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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 109 records · Page 6

Magnetic properties of CeM{sub 1.5}M’{sub 0.5}Ge{sub 4}O{sub 12} (M = Mn, Co; M’ = Ni, Cu)

Highlights: • marked composition dependence of magnetic structure. • metamagnetic transition in CeCo{sub 1.5}Cu{sub 0.5}Ge{sub 4}O{sub 12}. • neutron diffraction in an applied field. - Abstract: A study of the solid solutions CeM{sub 2-x}M’{sub x}Ge{sub 4}O{sub 12} (M = Mn, Co; M’ = Ni, Cu) by X-ray diffraction and magnetometry is described. For M = Co the introduction of Ni and Cu was possible for x ≤ 0.5; for M = Mn attempts to introduce Cu were unsuccessful but CeMn{sub 1.5}Ni{sub 0.5}GeO{sub 4} was obtained as a single phase. These compositions crystallise in the space group P4/nbm with a ~9.76, c ~4.85 Å. They all order antiferromagnetically with T{sub N}1.5 Ni{sub 1.5}Ge{sub 4}O{sub 12} and CeCo{sub 1.5}Cu{sub 0.5}Ge{sub 4}O{sub 12} were shown by neutron diffraction to be the same as those adopted by CeMn{sub 2}Ge{sub 4}O{sub 12} and CeCo{sub 2}Ge{sub 4}O{sub 12}, respectively. The in-field metamagnetic transition of the latter to a weakly ferromagnetic phase was shown to persist in the Cu-doped composition. The available data suggest that the anisotropy associated with the Co{sup 2+} cation plays a dominant role in determining the magnetic behaviour of these compounds.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Scrambled and fried: Cigarette smoke exposure causes antral follicle destruction and oocyte dysfunction through oxidative stress

Cigarette smoke is a reproductive hazard associated with pre-mature reproductive senescence and reduced clinical pregnancy rates in female smokers. Despite an increased awareness of the adverse effects of cigarette smoke exposure on systemic health, many women remain unaware of the adverse effects of cigarette smoke on female fertility. This issue is compounded by our limited understanding of the molecular mechanisms behind cigarette smoke induced infertility. In this study we used a direct nasal exposure mouse model of cigarette smoke-induced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to characterise mechanisms of cigarette-smoke induced ovotoxicity. Cigarette smoke exposure caused increased levels of primordial follicle depletion, antral follicle oocyte apoptosis and oxidative stress in exposed ovaries, resulting in fewer follicles available for ovulation. Evidence of oxidative stress also persisted in ovulated oocytes which escaped destruction, with increased levels of mitochondrial ROS and lipid peroxidation resulting in reduced fertilisation potential. Microarray analysis of ovarian tissue correlated these insults with a complex mechanism of ovotoxicity involving genes associated with detoxification, inflammation, follicular activation, immune cell mediated apoptosis and membrane organisation. In particular, the phase I detoxifying enzyme cyp2e1 was found to be significantly up-regulated in developing oocytes; an enzyme known to cause molecular bioactivation resulting in oxidative stress. Our results provide a preliminary model of cigarette smoke induced sub-fertility through cyp2e1 bioactivation and oxidative stress, resulting in developing follicle depletion and oocyte dysfunction. - Highlights: • Cigarette smoke exposure targets developing follicle oocytes. • The antral follicle oocyte is a primary site of ovarian cigarette smoke metabolism. • Cyp2e1 is a major enzyme involved in ameliorating smoke-induced ovotoxicity. • Cigarette smoke causes oocyte mitochondrial ROS, impairing fertilisation.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

A regional nuclear conflict would compromise global food security

A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could ignite fires large enough to emit more than 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere. Climate model simulations have shown severe resulting climate perturbations with declines in global mean temperature by 1.8 °C and precipitation by 8%, for at least 5 y. Here we evaluate impacts for the global food system. Six harmonized state-of-the-art crop models show that global caloric production from maize, wheat, rice, and soybean falls by 13 (±1)%, 11 (±8)%, 3 (±5)%, and 17 (±2)% over 5 y. Total single-year losses of 12 (±4)% quadruple the largest observed historical anomaly and exceed impacts caused by historic droughts and volcanic eruptions. Colder temperatures drive losses more than changes in precipitation and solar radiation, leading to strongest impacts in temperate regions poleward of 30°N, including the United States, Europe, and China for 10 to 15 y. Integrated food trade network analyses show that domestic reserves and global trade can largely buffer the production anomaly in the first year. Persistent multiyear losses, however, would constrain domestic food availability and propagate to the Global South, especially to food-insecure countries. By year 5, maize and wheat availability would decrease by 13% globally and by more than 20% in 71 countries with a cumulative population of 1.3 billion people. In view of increasing instability in South Asia, this study shows that a regional conflict using <1% of the worldwide nuclear arsenal could have adverse consequences for global food security unmatched in modern history.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

UNITY: Unified Memory and File Space. In: ROSS '17 Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for Supercomputers ROSS 2017, Article No. 6

This paper describes the vision for UNITY, a new high-performance computing focused data storage abstraction that places the entire memory hierarchy, including both traditionally separated memory-and file-based data storage, into one storage continuum. Through the use of a novel API and a set of services centered around a smart runtime system, UNITY is able to provide a number of valuable and interesting benefits. The unified storage space provides a scalable and resilient data environment that dynamically manages the mapping of data onto available resources based on multiple factors, including desired persistence and energy budget considerations. By eliminating the need for high-performance computing domain scientists to develop architecture-dependent optimizations for rapidly evolving data storage technologies, UNITY addresses both ease-of-use and performance.

