338 research outputs found
Study of systematics effects on the Cross Power Spectrum of 21 cm Line and Cosmic Microwave Background using Murchison Widefield Array Data
Observation of the 21cm line signal from neutral hydrogen during the Epoch of
Reionization is challenging due to extremely bright Galactic and extragalactic
foregrounds and complicated instrumental calibration. A reasonable approach for
mitigating these problems is the cross correlation with other observables. In
this work, we present the first results of the cross power spectrum (CPS)
between radio images observed by the Murchison Widefield Array and the cosmic
microwave background (CMB), measured by the Planck experiment. We study the
systematics due to the ionospheric activity, the dependence of CPS on group of
pointings, and frequency. The resulting CPS is consistent with zero because the
error is dominated by the foregrounds in the 21cm observation. Additionally,
the variance of the signal indicates the presence of unexpected systematics
error at small scales. Furthermore, we reduce the error by one order of
magnitude with application of a foreground removal using a polynomial fitting
method. Based on the results, we find that the detection of the 21cm-CMB CPS
with the MWA Phase I requires more than 99.95% of the foreground signal
removed, 2000 hours of deep observation and 50% of the sky fraction coverage.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures, accepted to MNRA
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Dynamic System Scaling Application to Accelerated Nuclear Fuel Testing
The development of nuclear fuel and materials requires is a continuous effort to investigate the acute and prolonged effects of irradiation, thermal-material stress, chemical change, or other conceivable damage mechanics acquired during normal operation or accident scenarios throughout its lifetime. As in-core fuel property measurement techniques advance to support in the real-time, non-invasive, and enhanced accuracy realm, it is the future of fuel development to pursue to higher degrees of control, predictability of integral test behavior via separate effects test (SET), and shorter test time intervals. The fuel development life cycle from initial concept to commercial licensing is approximated to be 20 years and current literature suggests by optimizing fuel performance codes with SETs, the process could possibly be compressed to 5 to 10 years. Recently, a research group in the Idaho National Laboratory is testing reduced scale fuel rods and increased power density to accelerate evolution of fuel phenomena in metallic fuels. In support of nuclear fuel rod development, compressing fuel test process, and accelerating fuel phenomena, it is the purpose of this study to investigate nuclear fuel performance phenomena via literature review and effectively scale the initial conditions, boundary conditions, and geometric properties to describe the time-dependent response including to fuel burnup, thermal and mechanical stress, transmutations and interdiffusion, and other relevant observed phenomena. The study is based on BISON simulations of historic EBR-II metallic fuel experiments and Dynamical System Scaling (DSS) method are utilized to assess effects of scaling activity including calculations of time-dependent distortions
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Heat Loss Characterization of NIST-1's Containment Vessel
NuScale Power has designed a small modular reactor using natural circulation cooling dependent systems for both steady-state and transient operations. The NuScale Integral Test System (NIST-1) facility was built to supply test data to NuScale Power to verify and validate computer codes for the NuScale Power Mod- ule (NPM) with the goal to satisfy the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s nuclear power plant certification criteria. The safety systems tested in NIST-1 heavily rely on the characterization of the heat transfer between the Containment Vessel (CNV) and Cooling Pool Vessel (CPV) via the Heat Transfer Plate (HTP) since the CNV acts as the cavity to contain steam leakage during an accident in the actual NPM. To ensure the heat loss in the CNV via insulation is small enough to be negligible and not affect test data, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) program STAR CCM+ was used to simulate the test data from High Pressure Test (HP) 16b to analyze the heat loss. Grid convergence was achieved and results show good agreement with the HP-16b’s test data concluding the CNV heat loss to be minimal and negligible
ALFRED: an allele frequency resource for research and teaching
ALFRED (http://alfred.med.yale.edu) is a free, web accessible, curated compilation of allele frequency data on DNA sequence polymorphisms in anthropologically defined human populations. Currently, ALFRED has allele frequency tables on over 663 400 polymorphic sites; 170 of them have frequency tables for more than 100 different population samples. In ALFRED, a population may have multiple samples with each ‘sample’ consisting of many individuals on which an allele frequency is based. There are 3566 population samples from 710 different populations with allele frequency tables on at least one polymorphism. Fifty of those population samples have allele frequency data for over 650 000 polymorphisms. Records also have active links to relevant resources (dbSNP, PharmGKB, OMIM, Ethnologue, etc.). The flexible search options and data display and download capabilities available through the web interface allow easy access to the large quantity of high-quality data in ALFRED
Gridded and direct Epoch of Reionisation bispectrum estimates using the Murchison Widefield Array
We apply two methods to estimate the 21~cm bispectrum from data taken within
the Epoch of Reionisation (EoR) project of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA).
