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12. Light Curves from a Search for Variable Stars in the Globular Cluster M4 with K2
- Abstract:
- The data are 4554 light curves derived from images taken of the globular cluster M4 by the Kepler space telescope during the K2 portion of its mission, specifically during Campaign 2 of that mission, which occurred in 2014. A total of 3856 images were taken over approximately three months at a cadence of approximately half an hour. The purpose of these observations was to find stars and other objects that vary in brightness over time --- variable stars. Also included is a table with associated information for each of the 4554 objects and their light curves.
- Type:
- collection and Dataset
13. Methane emissions from oil and gas platforms in the North Sea.
- Author(s):
- Riddick, Stuart; Mauzerall, Denise
- Abstract:
- Since 1850 the concentration of atmospheric methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas, has more than doubled. Recent studies suggest that emission inventories may be missing sources and underestimating emissions. To investigate whether offshore oil and gas platforms leak CH4 during normal operation, we measured CH4 mole fractions around eight oil and gas production platforms in the North Sea which were neither flaring gas nor off-loading oil. We use the measurements from summer 2017, along with meteorological data, in a Gaussian plume model to estimate CH4 emissions from each platform. We find CH4 mole fractions of between 11 and 370 ppb above background concentrations downwind of the platforms measured, corresponding to a median CH4 emission of 6.8 g CH4 s-1 for each platform, with a range of 2.9 to 22.3 g CH4 s-1. When matched to production records, during our measurements individual platforms lost between 0.04% and 1.4% of gas produced with a median loss of 0.23%. When the measured platforms are considered collectively, (i.e. the sum of platforms’ emission fluxes weighted by the sum of the platforms’ production), we estimate the CH4 loss to be 0.19% of gas production. These estimates are substantially higher than the emissions most recently reported to the National Atmospheric Emission Inventory (NAEI) for total CH4 loss from United Kingdom platforms in the North Sea. The NAEI reports CH4 losses from the offshore oil and gas platforms we measured to be 0.13% of gas production, with most of their emissions coming from gas flaring and offshore oil loading, neither of which were taking place at the time of our measurements. All oil and gas platforms we observed were found to leak CH4 during normal operation and much of this leakage has not been included in UK emission inventories. Further research is required to accurately determine total CH4 leakage from all offshore oil and gas operations and to properly include the leakage in national and international emission inventories.
- Type:
- Dataset
- Issue Date:
- February 2019
14. Modelling of Ablatant Deposition from Electromagnetically Driven Radiative Pellets for Disruption Mitigation Studies
- Author(s):
- Lunsford, Robert; Raman, Roger; Brooks, Arthur; Ellis, Robert A.; Lay, W-S;
- Abstract:
- The Electromagnetic Particle Injector (EPI) concept is advanced through the simulation of ablatant deposition into ITER H-mode discharges with calculations showing penetration past the H-mode pedestal for a range of injection velocities and granule sizes concurrent with the requirements of disruption mitigation. As discharge stored energy increases in future fusion devices such as ITER, control and handling of disruption events becomes a critical issue. An unmitigated disruption could lead to failure of the plasma facing components resulting in financially and politically costly repairs. Methods to facilitate the quench of an unstable high current discharge are required. With the onset warning time for some ITER disruption events estimated to be less than 10 ms, a disruption mitigation system needs to be considered which operates at injection speeds greater than gaseous sound speeds. Such an actuator could then serve as a means to augment presently planned pneumatic injection systems. The EPI uses a rail gun concept whereby a radiative payload is delivered into the discharge by means of the JxB forces generated by an external current pulse, allowing for injection velocities in excess of 1 km/s. The present status of the EPI project is outlined, including the addition of boost magnetic coils. These coils augment the self-generated rail gun magnetic field and thus provide a more efficient acceleration of the payload. The coils and the holder designed to constrain them have been modelled with the ANSYS code to ensure structural integrity through the range of operational coil cu
