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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 865 records · Page 48
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Cooperation or Rivalry? Impact of alternative development pathways on India's long-term electricity generation and associated water demands

The world has witnessed a significant shift in the last decade in the way countries interact with each other. A cooperation based international paradigm is being challenged by countries engaging in rivalry with each other in the name of their national interests. What developmental pathway the world charts in the future is going to be path defining for global energy and emissions use. India, expected to play a critical role in the emissions mitigation debate, would contribute to and would be impacted by these pathways. In India specific literature, however, little attention has been paid to development pathways related uncertainties and their impact on energy futures. We seek to address this gap by modelling India's electricity futures and associated water demands under different development pathways. Our analysis shows that alternative development pathways would have significantly different implications for the energy access, electricity generation mix, associated water withdrawals, and carbon dioxide emissions in India. We conclude by arguing that energy, emissions and water policies should be conceived with an explicit understanding of uncertainties related to potential development pathways that the world and India can chart.

India, Electricity-Water Nexus, Development Pathwa↗
DOE OSTI2022

Bioenergy crops as alternative feedstocks for recovery of anthocyanins: A review

Anthocyanins are plant-based pigments known for their wide range of industrial applications. Berries, grapes, purple yam, purple corn, and black rice are among the chief dietary sources of anthocyanins. However, these sources have a well-established market in the food sector and cannot be diverted completely for the extraction of anthocyanins. Hence, there is a need to identify alternative sources of these natural colorants. In this review, color-bearing bioenergy crops with high productivity such as miscanthus, sorghum, and sugarcane have been proposed as potential feedstocks for the recovery of anthocyanins as co-products. The role of genetic modification in the biosynthesis of anthocyanins in these crops has been discussed. A consolidated bioprocessing approach has been proposed for the recovery of anthocyanins from bioenergy crops along with the production of bioethanol and lignin-based chemicals. Such an integrated process could make the overall process for the production of biofuels cost-effective.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Evaluation of methods and improvement of predictions for specification properties of petroleum-based and alternative aviation fuels

To support our research and process modeling for liquid fuels, including blends, from petroleum and synthetic sources such as from biomass intermediates, we evaluated composition-based prediction methods and improved predictions for five key specification properties of petroleum-based and alternative aviation fuels, namely distillation temperatures (10 % distilled, t 10 , and final boiling point, t FBP ), density, flash point, net heat of combustion, and freezing point. The types of fuels included were petroleum-based jet fuels, jet-fuel surrogate mixtures, synthetic blending components obtained from different sources, and blends of Jet A with many synthetic blending components. Expanded datasets to update associated parameters allowed significant improvements for one of the prediction methods used in earlier work, namely the Modified Weighted Average method published initially by Shi et al. By considering the importance of lighter compounds for flash points and heavier compounds for freezing points, the revised Modified Weighted Average method was further improved. For liquid density, the revised Modified Weighted Average method gave the best overall results. The revised Modified Weighted Average method, the American Society for Testing and Materials D7215 method, and the D7215 method modified by another group gave comparable results for flash point, while the revised Modified Weighted Average and D3338 methods gave the best results for net heat of combustion. Freezing point was well predicted using the revised Modified Weighted Average method and showed the most significant improvements over current predictions. Distillation temperature t 10 was not well predicted, while t FBP was predicted with a mean absolute error comparable to experimental reproducibility.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Alternative mixed integer linear programming optimization for joint job scheduling and data allocation in grid computing

This paper presents a novel approach to the joint optimization of job scheduling and data allocation in grid computing environments. We formulate this joint optimization problem as a mixed integer quadratically constrained program. To tackle the nonlinearity in the constraint, we alternatively fix a subset of decision variables and optimize the remaining ones via Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP). We solve the MILP problem at each iteration via an off-the-shelf MILP solver. Our experimental results show that our method significantly outperforms existing heuristic methods, employing either independent optimization or joint optimization strategies. We have also verified the generalization ability of our method over grid environments with various sizes and its high robustness to the algorithm setting.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

