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At least 829 records · Page 46

Fossil Shell in 3C 84 as TeV γ-Ray Emitter and Cosmic-Ray Accelerator

We explore physical properties of the shocked external medium (i.e., a shell) in 3C 84 associated with the recurrent radio lobe born around 1960. In the previous work of Ito et al., we investigated a dynamical and radiative evolution of such a shell after the central engine stops the jet launching, and we found that a fossil-shell emission overwhelms that of the rapidly fading radio lobe. We apply this model to 3C 84 and find the following. (1) The fossil shell made of shocked diffuse ambient matter with the number density of 0.3 cm{sup −3} radiates bright inverse-Compton (IC) emission with the seed photons of the radio emission from the central compact region and the IC emission is above the sensitivity threshold of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). (2) When the fossil shell is produced in a geometrically thick ionized plasma with the number density of 10{sup 3} cm{sup −3}, the field strength in the shell may reach about 17 mG in the presence of magnetic fields amplification and the radio emission becomes comparable to the sensitivity of deep imaging VLBI observations. The possible production of ultra high-energy cosmic-rays (UHECRs) in the dense shocked plasma is also argued.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Materials compatibility and aging for flux and cleaner combinations

A materials study of high reliability electronics cleaning is presented here. In Phase 1, mixed type substrates underwent a condensed contaminants application to view a worst- case scenario for unremoved flux with cleaning agent residue for parts in a silicone oil filled environment. In Phase 2, fluxes applied to copper coupons and to printed wiring boards underwent gentle cleaning then accelerated aging in air at 65% humidity and 30 O C. Both sets were aged for 4 weeks. Contaminants were no-clean (ORL0), water soluble (ORH1 liquid and ORH0 paste), and rosin (RMA; ROL0) fluxes. Defluxing agents were water, solvents, and engineered aqueous defluxers. In the first phase, coupons had flux applied and heated, then were placed in vials of oil with a small amount of cleaning agent and additional coupons. In the second phase, pairs of copper coupons and PWB were hand soldered by application of each flux, using tin-lead solder in a strip across the coupon or a set of test components on the PWB. One of each pair was cleaned in each cleaning agent, the first with a typical clean, and the second with a brief clean. Ionic contamination residue was measured before accelerated aging. After aging, substrates were removed and a visual record of coupon damage made, from which a subjective rank was applied for comparison between the various flux and defluxer combinations; more corrosion equated to higher rank. The ORH1 water soluble flux resulted in the highest ranking in both phases, the RMA flux the least. For the first phase, in which flux and defluxer remained on coupons, the aqueous defluxers led to worse corrosion. The vapor phase cleaning agents resulted in the highest ranking in the second phase, in which there was no physical cleaning. Further study of cleaning and rinsing parameters will be required.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Data‐Driven Safety Risk Prediction of Lithium‐Ion Battery

Abstract Inevitable safety issues have pushed battery engineers to become more conservative in battery system design; however, battery‐involved accidents still frequently are reported in headlines. Identifying, understanding, and predicting safety risks have become priorities to further accelerate technology and industry development. However, diverse loading scenarios, significantly varied stress‐induced short circuit mechanisms, and highly coupled mechanical–electrochemical safety behaviors have remained grand challenges. Herein, the safety risk is termed as the probability of the mechanical triggering of an internal short circuit, to reflect the safety related behaviors of lithium‐ion batteries. Based on a mechanical model and experimental results, a sufficient dataset is generated consisting of strain states and their corresponding safety risks, covering both cylindrical and pouch cells, various states of charges, and loading conditions. Machine‐learning tools combined with the established finite element mechanical model are applied to predict the safety risks of the cells. The results achieve a high level of accuracy on the test data (the relative error of the average short circuit prediction deviation is less than 6.2%.). This work underpins the safety risk concept and highlights the promise of physics combined with data‐driven modeling methodology to predict the safety behaviors of energy storage systems.

Jia, Yikai↗

Airbreathing Laser Propulsion Experiments with 1 {mu}m Terawatt Pharos IIILaser: Part 2

This basic research study examines the physics of airbreathing laser propulsion at the extreme flux range of 1-2x10{sup 11} W/cm{sup 2}--within the air breakdown threshold for l {mu}m radiation--using the terawatt Pharos III neodymium-glass pulsed laser. Six different experimental setups were employed using a 34 mm line focus with 66 {mu}m focal waist, positioned near the flat impulse surface. The 2nd Campaign investigated impulse generation with the laser beam focused at grazing incidence across near horizontal target surfaces, with pulse energies ranging from 55 to 186 J, and pulse-widths of 2 to 30 ns FWHM. Laser generated impulse was measured with a horizontal Plexiglas registered ballistic pendulum equipped with either a steel target insert or 0.5 Tesla permanent magnet (NEIT-40), to quantify changes in the momentum coupling coefficient (C{sub M}). Part 2 of this 2-part paper covers Campaign no. 2 results including C{sub M} performance data, and long exposure color photos of LP plasma phenomena.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

