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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 361 records · Page 20
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2012

Quantification of the Variability of Diaphragm Motion and Implications for Treatment Margin Construction

Purpose: To quantify the variability of diaphragm motion during free-breathing radiotherapy of lung patients and its effect on treatment margins to account for geometric uncertainties. Methods and Materials: Thirty-three lung cancer patients were analyzed. Each patient had 5-19 cone-beam scans acquired during different treatment fractions. The craniocaudal position of the diaphragm dome on the same side as the tumor was tracked over 2 min in the projection images, because it is both easily visible and a suitable surrogate to study the variability of the tumor motion and its impact on treatment margins. Intra-acquisition, inter-acquisition, and inter-patient variability of the respiratory cycles were quantified separately, as were the probability density functions (PDFs) of the diaphragm position over each cycle, each acquisition, and each patient. Asymmetric margins were simulated using each patient PDF and compared to symmetric margins computed from a margin recipe. Results: The peak-to-peak amplitude variability (1 SD) was 3.3 mm, 2.4 mm, and 6.1 mm for the intra-acquisition, inter-acquisition, and inter-patient variability, respectively. The average PDF of each cycle was similar to the sin{sup 4} function but the PDF of each acquisition was closer to a skew-normal distribution because of the motion variability. Despite large interfraction baseline variability, the PDF of each patient was generally asymmetric with a longer end-inhale tail because the end-exhale position was more stable than the end-inhale position. The asymmetry of the PDF required asymmetric margins around the time-averaged position to account for the position uncertainty but the average difference was 1.0 mm (range, 0.0-4.4 mm) for a sharp penumbra and an idealized online setup correction protocol. Conclusion: The respiratory motion is more irregular during the fractions than between the fractions. The PDF of the respiratory motion is asymmetrically distributed. Both the intra-acquisition variability and the PDF asymmetry have a limited impact on dose distributions and inferred margins. The use of a margin recipe to account for respiratory motion with an estimate of the average motion amplitude was adequate in almost all patients.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Determining the tensile strength of fuel surrogate TRISO-coated particle buffer, IPyC, and buffer-IPyC interlayer regions

A novel micro tensile sample fabrication technique for determining the tensile strength of the buffer, IPyC, and buffer -IPyC interlayer regions of surrogate (ZrO2) TRISO fuel particle layers was refined and implemented. Copper micro tensile samples served as baseline materials to verify the methods used. Tensile tests performed in this study, while limited in number, were analyzed using standard and Weibull statistics. As expected, the buffer layer was weakest, with an average ultimate tensile strength of 138.70 MPa, and the IPyC layer samples, were strongest, with an average ultimate tensile strength of 189.74 MPa. In the buffer -IPyC interface samples, all breaks occurred in the buffer region, though the average ultimate tensile strength of the samples, 159.80 MPa, was between the pure buffer and IPyC samples. These results suggest the interlayer region has unique properties, perhaps associated with pyrocarbon infiltration into the buffer layer during particle coating. All interlayer samples fractured within the buffer side; however, the stress strain behavior of some of these samples resembled the behavior of the IPyC layer samples. Here, the buffer and IPyC layer strengths had a normal distribution under Weibull analysis, while the interlayer region had a Rayleigh distribution. Further testing is needed to clarify both the standard and Weibull statistical results

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2011

Generation and characterization of nano tungsten oxide particles by wire explosion process