GPU-resident sparse direct linear solvers for alternating current optimal power flow analysis

Integrating renewable resources within the transmission grid at a wide scale poses significant challenges for economic dispatch as it requires analysis with more optimization parameters, constraints, and sources of uncertainty. This motivates the investigation of more efficient computational methods, especially those for solving the underlying linear systems, which typically take more than half of the overall computation time. In this paper, we present our work on sparse linear solvers that take advantage of hardware accelerators, such as graphical processing units (GPUs), and improve the overall performance when used within economic dispatch computations. We treat the problems as sparse, which allows for faster execution but also makes the implementation of numerical methods more challenging. We present the first GPU-native sparse direct solver that can execute on both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. We demonstrate significant performance improvements when using high-performance linear solvers within alternating current optimal power flow (ACOPF) analysis. Furthermore, we demonstrate the feasibility of getting significant performance improvements by executing the entire computation on GPU-based hardware. Finally, we identify outstanding research issues and opportunities for even better utilization of heterogeneous systems, including those equipped with GPUs.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2012

Alternated Prone and Supine Whole-Breast Irradiation Using IMRT: Setup Precision, Respiratory Movement and Treatment Time

Purpose: The objective of this study was to compare setup precision, respiration-related breast movement and treatment time between prone and supine positions for whole-breast irradiation. Methods and Materials: Ten patients with early-stage breast carcinoma after breast-conserving surgery were treated with prone and supine whole breast-irradiation in a daily alternating schedule. Setup precision was monitored using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) imaging. Respiration-related breast movement in the vertical direction was assessed by magnetic sensors. The time needed for patient setup and for the CBCT procedure, the beam time, and the length of the whole treatment slot were also recorded. Results: Random and systematic errors were not significantly different between positions in individual patients for each of the three axes (left-right, longitudinal, and vertical). Respiration-related movement was smaller in prone position, but about 80% of observations showed amplitudes <1 mm in both positions. Treatment slots were longer in prone position (21.2 {+-} 2.5 min) than in supine position (19.4 {+-} 0.8 min; p = 0.044). Conclusion: Comparison of setup precision between prone and supine position in the same patient showed no significant differences in random and systematic errors. Respiratory movement was smaller in prone position. The longer treatment slots in prone position can probably be attributed to the higher repositioning need.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2011

Variable Circular Collimator in Robotic Radiosurgery: A Time-Efficient Alternative to a Mini-Multileaf Collimator?

Purpose: Compared with many small circular beams used in CyberKnife treatments, beam's eye view-shaped fields are generally more time-efficient for dose delivery. However, beam's eye view-shaping devices, such as a mini-multileaf collimator (mMLC), are not presently available for CyberKnife, although a variable-aperture collimator (Iris, 12 field diameters; 5-60 mm) is available. We investigated whether the Iris can mimic noncoplanar mMLC treatments using a limited set of principal beam orientations (nodes) to produce time-efficient treatment plans. Methods and Materials: The data from 10 lung cancer patients and the beam-orientation optimization algorithm 'Cycle' were used to generate stereotactic treatment plans (3 x 20 Gy) for a CyberKnife virtually equipped with a mMLC. Typically, 10-16 favorable beam orientations were selected from 117 available robot node positions using beam's eye view-shaped fields with uniform fluence. Second, intensity-modulated Iris plans were generated by inverse optimization of nonisocentric circular candidate beams targeted from the same nodes selected in the mMLC plans. The plans were evaluated using the mean lung dose, lung volume receiving {>=}20 Gy, conformality index, number of nodes, beams, and monitor units, and estimated treatment time. Results: The mMLC plans contained an average of 12 nodes and 11,690 monitor units. For a comparable mean lung dose, the Iris plans contained 12 nodes, 64 beams, and 21,990 monitor units. The estimated fraction duration was 12.2 min (range, 10.8-13.5) for the mMLC plans and 18.4 min (range, 12.9-28.5) for the Iris plans. In contrast to the mMLC plans, the treatment time for the Iris plans increased with an increasing target volume. The Iris plans were, on average, 40% longer than the corresponding mMLC plans for small targets (<80 cm{sup 3}) and {<=}121% longer for larger targets. For a comparable conformality index, similar results were obtained. Conclusion: For stereotactic lung irradiation, time-efficient and high-quality plans were obtained for robotic-controlled noncoplanar treatments using a mMLC. Iris is a time-efficient alternative for small targets, with similar or better plan quality.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2013

