Science Tools Working Group
Met this week. Eric Winter was introduced as a new programmer at the GSSC; he will be working on Science Tools and sounds like he knows what he is doing. James is introducing him to whatever he doesn't already know.
I'm not sure when we'll meet next - possibly not until after the collaboration meeting. Most likely, some GSSC people will visit SLAC on April 18-20 to discuss, and work on, Science Tools issues with Science Tools people at SLAC. Before you start trying to count the latter, please include Toby, who will be coming down from UW for the meeting.
The current version of ScienceTools remains v7r6p1.
Data products: No news
Databases and related utilities
No news.
Likelihood analysis
Jim reported fixing a bug in pyLikelihood related to TS calculations for binned likelihood analysis. The problem has existed for a while - related to a scheme to improve the approximate calculation of the TS values - but apparently Jim was the first to trip over it; the bug was a crash.
I mentioned the interest interest of the Diffuse group in large-area binned likelihood analyses. As Andy Strong has emphasized, for small pixels sizes and large areas of the sky, HEALPix is a superior binning scheme for convolutions with PSFs. Toby and Pat have done the most work that I'm aware of with HEALPix and LAT studies. We're far from having a binned HEALPix likelihood tool for general models, but this would be worth pursuing this year if skilled labor were available.
GRB tools
Eric W. will be starting on cleaning up things related to binning in gtbin. The topic that got mentioned specifically was implementing (or possibly fixing the implementation of) Bayesian Block binning for GRB time series.
Pulsar tools
Masa and James are continuing to work on gtpspec. The 'central engine' is working and they are focused on making the output plots and information useful, keeping in mind that FFTs for this kind of analysis will have A LOT of channels.
Observation simulation
Max has tagged even newer versions of PulsarSpectrum (now v2r2p5). The problem with running the SC1 pulsars on recent versions of PulsarSpectrum did not in fact go away as reported last week. Max is working on it.
Richard gave us an introduction to his MicroQuasar source, which has a number of knobs and can be used to represent a wide range of transient and/or periodic sources.
Toby and Nicola have tracked down a problem that we apparent only with GRBobsmanager, which generated very large time intervals to the next photon when a GRB 'turned off'.
Toby has got the Sun-centered reference frame (for MapSource sources - like the solar IC emission) and Moon-centered frames working. At first glance they produce reasonable output - on the right place on the sky. Detailed looks are in progress.
User interface and infrastructure (& utilities)
No news about Marco/Riccardo's proposed GUI for Science Tools.
Source Catalog
Did not meet this week.