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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 847 records · Page 47

TU-A-18C-01: ACR Accreditation Updates in CT, Ultrasound, Mammography and MRI

A goal of an imaging accreditation program is to ensure adequate image quality, verify appropriate staff qualifications, and to assure patient and personnel safety. Currently, more than 35,000 facilities in 10 modalities have been accredited by the American College of Radiology (ACR), making the ACR program one of the most prolific accreditation options in the U.S. In addition, the ACR is one of the accepted accreditations required by some state laws, CMS/MIPPA insurance and others. Familiarity with the ACR accreditation process is therefore essential to clinical diagnostic medical physicists. Maintaining sufficient knowledge of the ACR program must include keeping up-to-date as the various modality requirements are refined to better serve the goals of the program and to accommodate newer technologies and practices. This session consists of presentations from authorities in four ACR accreditation modality programs, including magnetic resonance imaging, mammography, ultrasound, and computed tomography. Each speaker will discuss the general components of the modality program and address any recent changes to the requirements. Learning Objectives: To understand the requirements of the ACR MR accreditation program. The discussion will include accreditation of whole-body general purpose magnets, dedicated extremity systems well as breast MRI accreditation. Anticipated updates to the ACR MRI Quality Control Manual will also be reviewed. To understand the current ACR MAP Accreditation requirement and present the concepts and structure of the forthcoming ACR Digital Mammography QC Manual and Program. To understand the new requirements of the ACR ultrasound accreditation program, and roles the physicist can play in annual equipment surveys and setting up and supervising the routine QC program. To understand the requirements of the ACR CT accreditation program, including updates to the QC manual as well as updates through the FAQ process.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

SU-E-T-134: Assessing the Capabilities of An MU Model for Fields as Small as 2cm in a Passively Scattered Proton Beam

Purpose: To assess and expand the capabilities of the current MU model for a passively scattered proton beam. The expanded MU model can potentially be used to predict the dose/MU for fields smaller than 2cm in diameter and reduce time needed for physical calibrations. Methods: The current MU model accurately predicted the dose/MU for more than 800 fields when compared to physical patient calibrations. Three different ion chambers were used in a Plastic Water phantom for physical measurements: T1, PIN, and A-16. The original MU model predicted output for fields that were affected by the bolus gap factor (BGF) and nozzle extension factor (NEF). As the system was tested for smaller treatment fields, the mod wheel dependent field size factor (MWDFSF) had to be included to describe the changes observed in treatment fields smaller than 3cm. The expanded model used Clarkson integration to determine the appropriate value for each factor (field size factor (FSF), BGF, NEF, and MWDFSF), to accurately predict the dose/MU for fields smaller than 2.5cm in effective diameter. Results: The expanded MU model demonstrated agreement better than 2% for more than 800 physical calibrations that were tested. The minimum tested fields were 1.7cm effective diameter for 149MeV and 2.4cm effective diameter for 186MeV. The inclusion of Clarkson integration into the MU model enabled accurate prediction of the dose/MU for very small and irregularly shaped treatment fields. Conclusion: The MU model accurately predicted the dose/MU for a wide range of treatment fields used in the clinic. The original MU model has been refined using factors that were problematic to accurately predict the dose/MU: the BGF, NEF, and MWDFSF. The MU model has minimized the time for determining dose/MU and reduced the time needed for physical calibrations, improving the efficiency of the patient treatment process.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Columbia River Surface Water and Pore Water Unaligned FTICR-MS Data Associated with “Using Community Assembly Metrics from Metacommunity Ecology to Understand Environmental Metabolomes”

Surface water and pore water samples were collected at five sites along a shoreline transect of the Columbia River, southeastern WA, USA in 2017. This dataset is comprised of (1) high resolution characterization of dissolved organic matter via 12 Tesla Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FTICR-MS) analyzed through the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL; https://www.pnnl.gov/environmental-molecular-sciences-laboratory) and (2) a metadata csv file. The FTICR-MS files are .xml, and the data package includes instructions for using Formularity (https://omics.pnl.gov/software/formularity) and an R script to process the data based on the user’s specific needs. The data are associated with the publication “Using community assembly metrics from metacommunity ecology to understand environmental metabolomes” that will be published in Nature Communications (Danczak et al.). The study aimed to investigate gaps in understanding the spatiotemporal organization of environmental metabolomes to improve the ability to predict ecosystem function. Associated sequencing data will be published via NCBI. The access information for NCBI and the publication DOI will be added to this abstract when they are available. Please use the data package’s DOI to cite the data package. We ask that you acknowledge the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Biological and Environmental Research (BER) Subsurface Biogeochemical Research (SBR) program when using the data. All data are free to be used for any purpose, such as for manuscripts, presentations, and grant proposals. There is no obligation to include data package authors as co-authors.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

FTICR, NPOC, TN, and Moisture of Variably Inundated Sediment across 48 North American Rivers