Patient-Physician Communication About Complementary and Alternative Medicine in a Radiation Oncology Setting

Purpose: Despite the extensive use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) among cancer patients, patient-physician communication regarding CAM therapies remains limited. This study quantified the extent of patient-physician communication about CAM and identified factors associated with its discussion in radiation therapy (RT) settings. Methods and Materials: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 305 RT patients at an urban academic cancer center. Patients with different cancer types were recruited in their last week of RT. Participants self-reported their demographic characteristics, health status, CAM use, patient-physician communication regarding CAM, and rationale for/against discussing CAM therapies with physicians. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify relationships between demographic/clinical variables and patients' discussion of CAM with radiation oncologists. Results: Among the 305 participants, 133 (43.6%) reported using CAM, and only 37 (12.1%) reported discussing CAM therapies with their radiation oncologists. In multivariate analyses, female patients (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 0.45, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.21-0.98) and patients with full-time employment (AOR 0.32, 95% CI 0.12-0.81) were less likely to discuss CAM with their radiation oncologists. CAM users (AOR 4.28, 95% CI 1.93-9.53) were more likely to discuss CAM with their radiation oncologists than were non-CAM users. Conclusions: Despite the common use of CAM among oncology patients, discussions regarding these treatments occur rarely in the RT setting, particularly among female and full-time employed patients. Clinicians and patients should incorporate discussions of CAM to guide its appropriate use and to maximize possible benefit while minimizing potential harm.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2013

Involved Node Radiation Therapy: An Effective Alternative in Early-Stage Hodgkin Lymphoma

Purpose: The involved node radiation therapy (INRT) strategy was introduced for patients with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) to reduce the risk of late effects. With INRT, only the originally involved lymph nodes are irradiated. We present treatment outcome in a retrospective analysis using this strategy in a cohort of 97 clinical stage I-II HL patients. Methods and Materials: Patients were staged with positron emission tomography/computed tomography scans, treated with adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine chemotherapy, and given INRT (prechemotherapy involved nodes to 30 Gy, residual masses to 36 Gy). Patients attended regular follow-up visits until 5 years after therapy. Results: The 4-year freedom from disease progression was 96.4% (95% confidence interval: 92.4%-100.4%), median follow-up of 50 months (range: 4-71 months). Three relapses occurred: 2 within the previous radiation field, and 1 in a previously uninvolved region. The 4-year overall survival was 94% (95% confidence interval: 88.8%-99.1%), median follow-up of 58 months (range: 4-91 months). Early radiation therapy toxicity was limited to grade 1 (23.4%) and grade 2 (13.8%). During follow-up, 8 patients died, none from HL, 7 malignancies were diagnosed, and 5 patients developed heart disease. Conclusions: INRT offers excellent tumor control and represents an effective alternative to more extended radiation therapy in the combined modality treatment for early-stage HL.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2011

An alternative Monte Carlo approach to the thermal radiative transfer problem

The usual Monte Carlo approach to the thermal radiative transfer problem is to view Monte Carlo as a solution technique for the nonlinear thermal radiative transfer equations. The equations contain time derivatives which are approximated by introducing small time steps. An alternative approach avoids time steps by using Monte Carlo to directly sample the time at which the next event occurs. That is, the time is advanced on a natural event-by-event basis rather than by introducing an artificial time step.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2015

