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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 1,279 records · Page 71
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2015

MAGNETIC GAMES BETWEEN A PLANET AND ITS HOST STAR: THE KEY ROLE OF TOPOLOGY

Magnetic interactions between a star and a close-in planet are postulated to be a source of enhanced emissions and to play a role in the secular evolution of the orbital system. Close-in planets generally orbit in the sub-alfvénic region of the stellar wind, which leads to efficient transfers of energy and angular momentum between the star and the planet. We model the magnetic interactions occurring in close-in star–planet systems with three-dimensional, global, compressible magnetohydrodynamic numerical simulations of a planet orbiting in a self-consistent stellar wind. We focus on the cases of magnetized planets and explore three representative magnetic configurations. The Poynting flux originating from the magnetic interactions is an energy source for enhanced emissions in star–planet systems. Our results suggest a simple geometrical explanation for ubiquitous on/off enhanced emissions associated with close-in planets, and confirm that the Poynting fluxes can reach powers of the order of 10{sup 19} W. Close-in planets are also shown to migrate due to magnetic torques for sufficiently strong stellar wind magnetic fields. The topology of the interaction significantly modifies the shape of the magnetic obstacle that leads to magnetic torques. As a consequence, the torques can vary by at least an order of magnitude as the magnetic topology of the interaction varies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

DIII-D research to address key challenges for ITER and fusion energy

DIII-D has made significant advances in the scientific basis for fusion energy. The physics mechanism of resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) edge localized mode (ELM) suppression is revealed as field penetration at the pedestal top, and reduced coil set operation was demonstrated. Disruption runaway electrons were effectively quenched by shattered pellets; runaway dissipation is explained by pitch angle scattering. Modest thermal quench radiation asymmetries are well described NIMROD modeling. With good pedestal regulation and error field correction, low torque ITER baselines have been demonstrated and shown to be compatible with an ITER test blanket module simulator. However performance and long wavelength turbulence degrade as low rotation and electron heating are approached. The alternative QH mode scenario is shown to be compatible with high Greenwald density fraction, with an edge harmonic oscillation demonstrating good impurity flushing. Discharge optimization guided by the EPED model has discovered a new super H-mode with doubled pedestal height. Lithium injection also led to wider, higher pedestals. On the path to steady state, 1 MA has been sustained fully non inductively with β N = 4 and RMP ELM suppression, while a peaked current profile scenario provides attractive options for ITER and a β N = 5 future reactor. Energetic particle transport is found to exhibit a critical gradient behavior. Scenarios are shown to be compatible with radiative and snowflake diverter techniques. Physics studies reveal that the transition to H mode is locked in by a rise in ion diamagnetic flows. Intrinsic rotation in the plasma edge is demonstrated to arise from kinetic losses. New 3D magnetic sensors validate linear ideal MHD, but identify issues in nonlinear simulations. Detachment, characterized in 2D with sub-eV resolution, reveals a radiation shortfall in simulations. As a result, future facility development targets burning plasma physics with torque free electron heating, the path to steady state with increased off axis currents, and a new divertor solution for fusion reactors.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

L1448-MM OBSERVATIONS BY THE HERSCHEL KEY PROGRAM, ''DUST, ICE, AND GAS IN TIME'' (DIGIT)

We present Herschel/Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) observations of L1448-MM, a Class 0 protostar with a prominent outflow. Numerous emission lines are detected at 55 <λ < 210 μm including CO, OH, H{sub 2}O, and [O I]. We investigate the spatial distribution of each transition to find that lines from low energy levels tend to distribute along the outflow direction while lines from high energy levels peak at the central spatial pixel. Spatial maps reveal that OH emission lines are formed in a relatively small area, while [O I] emission is extended. According to the rotational diagram analysis, the CO emission can be fitted by two (warm and hot) temperature components. For H{sub 2}O, the ortho-to-para ratio is close to 3. The non-LTE large velocity gradient (LVG) calculations suggest that CO and H{sub 2}O lines could instead be formed in a high kinetic temperature (T > 1000 K) environment, indicative of a shock origin. For OH, IR-pumping processes play an important role in the level population. The molecular emission in L1448-MM is better explained with a C-shock model, but the atomic emission of PACS [O I] and Spitzer/Infrared Spectrograph [Si II] emission is not consistent with C-shocks, suggesting multiple shocks in this region. Water is the major line coolant of L1448-MM in the PACS wavelength range, and the best-fit LVG models predict that H{sub 2}O and CO emit (50%-80%) of their line luminosity in the PACS wavelength range.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