Jones, Terry↗

A Regional Nuclear Conflict Would Compromise Global Food Security

A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could ignite fires large enough to emit more than 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere. Climate model simulations have shown severe resulting climate perturbations with declines in global mean temperature by 1.8 ◦C and precipitation by 8%, for at least 5 y. Here we evaluate impacts for the global food system. Six harmonized state-of-the-art crop models show that global caloric production from maize, wheat, rice, and soybean falls by 13 (±1)%, 11 (±8)%, 3 (±5)%, and 17 (±2)% over 5 y. Total single-year losses of 12 (±4)% quadruple the largest observed historical anomaly and exceed impacts caused by historic droughts and volcanic eruptions. Colder temperatures drive losses more than changes in precipitation and solar radiation, leading to strongest impacts in temperate regions poleward of 30◦N, including the United States, Europe, and China for 10 to 15 y. Integrated food trade network analyses show that domestic reserves and global trade can largely buffer the production anomaly in the first year. Persistent multiyear losses, however, would constrain domestic food availability and propagate to the Global South, especially to food-insecure countries. By year 5, maize and wheat availability would decrease by 13% globally and by more than 20% in 71 countries with a cumulative population of 1.3 billion people. In view of increasing instability in South Asia, this study shows that a regional conflict using <1% of the worldwide nuclear arsenal could have adverse consequences for global food security unmatched in modern history.

Jaegermeyr, Jonas↗

UNITY: Unified Memory and File Space

This paper describes the vision for UNITY, a new high-performance computing focused data storage abstraction that places the entire memory hierarchy, including both traditionally separated memoryand file-based data storage, into one storage continuum. Through the use of a novel API and a set of services centered around a smart runtime system, UNITY is able to provide a number of valuable and interesting benefits. The unified storage space provides a scalable and resilient data environment that dynamically manages the mapping of data onto available resources based on multiple factors, including desired persistence and energy budget considerations. By eliminating the need for high-performance computing domain scientists to develop architecture-dependent optimizations for rapidly evolving data storage technologies, UNITY addresses both ease-of-use and performance.

Otstott, Douglas↗

Explaining persistent incomplete mixing in multicomponent reactive transport with Eulerian stochastic model

We present an Eulerian stochastic advection–diffusion–reaction (SADR) model and use it to explain incomplete mixing typically observed in transport experiments with bimolecular reactions. Unlike traditional advection– dispersion–reaction (ADR) models, the SADR model describes mechanical and diffusive mixing as two separate processes. In the SADR model, mechanical mixing is driven by random advective velocity whose variance is given by the coefficient of mechanical dispersion. The diffusive mixing is modeled as a Fickian diffusion process with the effective diffusion coefficient. We demonstrate that the sum of the two coefficients is equal to the dispersion coefficient, but only the effective diffusion coefficient contributes to the mixing-controlled reactions. We use experimental results of Gramling et al. * * to show that for transport and bimolecular reactions in porous media, the SADR model is significantly more accurate than the ADR model, which overestimates the concentration of the reaction product by as much as 60%. We also show that the SADR model predicts an experimentally observed bell- shaped spatial distribution of the reactive product concentration, while the ADR model results in a concentration distribution with an unphysical kink.

Bimolecular reactions, incomplete mixing, Stochast↗

Systolic Sac Pressure Index for the Prediction of Persistent Type II Endoleak for 12 Months After Endovascular Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair

PurposeTo assess the relationship between the systolic sac pressure index (SPI) and the presence of endoleaks 12 months after endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair (EVAR).Materials and MethodsWe performed a single-center prospective trial of consecutively treated patients. SPI (calculated as systolic sac pressure/systolic aortic pressure) was measured by catheterization immediately after EVAR. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography was scheduled 12 months after EVAR to detect possible endoleaks.ResultsData were available for 34 patients who underwent EVAR for an AAA. Persisting type II endoleak was found in 8 patients (endoleak-positive group) but not in the other 26 patients (endoleak-negative group). The mean ± standard deviation SPI was significantly greater in the endoleak-positive group than in the endoleak-negative group (0.692 ± 0.048 vs. 0.505 ± 0.081, respectively; P = .001). Receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis revealed that an SPI of 0.638 was the optimum cutoff value for predicting a persistent endoleak at 12 months with high accuracy (0.971; 33/34), sensitivity (1.00), and specificity (0.962) values. The mean change in AAA diameter was −4.28 ± 5.03 mm and 2.22 ± 4.54 mm in patients with SPI of <0.638 or ≥0.638, respectively (P = .002).ConclusionPatients with an SPI of ≥0.638 immediately after EVAR were more likely to have a persistent type II endoleak at 12 months with an accuracy of 0.971, and showed increases in aneurysm sac diameter compared with patients with an SPI of <0.638.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

