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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 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Using 3D Measurements from MRI to Improve VVUQ

Magnetic resonance velocimetry (MRV) is a diagnostic that can measure 3D, three-component turbulent velocity fields in arbitrarily complex flow configurations. The approach uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is a system commonly available in radiology departments or medical research centers. MRV acquires signal from hydrogen protons in water channel flows. Despite the obvious utility of the measurements for investigating a variety of flows, comparisons with computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations largely retain traditional metrics, comparing velocity profiles and planes at discrete regions within the flow rather than using the 3D nature of the measured field. In this effort, MRV was conducted in a simple water channel with six spanwise-centered periodic obstacles roughly shaped as cubes. At a fully turbulent Reynolds number of 15,000, the channel includes two flows: a main streamwise flow and, in the wake of the second obstacle, an injected flow oriented perpendicular to the streamwise flow. The flow geometry includes partial obstacles on the side walls and is inherently 3D because of the interaction of the two streams and the wake features, making the flow challenging to completely measure with traditional optical techniques. Aside from line profiles and planar comparisons, two 3D metrics are used to compare the data with a steady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulation result. A brief discussion about the comparison is provided, including comments about uncertainty.

Benson, Mike [ORNL] (ORCID:000000023210116X)↗
DOE OSTI2021

Proton-induced reactions on Fe, Cu, and Ti from threshold to 55 MeV

Theoretical models often differ significantly from measured data in their predictions of the magnitude of nuclear reactions that produce radionuclides for medical, research, and national security applications. In this paper, we compare a priori predictions from several state-of-the-art reaction modeling packages (CoH, EMPIRE, TALYS, and ALICE) to cross sections measured using the stacked-target activation method. The experiment was performed using the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 88-Inch Cyclotron with beams of 25 and 55 MeV protons on a stack of iron, copper, and titanium foils. Thirty-four excitation functions were measured from 4–55 MeV, including the first measurement of the independent cross sections for nat Fe(p,x) 49,51 Cr, 51,52m,52g,56 Mn, and 58m,58g Co. All of the models, using default input parameters to assess their predictive capabilities, failed to reproduce the isomer-to-ground state ratio for reaction channels at compound and pre-compound energies, suggesting issues in modeling the deposition or distribution of angular momentum in these residual nuclei.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The 6-minute walk test predicts mortality in a pulmonary nontuberculous mycobacteria-predominant bronchiectasis cohort

Background: Bronchiectasis is a chronic lung condition frequently associated with nontuberculous mycobacteria pulmonary (NTM) disease. Persons with these conditions are at increased risk of mortality. Patient reported outcome (PRO) instruments and the 6-minute walk test (6MWT) have been shown to predict mortality for several lung conditions, but these measures have not been fully evaluated for bronchiectasis and NTM. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study among adult patients enrolled in a natural history study of bronchiectasis at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Electronic medical records were queried for demographic, clinical, microbiologic, radiographic, and PRO instrument data: St. George’s Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ), Medical Research Council Dyspnea Scale, and the Pulmonary Symptom Severity Score (PSSS). The study baseline date was defined as the patient’s first visit after January 1st, 2015 with a SGRQ or 6MWT completed. Follow-up was defined as the interval between the study baseline visit and date of death or December 31st, 2019. Sex-stratified Cox proportional-hazards regression was conducted to identify predictors of mortality. Separate models were run for each PRO and 6MWT measure, controlling for age, body mass index (BMI), fibrocavitary disease status, and M. abscessus infection. Results: In multivariable Cox proportional-hazards regression models, the PSSS-severity (aHR 1.29, 95% CI 1.04–1.59), the 6MWT total distance walked (aHR 0.938, 95% CI 0.896–0.981) and distance saturation product (aHR 0.930, 95% CI 0.887–0.974) independently predicted mortality. In addition, BMI was significantly predictive of mortality in all models. Conclusions: The 6MWT and a PRO instrument capturing symptom severity are independently predictive of mortality in our cohort of bronchiectasis patients.

