Search

The increased use of smaller spacecraft over the last decade, in combination with studies of potential science applications, has suggested the need for Radioisotope Power Systems (RPSs) yielding much lower power levels than the 100 watt-scale devices used in the past. Small milliwatt to multiwatt-scale RPS units have the potential to extend the capability of small science payloads and instruments, and to enable many new mission applications. Such units could also find application in future human exploration missions involving use of monitoring stations and autonomous devices, similar to the ALSEP units deployed on the Moon during the Apollo program. Although flight-qualified RPS units in this size and power range do not presently exist, their potential to support a broad range of exploration tasks has led NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE) to consider the development of small-RPS units such that they might be available for missions by the early part of next decade. This paper summarizes the results of activities to date and provides possible options for future development. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS) Development program is aimed at developing nuclear power and technologies that would improve the effectiveness of space science missions. The Radioisotope Power Conversion Technology (RPCT) NASA Research Announcement (NRA) is an important mechanism through which research and technology activities are supported in the Advanced Power Conversion Research and Technology project of the Advanced Radioisotope Power Systems Development program. The purpose of the RPCT NRA is to advance the development of radioisotope power conversion technologies to provide higher efficiencies and specific powers than existing systems. These advances would enable a factor of 2 to 4 decrease in the amount of fuel and a reduction of waste heat required to generate electrical power, and thus could result in more cost effective science missions for NASA. The RPCT NRA selected advanced RPS power conversion technology research and development proposals in the following three areas: innovative RPS power conversion research, RPS power conversion technology development in a nominal 100We scale; and, milliwatt/multi-watt RPS (mWRPS) power conversion research. Ten RPCT NRA contracts were awarded in 2003 in the areas of Brayton, Stirling, thermoelectric (TE), and thermophotovoltaic (TPV) power conversion technologies. This paper will provide an overview of the RPCT NRA, a summary of the power conversion technologies approaches being pursued, and a brief digest of first year accomplishments. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To fulfill President George W. Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration” (NASA, 2004) — successful human and robotic missions to and from other solar system bodies in order to explore their atmospheres and surfaces — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) must reduce the trip time, cost, and vehicle weight so that the payload and scientific experiments’ capabilities can be maximized. The new project described in this paper will generate thermal protection system (TPS) products that will enable greater fidelity in mission/vehicle design trade studies, support risk reduction for material selections, assist in the optimization of vehicle weights, and provide materials and processes templates for use in the development of human-rated TPS qualification and certification plans. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to many scholars, classrooms in America are overwhelmingly authoritarian and undemocratic. They focus on fragmented knowledge that is disconnected from the students' lives. Proven reforms are resisted at all levels, and systematic progressive change is non-existent nearly a century after the progressive movement. Why is this so? The standard liberal outlook is that the schools are ‘broken’ and ‘neglected’, but that they have the potential, with reform, to be a major progressive force in society. This paper questions these assumptions through a review of the seminal educational-economic work by Bowles and Gintis: Schooling in Capitalist America [1]. The major claim of this text is that our educational system's primary role is to mirror, support, stabilize, and reproduce the fundamentally hierarchical and undemocratic social relationships that exist in the majority of American workplaces. The major arguments and evidence of this text are reviewed, and implications for PER will be briefly mentioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2002, a single-stage turbo-Brayton cryocooler was installed on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to re-establish cooling to the detectors in the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS). The system has maintained the detectors at their operating temperature near 77 K since that time. Future NASA space missions require comparable low-vibration cooling for periods of five to ten years in the 6 K–10 K temperature range. Creare is extending the NICMOS cryocooler technology to meet these lower temperatures. The primary activities address the need for smaller turbomachines. Two helium compressors for a 6 K turbo-Brayton cycle have been developed and tested in a cryogenic test facility. They have met performance goals at design speeds of about 9,500 rev/s. A miniature, dual-temperature high specific speed turboalternator has been installed in this test facility and has been used to obtain extended operational life data during low temperature cryogenic tests. A smaller, low specific speed turboalternator using advanced gas bearings is under development to replace the original dual-temperature design. This machine should provide improvements in the thermodynamic performance of the cycle. This paper presents life test results for the low temperature system and discusses the development of the smaller turboalternator. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike most published polymer processing and/or forming research, the transformation of polyolefins to fabricated articles often involves non-confined flow or so-called free surface flow (e.g. fiber spinning, blown films, and cast films) in which elongational flow takes place during a fabrication process. Obviously, the characterization and validation of extensional rheological parameters and their use to develop rheological constitutive models are the focus of polyolefins materials transformation research. Unfortunately, there are challenges that remain with limited validation for non-linear, non-isothermal constitutive models for polyolefins. Further complexity arises in the transformation of polyolefins in the elongational flow system as it involves stress-induced crystallization process. The complicated nature of elongational, non-linear rheology and non-isothermal crystallization kinetics make the development of numerical methods very challenging for the polyolefins materials forming modeling. From the product based company standpoint, the challenges of materials transformation research go beyond elongational rheology, crystallization kinetics and its numerical modeling. In order to make models useful for the polyolefin industry, it is critical to develop links between molecular parameters to both equipment and materials forming parameters. The recent advances in the constrained geometry catalysis and materials sciences understanding (INSITE technology and molecular design capability) has made industrial polyolefinic materials forming modeling more viable due to the fact that the molecular structure of the polymer can be well predicted and controlled during the polymerization. In this paper, we will discuss inter-relationship (models) among molecular parameters such as polymer molecular weight (Mw), molecular weight distribution (MWD), long chain branching (LCB), short chain branching (SCB or comonomer types and distribution) and their affects on shear and elongational rheologies, on tie-molecules probabilities, on non-isothermal stress-induced crystallization, on crystalline/amorphous orientation vs. mechanical property relationship, etc. All of the above mentioned inter-relationships (models) are critical to the successful development of a knowledge based industrial model. Dow Polyolefins and Elastomers business is one of the world largest polyolefins resin producers with the most advanced INSITE technology and a “6-Day model” molecular design capability. Dow also offers one of the broadest polyolefinic product ranges and applications to the market. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last five years, there has been substantial international interest in a high luminosity (approx. 1033cm-2s-1) polarized electron-ion collider covering a CM energy range from about 30 to 100 GeV. Workshops have taken place in Europe in 1997 and in the United States at IUCF (1999), BNL (1999), Yale (2000) and MIT (2000). An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) collaboration was formed in the fall of 2000, and in the United States, the 2001 Long Range Plan favorably endorsed the science of EIC and urged R&D support as a high priority. In March 2002, a series of workshops at BNL involving over 150 physicists from around the world agreed to produce a conceptual design of an electron-ion collider within three years. Further, it was agreed to develop this design around the existing Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL. This design is known as eRHIC. In this paper the scientific highlights of eRHIC are described. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in high power electromagnetic propulsion has been revived to support a variety of future space missions, such as platform maneuvering in low earth orbit, cost-effective cargo transport to lunar and Mars bases, asteroid and outer planet sample return, deep space robotic exploration, and piloted missions to Mars and the outer planets. Magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thrusters have demonstrated, at the laboratory level, the capacity to process megawatts of electrical power while providing higher thrust densities than current electric propulsion systems. The ability to generate higher thrust densities permits a reduction in the number of thrusters required to perform a given mission and alleviates the system complexity associated with multiple thruster arrays. The specific impulse of an MPD thruster can be optimized to meet given mission requirements, from a few thousand seconds with heavier gas propellants up to 10,000 seconds with hydrogen propellant. In support of NASA space science and human exploration strategic initiatives, Glenn Research Center is developing and testing pulsed, MW-class MPD thrusters as a prelude to long-duration high power thruster tests. The research effort includes numerical modeling of self-field and applied-field MPD thrusters and experimental testing of quasi-steady MW-class MPD thrusters in a high power pulsed thruster facility. This paper provides an overview of the GRC high power electromagnetic thruster program and the pulsed thruster test facility. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) operated large out-of-reactor experimental facilities to resolve thermal-hydraulic safety issues in nuclear reactors. The fundamental research ranged from material mechanical behavior of fuel cladding during the depressurization phase of a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) to basic heat transfer research in gas- or sodium-cooled cores. The largest facility simulated the initial phase (less than 1 min. of transient time) of a LOCA in a commercial pressurized-water reactor. The nonnuclear reactor cores of these facilities were mimicked via advanced, highly instrumented electric fuel rod simulators locally manufactured at ORNL. This paper provides an overview of these experimental facilities with an emphasis on the fuel rod simulators. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial vendors could not supply the high-quality, highly instrumented electric fuel rod simulators (FRS) required for large thermal-hydraulic safety-oriented experiments at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the 1970s and early 1980s. Staff at ORNL designed, developed, and manufactured the simulators utilized in these safety experiments. Important FRS design requirements include (1) materials of construction, (2) test power requirements and availability, (3) experimental test objectives, (4) supporting thermal analyses, and (5) extensive quality control throughout all phases of FRS fabrication. This paper will present an overview of these requirements (design, analytics, and quality control) as practiced at ORNL to produce a durable high-quality FRS. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the presentations and discussions of the Beam-Beam’03 workshop, held in Montauk, Long Island, from May 19 to 23, 2003. Presentations and discussions focused on halo generation from beam-beam interactions; beam-beam limits, especially coherent limits and their effects on existing and future hadron colliders; beam-beam compensation techniques, particularly for long-range interactions; and beam-beam study tools in theory, simulation, and experiment. © 2003 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I present some early history of Los Alamos, modern computing, and the Monte Carlo method to describe the likely context in which the Metropolis algorithm was developed and to support the special creativity of the development. I also note the scant immediate use of the algorithm over the 10 to 15 years after its development and speculate why. This sparse use however did include many seminal applications and led to many of the techniques still used today. This is the heritage enjoyed by us who today unhesitatingly use the Metropolis algorithm and the Monte Carlo method more generally, for exploring the properties of physical systems. © 2003 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Laser Hardened Materials Evaluation Laboratory (LHMEL) has been characterizing material responses to laser energy in support of national defense programs and the aerospace industry for the past 26 years. This paper reviews the overall resources available at LHMEL to support fundamental materials testing relating to impulse coupling measurement and to explore beamed energy launch concepts. Located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, LHMEL is managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory Materials Directorate AFRL/MLPJ and operated by Anteon Corporation. The facility's advanced hardware is centered around carbon dioxide lasers producing output power up to 135kW and neodymium glass lasers producing up to 10 kilojoules of repetitively pulsed output. The specific capabilities of each laser device and related optical systems are discussed. Materials testing capabilities coupled with the laser systems are also described including laser output and test specimen response diagnostics. Environmental simulation capabilities including wind tunnels and large-volume vacuum chambers relevant to beamed energy propulsion are also discussed. This paper concludes with a summary of the procedures and methods by which the facility can be accessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates the enhanced capability of single polarity charge sensing, the 3-dimensional position sensing technique, developed at the University of Michigan and previously successfully demonstrated on CdZnTe detectors, to improve the spectroscopic performance of HgI[SUB2] and to extend its range for spectrometry to an unprecedented thickness of 10 mm. Energy resolutions of close to 1% FWHM at 662 keV gamma-ray energy were obtained from individual depth locations underneath pixel anodes, and 1.4-2.0% FWHM energy resolutions from 5 out of 6 tested pixel anodes on two 10 mm thick detectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates the capability of compact gamma-ray imaging devices using 3-dimensional position sensitive CdZnTe semiconductor gamma-ray spectrometers, developed at the University of Michigan. A prototype imager was constructed and tested using two 1 cm cube 3-dimensional position sensitive CdZnTe detectors. Energy resolutions of 1.5% FWHM for single pixel events at 662 keV gamma-ray energy were obtained on both detectors, and an angular resolution of about 5° FWHM was demonstrated. The capabilities of proposed devices, which can cover a wider energy range up to 2.6 MeV, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The national Accelerated Coated Conductor Initiative (ACCI) is committed to assuring continued U.S. leadership in the development of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wire for electric power and other applications of national interest. Increased energy efficiency, power density, and power-to-weight ratio are just a few of the tangible benefits that will be possible if today's meter lengths of HTS wire based upon the compound yttrium-barium-copper-oxygen (YBCO) can be scaled up by U.S. industry to kilometer lengths. This paper presents an evaluation of the current state of the development of coated conductor technology and a vision for its future. The challenges that U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories and their industrial and university partners face will be presented against the backdrop of the history of superconductivity program achievements. It is the purpose of this initiative to accelerate the development, commercialization, and application of high temperature superconductors through joint efforts among DOE laboratories, American industry, and universities, so that future challenges of the electric power industry can be met. Based on their advances in HTS coated conductor development in a program funded by the DOE's Office of Power Technologies, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories lead and support this effort by improving their own capabilities, including equipment, facilities, and technical expertise. Each laboratory has, in 2001, acquired new laboratory space, new capital equipment, and new personnel with the goal of working closely with U.S. companies to take technologies