Nano tungsten oxide particles are produced by wire explosion process. It is realized that by exploding tungsten conductor in lower pressure of oxygen, unreacted phase of tungsten was present and it could be reduced by increasing the operating pressure and increasing the amount of energy deposited to the exploding conductor. It is realized that the nucleation rate of the particle could be high only at the point of maximum saturation ratio, irrespective of the pressure of the oxygen. The size of the critical nucleus formed is low when the saturation ratio and the nucleation rate are at maximum. The nano metal oxide particle formation by wire explosion process allows one to conclude that the second stage annealing process has a major impact on the final grain size formed. The high speed camera photographs of wire explosion process were used to understand the dynamics of particle formation by wire explosion process. The Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) analysis indicates that the nano tungsten oxide (WO{sub 3}) particles are of spherical shape and the analysis of particle size indicates that it follows log normal distribution. - Graphical Abstract: Nano tungsten oxide (WO{sub 3}) particles are produced by wire explosion process. Theoretical analysis indicates that the size of the critical nucleus formed is low when the saturation ratio and the nucleation rate are at maximum. High speed camera photographs of wire explosion process were used to understand the dynamics of particles formed. Research Highlights: {yields}Lower particle size is possible with lower pressure. {yields}Particle size is increased with reduced energy ratio. {yields}Unreacted tungsten content reduces when oxygen pressure increases.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Production and cross-sectional characterization of aligned co-electrospun hollow microfibrous bulk assemblies

The development of co-electrospun (co-ES) hollow microfibrous assemblies of an appreciable thickness is critical for many practical applications, including filtration membranes and tissue-mimicking scaffolds. In this study, thick uniaxially aligned hollow microfibrous assemblies forming fiber bundles and strips were prepared by co-ES of polycaprolactone (PCL) and polyethylene oxide (PEO) as shell and core materials, respectively. Hollow microfiber bundles were deposited on a fixed rotating disc, which resulted in non-controllable cross-sectional shapes on a macroscopic scale. In comparison, fiber strips were produced with tuneable thickness and width by additionally employing an x–y translation stage in co-ES. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of cross-sections of fiber assemblies were analyzed to investigate the effects of production time (from 0.5 h to 12 h), core flow rate (from 0.8 mL/h to 2.0 mL/h) and/or translation speed (from 0.2 mm/s to 5 mm/s) on the pores and porosity. We observed significant changes in pore size and shape with core flow rate but the influence of production time varied; five strips produced under the same conditions had reasonably good size and porosity reproducibility; pore sizes didn't vary significantly from strip bottom to surface, although the porosity gradually decreased and then returned to the initial level. - Highlights: • Hollow microfibrous assemblies based on co-electrospinning are demonstrated. • The thickness and width of co-electrospun strips were controllable. • Cross-sections of fibres had non-normally distributed pore sizes and shapes. • Cross-sections were significantly influenced by production time and flow rate. • Co-electrospun strips had reasonably good reproducible cross-sections.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2012

Parameter estimation for models of ligninolytic and cellulolytic enzyme kinetics

While soil enzymes have been explicitly included in the soil organic carbon (SOC) decomposition models, there is a serious lack of suitable data for model parameterization. This study provides well-documented enzymatic parameters for application in enzyme-driven SOC decomposition models from a compilation and analysis of published measurements. In particular, we developed appropriate kinetic parameters for five typical ligninolytic and cellulolytic enzymes ( -glucosidase, cellobiohydrolase, endo-glucanase, peroxidase, and phenol oxidase). The kinetic parameters included the maximum specific enzyme activity (Vmax) and half-saturation constant (Km) in the Michaelis-Menten equation. The activation energy (Ea) and the pH optimum and sensitivity (pHopt and pHsen) were also analyzed. pHsen was estimated by fitting an exponential-quadratic function. The Vmax values, often presented in different units under various measurement conditions, were converted into the same units at a reference temperature (20 C) and pHopt. Major conclusions are: (i) Both Vmax and Km were log-normal distributed, with no significant difference in Vmax exhibited between enzymes originating from bacteria or fungi. (ii) No significant difference in Vmax was found between cellulases and ligninases; however, there was significant difference in Km between them. (iii) Ligninases had higher Ea values and lower pHopt than cellulases; average ratio of pHsen to pHopt ranged 0.3 0.4 for the five enzymes, which means that an increase or decrease of 1.1 1.7 pH units from pHopt would reduce Vmax by 50%. (iv) Our analysis indicated that the Vmax values from lab measurements with purified enzymes were 1 2 orders of magnitude higher than those for use in SOC decomposition models under field conditions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Improving Enzyme Optimum Temperature Prediction with Resampling Strategies and Ensemble Learning