TARGET SELECTION FOR THE LBTI EXOZODI KEY SCIENCE PROGRAM

The Hunt for Observable Signatures of Terrestrial planetary Systems (HOSTS) on the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer will survey nearby stars for faint emission arising from ∼300 K dust (exozodiacal dust), and aims to determine the exozodiacal dust luminosity function. HOSTS results will enable planning for future space telescopes aimed at direct spectroscopy of habitable zone terrestrial planets, as well as greater understanding of the evolution of exozodiacal disks and planetary systems. We lay out here the considerations that lead to the final HOSTS target list. Our target selection strategy maximizes the ability of the survey to constrain the exozodi luminosity function by selecting a combination of stars selected for suitability as targets of future missions and as sensitive exozodi probes. With a survey of approximately 50 stars, we show that HOSTS can enable an understanding of the statistical distribution of warm dust around various types of stars and is robust to the effects of varying levels of survey sensitivity induced by weather conditions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Plasma-assisted catalysis for ammonia synthesis in a dielectric barrier discharge reactor: key surface reaction steps and potential causes of low energy yield

Ammonia synthesis experiments were carried out in a coaxial dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor packed with several different supports and metal catalysts. There was a marked increase in the reaction rate, over that obtained in an empty DBD plasma reactor, upon introduction of a packed bed of γ-Al 2 O 3 , Ru/γ-Al 2 O 3 , or SiO 2 particles. The difference in the reaction rates over γ-Al 2 O 3 and Ru/γ-Al 2 O 3 was minimal. Complementary zero-dimensional plasma kinetic model analysis was also performed using inputs from experimental data. This kinetic analysis allowed for gas phase reactions, Eley–Rideal (E–R) reactions, and direct adsorption of radical species on the γ-Al 2 O 3 surface. On the metal surface, dissociative adsorption of N 2 and H 2 , and Langmuir–Hinshelwood reactions were also included. This analysis revealed that, under the conditions of our experiments, ammonia synthesis proceeds principally by the formation of reactive radicals in the gas phase, which then adsorb and participate in E–R reactions on both the metal and support material surfaces. Furthermore, this finding illustrates a challenge for substantially increasing the energy yield for plasma-assisted ammonia synthesis in typical DBD reactors containing packed catalyst beads.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2019

Theoretical analysis of key factors achieving reversed magnetic shear q -profiles sustained with lower hybrid waves on EAST

The phase space analysis technique is applied to provide new insights into the fully non-inductive lower hybrid current driven (LHCD) discharges on EAST. The analysis shows that there are bounded and unbounded topologies of lower hybrid (LH) waves in phase space. For typical parameters on EAST, the propagation domain for 4.6 GHz LH waves is bounded, while unbounded for 2.45 GHz LH waves and one of the conditions is recognized to be good for achieving an off-axis current profile driven by 4.6 GHz LH waves on EAST. The parametric analysis on the potential power deposition (PPD) region for those experiments demonstrates that the reversed magnetic shear dominates the wave behavior, and confines the LH power absorption to the far off-axis region as long as it occurs in the 4.6 GHz dominated LHCD discharge. GENRAY/CQL3D simulations also confirm this effect of reversed shear on the power absorption of 4.6 GHz waves. A bounded propagation domain and a positive feedback loop between magnetic shear reversal and off-axis LHCD profile could explain the LH-only-sustained strong reversed magnetic shear observed in experiments on multiple machines. In contrast, there is no such effect for 2.45 GHz waves on EAST since the PPD region is less sensitive to the change of reversed shear due to the unbounded propagation domain.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Measurement of Hubble constant: non-Gaussian errors in HST Key Project data