invented in the labs and demonstrated in l-m lengths and transfer these technologies to the commercial sector. The present status of the performance of the second-generation YBCO wires will be described, and the future plans of the national laboratories will be presented. Opportunities for collaboration are discussed, as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the theory, modeling, design, fabrication and preliminary test results of the MEMS loop heat pipe being developed at the Center for Microelectronic Sensors and MEMS at the University of Cincinnati. The emphasis is placed upon the silicon micro wick and its production through a novel technique known as Coherent Porous Silicon (CPS) Technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports the recent progress of a high-energy, heavy ion nuclear microprobe facility established at the University of North Texas. The microprobe system is installed on a 3MV NEC 9SDH-2 Pelletron tandem accelerator. A high demagnification factor (∼60) has been achieved with the system, using a probe-forming lens system (from MARC, Melbourne, Australia) with the new Russian quadruplet configuration. The spatial resolution of 2-3 µm has been achieved for 4.0 MeV carbon ions or 9.0 MeV alpha particles with a beam current of ∼ 50-100 pA. Better spatial resolution (approaching one µm) is achievable when an extremely low beam current (100-2000 ions/sec) is used in the applications of IBICC and IBIL. Applications of the analytical techniques with the nuclear microprobe are outlined and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Solar Tower Atmospheric Cherenkov Effect Experiment (STACEE) is located at the National Solar Thermal Test Facility of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. The field of solar tracking mirrors (heliostats) around a central receiver tower is used to direct Cherenkov light from atmospheric showers onto secondary mirrors on the tower, which in turn image the light onto cameras of photomultiplier tubes. The STACEE Collaboration has previously reported a detection of the Crab Nebula with approximately 7 standard deviation significance, using 32 heliostats (STACEE-32). This result demonstrates both the viability of the technique and the suitability of the site. We are in the process of completing an upgrade to 48 heliostats (STACEE-48) en route to an eventual configuration using 64 heliostats (STACEE-64) in early 2001. In this paper, we summarize the results obtained on the sensitivity of STACEE-32 and our expectations for STACEE-48 and STACEE-64. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's launch ranges rely on a vast network of manual activities to plan missions, schedule launches, configure instrumentation, preserve safety, and support mission analysis. Efforts are underway to replace currently-used 1960's technology with 1980's-era systems at the major U.S. launch ranges, but these efforts are insufficient to support the high flight rates and dramatic cost reductions needed to enable revolutionary long-term missions such as space solar power and public space access (McCleskey, Zapata, 1998). This paper describes a plan to evolve the existing U.S. launch ranges toward spaceports that accommodate frequent and routine flights by a variety of vehicle types and mission profiles. Known as NextRange™, the plan is a comprehensive approach to solving key technical, business, and regulatory challenges associated with creating commercial launch ranges in the U.S. These challenges are a major obstacle to the emerging commercial spaceport industry, so economical solutions are urgently needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Heatpipe Power System (HPS) is a near-term, low-cost, space fission power system that has been under development at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for 5 years. The goal of the HPS project is to devise an attractive space fission system that can be developed quickly and affordably. The primary ways of doing this are by using existing technology and by designing the system for inexpensive testing. If the system can be designed to allow highly prototypic testing with electrical heating, then an exhaustive test program can be carried out inexpensively and quickly and thorough testing of the actual flight unit can be performed—which is a major benefit to reliability. Over the past 4 years, LANL has conducted three HPS proof-of-concept technology demonstrations—each has been highly successful. The Heatpipe-Operated Mars Exploration Reactor (HOMER) is a derivative of the HPS designed especially for producing electricity on the surface of Mars. The key attributes of the HOMER are described in this paper, as well as a 20-kWe point design, system scalability, and the current technology status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Low Energy Demonstration Accelerator (LEDA), located at Los Alamos National Laboratory, utilizes a slow wire scanner to measure beam profiles. The beam energy is 6.7 MeV and the peak current is 100 mA. This wire scanner profile measurement is located in the High Energy Beam Transport (HEBT) section of the LEDA beam line. This section of beam line is used to expand the proton beam coming out of the LEDA Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) prior to impacting the beam-stop. The purpose of the scanner is to provide horizontal and vertical beam profiles. The wires or fibers are a Silicon Carbide (SIC) material, and are attached to an actuator driven by a stepping motor. The actuator drives the fibers through the beam in incremental steps. At each step, the amount of secondary electrons generated by the interactions of the proton beam and the wire are measured. From these incremental measurements the beam profile is constructed. This paper will discuss the operation of the scanner, two of the experiments conducted to understand the capability of the SiC wire to survive and some of the different uses of the beam profile data acquired during the ongoing commissioning of LEDA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this shrinking