- Type:
- Dataset
- Issue Date:
- June 2019
15. Physics design for a lithium vapor box divertor experiment on Magnum-PSI
- Author(s):
- Schwartz, Jacob; Emdee, Eric; Goldston, Robert; Jaworski, Michael
- Abstract:
- The lithium vapor box divertor is a potential solution for power exhaust in toroidal confinement devices. The divertor plasma interacts with a localized, dense cloud of lithium vapor, leading to volumetric radiation, cooling, recombination, and detachment. To minimize contamination of the core plasma, lithium vapor is condensed on cool (300°C to 400°C) baffles upstream of the detachment point. Before implementing this in a toroidal plasma device with a slot divertor geometry, we consider an experiment with a scaled baffled-pipe geometry in the high-power linear plasma device Magnum-PSI. Three 15 cm-scale open cylinders joined by 6 cm diameter ‘nozzles’ are positioned on the plasma beam axis upstream of a target. The central box may be loaded with several tens of grams of lithium, which can be evaporated at 650°C to produce a vapor predicted, using a simple plasma-neutral interaction model, to be dense enough to cause volumetric detachment in the plasma. The power delivered to the target and box walls as measured by increases in their temperatures after a 10 s plasma pulse can be compared to determine the effectiveness of the vapor in detaching the plasma. Direct Simulation Monte Carlo simulations are performed to estimate the flow rates of lithium vapor between the boxes and to estimate the trapping of H2 delivered by the plasma in the boxes, which could inadvertently lead to detachment. Details of the geometry, simulations, and possible diagnostic techniques are presented.
- Type:
- Dataset
- Issue Date:
- 30 January 2019
16. Reduced Model for Direct Induction Startup Scenario Development on MAST-U and NSTX-U
- Author(s):
- Battaglia, D.J.; Thornton, A.J.; Gerhardt, S.P.; Kirk, A.; Kogan, L; Menard, J.E.
- Abstract:
- A reduced semi-empirical model using time-dependent axisymmetric vacuum field calculations is used to develop the prefill and feed-forward coil current targets required for reliable direct induction (DI) startup on the new MA-class spherical tokamaks, MAST-U and NSTX-U. The calculations are constrained by operational limits unique to each device, such as the geometry of the conductive elements and active coils, power supply specifications and coil heating and stress limits. The calculations are also constrained by semi-empirical models for sufficient breakdown, current drive, equilibrium and stability of the plasma developed from a shared database. A large database of DI startup on NSTX and NSTX-U is leveraged to quantify the requirements for achieving a reliable breakdown (Ip ~ 20 kA). It is observed that without pre-ionization, STs access the large E/P regime at modest loop voltage (Vloop) where the electrons in the weakly ionized plasma are continually accelerating along the open field lines. This ensures a rapid (order millisecond) breakdown of the neutral gas, even without pre-ionization or high-quality field nulls. The timescale of the initial increase in Ip on NSTX is reproduced in the reduced model provided a mechanism for impeding the applied electric field is included. Most discharges that fail in the startup phase are due to an inconsistency in the evolution of the plasma current (Ip) and equilibrium field or loss of vertical stability during the burn-through phase. The requirements for the self-consistent evolution of the fields in the weakly and full-ionized plasma states are derived from demonstrated DI startup on NSTX, NSTX-U and MAST. The predictive calculations completed for MAST-U and NSTX-U illustrate that the maximum Ip ramp rate (dIp/dt) in the early startup phase is limited by the voltage limits on the poloidal field coils on MAST-U and passive vertical stability on NSTX-U.
- Type:
- Dataset
- Issue Date:
- August 2019
17. Sound velocities in shock-synthesized stishovite to 72 GPa
- Author(s):
- Berryman, Eleanor J.; Winey, J. M.; Gupta, Yogendra M.; Duffy, Thomas S.