6-minute walk test↗
DOE OSTI2020

Production of Cf-252 and other transplutonium isotopes at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

In 1957 Glenn T. Seaborg conceived and advocated for the construction of the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and the Transuranium Processing Plant (since then renamed the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center, or REDC) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. There, heavily shielded hot cells, glove boxes, and laboratories allow recovery of transuranium elements produced in substantial quantities. Seaborg’s vision of HFIR and REDC producing milligram quantities of berkelium, californium, and einsteinium has been fulfilled beginning in 1966 through May 2019 with 78 production campaigns yielding a cumulative totals of 1.2 g of 249 Bk, 10.2 g of 252 Cf, 39 mg of 253 Es, and 15 pg of 257 Fm. Notably, 252 Cf is a neutron source used in many industrial applications including oil exploration; process control systems for the cement industry, coal analysis, and power production; sources to start nuclear reactors and perform nondestructive materials analyses; homeland security and national defense detection devices; and medical research. Isotopes made available through transplutonium production at HFIR/REDC have enabled scientists to study the nuclear properties and reactions, chemical properties, optical properties, and solid-state properties of transplutonium elements. Long-lived isotopes have served as targets in heavy ion accelerators to produce heavier elements leading to the discovery of 104 Rf, 105 Db, 106 Sg, 113 Nh, 114 Fl, 115 Mc, 116 Lv, 117 Ts, and 118 Og. This paper reviews the evolution of the processing flowsheets to produce, separate, and purify transplutonium isotopes, which have evolved over 50 years of operation at HFIR and REDC, and summarizes directions of future work to improve the efficiency of the production operations.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗
DOE OSTI2024

Development of a compact electron cyclotron resonance accelerator for industrial and security applications

We describe the development of a novel accelerator, an electron Cyclotron Resonance Accelerator (eCRA) [1], to produce high power electron beams and X-ray beams for medical, research, sterilization, and national security applications. The several attractive features of eCRA include: a compact robust room-temperature single-cell RF cavity as the accelerating structure; continuous ampere-level high current output; and production of a self-rastering electron beam, thus eliminating the need for a separate beam scanner. Progress on the eCRA development, including numerical simulation, engineering design, and on-going experimental efforts will be reported here.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2022

DeepCare: Improving Patient Care using Deep Learning on Electronic Health Records

Coordinating patient care using electronic health records (EHR) data presents an exciting but formidable opportunity in data extraction, analysis and modeling. Traditional methods use a manual feature driven approach to model patients with age, family history and symptoms to predict disease outcomes. We propose a novel approach to model patients based on their streaming electronic health records data combined with information from medical knowledge bases, which has been gained over years of medical research. Using a combination of representation learning and long short term memory (LSTM) networks we plan to model patient evolution over time, leading to more accurate and individualized predictive models for patient’s diseases. Our approach will be transformative in providing critical decision support for patient care, enabling accurate understanding and evolution of diseases in patients.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Multi-omics Characterization of the Host Response to COVID-19

This project is a multi-disciplinary collaboration between investigators at PNNL with expertise in mass spectrometry (MS)-based omics technology development, omics measurement methods development and application, statistics, machine learning and integration of disparate datasets for a systems-level understanding, and expertise in pathogenic coronaviruses, and investigators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) with expertise in pathogenic respiratory viruses (e.g. influenza). The goal of this project is to obtain a comprehensive picture of the human host factors critical for the outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We will generate broad untargeted multi-omics profiles using both state-of-the-art and novel instrumentation and approaches to enable the identification of the molecular mechanisms and host response pathways that impact human COVID-19 outcomes. We anticipate these results will lead to the generation of biomarker panels that are predictive of disease outcomes and mechanistic hypotheses that can be further interrogated in future studies and will provide the basis for vaccine or therapeutic development. To do so, we are obtaining and analyzing blood samples from COVID-19 patients with a range of disease outcomes that were treated at the Center Hospital of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine in Tokyo, Japan and other collaborating hospitals in our network. Specifically, this project will fund proteomics and metabolomics analyses of clinical COVID samples, machine learning-based integration of the data, and pathway-based interpretation of the data. This project was funded in June 2020. In the time span of June to September 2020, the project team developed an analytically and statistically robust analysis plan and made various preparations to facilitate sample receipt from our UW-Madison collaborators. This included blocking and randomization of sample prep orders, ordering of reagents and reference materials, and shipping of materials needed for preparation of the samples under BSL3 conditions to our collaborators at UW-Madison. As of FY21, this project has been picked up via a sponsor, the Naval Medical Research Center, which will cover the remainder of the proposed scope of work.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Geant4 Visualization

