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At least 1,603 records · Page 89

MIDAS: Modeling Individual Differences using Advanced Statistics

This research explores novel methods for extracting relevant information from EEG data to characterize individual differences in cognitive processing. Our approach combines expertise in machine learning, statistics, and cognitive science, advancing the state-of-the art in all three domains. Specifically, by using cognitive science expertise to interpret results and inform algorithm development, we have developed a generalizable and interpretable machine learning method that can accurately predict individual differences in cognition. The output of the machine learning method revealed surprising features of the EEG data that, when interpreted by the cognitive science experts, provided novel insights to the underlying cognitive task. Additionally, the outputs of the statistical methods show promise as a principled approach to quickly find regions within the EEG data where individual differences lie, thereby supporting cognitive science analysis and informing machine learning models. This work lays methodological ground work for applying the large body of cognitive science literature on individual differences to high consequence mission applications.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Can Simple Machine Learning Tools Extend and Improve Temperature-Based Methods to Infer Streambed Flux?

Temperature-based methods have been developed to infer 1D vertical exchange flux between a stream and the subsurface. Current analyses rely on fitting physically based analytical and numerical models to temperature time series measured at multiple depths to infer daily average flux. These methods have seen wide use in hydrologic science despite strong simplifying assumptions including a lack of consideration of model structural error or the impacts of multidimensional flow or the impacts of transient streambed hydraulic properties. We performed a “perfect-model experiment” investigation to examine whether regression trees, with and without gradient boosting, can extract sufficient information from model-generated subsurface temperature time series, with and without added measurement error, to infer the corresponding exchange flux time series at the streambed surface. Using model-generated, synthetic data allowed us to assess the basic limitations to the use of machine learning; further examination of real data is only warranted if the method can be shown to perform well under these ideal conditions. We also examined whether the inherent feature importance analyses of tree-based machine learning methods can be used to optimize monitoring networks for exchange flux inference.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Anatomical Fraction segmentation in the biomass bales

The U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) is committed to the development of sustainable, nationwide, commercial biofuel production to displace petroleum-derived fuels, increase domestic energy production, and encourage the creation of a domestic bioenergy and bioproducts industry. Operating a commercial-scale bioenergy operation requires significant technological advancements for determining biomass feedstock quality during the preprocessing stage. Usage of non-food feedstocks- e.g., corn-stover, pine residue, and forest residue - at the biorefineries reduces strain on the food supply chain. But the non-food feedstock heterogeneity- physical size, shape, and chemical composition-poses a significant challenge during milling, conveyance, feeding, and biofuel conversion processes. 3D X-Ray imaging (CT) is capable of distinguishing material features by detecting density and compositional differences. But the inherent complexity introduced during harvesting and bailing makes the reconstruction and interpretation of baled biomass materials from x-ray data time consuming, laborious, and expensive. Feedstocks are low-density materials that produce small contrast differences in the x-ray images. This paper focuses on using the shape and texture properties, using 3D image processing techniques like 3D skeletonization, directional statistics to characterize and extract volumetric content of the different tissue samples in the biomass bales.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

A Measurement of the Neutron Electromagnetic Form Factor Ratio from a Rosenbluth Technique with Simultaneous Detection of Neutrons and Protons