Accurate prediction of the optimal catalytic temperature ( T opt ) of enzymes is vital in biotechnology, as enzymes with high T opt values are desired for enhanced reaction rates. Recently, a machine learning method (temperature optima for microorganisms and enzymes, TOME) for predicting T opt was developed. TOME was trained on a normally distributed data set with a median T opt of 37 °C and less than 5% of T opt values above 85 °C, limiting the method’s predictive capabilities for thermostable enzymes. Due to the distribution of the training data, the mean squared error on T opt values greater than 85 °C is nearly an order of magnitude higher than the error on values between 30 and 50 °C. Here, we apply ensemble learning and resampling strategies that tackle the data imbalance to significantly decrease the error on high T opt values (>85 °C) by 60% and increase the overall R 2 value from 0.527 to 0.632. The revised method, temperature optima for enzymes with resampling (TOMER), and the resampling strategies applied in this work are freely available to other researchers as Python packages on GitHub.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2018

Surface Morphology and Electrical Properties of Cu 3 BTC 2 Thin Films Before and After Reaction with TCNQ

HKUST-1 or Cu 3 BTC 2 (BTC = 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylate) is a prototypical metal–organic framework (MOF) that holds a privileged position among MOFs for device applications, as it can be deposited as thin films on various substrates and surfaces. Recently, new potential applications in electronics have emerged for this material when HKUST-1 was demonstrated to become electrically conductive upon infiltration with 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ). However, the factors that control the morphology and reactivity of the thin films are unknown. Here, we present a study of the thin-film growth process on indium tin oxide and amorphous Si prior to infiltration. From the unusual bimodal, non-log-normal distribution of crystal domain sizes, we conclude that the nucleation of new layers of Cu 3 BTC 2 is greatly enhanced by surface defects and thus difficult to control. We then show that these films can react with methanolic TCNQ solutions to form dense films of the coordination polymer Cu(TCNQ). This chemical conversion is accompanied by dramatic changes in surface morphology, from a surface dominated by truncated octahedra to randomly oriented thin platelets. The change in morphology suggests that the chemical reaction occurs in the liquid phase and is independent of the starting surface morphology. The chemical transformation is accompanied by 10 orders of magnitude change in electrical conductivity, from <10 –11 S/cm for the parent Cu 3 BTC 2 material to 10 –1 S/cm for the resulting Cu(TCNQ) film. In conclusion, the conversion of Cu 3 BTC 2 films, which can be grown and patterned on a variety of (nonplanar) substrates, to Cu(TCNQ) opens the door for the facile fabrication of more complex electronic devices.

2D nucleation↗
DOE OSTI2020

Parameterizing Subgrid Variations of Land Surface Heat Fluxes to the Atmosphere Improves Boreal Summer Land Precipitation Simulation With the NCAR CESM1.2

Subgrid horizontal variations of land surface heat fluxes to the atmosphere resulting from subgrid land cover heterogeneity are important in land-atmosphere interaction in global climate models (GCMs). To incorporate it, a parameterization using stochastic sampling based on truncated normal distributions diagnosed from the land model and internal ensemble mean of multiple calls to the planetary boundary layer and deep convection schemes is developed. After its implementation in the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Earth System Model version 1.2 (CESM1.2), large changes of simulated land precipitation are found to occur in regions where large subgrid variations of surface heat fluxes exist. The simulated precipitation is improved in boreal summer, especially over eastern China and the coastal areas of the Bay of Bengal. The improved precipitation is mainly a result of improved large-scale moisture convergence and advection by altered vertical diffusion and convection.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2011

Charge fluctuations for particles on a surface exposed to plasma

We develop a stochastic model for the charge fluctuations on a microscopic dust particle resting on a surface exposed to plasma. We find in steady state that the fluctuations are normally distributed with a standard deviation that is proportional to (CT{sub e}){sup 1/2}, where C is the particle-surface capacitance and T{sub e} is the plasma electron temperature. The time for an initially uncharged ensemble of particles to reach the steady state distribution is directly proportional to CT{sub e}.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2012

