Resources used or available at ADASS

We had a display table at ADASS in addition to participating in a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session and passed out a few documents, showed a few slides, had a couple glasses of wine… Cannot share the wine, but can share some of the files:

ASCL flyer (PDF)
BoF talking points handout
(.docx)
BoF discussion questions presentation
(.pptx)
Request for suggestions for improving the ASCL
(.pptx)
Papers of possible interest to astronomical software users
(.docx) (also available online)

ADS BibTeX records for citing ASCL entries

ADS is currently generating incorrect BibTeX records for citations to code entries in the ASCL. This will be fixed, but in the meantime, here’s an example of what is being generated and how to fix it, courtesy of Mark Taylor and Alberto Accomazzi.

Hitting the “Bibtex entry for this abstract” button on the ADS page for the ASCL Sherpa entry gives:

@ARTICLE{2011ascl.soft07005F,
author = {{Freeman}, P. and {Nguyen}, D. and {Doe}, S. and {Siemiginowska}, A.
},
title = “{Sherpa: CIAO Modeling and Fitting Package}”,
journal = {Astrophysics Source Code Library},
year = 2011,
month = jul,
pages = {7005},
adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011ascl.soft07005F},
adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

The identifier that should be in “pages” is “1107.005” as ASCL IDs are all of the form yymm.nnn. However, a better Bibtex entry format is:

@ARTICLE{2011ascl.soft07005F,
author = {{Freeman}, P. and {Nguyen}, D. and {Doe}, S. and {Siemiginowska}, A.
},
title = “{Sherpa: CIAO Modeling and Fitting Package}”,
journal = {Astrophysics Source Code Library},
year = 2011,
month = jul,
eprint = {ascl:1107.005},
adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011ascl.soft07005F},
adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

Note the removal of “page” and the addition of the “eprint” field.

After running LaTeX and BibTeX on it, it should generate an entry in the .bbl file that looks like this:

bibitem[{{Freeman et al.}(2011)]{2011ascl.soft07005F}
{Freeman}, P., {Nguyen}, D., {Doe}, S., and {Siemiginowska}, A. 2011
Astrophysics Source Code Library, eprint{ascl:1107.005}

My thanks to Dr. Accomazzi and Dr. Taylor for their work on this!

Two new members join the Advisory Committee

Keith Shortridge at the Australian Astronomical Observatory and Mark Taylor at the University of Bristol (UK) have graciously agreed to serve on the ASCL’s Advisory Committee.

Dr. Shortridge has written data reduction and data acquisition software throughout his career. He has an increasing interest in the way software is developed and in communication in the astronomical software field, and is associated with the AstroShare project. He wrote the Figaro data reduction system for Palomar early in his career, and his software AAOGlimpse was presented at the XXI ADASS conference.

Dr. Taylor has been writing astronomical software since 1998. His work has focused on processing catalogs of astronomical objects (galaxies and stars), particularly in the context of the emerging Virtual Observatory. He has worked on Starlink, AstroGrid, Euro-VOTech and the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, and is the author of several widely-used tools, including the interactive graphical viewer and tabular data editor TOPCAT.

ADASS Birds of a Feather session

Several of the ASCL’s Advisory Committee are panelists for a Birds of a Feather session that seeks answers to the following questions:

How do we ensure code release is recognized as an essential part of assuring reproducibility of research?

How can the community change the culture so developers will release their programs?

What can we do to ensure code authors receive credit for writing and releasing their software, and encourage them to release it even if it’s “messy” code?

How do we reduce expectations of support when a developer does not wish to (or cannot) take on that role after program release?

What role might journal publishers and funding agencies have in furthering code release, and how can the community influence them to take on that role?

How can universities be convinced to change policies which prohibit software publication?

Can funding agencies and publishers encourage documentation of programs, and if so, how?

Got answers? Ideas? Comments? Please share!

October 2012 additions

Thirty-one codes were added to the ASCL in October; on October 31, there were 546 codes in the library.