Anderson acceleration of the Jacobi iterative method: An efficient alternative to Krylov methods for large, sparse linear systems

We employ Anderson extrapolation to accelerate the classical Jacobi iterative method for large, sparse linear systems. Specifically, we utilize extrapolation at periodic intervals within the Jacobi iteration to develop the Alternating Anderson–Jacobi (AAJ) method. We verify the accuracy and efficacy of AAJ in a range of test cases, including nonsymmetric systems of equations. We demonstrate that AAJ possesses a favorable scaling with system size that is accompanied by a small prefactor, even in the absence of a preconditioner. In particular, we show that AAJ is able to accelerate the classical Jacobi iteration by over four orders of magnitude, with speed-ups that increase as the system gets larger. Moreover, we find that AAJ significantly outperforms the Generalized Minimal Residual (GMRES) method in the range of problems considered here, with the relative performance again improving with size of the system. As a result, the proposed method represents a simple yet efficient technique that is particularly attractive for large-scale parallel solutions of linear systems of equations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

Memory-optimized shift operator alternating direction implicit finite difference time domain method for plasma

Through introducing the alternating direction implicit (ADI) technique and the memory-optimized algorithm to the shift operator (SO) finite difference time domain (FDTD) method, the memory-optimized SO-ADI FDTD for nonmagnetized collisional plasma is proposed and the corresponding formulae of the proposed method for programming are deduced. In order to further the computational efficiency, the iteration method rather than Gauss elimination method is employed to solve the equation set in the derivation of the formulae. Complicated transformations and convolutions are avoided in the proposed method compared with the Z transforms (ZT) ADI FDTD method and the piecewise linear JE recursive convolution (PLJERC) ADI FDTD method. The numerical dispersion of the SO-ADI FDTD method with different plasma frequencies and electron collision frequencies is analyzed and the appropriate ratio of grid size to the minimum wavelength is given. The accuracy of the proposed method is validated by the reflection coefficient test on a nonmagnetized collisional plasma sheet. The testing results show that the proposed method is advantageous for improving computational efficiency and saving computer memory. The reflection coefficient of a perfect electric conductor (PEC) sheet covered by multilayer plasma and the RCS of the objects coated by plasma are calculated by the proposed method and the simulation results are analyzed.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Simulation of crumpled sheets via alternating quasistatic and dynamic representations

In this work, we present a method for simulating the large-scale deformation and crumpling of thin, elastoplastic sheets. Motivated by the physical behavior of thin sheets during crumpling, two different formulations of the governing equations of motion are used: (1) a quasistatic formulation that effectively describes smooth deformations, and (2) a fully dynamic formulation that captures large changes in the sheet's velocity. The former is a differential-algebraic system of equations integrated implicitly in time, while the latter is a set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) integrated explicitly. We adopt a hybrid integration scheme to adaptively alternate between the quasistatic and dynamic representations as appropriate. Further, we demonstrate the capacity of this method to effectively simulate a variety of crumpling phenomena. Finally, we show that statistical properties, notably the accumulation of creases under repeated loading, as well as the area distribution of facets, are consistent with experimental observations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2012

Teaching an Old Scaffold New Tricks: Monobodies Constructed Using Alternative Surfaces of the FN3 Scaffold