Geant4 offers versatile visualization tools to study detector geometry, particle trajectories, and hits. These tools support both interactive and batch modes (e.g., vis.mac). With a unified interface, Geant4 integrates various graphics systems such as G4VisExecutive, OpenGL, Qt, HepRApp, DAWN, VTK, and ToolsSG. Advanced examples, including the ICRP145 Human Phantoms and the gMocren tool, highlight its applications in medical research and simulation and as well as radiation protection and shielding studies. These features make Geant4 a robust framework for exploring particle interactions and supporting domain-specific use cases.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2021

A Meta-Analysis of the Protein Components in Rattlesnake Venom

The specificity and potency of venom components give them a unique advantage in developing various pharmaceutical drugs. Though venom is a cocktail of proteins, rarely are the synergy and association between various venom components studied. Understanding the relationship between various components of venom is critical in medical research. Using meta-analysis, we observed underlying patterns and associations in the appearance of the toxin families. For Crotalus, Dis has the most associations with the following toxins: PDE; BPP; CRL; CRiSP; LAAO; SVMP P-I and LAAO; SVMP P-III and LAAO. In Sistrurus venom, CTL and NGF have the most associations. These associations can predict the presence of proteins in novel venom and understand synergies between venom components for enhanced bioactivity. Using this approach, the need to revisit the classification of proteins as major components or minor components is highlighted. The revised classification of venom components is based on ubiquity, bioactivity, the number of associations, and synergies. The revised classification can be expected to trigger increased research on venom components, such as NGF, which have high biomedical significance. Using hierarchical clustering, we observed that the genera’s venom compositions were similar, based on functional characteristics rather than phylogenetic relationships.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1962

DISCUSSION OF PROJECT EXCELSIOR

There were two basic objectives of Project Excelsior, which was conducted by the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. The first concerned the psychophysiological aspects of escape from high altitude and the second concerned the protection of a man in a space environment.

Life support system↗
NASA NTRS1972

An integrated medical system for long-duration space missions.

A description is given of the Integrated Medical and Behavioral Laboratory Measurement System (IMBLMS) being developed for onboard medical support of the crew and for medical research during space missions. The system is suitable for use during early extended space flights and for accommodating measurement and diagnostic apparatus as well as treatment and surgical facilities developed for later missions.

Pool, S. L.↗
NASA NTRS1974

TRIIG - Time-lapse reproduction of images through interactive graphics

Description of the hardware and software implementing the system of time-lapse reproduction of images through interactive graphics (TRIIG). The system produces a quality hard copy of processed images in a fast and inexpensive manner. This capability allows for optimal development of processing software through the rapid viewing of many image frames in an interactive mode. Three critical optical devices are used to reproduce an image: an Optronics photo reader/writer, the Adage Graphics Terminal, and Polaroid Type 57 high speed film. Typical sources of digitized images are observation satellites, such as ERTS or Mariner, computer coupled electron microscopes for high-magnification studies, or computer coupled X-ray devices for medical research.

Buckner, J. D.↗
NASA NTRS1978

Modeling the effects of high-G stress on pilots in a tracking task

Air-to-air tracking experiments were conducted at the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories using both fixed and moving base dynamic environment simulators. The obtained data, which includes longitudinal error of a simulated air-to-air tracking task as well as other auxiliary variables, was analyzed using an ensemble averaging method. In conjunction with these experiments, the optimal control model is applied to model a human operator under high-G stress.

Korn, J.↗