TH-EF-204-03: Determination of Small Field Output Factors, Advantages and Limitations of Monte Carlo Simulation

Joanna E. Cygler, Jan Seuntjens, J. Daniel Bourland, M. Saiful Huq, Josep Puxeu Vaque, Daniel Zucca Aparicio, Tatiana Krylova, Yuri Kirpichev, Eric Ford, Caridad Borras Stereotactic Radiation Therapy (SRT) utilizes small static and dynamic (IMRT) fields, to successfully treat malignant and benign diseases using techniques such as Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS) and Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT). SRT is characterized by sharp dose gradients for individual fields and their resultant dose distributions. For appropriate targets, small field radiotherapy offers improved treatment quality by allowing better sparing of organs at risk while delivering the prescribed target dose. Specialized small field treatment delivery systems, such as robotic-controlled linear accelerators, gamma radiosurgery units, and dynamic arc linear accelerators may utilize rigid fixation, image guidance, and tumor tracking, to insure precise dose delivery to static or moving targets. However, in addition to great advantages, small field delivery techniques present special technical challenges for dose calibration due to unique geometries and small field sizes not covered by existing reference dosimetry protocols such as AAPM TG-51 or IAEA TRS 398. In recent years extensive research has been performed to understand small field dosimetry and measurement instrumentation. AAPM, IAEA and ICRU task groups are expected to provide soon recommendations on the dosimetry of small radiation fields. In this symposium we will: 1] discuss the physics, instrumentation, methodologies and challenges for small field radiation dose measurements; 2] review IAEA and ICRU recommendations on prescribing, recording and reporting of small field radiation therapy; 3] discuss selected clinical applications and technical aspects for specialized image-guided, small field, linear accelerator based treatment techniques such as IMRT and SBRT. Learning Objectives: To learn the physics of small fields in contrast to dosimetry of conventional fields To learn about detectors suitable for small fields To learn about the role of Monte Carlo simulations in determination of small field output factors To provide an overview of the IAEA small field dosimetry recommendations To provide an overview of the content of the ICRU report on Prescribing, Reporting and Recording of Small Field Radiation Therapy. To learn about special technical considerations in delivering IMRT and SBRT treatments To appreciate specific challenges of IMRT implementation J. Seuntjens, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council; Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Electronic landscape of the f -electron intermetallics with the ThCr 2 Si 2 structure

Although strongly correlated f -electron systems are well known as reservoirs for quantum phenomena, a persistent challenge is to design specific states. What is often missing are simple ways to determine whether a given compound can be expected to exhibit certain behaviors and what tuning vector(s) would be useful to select the ground state. In this review, we address this question by aggregating information about Ce, Eu, Yb, and U compounds with the ThCr 2 Si 2 structure. We construct electronic/magnetic state maps that are parameterized in terms of unit cell volumes and d -shell filling, which reveals useful trends including that (i) the magnetic and nonmagnetic examples are well separated, and (ii) the crossover regions harbor the examples with exotic states. These insights are used to propose structural/chemical regions of interest in these and related materials, with the goal of accelerating discovery of the next generation of f -electron quantum materials.

42 ENGINEERING↗

ASAP: Automatic Synthesis of Area-Efficient and Precision-Aware CGRAs

Coarse-grained reconfigurable accelerators (CGRAs) are a promising accelerator design choice that strikes a balance between performance and adaptability to different computing patterns across various applications domains. Designing a CGRA for a specific application domain involves enormous software/hardware engineering effort. Recent research works explore loop transformations, functional unit types, network topology, and memory size to identify optimal CGRA designs given a set of kernels from a specific application do- main. Unfortunately, the impact of functional units with different precision support has rarely been investigated. To address this gap, we propose ASAP – a hardware/software co-design framework that automatically identifies and synthesizes optimal precision-aware CGRA for a set of applications of interest. Our evaluation shows that ASAP generates specialized designs 3.2×, 4.21×, and 5.8× more efficient (in terms of performance per unit of energy or area) than non-specialized homogeneous CGRAs, for the scientific computing, embedded, and edge machine learning domains, respectively, with limited accuracy loss. Moreover, ASAP provides more efficient designs than other state-of-the-art synthesis frameworks for specialized CGRAs.

artificial intelligence↗

Manifold Learning-Based Polynomial Chaos Expansions for High-Dimensional Surrogate Models