This dataset supports a broader study examining drivers of organic matter chemistry in variably inundated hyporheic zone sediments and further linking that chemistry to biogeochemical rates. The dataset provides physical and chemical sediment data collected from 48 rivers across North America. There are related data that will be published, including surficial sediment temperature time series that can be used to infer the dynamics of inundation prior to the collection of sediments. This dataset is comprised of two folders: (1) ECA2_Sediment and (2) ECA2_SitePhotos. The ECA2_Sediment folder contains: (1) file-level metadata; (2) data dictionary; (3) field metadata; (4) non-purgeable organic carbon (NPOC), total nitrogen (TN), and sediment moisture; (5) sediment sampling protocol, (6) readme, and (7) folder of high resolution characterization of organic matter from sediment extracts via 12 Tesla Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FTICR-MS) through the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL; https://www.pnnl.gov/environmental-molecular-sciences-laboratory). The FTICR-MS files are .xml, and the data package includes instructions for using Formularity (https://omics.pnl.gov/software/formularity) and an R script to process the data based on the user's specific needs. All other files are .csv, .txt, or .pdf. The ECA2_SitePhotos folder contains a readme and site photographs taken in the field. All files are .txt or .jpg.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Data from "A Bayesian Record Linkage Approach to Applications in Tree Demography Using Overlapping LiDAR Scans"

Processed LiDAR data and environmental covariates from 2015 and 2019 LiDAR scans in the Vicinity of Snodgrass Mountain (Western Colorado, USA), in a geographic subset used in primary analysis for the research paper.This package contains LiDAR-derived canopy height maps for 2015 and 2019, crown polygons derived from the height maps using a segmentation algorithm, and environmental covariates supporting the model of forest growth. Source datasets include August 2015 and August 2019 discrete-return LiDAR point clouds collected by Quantum Geospatial for terrain mapping purposes on behalf of the Colorado Hazard Mapping Program and the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Both datasets adhere to the USGS QL2 quality standard. The point cloud data were processed using the R package lidR to generate a canopy height model representing maximum vegetation height above the ground surface, using a pit-free algorithm.This dataset was compiled to assess how spatial patterns of tree growth in montane and subalpine forests are influenced by water and energy availability. Understanding these growth patterns can provide insight into forest dynamics in the Southern Rocky Mountains under changing climatic conditions.This dataset contains .tif, .csv, and .txt files. This dataset additionally includes a file-level metadata (flmd.csv) file that lists each file contained in the dataset with associated metadata; and a data dictionary (dd.csv) file that contains column/row headers used throughout the files along with a definition, units, and data type.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Analytical Chemistry Core Capability Assessment (Preliminary Report)

The concept of 'core capability' can be nebulous one. Even at a fairly specific level, where core capability equals maintaining essential services, it is highly dependent upon the perspective of the requestor. Samples are submitted to analytical services because the requesters do not have the capability to conduct adequate analyses themselves. Some requests are for general chemical information in support of R and D, process control, or process improvement. Many analyses, however, are part of a product certification package and must comply with higher-level customer quality assurance requirements. So which services are essential to that customer - just those for product certification? Does the customer also (indirectly) need services that support process control and improvement? And what is the timeframe? Capability is often expressed in terms of the currently utilized procedures, and most programmatic customers can only plan a few years out, at best. But should core capability consider the long term where new technologies, aging facilities, and personnel replacements must be considered? These questions, and a multitude of others, explain why attempts to gain long-term consensus on the definition of core capability have consistently failed. This preliminary report will not try to define core capability for any specific program or set of programs. Instead, it will try to address the underlying concerns that drive the desire to determine core capability. Essentially, programmatic customers want to be able to call upon analytical chemistry services to provide all the assays they need, and they don't want to pay for analytical chemistry services they don't currently use (or use infrequently). This report will focus on explaining how the current analytical capabilities and methods evolved to serve a variety of needs with a focus on why some analytes have multiple analytical techniques, and what determines the infrastructure for these analyses. This information will be useful in defining a roadmap for what future capability needs to look like.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗

Sulfur Hexafluoride Treatment of Used Nuclear Fuel to Enhance Separations

Reactive Gas Recycling (RGR) technology development has been initiated at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), with a stretch-goal to develop a fully dry recycling technology for Used Nuclear Fuel (UNF). This approach is attractive due to the potential of targeted gas-phase treatment steps to reduce footprint and secondary waste volumes associated with separations relying primarily on traditional technologies, so long as the fluorinators employed in the reaction are recycled for use in the reactors or are optimized for conversion of fluorinator reactant. The developed fluorination via SF 6 , similar to the case for other fluorinators such as NF 3 , can be used to address multiple fuel forms and downstream cycles including continued processing for LWR via fluorination or incorporation into a aqueous process (e.g. modified FLUOREX) or for subsequent pyro treatment to be used in advanced gas reactor designs such metal- or gas-cooled reactors. This report details the most recent experimental results on the reaction of SF 6 with various fission product surrogate materials in the form of oxides and metals, including uranium oxides using a high-temperature DTA apparatus capable of temperatures in excess of 1000°C. The experimental results indicate that the majority of the fission products form stable solid fluorides and sulfides, while a subset of the fission products form volatile fluorides such as molybdenum fluoride and niobium fluoride, as predicted thermodynamically. Additional kinetic analysis has been performed on additional fission products. A key result is the verification that SF 6 requires high temperatures for direct fluorination and subsequent volatilization of uranium oxides to UF 6 , and thus is well positioned as a head-end treatment for other separations technologies, such as the volatilization of uranium oxide by NF 3 as reported by colleagues at PNNL, advanced pyrochemical separations or traditional full recycle approaches. Based on current results of the research at SRNL on SF 6 fluoride volatility for UNF separations, SF 6 treatment renders all anticipated volatile fluorides studied to be volatile, and all non-volatile fluorides studied to be non-volatile, with the notable exception of uranium oxides. This offers an excellent opportunity to use this as a head-end separations treatment process because: 1. SF 6 can be used to remove volatile fluorides from a UNF matrix while leaving behind uranium oxides. Therefore an agent such as NF 3 should be able to very cleanly separate a pure UF 6 stream, leaving compounds in the bottoms such as PuF 4 , SrF 2 and CsF after the UNF matrix has been pre-treated with SF 6 . 2. Due to the fact that the uranium oxide is not separated in the volatilization step upon direct contact with SF 6 at moderately high temperatures (≤ 1000°C), this fluoride approach may be well-suited for head-end processing for Gen IV reactor designs where the LWR is treated as a fuel stock, and it is not desired to separate the uranium from plutonium, but it is desired to separate many of the volatile fission products. 3. It is likely that removal of the volatile fission products from the uranium oxide should simplify both traditional and next generation pyroprocessing techniques. 4. SF 6 treatment to remove volatile fission products, with or without treatment with additional fluorinators, could be used to simplify the separations of traditional aqueous processes in similar fashion to the FLUOREX process. Further research should be conducted to determine the separations efficiency of a combined SF 6 /NF 3 separations approach which could be used as a stand-alone separations technology or a head-end process.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Airborne LiDAR to Improve Canopy Fuels Mapping for Wildfire Modeling

Increasing conflict between wildfire and the built environment has increased the need for more up-to-date and finer resolution canopy fuels data to improve wildfire modeling and associated risk forecasts. The US Forest Service and US Department of the Interior’s LANDFIRE product, which provides 30-m resolution canopy fuels data for the entire US, is one of the most widely used sources of fuels data. However, the last complete mapping effort for LANDFIRE is based on 2016 conditions, and subsequent updates reflect disturbances 1-2 years behind the release year. Airborne systems equipped with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors can be deployed to actively sense canopy structure and estimate canopy fuels data (cover, height, base height, bulk density) at finer resolutions. Canopy base height (CBH) and canopy bulk density (CBD) are difficult to measure both in the field and in LiDAR point clouds. Still, they are important for accurately modeling crown fires, which are often intense and difficult to contain. Additionally, point cloud datasets are large, and calculations require efficient utilization of computational resources. To address these challenges, we are working on an approach that uses openly available National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) airborne LiDAR data, with calculations processed in the R programming language and parallelized through the lidR package. CBH and CBD are often derived from tree height, diameter at breast height, and species-specific allometries using the Fire and Fuels Extension of the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FFE-FVS). We aim to test if airborne LiDAR can estimate CBH and CBD without the use of empirical equations. Reliable estimates of canopy fuels data directly from airborne LiDAR could streamline quick, fine-resolution updates for use in wildfire behavior models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

gcamdata: An R Package for Preparation, Synthesis, and Tracking of Input Data for the GCAM Integrated Human-Earth Systems Model

The increasing data requirements of complex models demand robust, reproducible, and transparent systems to track and prepare models’ inputs. Here we describe version 1.0 of the gcamdata R package that processes raw inputs to produce the hundreds of XML files needed by the GCAM integrated human-earth systems model. It features extensive functional and unit testing, data tracing and visualization, and enforces metadata, documentation, and flexibility in its component data-processing subunits. Although this package is specific to GCAM, many of its structural pieces and approaches should be broadly applicable to, and reusable by, other complex model/data systems aiming to improve transparency, reproducibility, and flexibility.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Nasa pert time ii

Compiler language for NASA PERT Time II COMPUTER processing

PERT PROJECT↗

Thin plastic sheet eliminates need for expensive plating

Gasket of a commercially available plastic material is interposed between the mating surfaces in axial joints where a hard and a soft metal are in intimate contact under stress conditions. This eliminates the fretting problem and is quicker and less expensive than the plating process.

Stremel, R. L.↗