world, what happens in an industry in one country can significantly affect the same industry elsewhere around the globe. In April 1986, a nuclear accident destroyed Unit 4 of Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant, focusing worldwide attention on the dozens of Soviet-designed reactors still in operation. The Chemobyl accident led to public concerns about all operating nuclear power plants and, in some countries (e.g., Italy and Sweden), to proposals for nationwide plant closures or moratoriums on new construction. However, for most former Soviet Union countries, plant shutdown was and still is not a viable option—the plants produce a significant percentage of each nation’s total electricity, and those countries do not have sufficient economic resources to develop alternative power sources. In cooperation with similar programs initiated in Canada, Japan, and western European countries, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is conducting a comprehensive effort to reduce risks at Soviet-designed nuclear power plants until they can be shut down or brought into compliance with international standards. This paper describes DOE-supported initiatives with participating host countries to: • improve reliability and accuracy of nondestructive evaluation equipment used for in-service inspection • transfer technologies and infrastructure to improve in-service inspections • enhance management systems for training and certifying host-country in-service inspection personnel The goal of these initiatives to enhance the use of international standards (ASME, ASNT, European Standards EN, and ISO) in operating and regulatory practices at Soviet-designed nuclear power plants. © 2000 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new building has been constructed to house various powder and single-stage and two-stage gas guns at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head Division. Guns previously located at the Naval Research Laboratory and the former White Oak Site of the Naval Surface Warfare Center have been relocated here. Most of the guns are mounted on moveable pedestals to allow them to be shot into various chambers. The facility includes a concrete blast chamber, a target chamber/catch tank for flyer plate experiments, and a target chamber outfitted for terminal ballistics measurements. This paper will discuss the capabilities of this new facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atlas is a high-energy pulsed-power facility under construction at Los Alamos National Laboratory. When completed in late 2000, Atlas will provide a laboratory environment to perform shock compression experiments in regimes presently unattainable by other methods. The high-energy-density environment on Atlas will be produced by the rapid (~4 μs) implosion of a 20-40 gram, ~4 cm radius, 4 cm length cylindrical aluminum or aluminum/high-Z composite liner, driven by a fast current pulse of ~32 MA from a 24 MJ capacitor bank. Implosion velocities up to 20 km/s are predicted, allowing Hugoniot experiments to ~20 Mbar and quasi-adiabatic compression to several Mbar. However, many issues face us in performing such experiments, including how to diagnose conditions inside the imploding liner, how to correct results for distortions and density gradients created by the cylindrical geometry and magnetic drive, and how to prevent geometric distortions and instabilities from degrading results. In this paper, liner performance is predicted for a shock compression experiment utilizing 1-D MHD simulations, and the effect of gradients in density, pressure, and velocity in the impactor prior to collision are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Milagrito, a detector sensitive to γ-rays at TeV energies, monitored the northern sky during the period February 1997 through May 1998. With a large field of view and high duty cycle, this instrument was used to perform a search for TeV counterparts to γ-rays bursts. Within the Milagrito field of view 54 γ-ray bursts at keV energies were observed by the Burst And Transient Satellite Experiment (BATSE) aboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory. This paper describes the results of a preliminary analysis to search for TeV emission correlated with BATSE detected bursts. Milagrito detected an excess of events coincident both spatially and temporally with GRB 970417a, with chance probability 2.8×10[sup -5] within the BATSE error radius. No other significant correlations were detected. Since 54 bursts were examined the chance probability of observing an excess with this significance in any of these bursts is 1.5×10[sup -3]. The statistical aspects and physical implications of this result are discussed. © 2000 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The HCOR will be used onboard the ISS to record digital data during Ku-band Loss of Signal (LOS) periods. This recorded data will be played back to the ground during Ku-band Acquisition of Signal (AOS) periods. The Data Management (DM) Team at the Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) is the primary operator of this complex recorder. The record and playback capabilities—along with the memory management functions—are presented in this paper. To illustrate how the DM Team plans to manage the record, playback, and memory management tasks of operating the HCOR, an operational scenario for a ninety minute orbit is presented. © 2000 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The three sessions of the Physics Education Workshop focused on good education practice, with particular reference to gender awareness. The first session consisted of country-specific talks, from the United States, Tanzania and UK, with emphasis on engaging female students in physics, including strategies that work and strategies that do not work. Delegates discussed sharing best practices in their own countries and explored initiatives and pedagogy that may work in their own contexts. The second session demonstrated an example of practical physics teaching, with delegates observing teacher Dr. Jenny