sPHENIX is a new detector at RHIC.

[Gunther M Roland <rolandg AT mit.edu>]

Friends,

We had our regular meeting with Berndt today, discussing among other things 
the endgame for the descoping exercise and Berndt's planned visit to DOE. 
This visit is tentatively scheduled for 10/31. As input Berndt has already 
received a letter detailing the role the MIT Bates laboratory is expected to 
play for the MVTX engineering and the document on ME measurements with the 
sPHENIX Barrel, prepared by the Cold QCD group (which Berndt called "nearly 
perfect" in the meeting). Following discussions with Ed and John Lajoie, we 
are proposing to finalize the descoping studies as follows:
- EC meeting early next week (10/15 or 10/16) to solicit further advice on 
how to present our strategy
- Preparation of a short document by Dave/Gunther in time for next week's GM 
(10/20)
- short comment period (until ~10/24)
- deliver document to Berndt about ~6 days before planned DOE visit

While this is a tight schedule, we believe the studies and discussions over 
the last 6 weeks have converged on a stable and reasonable set of 
conclusions. 

Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions. We'll send out an 
EC meeting doodle poll shortly.

Best,

Gunther and Dave