BOOTTRAN: Error Bars for Keplerian Orbital Parameters
CALCLENS: Curved-sky grAvitational Lensing for Cosmological Light conE simulatioNS
Consistent Trees: Gravitationally Consistent Halo Catalogs and Merger Trees for Precision Cosmology
ConvPhot: A profile-matching algorithm for precision photometry
EZ: A Tool For Automatic Redshift Measurement

FLUKA: Fully integrated particle physics Monte Carlo simulation package
GASGANO: Data File Organizer
GOSSIP: SED fitting code
GP2PCF: Brute-force computation of 2-point correlation functions
HAM2D: 2D Shearing Box Model

inf_solv: Kerr inflow solver
McPHAC: McGill Planar Hydrogen Atmosphere Code
ORBADV: ORBital ADVection by interpolation
PAHFIT: Properties of PAH Emission
pPXF: Penalized Pixel-Fitting stellar kinematics extraction

PVS-GRMHD: Conservative GRMHD Primitive Variable Solvers
PyCosmic: Detecting cosmics in CALIFA and other fiber-fed integral-field spectroscopy datasets
QFitsView: FITS file viewer
QYMSYM: A GPU-accelerated hybrid symplectic integrator
Rockstar: Phase-space halo finder

RVLIN: Fitting Keplerian curves to radial velocity data
Sapporo: N-body simulation library for GPUs
SearchCal: The JMMC Evolutive Search Calibrator Tool
SGNAPS: Software for Graphical Navigation, Analysis and Plotting of Spectra
SMART: Spectroscopic Modeling Analysis and Reduction Tool

Specview: 1-D spectral visualization and analysis of astronomical spectrograms
Systemic Console: Advanced analysis of exoplanetary data
TA-DA: A Tool for Astrophysical Data Analysis
Tempo2: Pulsar Timing Package
TRIP: General computer algebra system for celestial mechanics

TwoDSSM: Self-gravitating 2D shearing sheet

Papers to read

Best Practices for Scientific Computing. What can I say? Good reading! Please don’t let not following its recommendations stop you from making your code(s) public or from submitting it/them to the ASCL, however. Offer them up with the CRAPL license; make your codes available no matter how messy they are. After all, Astronomical Software Wants To Be Free. And really, science requires it.

September 2012 additions

Fifteen codes were added to the ASCL in September, bringing the number to 515.

ANNz: Artificial Neural Networks for estimating photometric redshifts
Aspects: Probabilistic/positional association of catalogs of sources
Bayesian Blocks: Detecting and characterizing local variability in time series
CHORIZOS: CHi-square cOde for parameterRized modeling and characterIZation of phOtometry and Spectrophotmetry
DiskFit: Modeling Asymmetries in Disk Galaxies

FAMIAS: Frequency Analysis and Mode Identification for AsteroSeismology
HARM: A Numerical Scheme for General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics
IRACproc: IRAC Post-BCD Processing
JAGS: Just Another Gibbs Sampler
LSD: Large Survey Database framework

macula: Rotational modulations in the photometry of spotted stars
MeqTrees: Software package for implementing Measurement Equations
Phantom-GRAPE: SIMD accelerated numerical library for N-body simulations
Scanamorphos: Maps from scan observations made with bolometer arrays
TMCalc: Fast estimation of stellar metallicity [Fe/H]

Codes added in August 2012

Twenty-five codes were added to the ASCL in August; we ended the month with 500 codes.

APLpy: Astronomical Plotting Library in Python
APT: Aperture Photometry Tool
Astrometry.net: Astrometric calibration of images
BASE: Bayesian Astrometric and Spectroscopic Exoplanet Detection and Characterization Tool
Big MACS: Accurate photometric calibration

BINSYN: Simulating Spectra and Light Curves of Binary Systems with or without Accretion Disks
BLOBCAT: Software to Catalog Blobs
BLOCK: A Bayesian block method to analyze structure in photon counting data
BSGMODEL: The Bahcall-Soneira Galaxy Model
ccogs: Cosmological Calculations on the GPU

CUBEP3M: High performance P3M N-body code
EXTINCT: A computerized model of large-scale visual interstellar extinction
EzGal: A Flexible Interface for Stellar Population Synthesis Models
Fewbody: Numerical toolkit for simulating small-N gravitational dynamics
Lare3d: Lagrangian-Eulerian remap scheme for MHD

MPFIT: Robust non-linear least squares curve fitting
MPI-AMRVAC: MPI-Adaptive Mesh Refinement-Versatile Advection Code
ParselTongue: AIPS Python Interface
PSM: Planck Sky Model
PyKE: Reduction and analysis of Kepler Simple Aperture Photometry data

RADPACK: A RADical compression analysis PACKage for fitting to the CMB
SolarSoft: Programming and data analysis environment for solar physics
Swarm-NG: Parallel n-body Integrations
TiRiFiC: Tilted Ring Fitting Code
VARTOOLS: Light Curve Analysis Program