The internal structure of protons and neutrons provides insight into both the dynamical behavior of the constitute quarks and gluons, and emergent properties of the nucleons (such as mass, spin, and electromagnetic distributions). Elastic electron-nucleon scattering can probe the elastic electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon. The electric and magnetic form factors, respectively, encode information about the internal charge and magnetization distributions within the nucleon. Precision data for these form factors, over a broad range of the four-momentum transfer squared, Q^2, can benchmark theoretical models describing the strong interaction of nuclear physics. The Super BigBite Spectrometer (SBS) program in Hall A at Jefferson Lab, is a series of high-precision experiments which seek to significantly extend the Q^2 reach of previous data for the nucleon electromagnetic form factors. The first two experiments of this program are known as G_M^n and the neutron Two Photon Exchange (nTPE) and the data were collected from October 2021 to February 2022. Both experiments were conducted with the simultaneous measurement of D(e,e'n) and D(e,e'p) reactions for quasi-elastic electron-deuteron scattering. The scattered electrons were detected in the BigBite Spectrometer, which features multiple large-acceptance Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detectors. The Super BigBite Spectrometer provided simultaneous detection of scattered nucleons, and utilized a large acceptance dipole magnet and Hadron Calorimeter (HCal). The G_M^n experiment provides precision measurements of the neutron magnetic form factor, via the ratio method, over a Q^2 range of 3.0 to 13.5 (GeV/c)2. From this data analysis, preliminary values for G_M^n/µ_n G_D are extracted. For Q^2=4.48 (GeV/c)2 we find G_M^n/µ_n G_D=0.9546±0.0132 and for Q^2=4.476 (GeV/c)2 we find G_M^n/µ_n G_D=0.9563±0.0110. These preliminary G_M^n/µ_n G_D values are more precise than existing world data in this Q^2 regime and are consistent with the most recent parameterization of the G_M^n/µ_n G_D world data. The nTPE experiment provides a first measurement of the neutron Rosenbluth Slope and seeks to quantify the two-photon exchange(TPE) contribution to elastic electron-neutron scattering at a fixed Q^2=4.5 (GeV/c)2 with two different beam energies and scattering angle values. For data of the proton form factor ratio, µ_p G_E^p/G_M^p, significant discrepancies exist between values obtained from Rosenbluth Separation and polarization transfer measurement, particularly at large Q^2, and TPE contributions are thought to resolve this discrepancy. The impacts of TPE contributions have not yet been experimentally established for the neutron. From the data analysis presented in this dissertation, a preliminary result for the neutron Rosenbluth Slope is found as S^n=(G_E^n )^2/t_n (G_M^n )^2=0.0916±0.0476 for Q^2=4.48 (GeV/c)2. This value of the neutron Rosenbluth Slope is consistent with the world data extrapolation and the absence of large TPE corrections.

Wertz, Ezekiel [Thomas Jefferson National Accelera↗

Stress and Strain Heterogeneity and Persistence in Uniaxially‐ and Triaxially‐Loaded Sandstone

Two critical questions in brittle rock mechanics are how rocks developed localized strains and to what extent internal stress heterogeneity controls this localization and subsequent macroscopic failure. Definitive answers have not yet been found, but would provide insight into rock fracture mechanics as relevant to hydrocarbon extraction and sequestration. Here, we use synchrotron X‐ray tomography (XRT) and 3D X‐ray diffraction (3DXRD) during uniaxial and triaxial tests on Nugget and Bentheimer sandstones to examine strain and stress localization prior to mechanical failure. 3DXRD was used to measure intra‐granular lattice strains which were used to compute elastic stress tensors of each grain. Digital volume correlation (DVC) was applied to XRT images to determine the strain field in the sample. Both samples featured marked spatial heterogeneity, localization, and temporal persistence of elevated stresses and strains during their mechanical deformation toward failure. Both samples featured a majority of grains with at least one principal stress component that was tensile, a signature of the influence of heterogeneity on stress transmission. Measurements further revealed that compressive stress orientations and statistics evolved in a similar manner to those of inter‐particle forces in loose granular materials, with triaxially‐compressed rock exhibiting enhanced grain stress heterogeneity compared to uniaxially‐compressed rock. Our results complement recent work by others who employed XRT and scanning 3DXRD to study triaxially‐compressed sandstone, but extend those results to uniaxial compression, sandstones of varied porosity, and grain stress measurements throughout the 3D full extent of the samples rather than in a single layer examined with scanning 3DXRD.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Solid neon as a noise-resilient host for electron qubits above 100 mK

Solid neon can be used as a solid host for single-electron qubits. At temperatures of around 10 mK, electron-on-solid-neon charge qubits exhibit long coherence times and high operation fidelities. However, a systematic characterization of the noise features of such systems is needed for the development of scalable quantum information architectures. Here, in this work, we show that solid neon can be used as a noise-resilient host for electron qubits above 100 mK. We examine the resilience of solid neon against charge and thermal noise when electron-on-solid-neon charge qubits are operated away from the charge-insensitive sweet spot and at elevated temperatures. We show that the extracted high-frequency charge noise density of electron-on-solid-neon qubits, projected as voltage fluctuations on nearby electrodes, is between 10 −4 μV 2 Hz −1 and 10 −6 μV 2 Hz −1 at 0.01 MHz to 1 MHz, which is comparable to common semiconductor hosts. We also show that the electron-on-solid-neon charge qubits operating at frequencies of around 5 GHz can maintain echo coherence times of over 1 μs at temperatures up to 400 mK.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Application of sulfur SAD to small crystals with a large asymmetric unit and anomalous substructure