Assuming the Central Limit Theorem, experimental uncertainties in any data set are expected to follow the Gaussian distribution with zero mean. We propose an elegant method based on Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic to test the above; and apply it on the measurement of Hubble constant which determines the expansion rate of the Universe. The measurements were made using Hubble Space Telescope. Our analysis shows that the uncertainties in the above measurement are non-Gaussian.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Using research networks to create the comprehensive datasets needed to assess nutrient availability as a key determinant of terrestrial carbon cycling

A wide range of research shows that nutrient availability strongly influences terrestrial carbon (C) cycling and shapes ecosystem responses to environmental changes and hence terrestrial feedbacks to climate. Nonetheless, our understanding of nutrient controls remains far from complete and poorly quantified, at least partly due to a lack of informative, comparable, and accessible datasets at regional-to-global scales. A growing research infrastructure of multi-site networks are providing valuable data on C fluxes and stocks and are monitoring their responses to global environmental change and measuring responses to experimental treatments. These networks thus provide an opportunity for improving our understanding of C-nutrient cycle interactions and our ability to model them. However, coherent information on how nutrient cycling interacts with observed C cycle patterns is still generally lacking. Here, we argue that complementing available C-cycle measurements from monitoring and experimental sites with data characterizing nutrient availability will greatly enhance their power and will improve our capacity to forecast future trajectories of terrestrial C cycling and climate. Therefore, we propose a set of complementary measurements that are relatively easy to conduct routinely at any site or experiment and that, in combination with C cycle observations, can provide a robust characterization of the effects of nutrient availability across sites. In addition, we discuss the power of different observable variables for informing the formulation of models and constraining their predictions. Most widely available measurements of nutrient availability often do not align well with current modelling needs. This highlights the importance to foster the interaction between the empirical and modelling communities for setting future research priorities.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Integrated assessment model diagnostics: key indicators and model evolution

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) form a prime tool in informing climate mitigation strategies. Diagnostic indicators that allow to compare these models can help to describe and explain differences in model projections. This also increases transparency and comparability. Earlier, the IAM community has developed an approach to diagnose models (Kriegler et al., 2015). Here we build on this, by proposing a selected set of well-defined indicators as a community standard, similar to metrics used for other modeling communities such as climate models. These indicators are the relative abatement index (RAI), emission reduction type index (ERT), inertia timescale (IT), fossil fuel reduction (FFR), transformation index (TI) and cost per abatement value (CAV). We apply the approach to 17 IAMs, including both older version as well as their latest versions, as applied in the IPCC 6th Assessment Report (AR6). The study shows that the approach can be easily applied and allows for comparison of model versions in time. The indicators and their trends can often be explained in terms of model characteristics and changes. We show that together, the set of six indicators can provide an useful indication of the main traits of the model and can roughly indicate the general model behavior. The results also show that there is often a considerable spread across the models. Interestingly, the diagnostic values often change for different model versions, but there does not seem to be a distinct trend across the different models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2013

A KEY PHYSICAL MECHANISM FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ENIGMATIC LINEAR POLARIZATION OF THE SOLAR Ba II AND Na I D{sub 1} LINES

The linearly polarized spectrum of the solar limb radiation produced by scattering processes is of great diagnostic potential for exploring the magnetism of the solar atmosphere. This spectrum shows an impressive richness of spectral details and enigmatic Q/I signals, whose physical origin must be clearly understood before they can be exploited for diagnostic purposes. The most enduring enigma is represented by the polarization signals observed in the D{sub 1} resonance lines of Na I (5896 A) and Ba II (4934 A), which were expected to be intrinsically unpolarizable. The totality of sodium and 18% of barium have hyperfine structure (HFS), and it has been argued that the only way to produce a scattering polarization signal in such lines is through the presence of a substantial amount of atomic polarization in their lower HFS levels. The strong sensitivity of these long-lived levels to depolarizing mechanisms led to the paradoxical conclusion that the observed D{sub 1}-line polarization is incompatible with the presence in the lower solar chromosphere of inclined magnetic fields sensibly stronger than 0.01 G. Here we show that by properly taking into account the fact that the solar D{sub 1}-line radiation has a non-negligible spectral structure over the short frequency interval spanned by the HFS transitions, it is possible to produce scattering polarization signals in the D{sub 1} lines of Na I and Ba II without the need of ground-level polarization. The resulting linear polarization is not so easily destroyed by elastic collisions and/or magnetic fields.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Box tomography: localized imaging of remote targets buried in an unknown medium, a step forward for understanding key structures in the deep Earth