In this work we introduce a manifold learning-based method for uncertainty quantification (UQ) in systems describing complex spatiotemporal processes. Our first objective is to identify the embedding of a set of high-dimensional data representing quantities of interest of the computational or analytical model. For this purpose, we employ Grassmannian diffusion maps, a two-step nonlinear dimension reduction technique which allows us to reduce the dimensionality of the data and identify meaningful geometric descriptions in a parsimonious and inexpensive manner. Polynomial chaos expansion is then used to construct a mapping between the stochastic input parameters and the diffusion coordinates of the reduced space. An adaptive clustering technique is proposed to identify an optimal number of clusters of points in the latent space. The similarity of points allows us to construct a number of geometric harmonic emulators which are finally utilized as a set of inexpensive pretrained models to perform an inverse map of realizations of latent features to the ambient space and thus perform accurate out-of-sample predictions. Thus, the proposed method acts as an encoder-decoder system which is able to automatically handle very high-dimensional data while simultaneously operating successfully in the small-data regime. The method is demonstrated on two benchmark problems and on a system of advection-diffusion-reaction equations which model a first-order chemical reaction between two species. In all test cases, the proposed method is able to achieve highly accurate approximations which ultimately lead to the significant acceleration of UQ tasks.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Lower-Energy Energy Storage System (LEESS) Component Evaluation

Alternate hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) energy storage systems (ESS) such as lithium-ion capacitors (LICs) and electrochemical double-layer capacitor (EDLC) modules have the potential for improved life, superior cold temperature performance, and lower long-term cost projections relative to traditional battery storage systems. If such lower-energy ESS (LEESS) devices can also be shown to maintain high HEV fuel savings, future HEVs designed with these devices could have an increased value proposition relative to conventional vehicles. NREL's vehicle test platform is helping validate the in-vehicle performance capability of alternative LEESS devices and identify unforeseen issues. NREL created the Ford Fusion Hybrid test platform for in-vehicle evaluation of such alternative LEESS devices, bench testing of the initial LIC pack, integration and testing of the LIC pack in the test vehicle, and bench testing and installation of an EDLC module pack. EDLC pack testing will continue in FY15. The in-vehicle LIC testing results suggest technical viability of LEESS devices to support HEV operation. Several LIC configurations tested demonstrated equivalent fuel economy and acceleration performance as the production nickel-metal-hydride ESS configuration across all tests conducted. The lowest energy LIC scenario demonstrated equivalent performance over several tests, although slightly higher fuel consumption on the US06 cycle and slightly slower acceleration performance. More extensive vehicle-level calibration may be able to reduce or eliminate these performance differences. The overall results indicate that as long as critical attributes such as engine start under worst case conditions can be retained, considerable ESS downsizing may minimally impact HEV fuel savings.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

The International Linear Collider Technical Design Report - Volume 4: Detectors

The International Linear Collider Technical Design Report (TDR) describes in four volumes the physics case and the design of a 500 GeV centre-of-mass energy linear electron-positron collider based on superconducting radio-frequency technology using Niobium cavities as the accelerating structures. The accelerator can be extended to 1 TeV and also run as a Higgs factory at around 250 GeV and on the Z0 pole. A comprehensive value estimate of the accelerator is give, together with associated uncertainties. It is shown that no significant technical issues remain to be solved. Once a site is selected and the necessary site-dependent engineering is carried out, construction can begin immediately. The TDR also gives baseline documentation for two high-performance detectors that can share the ILC luminosity by being moved into and out of the beam line in a "push-pull" configuration. These detectors, ILD and SiD, are described in detail. They form the basis for a world-class experimental programme that promises to increase significantly our understanding of the fundamental processes that govern the evolution of the Universe.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

neutron-Induced Failures in semiconductor Devices

Single Event Effects are a very significant failure mode in modern semiconductor devices that may limit their reliability. Accelerated testing is important for semiconductor industry. Considerable more work is needed in this field to mitigate the problem. Mitigation of this problem will probably come from Physicists and Electrical Engineers working together

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

HPC4Mfg with Sepion

We employed ab-initio simulations and quantum chemical calculations to develop a computational framework for simulating the microscopic structure and mechanical properties of novel polymer membranes used in lithium sulfur batteries. To meet industry targets, next generation batteries with high specific energy (Wh/kg) are essential. Efforts to commercialize light-weight, energy-dense lithium-sulfur secondary batteries (2510 Wh/kg) have been stalled by ongoing problems with the battery’s separator membrane, which should prevent cross-over of active material from cathode to anode that, if unchecked, limits cycle-life. However, Sepion Technologies’ polymer membranes yield long-lasting lithium-sulfur cells. Advancing to 10 Ah battery prototypes, Sepion faces challenges in membrane manufacturing related to polymer processing and the molecular basis for membrane performance and durability. High performance computing offers critical new insight into these phenomena, which in turn will accelerate product entry into the market.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