Kinetics of small single particle combustion of zirconium alloy

We present quantitative kinetic information regarding small, 1-10 {mu}m in diameter, single particle combustion of Zr-rich metal alloy foils subjected to either mechanical impacts or laser-ablation. The lights from combustion of metal fragments were recorded on a high-speed camera. The particle size was determined by the motion analysis of individual particle trajectory based on an aerodynamic drag law and further verified by the microstructure and chemical composition analysis of recovered post-burn particles. The measured particle sizes show a log-normal distribution centered at around 3.1 {mu}m in diameter, and the composition of recovered particles is that of fully oxidized ZrO{sub 2}. The temperature evolution of each particle along the space/time-trajectory is determined based on the thermal emission from combustion using a single-color photographic spectro-pyrometry. The result indicates that the particle has reached the maximum combustion temperature of 4000 K, well beyond the melting temperature of ZrO{sub 2}, and undergone the solidification of molten ZrO{sub 2} during the cooling stage. It also shows that the maximum combustion temperature decreases linearly with increasing the particle diameter, following the correlation t aD{sup 1.5-1.8} between the burn time (t) and the particle diameter (D). Combining the particle size, the burn time, and the particle temperature, both temperature and mass burn rates are obtained as a function of particle size. As the particle size increases, the temperature burn rate decreases, whereas the mass burn rate goes in the opposite direction.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2013

Intermittent fluctuations in the Alcator C-Mod scrape-off layer

Fluctuations in the boundary region of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak have been analyzed using gas puff imaging data. It is found that the fluctuation amplitudes in the near scrape-off layer follow a normal distribution while the far scrape-off layer fluctuations are dominated by large amplitude bursts due to radial motion of blob-like structures and have a positively skewed and flattened amplitude probability distribution. Conditional averaging of the time series reveals burst wave forms with a fast rise and slow decay and exponentially distributed burst amplitudes and waiting times. Based on this, a stochastic model of the burst dynamics is constructed. The model predicts that fluctuation amplitudes should follow a Gamma distribution and that there is a parabolic relation between the skewness and the kurtosis moments of the fluctuations. This is shown to compare favorably with the gas puff imaging data over a range of line-averaged plasma densities.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Reconstruction 3-dimensional image from 2-dimensional image of status optical coherence tomography (OCT) for analysis of changes in retinal thickness

Optical Coherence Tomography is often used in medical image acquisition to diagnose that change due easy to use and low price. Unfortunately, this type of examination produces a two-dimensional retinal image of the point of acquisition. Therefore, this study developed a method that combines and reconstruct 2-dimensional retinal images into three-dimensional images to display volumetric macular accurately. The system is built with three main stages: data acquisition, data extraction and 3-dimensional reconstruction. At data acquisition step, Optical Coherence Tomography produced six *.jpg images of each patient were further extracted with MATLAB 2010a software into six one-dimensional arrays. The six arrays are combined into a 3-dimensional matrix using a kriging interpolation method with SURFER9 resulting 3-dimensional graphics of macula. Finally, system provides three-dimensional color graphs based on the data distribution normal macula. The reconstruction system which has been designed produces three-dimensional images with size of 481 × 481 × h (retinal thickness) pixels.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Financial derivative pricing under probability operator via Esscher transfomation

The problem of pricing contingent claims has been extensively studied for non-Gaussian models, and in particular, Black- Scholes formula has been derived for the NIG asset pricing model. This approach was first developed in insurance pricing{sup 9} where the original distortion function was defined in terms of the normal distribution. This approach was later studied6 where they compared the standard Black-Scholes contingent pricing and distortion based contingent pricing. So, in this paper, we aim at using distortion operators by Cauchy distribution under a simple transformation to price contingent claim. We also show that we can recuperate the Black-Sholes formula using the distribution. Similarly, in a financial market in which the asset price represented by a stochastic differential equation with respect to Brownian Motion, the price mechanism based on characteristic Esscher measure can generate approximate arbitrage free financial derivative prices. The price representation derived involves probability Esscher measure and Esscher Martingale measure and under a new complex valued measure φ (u) evaluated at the characteristic exponents φ{sub x}(u) of X{sub t} we recuperate the Black-Scholes formula for financial derivative prices.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Evaluating Kuala Lumpur stock exchange oriented bank performance with stochastic frontiers