The application of sulfur single-wavelength anomalous dispersion (S-SAD) to determine the crystal structures of macromolecules can be challenging if the asymmetric unit is large, the crystals are small, the size of the anomalously scattering sulfur structure is large and the resolution at which the anomalous signals can be accurately measured is modest. Here, as a study of such a case, approaches to the SAD phasing of orthorhombic Ric-8A crystals are described. The structure of Ric-8A was published with only a brief description of the phasing process [Zeng et al. (2019), Structure , 27 , 1137–1141]. Here, alternative approaches to determining the 40-atom sulfur substructure of the 103 kDa Ric-8A dimer that composes the asymmetric unit are explored. At the data-collection wavelength of 1.77 Å measured at the Frontier micro-focusing Macromolecular Crystallography (FMX) beamline at National Synchrotron Light Source II, the sulfur anomalous signal strength, |Δ ano |/σΔ ano ( d ′′/sig), approaches 1.4 at 3.4 Å resolution. The highly redundant, 11 000 000-reflection data set measured from 18 crystals was segmented into isomorphous clusters using BLEND in the CCP 4 program suite. Data sets within clusters or sets of clusters were scaled and merged using AIMLESS from CCP 4 or, alternatively, the phenix.scale_and_merge tool from the Phenix suite. The latter proved to be the more effective in extracting anomalous signals. The HySS tool in Phenix , SHELXC / D and PRASA as implemented in the CRANK 2 program suite were each employed to determine the sulfur substructure. All of these approaches were effective, although HySS , as a component of the phenix.autosol tool, required data from all crystals to find the positions of the sulfur atoms. Critical contributors in this case study to successful phase determination by SAD included (i) the high-flux FMX beamline, featuring helical-mode data collection and a helium-filled beam path, (ii) as recognized by many authors, a very highly redundant, multiple-crystal data set and (iii) the inclusion within that data set of data from crystals that were scanned over large ω ranges, yielding highly isomorphous and highly redundant intensity measurements.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

FY21 Progress Report: SRNL Analysis of ICCWR LCM and WAMS data for Corrosion and Cracking

The development of algorithms for machine learning and data analysis for the 3013 Surveillance Program is a collaborative effort by the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) and the University of South Carolina (USC). For corrosion detection, Laser Confocal Microscope (LCM) or Wide Area 3D Measurement System (WAMS) data is extracted from large binary files, with software written to convert the data to physical attributes (e.g., height, color and grayscale values; all as functions of a location in a plane projection). A user-friendly Matlab Graphical User Interface (GUI) that reads data from either LCM or WAMS files was developed to integrate input data with software developed for processing and evaluation. The GUI can selectively download binary data, interrogate data attributes, label data, flag significant features, execute Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, output parameters for trained ML algorithms, report ML model accuracy with respect to labeled data, and generate graphical representations for various analyses. Features can be called out by user-specified thresholds, manual labeling or machine learning algorithms when they have been completed. The ability to rapidly label data is important because of the volume of data required for training machine learning algorithms. The GUI has the flexibility to allow addition of improved ML algorithms, methods for data visualization, and statistical computations. Statistical analyses via the GUI include areas of pits within a defined range of pit depths, correlations between Red-Green-Blue (RGB) or grayscale intensity and relative surface height, covariances between values associated with features, and feature histograms. The development of supervised machine learning algorithms, however, has been hindered by a lack of training data. The machine learning algorithms for crack identification are being refined but require improvements to the true positive rate for crack detection. This shortcoming is an artifact of the limited training data currently available, perhaps more so than the structure of the neural networks. At present, the best results are had from a consensus over an ensemble of randomly generated Deep Neural Network (DNN) or Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) algorithms. Although the consensus accuracy method has yielded optimum true positive and true negative rates in excess of 80%, additional validation testing is necessary. In addition to the suite of LCM data that was initially used, and which represents the majority of the work presented in this report, WAMS image data was also reviewed at a preliminary level. The review included a comparison between image resolution and dynamic range for each method. WAMS (ZON file) image data was found to have a pixel pitch of 3.69μm compared to 1 μm for the LCM (vk4 file) data, which implies a lower resolution for the WAMS images. Conversely, the ratio of dynamic range of the WAMS data to the LCM data was approximately 41:20 for height data, suggesting that information from WAMS should more accurately determine the depth of pits. At present, the significance of the greater dynamic range of the WAMS data relative to the LCM data has not yet been evaluated.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Adaptive Sampling Algorithms for Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Nuclear Simulations