DOE Laboratory Support for DER and Inverter-Based Resource Integration Standards (ACCEL II) (Final Report)

This report documents efforts under a project that followed work completed under Accelerating Systems Integration Standards (ACCEL). In this continuation, the project team provided support for updates to critical standards for interconnection and interoperability of distributed energy resources at the distribution level. In addition, the project contributed to development of guidance for operational best practices of the bulk power system with high levels of DERs. Additional goals of the project were to inform and develop improved recommended practices and certification standards for end-to-end interoperability of DERs, utilizing Sandia laboratory assets when needed.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

A High Performance Computing Platform for Performing High-Volume Studies With Windows-based Power Grid Tools

Serial Windows-based programs are widely used in power utilities. For applications that require high volume simulations, the single CPU runtime can be on the order of days or weeks. The lengthy runtime, along with the availability of low cost hardware, is leading utilities to seriously consider High Performance Computing (HPC) techniques. However, the vast majority of the HPC computers are still Linux-based and many HPC applications have been custom developed external to the core simulation engine without consideration for ease of use. This has created a technical gap for applying HPC-based tools to today’s power grid studies. To fill this gap and accelerate the acceptance and adoption of HPC for power grid applications, this paper presents a prototype of generic HPC platform for running Windows-based power grid programs on Linux-based HPC environment. The preliminary results show that the runtime can be reduced from weeks to hours to improve work efficiency.

High-performance computing, power grid, power syst↗

Preliminary Modelling of Radiation Levels at the Fermilab PIP-II Linac

PIP-II is the Fermilab's flagship project for providing powerful, high-intensity proton beams to the laboratory's experiments. The heart of PIP-II is an 800-MeV superconducting linac accelerator. It will be located in a new tunnel with new service buildings and connected to the present Booster through a new transfer line. To support the design of civil engineering and mechanical integration, this paper provides preliminary estimation of radiation level in the gallery at an operational beam loss limit of 0.1 W/m, by means of Monte Carlo calculations with FLUKA and MARS15 codes.

Lari, L.↗

Verazine biosynthesis from simple sugars in engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Steroidal alkaloids are FDA-approved drugs (e.g., Zytiga) and promising drug candidates/leads (e.g., cyclopamine); yet many of the ≥697 known steroidal alkaloid natural products remain underutilized as drugs because it can be challenging to scale their biosynthesis in their producing organisms. Cyclopamine is a steroidal alkaloid produced by corn lily (Veratrum spp.) plants, and it is an inhibitor of the Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway. Therefore, cyclopamine is an important drug candidate/lead to treat human diseases that are associated with dysregulated Hh signaling, such as basal cell carcinoma and acute myeloid leukemia. Cyclopamine and its semi-synthetic derivatives have been studied in (pre)clinical trials as Hh inhibitor-based drugs. However, challenges in scaling the production of cyclopamine have slowed efforts to improve its efficacy and safety profile through (bio)synthetic derivatization, often limiting drug development to synthetic analogs of cyclopamine such as the FDA-approved drugs Odomzo, Daurismo, and Erivedge. If a platform for the scalable and sustainable production of cyclopamine were established, then its (bio)synthetic derivatization, clinical development, and, ultimately, widespread distribution could be accelerated. Ongoing efforts to achieve this goal include the biosynthesis of cyclopamine in Veratrum plant cell culture and the semi-/total chemical synthesis of cyclopamine. Herein, this work advances efforts towards a promising future approach: the biosynthesis of cyclopamine in engineered microorganisms. We completed the heterologous microbial production of verazine (biosynthetic precursor to cyclopamine) from simple sugars (i.e., glucose and galactose) in engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae) through the inducible upregulation of the native yeast mevalonate and lanosterol biosynthetic pathways, diversion of biosynthetic flux from ergosterol (i.e., native sterol in S. cerevisiae) to cholesterol (i.e., biosynthetic precursor to verazine), and expression of a refactored five-step verazine biosynthetic pathway. The engineered S. cerevisiae strain that produced verazine contains eight heterologous enzymes sourced from seven different species. Importantly, S. cerevisiae-produced verazine was indistinguishable via liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry from both a commercial standard (Veratrum spp. plant-produced) and Nicotiana benthamiana-produced verazine. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report describing the heterologous production of a steroidal alkaloid in an engineered yeast. Verazine production was ultimately increased through design-build-test-learn cycles to a final titer of 83 ± 3 μg/L (4.1 ± 0.1 μg/g DCW). Finally, this research lays the groundwork for future microbial biosynthesis of cyclopamine, (bio)synthetic derivatives of cyclopamine, and other steroidal alkaloid natural products.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