Using data acquired with the Phase II compact array allows a direct bispectrum
estimate to be undertaken on the multiple redundantly-spaced triangles of
antenna tiles, as well as an estimate based on data gridded to the -plane.
The direct and gridded bispectrum estimators are applied to 21 hours of
high-band (167--197~MHz; =6.2--7.5) data from the 2016 and 2017 observing
seasons. Analytic predictions for the bispectrum bias and variance for point
source foregrounds are derived. We compare the output of these approaches, the
foreground contribution to the signal, and future prospects for measuring the
bispectra with redundant and non-redundant arrays. We find that some triangle
configurations yield bispectrum estimates that are consistent with the expected
noise level after 10 hours, while equilateral configurations are strongly
foreground-dominated. Careful choice of triangle configurations may be made to
reduce foreground bias that hinders power spectrum estimators, and the 21~cm
bispectrum may be accessible in less time than the 21~cm power spectrum for
some wave modes, with detections in hundreds of hours.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in PAS
Inhibition of B16 melanoma growth and metastasis in C57BL mice by vaccination with a syngeneic endothelial cell line
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Key role of angiogenesis in tumor growth and metastasis based on accumulating evidence and recent progress of immunotherapy have led us to investigate vaccine therapy targeting tumor angiogenesis.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>C57BL/6J mice were vaccinated with a syngeneic endothelial cell line Tpit/E by subcutaneous injection once a week. Prior to ninth vaccination, the mice were challenged with B16/F10 melanoma cells by subcutaneous inoculation on the back for the tumor growth model or by tail venous injection for the lung metastasis model. Development of subcutaneous tumor and lung metastasis was monitored by computed tomography scanning, which enabled accurate evaluation with the minimized sacrifice of mice.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Vaccination with Tpit/E cells inhibited subcutaneous tumor growth and appearance of lung metastasis compared to control. Survival period was elongated in the Tpit/E vaccination in both of the two models. We also obtained hybridomas secreting specific antibodies to Tpit/E cells from a mouse vaccinated with the cells, indicating that specific immune response to the syngeneic endothelial cells was elicited.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that vaccination with an autologous endothelial cell line may be effective against melanoma.</p
Robust statistics towards detection of the 21 cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization
© 2019 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.
We explore methods for robust estimation of the 21 cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). A Kernel Density Estimator (KDE) is introduced for measuring the spatial temperature fluctuation power spectrum from the EoR. The KDE estimates the underlying probability distribution function of fluctuations as a function of spatial scale, and contains different systematic biases and errors to the typical approach to estimating the fluctuation power spectrum. Extraction of histograms of visibilities allows moments analysis to be used to discriminate foregrounds from 21 cm signal and thermal noise. We use the information available in the histograms, along with the statistical dis-similarity of foregrounds from two independent observing fields, to robustly separate foregrounds from cosmological signal, while making no assumptions about the Gaussianity of the signal. Using two independent observing fields to robustly discriminate signal from foregrounds is crucial for the analysis presented in this paper. We apply the techniques to 13 h of Murchison Widefield Array EoR data over two observing fields. We compare the output to that obtained with a comparative power spectrum estimation method, and demonstrate the reduced foreground contamination using this approach. Using the second moment obtained directly from the KDE distribution functions yields a factor of 2-3 improvement in power for k < 0.3 h Mpc-1 compared with a matched delay space power estimator, while weighting data by additional statistics does not offer significant improvement beyond that available for thermal noise-only weights
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