Watson delivering a workshop on friction to 30 local primary school girls. Following a brief introduction about the force of friction, the students built their own CD hovercraft using an old CD/DVD, a bottle cap and a balloon. Students were shown how to plan their own investigation into the factors that affect the amount of friction involved as their table-top hovercraft moved. Discussions on running experiments which engage girls and encourage them to fully participate followed the session. The final session focused on the notion that creativity is an integral aspect of physics: The last two talks described how art and beauty in physics can be used to engage girls who may otherwise not connect with physics. The workshop finished with discussions on best practices in gender-aware physics education that translates across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NASA Solar Probe mission to the inner frontier of the heliosphere is a part of the Sun-Earth Connection theme within the Office of Space Science. A NASA-appointed Science Definition Team has defined a Solar Probe mission and its scientific objectives. These include making measurements to understand the processes that heat the solar corona and produce the solar wind, subjects of continuing scientific debate. The Solar Probe mission will accomplish these objectives with a combination of in situ measurements designed to characterize the local heating and acceleration of plasma near the Sun and high resolution images to detect small-scale, transient magnetic structures at and around the Sun. In order to sample the solar corona acceleration region, Solar Probe will fly to four solar radii from the center of the Sun in an orbit inclined 90° to the plane of the ecliptic. Engineering solutions to design a probe that can withstand the near-Sun environment have been proposed for several decades. Current status of the Solar Probe concept is provided in this paper. © 2003 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, or LANSCE, is an accelerator-based national user facility for research in basic and applied science. At present LANSCE has two experimental areas primarily using neutrons generated by 800-MeV protons striking tungsten target systems. A third area uses the proton beam for radiography. This paper describes the three LANSCE experimental areas, gives highlights of the past operating period, and discusses plans for the future. © 2003 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the highlights of the 20[SUPth] Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics was the night out at Cedar Street, during which Black Holes were served to the participants. In this paper, we outline the basic principles behind the formation of a Black Hole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a 5SDH-2 tandem accelerator, at the Center for Irradiation of Materials of Alabama A&M University we have developed facilities for ion beam based studies of materials, such as PIXE, RBS/Channeling, NRA/Hydrogen Profiling. The RBS/Channeling setup (experimental chamber and attached software for data acquisition and analysis), provided by NEC, has a goniometer with 4 degrees of freedom, two linear upon the x and z axes, and two rotational upon the theta (around the z axis) and phi (upon the y axis — beam axis). We designed an addition to this setup to allow us to perform double alignment channeling. A description of the setup, as well as double alignment channeling results are presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article widely accepted fact that refrigerants, especially chlorofluorocarbons (R-12 and family) used in present day vapor compression cycles are having a detrimental effect on the earth's upper atmosphere. The United States and most industrialized nations have formally agreed to reduce and ban the production of these chemicals. The automotive air-conditioning industry is greatly affected by this change. Eighty percent of the new cars sold today have on-board air conditioners which are difficult to seal permanently against refrigerant leakage. While most of the industry is concentrating on finding less dangerous forms of chlorofluorocarbons, it must be realized that this would only be a temporary solution. Recent EPA findings show that by 1990 there was cumulative 5% reduction in the ozone layer over the United States. This could, if continued, lead to over 12 million cancer cases and 200,000 deaths over the next 50 years. Energy from the exhaust gas of an internal combustion engine is used to power an absorption refrigeration system to air-condition an ordinary passenger car. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) consists of 12 NaI detectors and 2 BGO detectors mounted on two sides of the spacecraft. This provides detection capability for energies between 10 keV and 30 MeV, and sensitivity to all directions in the sky. Extensive measurements using radioactive sources have been performed on the isolated detectors. Simulations of these measurements using the GEANT4 Monte Carlo radiation transport simulations toolset have also been preformed. For gamma-ray burst the spacecraft itself will have a significant impact on the detector response, therefore the final stage of validations involves measuring the detector response to radioactive sources after the spacecraft is fully assembled, and validating the results using simulation. Details of these simulations will be given in this paper. © 2007 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utility-scale solar systems occupy a large amount of land space and it is estimated that there is going to be a gradual rise in the production of solar panels soon due to the high Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) goals put forward by states in the United States. We are already witnessing the rapid conversion of agricultural land into ground-mounted utility-scale solar parks. Therefore, we must transition to agrivoltaics in order to avoid conflict in land space in the future. Agrivoltataics not only adds value to the land but also leads to dual use of