Metronomic Adjuvant Chemotherapy Improves Treatment Outcome in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Patients With Postradiation Persistently Detectable Plasma Epstein-Barr Virus Deoxyribonucleic Acid

Purpose: To investigate the effects of adjuvant chemotherapy in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients with persistently detectable plasma Epstein-Barr virus DNA (pEBV DNA) after curative radiation therapy plus induction/concurrent chemotherapy. Methods and Materials: The study population consisted of 625 NPC patients with available pEBV DNA levels before and after treatment. Eighty-five patients with persistently detectable pEBV DNA after 1 week of completing radiation therapy were eligible for this retrospective study. Of the 85 patients, 33 were administered adjuvant chemotherapy consisting of oral tegafur-uracil (2 capsules twice daily) for 12 months with (n=4) or without (n=29) preceding intravenous chemotherapy of mitomycin-C, epirubicin, and cisplatin. The remaining 52 patients who did not receive adjuvant chemotherapy served as the control group. Results: Baseline patient characteristics at diagnosis (age, sex, pathologic type, performance status, T classification, N classification, and overall stage), as well as previous treatment modality, were comparable in both arms. After a median follow-up of 70 months for surviving patients, 45.5% (15 of 33 patients) with adjuvant chemotherapy and 71.2% (37 of 52 patients) without adjuvant chemotherapy experienced tumor relapses (P=.0323). There were a significant reduction in distant failure (P=.0034) but not in local or regional recurrence. The 5-year overall survival rate was 71.6% for patients with adjuvant chemotherapy and 28.7% for patients without adjuvant chemotherapy (hazard ratio 0.27; 95% confidence interval 0.17-0.55; P<.0001). Conclusions: Our retrospective data showed that adjuvant chemotherapy can reduce distant failure and improve overall survival in NPC patients with persistently detectable pEBV DNA after curative radiation therapy plus induction/concurrent chemotherapy.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

Microbial models with minimal mineral protection can explain long-term soil organic carbon persistence

Soil organic carbon (SOC) models currently in widespread use omit known microbial processes, and assume the existence of a SOC pool whose intrinsic properties confer persistence for centuries to millennia, despite evidence from priming and aggregate turnover that cast doubt on the existence of SOC with profound intrinsic stability. Here we show that by including microbial interactions in a SOC model, persistence can be explained as a feedback between substrate availability, mineral protection and microbial population size, without invoking an unproven pool that is intrinsically stable for centuries. The microbial SOC model based on this concept reproduces long-term data (r 2 = 0.92; n = 90), global SOC distribution (rmse = 4.7 +/– 0.6 kg C m –2 ), and total global SOC in the top 0.3 m (822 Pg C) accurately. SOC dynamics based on a microbial feedback without stable pools are thus consistent with global SOC distribution. This has important implications for carbon management, suggesting that relatively fast cycling, rather than recalcitrant, SOC must form the primary target of efforts to build SOC stocks.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Sharp shortward-shifted features in the spectra of O subdwarfs

Preliminary inspection of archival high-dispersion ultraviolet spectra obtained by the International Ultraviolet Explorer reveal sharp shortward-shifted features in the spectra of O subdwarfs. In three examples presented here, BD + 75.325 deg, HD 128220 B, and BD + 28.4211 deg, stable, multiple, discrete shortward-shifted components of the N V, C IV, and Si IV resonance doublets are seen. The available data suggest that some of these features are persistent, being relatively stable in velocity and intensity over at least 9 months. It is tentatively suggested that the mechanism, or mechanisms, producing these discrete features operates universally in hot stars, from luminous O and B stars down through the O subdwarfs to include the hot white dwarfs. If true, this has important ramifications for current knowledge of mass loss in hot stars.

Bruhweiler, F. C.↗

Seismic Forecasting of Solar Activity

We have developed and improved helioseismic imaging techniques of the far-side of the Sun as part of a synoptic monitor of solar activity. In collaboration with the MIDI team at Stanford University we are routinely applying our analysis to images within 24 hours of their acquisition by SOHO. For the first time, real-time seismic maps of large active regions on the Sun's far surface are publicly available. The synoptic images show examples of active regions persisting for one or more solar rotations, as well as those initially detected forming on the solar far side. Until recently, imaging the far surface of the Sun has been essentially blind to active regions more than about 50 degrees from the antipode of disk center. In a paper recently accepted for publication, we have demonstrated how acoustic travel-time perturbations may be mapped over the entire hemisphere of the Sun facing away from the Earth, including the polar regions. In addition to offering significant improvements to ongoing space weather forecasting efforts, the procedure offers the possibility of local seismic monitoring of both the temporal and spatial variations in the acoustic properties of the Sun over the entire far surface.

Braun, Douglas↗