- Abstract:
- Stishovite (rutile-type SiO2) is the archetype of dense silicates and may occur in post-garnet eclogitic rocks at lower-mantle conditions. Sound velocities in stishovite are fundamental to understanding its mechanical and thermodynamic behavior at high pressure and temperature. Here, we use plate-impact experiments combined with velocity interferometry to determine the stress, density, and longitudinal sound speed in stishovite formed during shock compression of fused silica at 44 GPa and above. The measured sound speeds range from 12.3(8) km/s at 43.8(8) GPa to 9.8(4) km/s at 72.7(11) GPa. The decrease observed at 64 GPa reacts a decrease in the shear modulus of stishovite, likely due to the onset of melting. By 72 GPa, the measured sound speed agrees with the theoretical bulk sound speed indicating loss of all shear stiffness due to complete melting. Our sound velocity results provide direct evidence for shock-induced melting, in agreement with previous pyrometry data.
- Type:
- Dataset
- Issue Date:
- 2019
18. Sowing the Seeds for More Usable Web Archives: A Usability Study of Archive-It
- Author(s):
- Abrams, Samantha; Antracoli, Alexis; Appel, Rachel; Caust-Ellenbogen, Celia; Dennison, Sarah; Duncan, Sumitra; Ramsay, Stefanie
- Abstract:
- In 2017, seven members of the Archive-It Mid-Atlantic Users Group (AITMA) conducted a study of 14 subjects representative of their stakeholder populations to assess the usability of Archive-It, a web archiving subscription service of the Internet Archive. While Archive-It is the most widely-used tool for web archiving, little is known about how users interact with the service. This study intended to teach us what users expect from web archives, which exist as another form of archival material. End-user subjects executed four search tasks using the public Archive-It interface and the Wayback Machine to access archived information on websites from the facilitators’ own harvested collections and provide feedback about their experiences. The tasks were designed to have straightforward pass or fail outcomes, and the facilitators took notes on the subjects’ behavior and commentary during the sessions. Overall, participants reported mildly positive impressions of Archive-It public user interface based on their session. The study identified several key areas of improvement for the Archive-It service pertaining to metadata options, terminology display, indexing of dates, and the site’s search box.
- Type:
- Dataset
- Issue Date:
- 2019
19. Spontaneous multi-keV electron generation in a low-RF-power axisymmetric mirror machine
- Author(s):
- Swanson, C.;Cohen, S.A.
- Abstract:
- Title: Spontaneous multi-keV electron generation in a low-RF-power axisymmetric mirror machine Abstract: X-ray emission shows the existence of multi-keV electrons in low-temperature, low-power, capacitively-coupled RF-heated magnetic-mirror plasmas that also contain a warm (300 eV) minority electron population. Though these warm electrons are initially passing particles, we suggest that collisionless scattering -- mu non-conservation in the static vacuum field -- is responsible for a minority of them to persist in the mirror cell for thousands of transits during which time a fraction are energized to a characteristic temperature of 3 keV, with some electrons reaching energies above 30 keV. A heuristic model of the heating by a Fermi-acceleration-like mechanism is presented, with mu non-conservation in the static vacuum field as an essential feature.
- Type:
- Dataset
- Issue Date:
- May 2019
20. Study of liquid metal surface wave damping in the presence of magnetic fields and electrical currents
- Author(s):
- Fisher, A.E.; Hvasta, M.G.; Kolemen, E.
- Abstract:
- Experiments and predictions of surface wave damping in liquid metal due to a surface aligned magnetic field and externally regulated j × B force are presented. Fast-flowing, liquid-metal plasma facing components (LM-PFCs) are a proposed alternative to solid PFCs that are unable to handle the high heat flux, thermal stresses, and radiation damage in a tokamak. The significant technical challenges associated with LM-PFCs compared to solid PFCs are justified by greater heat flux management, self-healing properties, and reduced particle recycling. However, undesirable engineering challenges such as evaporation and splashing of the liquid metal introduce excessive impurities into the plasma and degrade plasma performance. Evaporation may be avoided through high-speed flow that limits temperature rise of the liquid metal by reducing heat flux exposure time, but as flow speed increases the surface may become more turbulent and prone to splashing and uneven surfaces. Wave damping is one mechanism that reduces surface disturbance and thus the chances of liquid metal impurity introduction into the plasma. Experiments on the Liquid Metal eXperiment Upgrade (LMX-U) examined damping under the influence of transverse magnetic fields and vertically directed Lorentz force.
- Type:
- Dataset
- Issue Date:
- March 2019
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