Banks play an essential role in the economic development and banks need to be efficient; otherwise, they may create blockage in the process of development in any country. The efficiency of banks in Malaysia is important and should receive greater attention. This study formulated an appropriate stochastic frontier model to investigate the efficiency of banks which are traded on Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) market during the period 2005–2009. All data were analyzed to obtain the maximum likelihood method to estimate the parameters of stochastic production. Unlike the earlier studies which use balance sheet and income statements data, this study used market data as the input and output variables. It was observed that banks listed in KLSE exhibited a commendable overall efficiency level of 96.2% during 2005–2009 hence suggesting minimal input waste of 3.8%. Among the banks, the COMS (Cimb Group Holdings) bank is found to be highly efficient with a score of 0.9715 and BIMB (Bimb Holdings) bank is noted to have the lowest efficiency with a score of 0.9582. The results also show that Cobb-Douglas stochastic frontier model with truncated normal distributional assumption is preferable than Translog stochastic frontier model.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2015

The magnetic transition in ε-Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3} nanoparticles: Magnetic properties and hyperfine interactions from Mössbauer spectroscopy

The nanoparticles of ε-Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3} enriched with {sup 57}Fe isotope in amorphous silica matrix were prepared by sol-gel technique starting from a single molecular precursor for both Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3} and silica. From the X-ray powder diffraction pattern ε-Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3} was identified as the major phase and α-Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3} and β-Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3} were observed as minor iron oxide phases. Using the log-normal distribution for fitting the experimental data from the TEM micrographs, the characteristic size of particles d{sub 0} ∼ 25 nm was derived. The rather high coercivity of ∼2.1 T at room temperature was confirmed for our nanoparticle system. From the dependences of magnetization on temperature a two-step magnetic transition spread between 100 K and 153 K was indicated. From the {sup 57}Fe Mössbauer spectra measured in the temperature range of 4.2–300 K, the hyperfine parameters for one tetrahedral and three octahedral sites of ε-Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3} structure were identified. The in-field spectra in the external magnetic fields up to 6 T were taken both above and below the indicated two-step magnetic transition. Their dependence on temperature and external magnetic field suggests that the first step in the temperature range of 153 K–130 K is related to the spin reorientation of the local magnetic moments in the magnetic sublattices and the second step in temperatures 130 K–100 K may be associated with the intermediate spin–high spin state transition of Fe{sup 3+} cation in the tetrahedral sublattice expressed in the change of the hyperfine magnetic field.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2015

Characterization of the mechanical properties of HL-1 cardiomyocytes with high throughput magnetic tweezers

We characterized the mechanical properties of cardiomyocyte-like HL-1 cells using our recently developed multi-pole magnetic tweezers. With the optimized design, both high force and high throughput are achieved at the same time. Force up to 100 pN can be applied on a 1 μm diameter superparamagnetic bead in a workspace with 60 μm radius, which is encircled symmetrically by 3 sharp magnetic tips. By adjusting the coil currents, both the strength and direction of force can be controlled. The result shows that both viscosity and shear elastic modulus of HL-1 cells exhibit an approximately log-normal distribution. The cells became stiffer as they matured, consistent with a transition from proliferating cells to contractile muscle tissue. Moreover, the mechanical properties of HL-1 cells show high heterogeneity, which agrees well with their physiological structure.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2015

Electron beam induced growth of tin whiskers

We have investigated the influence of electron irradiation on tin whisker growth. Sputtered tin samples exposed to electron beam of 6 MeV energy exhibited fast whisker growth, while control samples did not grow any whiskers. The statistics of e-beam induced whiskers was found to follow the log-normal distribution. The observed accelerated whisker growth is attributed to electrostatic effects due to charges trapped in an insulating substrate. These results offer promise for establishing whisker-related accelerated life testing protocols.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