Overview of the RFX Fusion Science Program

With a program well-balanced among the goal of exploring the fusion potential of the reversed field pinch (RFP) and that of contributing to the solution of key science and technology prob- lems in the roadmap to ITER, the European RFX-mod device has produced a set of high-quality results since the last 2010 Fusion Energy Conference. RFX-mod is a 2 MA RFP, which can also be operated as a tokamak and where advanced confinement states have 3D features studied with stellarator tools. Self-organized equilibria with a single helical axis and improved confinement (SHAx) have been deeply investigated and a more profound understanding of their physics has been achieved. First wall conditioning with Lithium provides a tool to operate RFX at higher density than before, and application of helical magnetic boundary conditions favour stationary SHAx states. The correlation between the quality of helical states and the reduction of magnetic field errors acting as seed of magnetic chaos has been robustly proven. Helical states provide a unique test-bed for numerical codes conceived to deal with 3D effects in all magnetic configura- tions. In particular the stellarator equilibrium codes VMEC and V3FIT have been successfully adapted to reconstruct RFX-mod equilibria with diagnostic input. The border of knowledge has been significantly expanded also in the area of feedback control of MHD stability. Non-linear dynamics of tearing modes and their control has been modelled, allowing for optimization of feedback models. An integrated dynamic model of the RWM control system has been developed integrating the plasma response to multiple RWMs with active and passive conducting structures (CarMa model) and with a complete representation of the control system. RFX has been oper- ated as a tokamak with safety factor kept below 2, with complete active stabilization of the p2, 1q Resistive Wall Mode (RWM). This opens the exploration of a broad and interesting operational range otherwise excluded to standard tokamaks. Control experiments and modelling led to the design of a significant upgrade of the RFX-mod feedback control system to dramatically enhance computing power and reduce system latency. The possibility of producing D-shaped plasmas is being explore

Toward Male Individualization with Rapidly Mutating Y-Chromosomal Short Tandem Repeats

Relevant for various areas of human genetics, Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (Y-STRs) are com- monly used for testing close paternal relationships among individuals and populations, and for male lineage iden- tification. However, even the widely used 17-loci Yfiler set cannot resolve individuals and populations completely. Here, 52 centers generated quality-controlled data of 13 rapidly mutating (RM) Y-STRs in 14,644 related and unrelated males from 111 worldwide populations. Strik- ingly, >99% of the 12,272 unrelated males were com- pletely individualized. Haplotype diversity was extremely high (global: 0.9999985, regional: 0.99836\u20130.9999988). Haplotype sharing between populations was almost ab- sent except for six (0.05%) of the 12,156 haplotypes. Haplotype sharing within populations was generally rare (0.8% nonunique haplotypes), significantly lower in ur- ban (0.9%) than rural (2.1%) and highest in endogamous groups (14.3%). Analysis of molecular variance revealed 99.98% of variation within populations, 0.018% among populations within groups, and 0.002% among groups. Of the 2,372 newly and 156 previously typed male relative pairs,29% were differentiated including 27% of the 2,378 father\u2013son pairs. Relative to Yfiler, haplotype diversity was increased in 86% of the populations tested and over- all male relative differentiation was raised by 23.5%. Our study demonstrates the value of RM Y-STRs in identifying and separating unrelated and related males and provides a reference database