Controlled generation of large volumes of atmospheric clouds in a ground-based environmental chamber

Atmospheric clouds were generated in a 23,000 cubic meter environmental chamber as the first step in a two part study on the effects of contaminants on cloud formation. The generation procedure was modeled on the terrestrial generation mechanism so that naturally occurring microphysics mechanisms were operative in the cloud generation process. Temperature, altitude, liquid water content, and convective updraft velocity could be selected independently over the range of terrestrially realizable clouds. To provide cloud stability, a cotton muslin cylinder 29.3 meters in diameter and 24.2 meters high was erected within the chamber and continuously wetted with water at precisely the same temperature as the cloud. The improved instrumentation which permitted fast, precise, and continual measurements of cloud temperature and liquid water content is described

Enhancement of ion cyclotron waves in hydrogen helium mixtures

Metastable helium atom addition to hydrogen plasma for ion cyclotron mode enhancemen

Brucellosis Media Survey; Where Ohio Newspapers Get Agricultural News; A Media Survey Checklist

Three research briefs: Brucellosis Media Survey; Where Ohio Newspapers Get Agricultural News; A Media Survey ChecklistCattle brucellosis is a tough disease to conquer

Do Routine Preoperative and Intraoperative Urine Cultures Benefit Pediatric Vesicoureteral Reflux Surgery?

Objective. To determine if routine preoperative and intraoperative urine cultures (UCx) are necessary in pediatric vesicoureteral (VUR) reflux surgery by identifying their association with each other, preoperative symptoms, and surgical outcomes. Materials and Methods. A retrospective review of patients undergoing ureteral reimplant(s) for primary VUR at a tertiary academic medical center between years 2000 and 2014 was done. Preoperative UCx were defined as those within 30 days before surgery. A positive culture was defined as >50,000 colony forming units of a single organism. Results. A total of 185 patients were identified and 87/185 (47.0%) met inclusion criteria. Of those, 39/87 (45%) completed a preoperative UCx. Only 3/39 (8%) preoperative cultures returned positive, and all of those patients were preoperatively symptomatic. No preoperatively asymptomatic patients had positive preoperative cultures. Intraoperative cultures were obtained in 21/87 (24.1%) patients; all were negative. No associations were found between preoperative culture results and intraoperative cultures or between culture result and postoperative complications. Conclusions. In asymptomatic patients, no associations were found between the completion of a preoperative or intraoperative UCx and surgical outcomes, suggesting that not all patients may require preoperative screening. Children presenting with symptoms of urinary tract infection (UTI) prior to ureteral reimplantation may benefit from preoperative UCx

Steady State Analysis of Short-wavelength, High-gain FELs in a Large Storage Ring

Storage ring FELs have operated successfully in the low-gain regime using optical cavities. Discussions of a high-gain FEL in a storage ring typically involve a special bypass to decouple the FEL interaction from the storage ring dynamics. In this paper, we investigate the coupled dynamics of a high-gain FEL in a large storage ring such as PEP and analyze the equilibrium solution. We show that an FEL in the EUV and soft x-ray regimes can be integrated into a very bright storage ring and potentially provides three orders of magnitude improvement in the average brightness at these radiation wavelengths. We also discuss possibilities of seeding with HHG sources to obtain ultra-short, high-peak power EUV and soft x-ray pulses

