USE OF ADR IN EXTENSION PUBLIC POLICY EDUCATION PROGRAMS AND ROLES EXTENSION CAN PLAY IN DISPUTE RESOLUTION

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Capabilities and Testing of the Fission Surface Power Primary Test Circuit (FSP-PTC)

An actively pumped alkali metal flow circuit, designed and fabricated at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, is currently undergoing testing in the Early Flight Fission Test Facility (EFF-TF). Sodium potassium (NaK), which was used in the SNAP-10A fission reactor, was selected as the primary coolant. Basic circuit components include: simulated reactor core, NaK to gas heat exchanger, electromagnetic (EM) liquid metal pump, liquid metal flowmeter, load/drain reservoir, expansion reservoir, test section, and instrumentation. Operation of the circuit is based around a 37-pin partial-array core (pin and flow path dimensions are the same as those in a full core), designed to operate at 33 kWt. NaK flow rates of greater than 1 kg/sec may be achieved, depending upon the power applied to the EM pump. The heat exchanger provides for the removal of thermal energy from the circuit, simulating the presence of an energy conversion system. The presence of the test section increases the versatility of the circuit. A second liquid metal pump, an energy conversion system, and highly instrumented thermal simulators are all being considered for inclusion within the test section. This paper summarizes the capabilities and ongoing testing of the Fission Surface Power Primary Test Circuit (FSP-PTC)

Design and Test of Advanced Thermal Simulators for an Alkali Metal-Cooled Reactor Simulator

The Early Flight Fission Test Facility (EFF-TF) at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has as one of its primary missions the development and testing of fission reactor simulators for space applications. A key component in these simulated reactors is the thermal simulator, designed to closely mimic the form and function of a nuclear fuel pin using electric heating. Continuing effort has been made to design simple, robust, inexpensive thermal simulators that closely match the steady-state and transient performance of a nuclear fuel pin. A series of these simulators have been designed, developed, fabricated and tested individually and in a number of simulated reactor systems at the EFF-TF. The purpose of the thermal simulators developed under the Fission Surface Power (FSP) task is to ensure that non-nuclear testing can be performed at sufficiently high fidelity to allow a cost-effective qualification and acceptance strategy to be used. Prototype thermal simulator design is founded on the baseline Fission Surface Power reactor design. Recent efforts have been focused on the design, fabrication and test of a prototype thermal simulator appropriate for use in the Technology Demonstration Unit (TDU). While designing the thermal simulators described in this paper, effort were made to improve the axial power profile matching of the thermal simulators. Simultaneously, a search was conducted for graphite materials with higher resistivities than had been employed in the past. The combination of these two efforts resulted in the creation of thermal simulators with power capacities of 2300-3300 W per unit. Six of these elements were installed in a simulated core and tested in the alkali metal-cooled Fission Surface Power Primary Test Circuit (FSP-PTC) at a variety of liquid metal flow rates and temperatures. This paper documents the design of the thermal simulators, test program, and test results

Fluorescent amplification for next generation sequencing (FA-NGS) library preparation.

BACKGROUND:Next generation sequencing (NGS) has become a universal practice in modern molecular biology. As the throughput of sequencing experiments increases, the preparation of conventional multiplexed libraries becomes more labor intensive. Conventional library preparation typically requires quality control (QC) testing for individual libraries such as amplification success evaluation and quantification, none of which occur until the end of the library preparation process. RESULTS:In this study, we address the need for a more streamlined high-throughput NGS workflow by tethering real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) to conventional workflows to save time and implement single tube and single reagent QC. We modified two distinct library preparation workflows by replacing PCR and quantification with qPCR using SYBR Green I. qPCR enabled individual library quantification for pooling in a single tube without the need for additional reagents. Additionally, a melting curve analysis was implemented as an intermediate QC test to confirm successful amplification. Sequencing analysis showed comparable percent reads for each indexed library, demonstrating that pooling calculations based on qPCR allow for an even representation of sequencing reads. To aid the modified workflow, a software toolkit was developed and used to generate pooling instructions and analyze qPCR and melting curve data. CONCLUSIONS:We successfully applied fluorescent amplification for next generation sequencing (FA-NGS) library preparation to both plasmids and bacterial genomes. As a result of using qPCR for quantification and proceeding directly to library pooling, the modified library preparation workflow has fewer overall steps. Therefore, we speculate that the FA-NGS workflow has less risk of user error. The melting curve analysis provides the necessary QC test to identify and troubleshoot library failures prior to sequencing. While this study demonstrates the value of FA-NGS for plasmid or gDNA libraries, we speculate that its versatility could lead to successful application across other library types

Cryptanalysis of group-based key agreement protocols using subgroup distance functions

We introduce a new approach for cryptanalysis of key agreement protocols based on noncommutative groups. This approach uses functions that estimate the distance of a group element to a given subgroup. We test it against the Shpilrain-Ushakov protocol, which is based on Thompson's group F

Examining the Effect of a School-based Creativity Program on Divergent Thinking and Academic Achievement in Middle School Students

This study aimed to investigate the potential transfer effects of domain-specific creativity training on domain-general divergent thinking indices of divergent thinking and investigate the potential effects of the school-based creativity program on the development of creativity in a middle school in the southeast region of the United States. The school-based creativity program is an initiative that uses literacy standards to position students as content creators, connecting directly to student interests. The creativity program includes capstone projects, such as songwriting, theater, dance, video game development, inventions, marketing, and design. In the 2020–2021 school year, 55.17% of the program’s capstone projects were music-related (2019–2020: 63%). I assessed online 75 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students. Of the seventh and eighth graders, one half of the students were partially in the school-based creativity program and the second half were not involved in the program. All sixth graders were enrolled in the program and considered one group, which I labeled as Full Creativity-Sixth Grade. Four types of data were collected and analyzed for this study: the Runco Creativity Assessment Battery, Georgia Milestones Achievement Scores (GMAS), music-based capstone projects, and interviews with the administrator and program coordinator from the creativity program. Quantitative results revealed that grade level did affect divergent thinking, with lower grades scoring less. However, the participants in the Full Creativity program had virtually no transfer effects, which was expected based on the extensive training literature. These results may have been influenced by the way divergent thinking was measured and the testing schedule, in which testing fatigue may have influenced the posttest results. To measure academic achievement, participants were divided into two groups based on their GMAS test scores for English/Language Arts (ELA) and Math (Low Achieving and High Achieving). There were no significant interactions between divergent thinking pre-and posttest scores and GMAS test scores in ELA or Math. After completing a content analysis of the students’ music capstone projects, two overarching themes were present: musical creativity and emotional expression. This dissertation describes the creativity program in detail and discusses how it relates to music education. Contributions, limitations, implications, and directions for future research address the effect of school-based creativity programs on divergent thinking and academic achievement