Eric is almost ready to submit at least two papers to the proceedings for the 2007 Bioastronomy conference In Puerto Rico. He’s going to try to get send in by the end of this week. When the papers are published we’re also going to get them up on the website for everyone to read. Also, Network World has published an article about BOINC and SETI@Home. It’s a good general article to read. It’s linked on the SETI@Home Website as well.

Dan brought up the point that it is about time to get out a new paper about scientific results—maybe something about SETI@Home and the algorithms behind it, to be published in Astrophysical Journal. We do have a lot of published proceedings papers, but we don’t really have a paper out there that is aimed at the astronomy community. Eric would be the one to write it, it would potentially in three parts (a trilogy of SETI@Home, if you will). Otherwise it would a long paper. A really long paper.

Eric finally figured out why BOINC no longer gives stack dumps in Linux. It took him a long time, but he’s now able to release a version of that allows him to see where it is crashing. Unfortunately, no news as to why it is crashing, but hopefully if he can release a version on BOINC that pinpoints where it is crashing, he can figure it out soon.

We are reaching a limit on the science database, so when Matt tries to do stuff like the top ten on NTPCkr, it locks the database. We’ve had a goal for a while of re-configuring the subsystem to make the database faster. Now that this is finally a major issue, we’re going to dig right in and get started on it.

Matt stole Bob’s database-thunder by announcing that the new intel server mork is ready, and we are going to finally may that the primary server tomorrow. Farewell, jocelyn!

In the Radar blanking development world: Matt is certain we definitely have the fold period correct. However, when he looks at the data and manually blanks the data that is obviously trash, his result is still hundreds of samples out of phase with the hardware radar blanking result. Even considering the fact that the hardware radar blanking we currently use does blank a huge window of data (to make up for signals bouncing off mountains, etc.), the disparity between the two results still seems flat-out wrong.

The point was brought up that we should consider the possibility that in the instances Matt is looking at, the hardware blanker itself could be not functioning properly. Dan noted that this particular hardware is not something that is continually being monitored, and SETI is the only group really that uses it everyday. So unless we realize that it is broken, no one will really tell us that it is not working. When it’s broken, a lot of times, you’ll get a signal, but it’s the wrong signal. Hopefully when Matt’s project is finished it will be much more reliable than this current system, and we can really start blanking some earth-bound radar.

Jeff recommended that Matt could look at some old plots we have that have already used the hardware blanker on (so we know that it is correct). The ultimate test is SETI@Home.

Jeff has started work is on building the framework for the Zone RFI detection that we talked about last week. Eric is writing the first algorithm. Also, NTPCkr is up and running. It is still in beta, but it is running.

Jeff has started work is on building the framework for RFI filtering that we talked about last week. Eric is writing the first algorithm which will detect and remove known contaminated frequency
and pulse period zones in our data. Also, NTPCkr is up and running. It is still in beta, but it is running.

We’re out of Multibeam (SETI@Home) data right now, so only people who are running Astropulse are getting work. But we’re going to be getting a box of data tomorrow or the next day, so we’re fine on that front. Saved by the Box, again.

Dave Messerschmitt, a retired UC Berkeley electrical engineering professor, is giving a talk in October about interstellar beacons and transmitting civilizations. Dan suggested that it would be fun to get everyone together to talk to him and hear his ideas about detecting such transmissions.

That’s all this week from the Space Sciences Lab! Thanks for reading.