Lattice Design for PEP-X Ultimate Storage Ring Light Source

SLAC expertise in designing and operating high current storage rings and the availability of the 2.2-km PEP-II tunnel present an opportunity for building a next generation light source - PEP-X - that would replace the SPEAR3 storage ring in the future. The PEP-X 'baseline' design, with 164 pm-rad emittance at 4.5 GeV beam energy and a current of 1.5 A, was completed in 2010. As a next step, a so-called 'ultimate' PEP-X lattice, reducing the emittance to 11 pm-rad at zero current, has been designed. This emittance approaches the diffraction limited photon emittance for multi-keV photons, providing near maximum photon brightness and high coherence. It is achieved by using 7-bend achromat cells in the ring arcs and a 90-m damping wiggler in one of the 6 long straight sections. Details of the lattice design, dynamic aperture, and calculations of the intra-beam scattering effect and Touschek lifetime at a nominal 0.2 A current are presented. Accelerator-based light sources are in high demand for many experimental applications. The availability of the 2.2-km PEP-II tunnel at SLAC presents an opportunity for building a next generation light source - PEP-X - that would replace the existing SPEAR3 light source in the future. The PEP-X study started in 2008, and the 'baseline' design, yielding 164 pm-rad emittance at 4.5 GeV beam energy and a current of 1.5 A, was completed in 2010. This relatively conservative design can be built using existing technology. However, for a long term future, it is natural to investigate a more aggressive, so-called 'ultimate' ring design. The goal is to reduce the electron emittance in both x and y planes to near the diffraction limited photon emittance of 8 pm-rad at hard X-ray photon wavelength of 0.1 nm. This would provide a near maximum photon brightness and significant increase in photon coherence. This study was motivated by the advances in low emittance design at MAX-IV. The latter was used as a starting point for the PEP-X arc lattice, however new features were included into the design for better tuning capabilities and compensation of non-linear optics effects. Further emittance reduction is achieved with a 90-m damping wiggler. Finally, intra-beam scattering (IBS) and Touschek lifetime effects were estimated and cross-checked using various codes

Few-cycle self-compression of GW mid-IR pulses in an anti-resonant fiber in ambient air

We report self-compression of mid-IR optical pulses to the few-cycle regime in an anti-resonant hollow core fiber filled with ambient air. Transform-limited 120-fs duration input optical pulses with 160 μJ energy are compressed to 29.8 fs (&lt; 3 cycles) with a compression efficiency of 75%, resulting in 2.6 GW peak power few-cycle pulses. In addition, we show that nonlinear compression is maintained when the fiber is coiled, allowing for a compact setup. Finally, we elucidate the dynamics involved in this self-compression setup via numerical simulations and identify the critical role played by Raman shifting in molecular gases and ionization limitations.</p

Computational Fluid Dynamics of Catalytic Reactors

Today, the challenge in chemical and material synthesis is not only the development of new catalysts and supports to synthesize a desired product, but also the understanding of the interaction of the catalyst with the surrounding flow field. Computational Fluid Dynamics or CFD is the analysis of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer and chemical reactions by means of computer-based numerical simulations. CFD has matured into a powerful tool with a wide range of applications in industry and academia. From a reaction engineering perspective, main advantages are reduction of time and costs for reactor design and optimization, and the ability to study systems where experiments can hardly be performed, e.g., hazardous conditions or beyond normal operation limits. However, the simulation results will always remain a reflection of the uncertainty in the underlying models and physicochemical parameters so that in general a careful experimental validation is required. This chapter introduces the application of CFD simulations in heterogeneous catalysis. Catalytic reactors can be classified by the geometrical design of the catalyst material (e.g. monoliths, particles, pellets, washcoats). Approaches for modeling and numerical simulation of the various catalyst types are presented. Focus is put on the principal concepts for coupling the physical and chemical processes on different levels of details, and on illustrative applications. Models for surface reaction kinetics and turbulence are described and an overview on available numerical methods and computational tools is provided

SPEAR3 Accelerator Physics Update

The SPEAR3 storage ring at Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory has been delivering photon beams for three years. We will give an overview of recent and ongoing accelerator physics activities, including 500 mA fills, work toward top-off injection, long-term orbit stability characterization and improvement, fast orbit feedback, new chicane optics, low alpha optics & short bunches, low emittance optics, and MATLAB software. The accelerator physics group has a strong program to characterize and improve SPEAR3 performanc

Light-enhanced Charge Density Wave Coherence in a High-Temperature Superconductor

In high-T$_{C}$ cuprates, superconductivity and charge density waves (CDW) are competitive, yet coexisting orders. To understand their microscopic interdependence a probe capable of discerning their interaction on its natural length and time scales is necessary. Here we use ultrafast resonant soft x-ray scattering to track the transient evolution of CDW correlations in YBa$_{2}$Cu$_{3}$O$_{6+x}$ following the quench of superconductivity by an infrared laser pulse. We observe a picosecond non-thermal response of the CDW order, characterized by a large enhancement of spatial coherence, nearly doubling the CDW correlation length, while only marginally affecting its amplitude. This ultrafast snapshot of the interaction between order parameters demonstrates that their competition manifests inhomogeneously through disruption of spatial coherence, and indicates the role of superconductivity in stabilizing topological defects within CDW domains.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figures, Main text and Supplementary Material