land. Our research focuses on the transition to agrivoltaics from a systems-level perspective. Till date, there is not much literature about the transitions to agrivoltaics, our study fills in that gap by providing a new interdisciplinary framework that promotes transition to agrivoltaics from a business, technology, economic, policy and, social perspective. There are a lot of complexities involved in the transition process and our research addresses those complexities from a multidimensional perspective. We have not only created a new framework from established theories but also tested the framework in the context of agrivoltaic transitions. Due to the inter-disciplinary nature of our framework, our systems-level approach could be a beneficial decision-making tool to a diverse number of stakeholders such as innovators, entrepreneurs, farmers, electricity generators, engineers, and policymakers. In addition, it will add value to the literature of agrivoltaics, agribusiness, energy economics, and management as well as efficient policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) collectors (e.g., parabolic trough or linear Fresnel systems) for industrial thermal applications has been increasing in global interest in the last few years. In particular, the European Union has been tracking the deployment of Solar Industrial Process Heat (SIPH) plants. Although relatively few plants have been deployed in the United States (U.S.), we establish that 29% of primary energy consumption in the U.S. manufacturing sector is used for process heating. Perhaps the best opportunities for SIPH reside in the state of California due to its excellent solar resource, strong industrial base, and solar-friendly policies. This initial analysis identified 48 TWhth/year of process heat demand in certain California industries versus a technical solar-thermal energy potential of 23,000 TWhth/year. The top five users of industrial steam in the state are highlighted and special attention paid to the food sector that has been an early adopter of SIPH in other countries. A comparison of the cost of heat from solar-thermal collectors versus the cost of industrial natural gas in California indicates that SIPH may be cost effective even under the relatively low gas prices seen in 2014. A recommended next step is the identification of pilot project candidates to promote the deployment of SIPH facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A time series model based on multivariate power-normal distribution has been applied in the past literature on the United States (US) mortality data from the years 1933 to 2000 to forecast the future age-specific mortality rates of the years 2001 to 2010. In this paper, we show that the method based on multivariate power-normal distribution can still be used for an incomplete US mortality dataset that contains some missing values. The prediction intervals based on this incomplete training data are found to still have good ability of covering the observed future mortality rates although the interval lengths may become wider for long-range prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first results of scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM) characterizations of a CWF made from salt used to electrorefine Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR II) driver fuel elements. The goals of the study are to gain a detailed understanding of microstructure and phase formation. This serves as a guide for process development, and also towards interpreting leach test results and developing models to predict long-term repository performance. © 2000 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 2011-10-01, WSA-Enlil became the first operational numerical space weather prediction model to be used by the United States National Weather Service. One of the primary purposes of this heliospheric model is to provide advance warning of geomagnetic storms from Earth-directed CMEs; such a forecast requires an accurate characterization of a CME. Almost a decade of published literature had suggested that the single viewpoint, flat-fronted cone model of Xie et al. [1] could supply the quantitative and consistent characterization of CMEs necessary for operational space weather forecasting. However, early in the transition-to-operations process, it became clear that this basic cone model is fundamentally flawed as an operational forecasting tool. We will describe the problems associated with this model, focusing in particular on the problems that arise because an unrealistic model shape is used to describe CME morphology. One of the consequences of the shape mismatch is that the flat-fronted cone model underestimates the speed of a CME. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will be based on the information already known about the Mars Planet at international level and on the NASA and ESA preoccupations for finding a human team in order to establish new explorations of the planet resources in the near future justifying in this way the opportunity of approaching this theme, and taking into account the preoccupations and the experience in the drilling field of our country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a preliminary version of CPMDS, a new catalogue of Northern common proper motion visual double stars. All these stars are laying in the Bordeaux Carte du Ciel zone +11°≤δ≤+18°. We applied a statistical hypothesis t-test in the proper motions of the components. The proper motions used in our list were adopted from the Bordeaux proper motion catalogue PM2000. We detected 2831 new common proper motion double stars covering about 6% of the sky. This new catalogue is a large contribution to the small list of known common proper motion double stars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New versions of the NIST Atomic Spectra Database (ASD, v. 4.0) and three bibliographic databases (Atomic Energy Levels and Spectra, v. 2.0, Atomic Transition Probabilities, v. 9.0, and Atomic Line Broadening and Shapes, v. 3.0) have recently been released. In this contribution