, we (the shift sign-up commitee members) had to resolve the institute/institutions dependencies by hand to calculate the dues and check if the shift dues were reached (each group or institute would appear on a separate line and we had to remember which one depends on who and sum by hand). The re-grouping will make many steps transparent and automated - besides, only institutions matter for the shift accounting and the author exclusion policy, not group names or institute depending on ...

Quick tutorials notes

What to expect

As per in previous years, the Shift sign-up will open only after several security features are through. Here is what to expect
  • An initial username and password to enter in order to access Run15 link.
    Those credentials are left at the bottom of this page for your convenience. DO NOT distribute it via EMail.
    This first level of authentication is Web server related and is done to prevent the world from accessing our Shift sign-up.
  • A CAPTCHA will be further required - this is to protect against ourselves.
    Scripting based signing was found to be in use by some giving cmputing savy members an advantage. CAPTCHA prevents this from happening. It will be required only once per session.
  • A training record check - this is not mandatory and you may decline.
    However, we highly recommend you go through as doing so allows you to go direcely to the count down and, upon shift opening, your name will be automatically selected (you will be ready to sign-up right away).

The sequence

After the username password authentication are provided ...
  • The first step will be to enter a CAPTCHA - An example of how it looks is showed below

     
  • The second step will now offer you the possibility for the interface to access your training record. The panel should look like

    This step is not mandatory but
    • if you decline, you will be driven to the countdown and not be able to pre-select your name and institution. The two issues were bound to one another to create an incentive to use the new feature.
    • If you accept, the following menue would appear

    Do not forget to enyter your ID and click "Check ID" - this will verify that we do have a record on file with this ID and can proceed. If you miss-type, you will be informed and you could correct it before moving further along. If yu ave full shift qualifications, you should see something like this coming up

    End by clicking [Proceed to ShiftSignup] and you will be brought to the countdown.
    Needless to say that if this phase tells "Regular Shifter trainings: NO" you should act accordingly and inquire of the proper training you should take to be serving on a STAR shift.
    STAR training information is maintained by on the STAR training GUV center Web page.



Other information & Findings

Past year links


Previous years findings are available at Shift accounting, dues for Run 14 and findings.

Run 14 findings


{TO BE SUMMARIZED}

Top 15 shift-signer (and top 3)


Place Time Person Institution
1 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:15 -0500 Arindam Roy Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre. Kolkata
2 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:16 -0500 Xiaoping Zhang Tsinghua University
3 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:17 -0500 Adam Gibson Valparaiso University
4 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:17 -0500 Samuel Heppelmann Brookhaven National Laboratory
5 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:19 -0500 Bingchu Huang University of Illinois at Chicago
6 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:19 -0500 Leszek Kosarzewski Warsaw University of Technology
7 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:19 -0500 Xin Dong Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
8 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:19 -0500 Prashanth Shanmuganathan Kent State University
9 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:20 -0500 Kevin Adkins University of Kentucky
10 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:20 -0500 Rihan Haque National Institute of Science Education and Research
11 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:20 -0500 John Campbell Ohio State University
12 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:21 -0500 Scott Wissink Indiana University, CEEM
13 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:21 -0500 Alexey Aparin Joint Institute for Nuclear Research
14 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:22 -0500 Carl Gagliardi Texas A&M University
15 Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:00:22 -0500 Jan Rusnak Nuclear Physics Institute, Academy of Sciences

Profile



Shift opening and other findings

  • In the shift dues panel (administrator only), a "shift extra" column was added to facilitate considering the requests to serve extra shifts. However, this column has no effects (none of the calculations were considering it) hence, we need to do as in previous years
    • Add the extras as part of the due column before the run
    • Substract the extras before the shift final date and before the accounting (author exclusion calculation) is carried
  • ...



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