The fibronectin type III domain (FN3) has become one of the most widely used non-antibody scaffolds for generating new binding proteins. Because of its structural homology to the immunoglobulin domain, combinatorial libraries of FN3 designed to date have primarily focused on introducing amino acid diversity into three loops that are equivalent to antibody complementarity-determining regions. Here, we report an FN3 library that utilizes alternative positions for presenting amino acid diversity. We diversified positions on a {beta}-sheet and surface loops that together form a concave surface. The new library produced binding proteins (termed 'monobodies') to multiple target proteins, generally with similar efficacy as the original, loop-focused library. The crystal structure of a monobody generated from the new library in complex with its target, the Abl SH2 domain, revealed that a concave surface of the monobody, as intended in our design, bound to a convex surface of the target with the interface area being among the largest of published structures of monobody-target complexes. This mode of interaction differs from a common binding mode for single-domain antibodies and antibody mimics in which recognition loops recognize clefts in targets. Together, this work illustrates the utilization of different surfaces of a single immunoglobulin-like scaffold to generate binding proteins with distinct characteristics.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Radiation Therapy Students as Partners in the Development of Alternative Approaches to Assessing Treatment Planning Skills

The involvement of undergraduate students in assessment design is not a new concept. However, there is a paucity of evidence on radiation therapy students' participation in the design of teaching and learning activities. This article reports the development and initial evaluation of alternative approaches to assessing treatment planning skills and knowledge in undergraduate radiation therapy education.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Alternative reductants for foam control during vitrification of high-iron High Level Waste (HLW) feeds

Foaming during vitrification of radioactive waste in Joule-Heated Ceramic Melters (JHCM) is exacerbated by trapping of evolving gases, such as CO 2 , NO x and O 2 , beneath a viscous reaction layer. Foaming restricts heat transfer during melting. Sucrose is employed as the baseline additive at the Hanford site in Washington State, USA to reduce foaming. Alternative carbon-based reductant additives were explored in simulated, inactive Hanford high-iron HLW-NG-Fe2 feeds, for both their effect on foaming and to give insight to the behaviour of multivalent species in glass melts under different redox conditions. Graphite, coke (93% C), formic acid and HEDTA additives were compared with sucrose, and a feed with no additive. Graphite and coke additions proved most effective in reducing the maximum foam volume by 51 ± 3% and 54 ± 2%, respectively, compared with 24 ± 5% for sucrose. Lower foaming could result in more efficient vitrification in JHCMs. Reductants also affected redox ratios in the multivalent species present in the feed. The order of reduction, Mn 3+ /Mn 2+ > Cr 6+ /Cr 3+ > Ce 3+ /Ce 4+ > Fe 3+ /Fe 2+ was as predicted on the basis of their redox potentials. There is less reduction overall, particularly in the Fe 3+ → Fe 2+ , than predicted by the calculations, attributed to the oxygenated atmosphere of the experiments.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2013

Selection and properties of alternative forming fluids for TRISO fuel kernel production

Current Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) designs incorporate TRi-structural ISOtropic (TRISO) fuel, which consists of a spherical fissile fuel kernel surrounded by layers of pyrolytic carbon and silicon carbide. An internal sol-gel process forms the fuel kernel using wet chemistry to produce uranium oxyhydroxide gel spheres by dropping a cold precursor solution into a hot column of trichloroethylene (TCE). Over time, gelation byproducts inhibit complete gelation, and the TCE must be purified or discarded. The resulting TCE waste stream contains both radioactive and hazardous materials and is thus considered a mixed hazardous waste. Changing the forming fluid to a non-hazardous alternative could greatly improve the economics of TRISO fuel kernel production. Selection criteria for a replacement forming fluid narrowed a list of ~10,800 chemicals to yield ten potential replacement forming fluids: 1-bromododecane, 1- bromotetradecane, 1-bromoundecane, 1-chlorooctadecane, 1-chlorotetradecane, 1-iododecane, 1-iodododecane, 1-iodohexadecane, 1-iodooctadecane, and squalane. The density, viscosity, and surface tension for each potential replacement forming fluid were measured as a function of temperature between 25 °C and 80 °C. Calculated settling velocities and heat transfer rates give an overall column height approximation. 1-bromotetradecane, 1-chlorooctadecane, and 1-iodododecane show the greatest promise as replacements, and future tests will verify their ability to form satisfactory fuel kernels.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