I will describe the main changes in the way users get the data through the Web. The contents of ASD have been significantly extended. In particular, the data on highly ionized tungsten (W III-LXXIV) have been added from a recently published NIST compilation. The tables for Fe I and Fe II have been replaced with newer, much more extensive lists (10000 lines for Fe I). The other updated or new spectra include H, D, T, He I-II, Li I-III, Be I-IV, B I-V, C I-II, N I-II, O I-II, Na I-X, K I-XIX, and Hg I. The new version of ASD now incorporates data on isotopes of several elements. I will describe some of the issues the NIST ASD Team faces when updating the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission observed an unexpected band of enhanced energetic neutral atom (ENA) flux in its first all-sky maps. In this paper we discuss a possible mechanism that may explain this effect, and quantitatively test it using a 3D simulation of the global heliosphere. We describe the mechanism, and how the concept of a partial shell distribution can be used to approximate weak wave-particle scattering by PUIs that form the parent population of ENAs in the model ribbon. We also introduce a simple approximation to a solar cycle for primary ENAs born in the supersonic solar wind, and find that this has the effect of spreading out a bump in the model ENA spectrum centered on the solar wind energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is a NASA medium class Explorer mission that performed an all sky survey in four infrared bands. We present an overview of the WISE InfraRed Excesses around Degenerates (WIRED) Survey, which has the goals of characterizing white dwarf stars in the WISE bands, confirming objects known to have infrared excess from past observations, and revealing new examples of white dwarfs with infrared excess that can be attributed to unresolved companions or debris disks. We obtained preliminary WISE detections (S/N>2) in at least one band of 405 white dwarfs from the 9316 unique possible targets in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4 Catalog of Spectroscopically Identified White Dwarfs (not all potential targets were available in the sky coverage used here). A companion paper in this volume discusses specific results from our target detections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Fall of 2008 a web survey, designed to collect information about pedagogical knowledge and practices, was completed by a representative sample of 722 physics faculty across the United States (a 50.3% response rate). This paper examines how 20 predictor variables correlate with faculty knowledge about and use of research-based instructional strategies (RBIS). Profiles were developed for each of four faculty levels of knowledge about and use of RBIS. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify a subset of the variables that could predict group membership. Five significant predictor variables were identified. High levels of knowledge and use of RBIS were associated with the following characteristics: attendee of the physics and astronomy new faculty workshop, attendee of at least one talk or workshop related to teaching in the last two years, satisfaction with meeting instructional goals, regular reader of one or more journals related to teaching, and being female. High research productivity and large class sizes were not found to be barriers to use of at least some RBIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about the symposium on the state of the art in pure and applied Clifford analysis in the U.S. is presented. The topics include the polynomial series expansions of Cliffordian functions, the uniform approach for the explicit construction of orthogonal Appell bases of inner and outer solid spherical monogenics and the orthosymplectic Lie supergroup in harmonic analysis. The symposium features several speakers including S. Bock, F. Brackx and K. Coulembier

We develop efficient mesh free methods to solve European and American option pricing problems. Using radial basis functions, these methods leads to systems of difference equations which are solved by using a [phonetic_theta]-method. Numerical results describing the payoff functions and option values are also presents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Office of Naval Research and the Chinese Academy of Sciences established and continue to encourage an unprecedented collaboration between the United States and China in the basic research field of ocean acoustics. This paper describes the progression of events in the scientific relationship. This cooperative research effort, primarily focused on shallow-water acoustics, has varied over fifteen years. It has involved numerous researchers and institutions from the U.S., China, and other countries, and it has resulted in productive workshops, conferences, field experiments, research collaborations, and scientific publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 1996, a joint China-U.S. underwater acoustics experiment was conducted near the geographic center of the Yellow Sea with a water depth of 75 m. Hundreds of broadband explosive sources were deployed. The seabed sound speed in this experiment has been inverted using two methods based on data-derived mode depth functions and modal arrival time differences. The seabed attenuation has been estimated from three different approaches using modal attenuation coefficients, modal amplitude ratios, and transmission loss measurements [Wan, Zhou, and Rogers, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 128(2), 2010]. The present paper analyzes the vertical coherence of the sound propagation as a function of range and frequency. The seabed sound attenuation is inferred by minimizing the difference between the theoretical and measured vertical coherence. The seabed attenuation, inverted from long-range broadband sound propagation with different methods over a frequency range of 80-1000 Hz, can be expressed as αb = (0.34±0.02)f187±004{dB/m·kHz). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]