Nuclear simulations are often computationally expensive, time-consuming, and high-dimensional with respect to the number of input parameters. Thus exploring the space of all possible simulation outcomes is infeasible using finite computing resources. During simulation-based probabilistic risk analysis, it is important to discover the relationship between a potentially large number of input parameters and the output of a simulation using as few simulation trials as possible. This is a typical context for performing adaptive sampling where a few observations are obtained from the simulation, a surrogate model is built to represent the simulation space, and new samples are selected based on the model constructed. The surrogate model is then updated based on the simulation results of the sampled points. In this way, we attempt to gain the most information possible with a small number of carefully selected sampled points, limiting the number of expensive trials needed to understand features of the simulation space. We analyze the specific use case of identifying the limit surface, i.e., the boundaries in the simulation space between system failure and system success. In this study, we explore several techniques for adaptively sampling the parameter space in order to reconstruct the limit surface. We focus on several adaptive sampling schemes. First, we seek to learn a global model of the entire simulation space using prediction models or neighborhood graphs and extract the limit surface as an iso-surface of the global model. Second, we estimate the limit surface by sampling in the neighborhood of the current estimate based on topological segmentations obtained locally. Our techniques draw inspirations from topological structure known as the Morse-Smale complex. We highlight the advantages and disadvantages of using a global prediction model versus local topological view of the simulation space, comparing several different strategies for adaptive sampling in both contexts. One of the most interesting models we propose attempt to marry the two by obtaining a coarse global representation using prediction models, and a detailed local representation based on topology. Our methods are validated on several analytical test functions as well as a small nuclear simulation dataset modeled after a simplified Pressurized Water Reactor.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Principal component analysis of computed emission lines from protostellar jets

A very important issue concerning protostellar jets is the mechanism behind their formation. Obtaining information on the region at the base of a jet can shed light on the subject, and some years ago this was done through a search for a rotational signature in the jet line spectrum. The existence of such signatures, however, remains controversial. In order to contribute to the clarification of this issue, in this paper we show that principal component analysis (PCA) can potentially help to distinguish between rotation and precession effects in protostellar jet images. This method reduces the dimensions of the data, facilitating the efficient extraction of information from large data sets such as those arising from integral field spectroscopy. PCA transforms the system of correlated coordinates into a system of uncorrelated coordinates, the eigenvectors, ordered by principal components of decreasing variance. The projection of the data on these coordinates produces images called tomograms, while eigenvectors can be displayed as eigenspectra. The combined analysis of both can allow the identification of patterns correlated to a particular physical property that would otherwise remain hidden, and can help to separate the effects of physically uncorrelated phenomena in the data. These are, for example, rotation and precession in the kinematics of a stellar jet. In order to show the potential of PCA analysis, we apply it to synthetic spectro-imaging datacubes generated as an output of numerical simulations of protostellar jets. In this way we generate a benchmark with which a PCA diagnostics of real observations can be confronted. Using the computed emission line profiles for [O i]λ6300 and [S ii]λ6716, we recover and analyze the effects of rotation and precession in tomograms generated by PCA. We show that different combinations of the eigenvectors can be used to enhance and to identify the rotation features present in the data. Our results indicate that PCA can be useful for disentangling rotation from precession in jets with an inclination of the jet with respect to the plane of the sky as high as 45°. We have been able to recover the initially imposed rotation jet profile for models at a moderate inclination angle (ϕ≪15°) and without precession.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Quantile regression-enriched event modeling framework for dropout analysis in high-temperature superconductor manufacturing

High-temperature superconductor (HTS) tapes have shown promising characteristics of high critical current, which are prerequisites for applications in high-field magnets. Due to the unstable growth conditions in the HTS manufacturing process, however, the frequent occurrences of dropouts in the critical current impede the consistent performance of HTS tapes. To manufacture HTS tapes with large scale, high yield, and uniform performance, it is essential to develop novel data analysis approaches for modeling the dropouts and identifying the related important process parameters. Conventional methods for modeling recurrent events, such as the point process, require the extraction of events from quality measurements. As the critical current is a continuous process, it may not comprehensively represent the drop patterns by transforming the time-series measurements into a set of events. Here, to solve this issue, we develop a novel quantile regression-enriched event modeling (QREM) framework that integrates the non-homogeneous Poisson process for modeling the occurrence of dropouts and the quantile regression for capturing the drop patterns. By incorporating the feature selection and regularization, the proposed framework identifies a set of significant process parameters that can potentially cause the dropouts of HTS tapes. The proposed method is tested on real HTS tapes produced using an advanced manufacturing process, successfully identifying important parameters that influence dropout events including the substrate temperature and voltage. The results demonstrate that the proposed QREM method outperforms the standard point process in predicting the occurrence of dropouts.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