We discuss an application of tomographic methods to the imaging of localized geological structures buried inside the Earth, where neither seismic sources nor receivers are necessarily present. We call this ‘box tomography’. The essential difference between box-tomography and standard tomographic methods is that the numerical modelling (i.e. the ray tracing in traveltime tomography and the wave propagation in waveform tomography or full waveform inversion) is completely confined within the small box-region imaged. Thus, box tomography is a lot more efficient than global tomography (i.e. where we invert for the velocity in the larger volume that encompasses all the sources and receivers), for imaging localized objects. The principal difficulty in the box tomography problem comes from the medium outside the box-region imaged, that masks the target structure. In the data recorded at the surface, the information carried by the waves about the target structure is mixed with that about the surrounding medium. The main focus of this paper is to evaluate how well box tomography can extract useful information to produce accurate images of remote buried objects, especially in the difficult situation where the velocity distribution above the target structure is not known a priori. We implemented traveltime box tomography, where first arrival times are inverted using ray theory, and, waveform box tomography or full waveform box inversion, where seismograms are inverted using either scattering integrals or adjoint methods. Whatever the method employed, we found that, in the simple situation where the velocity structure is known around the target region, box-tomography is faster and more accurate than global tomography. Most importantly, through examples and simple analysis, we show that box-tomography can produce accurate images of localized structures even though the velocity distribution is not a priori known around the box-region imaged. In the last section of this paper, we evaluate the usage of box-tomography for imaging geological structures in the deep Earth. We performed 2-D synthetic experiments in a fluid planet and we argue that box tomography can be employed for refining our current global tomographic models within arbitrary regions inside the Earth. This has important implications for understanding the composition and dynamics of the Earth’s interior.

Masson, Yder↗
DOE OSTI2015

Big Biomedical data as the key resource for discovery science

Modern biomedical data collection is generating exponentially more data in a multitude of formats. This flood of complex data poses significant opportunities to discover and understand the critical interplay among such diverse domains as genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and phenomics, including imaging, biometrics, and clinical data. The Big Data for Discovery Science Center is taking an “-ome to home” approach to discover linkages between these disparate data sources by mining existing databases of proteomic and genomic data, brain images, and clinical assessments. In support of this work, the authors developed new technological capabilities that make it easy for researchers to manage, aggregate, manipulate, integrate, and model large amounts of distributed data. Guided by biological domain expertise, the Center’s computational resources and software will reveal relationships and patterns, aiding researchers in identifying biomarkers for the most confounding conditions and diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer's disease (ID)↗
DOE OSTI2016

Structural basis of damage recognition by thymine DNA glycosylase: Key roles for N-terminal residues

Thymine DNA Glycosylase (TDG) is a base excision repair enzyme functioning in DNA repair and epigenetic regulation. TDG removes thymine from mutagenic G·T mispairs arising from deamination of 5-methylcytosine (mC), and it processes other deamination-derived lesions including uracil (U). Essential for DNA demethylation, TDG excises 5- formylcytosine and 5-carboxylcytosine, derivatives of mC generated by Tet (ten-eleven translocation) enzymes. Here, we report structural and functional studies of TDG82-308, a new construct containing 29 more N-terminal residues than TDG111-308, the construct used for previous structures of DNAbound TDG. Crystal structures and NMR experiments demonstrate that most of these N-terminal residues are disordered, for substrate- or productbound TDG82-308. Nevertheless, G·T substrate affinity and glycosylase activity of TDG82-308 greatly exceeds that of TDG111-308 and is equivalent to full-length TDG. We report the first high-resolution structures of TDG in an enzyme-substrate complex, for G·U bound to TDG82-308 (1.54 A) and TDG ' 111-308 (1.71 A), revealing ' new enzyme-substrate contacts, direct and watermediated. We also report a structure of the TDG82-308 product complex (1.70 A). TDG ' 82-308 forms unique enzyme–DNA interactions, supporting its value for structure-function studies. The results advance understanding of how TDG recognizes and removes modified bases from DNA, particularly those resulting from deamination.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