In Situ Chemical Monitoring and Imaging of Contents within Microfluidic Devices Having a Porous Membrane Wall Using Liquid Microjunction Surface Sampling Probe Mass Spectrometry

The ability to observe dynamic chemical processes (e.g., signaling, transport, etc.) in vivo or in situ using nondestructive chemical imaging opens a new door to understanding the complex dynamics of developing biological systems. With the advent of “biology-on-a-chip” devices has come the ability to monitor dynamic chemical processes in a controlled environment, using these engineered habitats to capture key features of natural systems while allowing visual observation of system development. Having the capability to spatially and temporally map the chemical signals within these devices may yield new insights into the forces that drive biosystem development. Here, a porous membrane sealed microfluidic device was designed to allow normal microfluidic operation while enabling continuous, location specific sampling and chemical characterization by liquid microjunction surface sampling probe mass spectrometry (LMJ-SSP MS). LMJ-SSP was used to extract fluids with nL-to-μL/min flow rates directly from selected areas of the microfluidic device without negatively impacting the device function. These extracts were subsequently characterized using MS. This technique was used to acquire MS images of the entirety of several multi-input microfluidic devices having different degrees of fluid mixing. LMJ-SSP MS imaging visualized the spatial distribution of chemical components within the microfluidic channels and could visualize chemical reactions occurring in the device. These microfluidic devices with a porous membrane wall are wholly compatible with the construction of biology-on-a-chip devices. This ultimately would enable correlation of biosystem physical structure with an evolving chemical environment

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Direct extraction of coherent mode properties from imaging measurements in a linear plasma column

Spectral properties of coherent waves in an argon plasma column are examined using fluctuation data from fast imaging. Visible light from ArII line emission is collected at high frame rates using a high-speed digital camera. A cross-spectral phase technique allows direct visualization of dominant phase structures as a function of frequency, as well as identification of azimuthal asymmetries present in the system. Experimental dispersion estimates are constructed from imaging data alone. Drift-like waves are identified by comparison with theoretical dispersion curves, and a tentative match of a low-frequency spectral feature to Kelvin-Helmholtz-driven waves is presented. Imaging measurements are consistent with previous results, and provide non-invasive, single-shot measurements across the entire plasma cross-section. Implications of the measured spectral properties for imaging measurements of mode dynamics are explored.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Thermopower as a tool to investigate many-body effects in quantum systems

Measuring the thermopower of a confined quantum system reveals important information about its excitation spectrum. Our simulations show how this kind of transport spectroscopy is able to extract a clear signal for the onset of Wigner localization in a nanowire segment. This demonstrates that thermopower measurements provide a tool for investigating complex many-body quantum effects, which is less intrusive than the usual charge-stability diagram as no high source-drain bias is required. While the effect is most pronounced for weak tunnel coupling and low temperatures, the excited states also significantly affect the thermopower spectrum at moderate temperature, adding distinct features to the characteristic thermopower lineshape.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Transport of hot carriers in plasmonic nanostructures

Plasmonic hot carrier devices extract excited carriers from metal nanostructures before equilibration and have the potential to surpass semiconductor light absorbers. However their efficiencies have so far remained well below theoretical limits, which necessitates quantitative prediction of carrier transport and energy loss in plasmonic structures to identify and overcome bottlenecks in carrier harvesting. Here, we present a theoretical and computational framework, nonequilibrium scattering in space and energy (NESSE), to predict the spatial evolution of carrier energy distributions that combines the best features of phase-space (Boltzmann) and particle-based (Monte Carlo) methods. Within the NESSE framework, we bridge first-principles electronic structure predictions of plasmon decay and carrier collision integrals at the atomic scale, with electromagnetic field simulations at the nano- to mesoscale. Finally, we apply NESSE to predict spatially-resolved energy distributions of photoexcited carriers that impact the surface of experimentally realizable plasmonic nanostructures at length scales ranging from tens to several hundreds of nanometers, enabling first-principles design of hot carrier devices.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Analysis and Visualization of Discrete Fracture Networks Using a Flow Topology Graph

We present an analysis and visualization prototype using the concept of a flow topology graph (FTG) for characterization of flow in constrained networks, with a focus on discrete fracture networks (DFN), developed collaboratively by geoscientists and visualization scientists. Our method allows users to understand and evaluate flow and transport in DFN simulations by computing statistical distributions, segment paths of interest, and cluster particles based on their paths. The new approach enables domain scientists to evaluate the accuracy of the simulations, visualize features of interest, and compare multiple realizations over a specific domain of interest. Geoscientists can simulate complex transport phenomena modeling large sites for networks consisting of several thousand fractures without compromising the geometry of the network. However, few tools exist for performing higher-level analysis and visualization of simulated DFN data. The prototype system we present addresses this need. Here, we demonstrate its effectiveness for increasingly complex examples of DFNs, covering two distinct use cases - hydrocarbon extraction from unconventional resources and transport of dissolved contaminant from a spent nuclear fuel repository.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

In-flight verification of the calibration and performance of the ASTRO-H (Hitomi) Soft X-ray Spectrometer

The Soft X-ray Spectrometer onboard the Astro-H (Hitomi) orbiting x-ray observatory featured an array of 36 silicon thermistor x-ray calorimeters optimized to perform high spectral resolution x-ray imaging spectroscopy of astrophysical sources in the 0.3- to 12-keV band. Extensive preflight calibration measurements are the basis for our modeling of the pulse height–energy relation and energy resolution for each pixel and event grade, telescope collecting area, detector efficiency, and pulse arrival time. Because of the early termination of mission operations, we needed to extract the maximum information from observations performed only days into the mission when the onboard calibration sources had not yet been commissioned and the dewar was still coming into thermal equilibrium, so our technique for reconstructing the per-pixel time-dependent pulse height–energy relation had to be modified. The gain scale was reconstructed using a combination of an absolute energy scale calibration at a single time using a fiducial from an onboard radioactive source and calibration of a dominant time-dependent gain drift component using a dedicated calibration pixel, as well as a residual time-dependent variation using spectra from the Perseus cluster of galaxies. The energy resolution was also measured using the onboard radioactive sources. It is consistent with instrument-level measurements accounting for the modest increase in noise due to spacecraft systems interference. We use observations of two pulsar wind nebulae to validate our models of the telescope area and detector efficiency and to derive a more accurate value for the thickness of the gate-valve Be window, which had not been opened by the time mission operations ceased. We use observations of the Crab nebula to refine the pixel-to-pixel timing and validate the absolute timing.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Computed Tomography Scanning and Geophysical Measurements of UW Enterprises LP 1-250512-129 Well in Southwestern Indiana

The computed tomography (CT) facilities and the Multi-Sensor Core Logger (MSCL) at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, West Virginia, were used to characterize Illinois Basin core of the Upper Devonian-Early Mississippian New Albany Shale Formation from Posey County, Indiana. The primary impetus of this work is a collaboration between Indiana Geological and Water Survey at Indiana University Bloomington, NETL, and Woolsey Operating Company LLC to characterize and make publicly available core information from the New Albany Shale of the Illinois Basin. Core characterization of this unconventional oil/gas well will aid in understanding the lithology changes and the fracture complexity of the New Albany Shale. There is a potential for this formation to be developed in the future for critical mineral and rare earth element (CM/REE) extraction. The resultant datasets are presented in this report and can be accessed from NETL's Energy Data eXchange (EDX) online system using the following link: https://edx.netl.doe.gov/dataset/uw-enterprises. All equipment and techniques used were non-destructive, enabling future examinations and analyses to be performed on this core. None of the equipment used was suitable for direct visualization of the pore space in the fine-grained structures studied; however, fractures, discontinuities, and millimeter-scale features were readily detectable with the methods tested. Imaging with the NETL medical CT scanner was performed on the entire core. Targeted higher resolution CT scanning of select sections was performed with NETL’s industrial and micro-CT scanner. Qualitative analysis of the medical CT images, coupled with X-ray fluorescence (XRF), P-wave, and magnetic susceptibility measurements from the MSCL were useful in identifying zones of interest for more detailed analysis. The ability to quickly identify key areas for more detailed study with higher resolution will save time and resources in future studies. The combination of methods used provides a multi-scale analysis of the core; the resulting macro and micro descriptions are relevant to many subsurface energy related examinations traditionally performed at NETL.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