With the advent of X-ray Free Electron Lasers (FELs), new methods have been developed to extend capabilities at short wavelengths beyond Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE). In particular, seeding of a FEL allows for temporal control of the radiation pulse and increases the peak brightness by orders of magnitude. Most recently, Gennady Stupakov and colleagues at SLAC proposed a new technique: Echo-Enabled Harmonic Generation (EEHG). Here a laser microbunches the beam in an undulator and the beam is sheared in a chicane. This process is repeated with a second laser, undulator and chicane. The interplay between these allows a seeding of the X-ray laser up to the 100th harmonic of the first laser. After introducing the physics of FELs and the EEHG seeding technique, we describe contributions to the experimental effort. We will present detailed studies of the experiment including the choice of parameters and their optimization, the emittance effect, spontaneous emission in the undulators, the second laser phase effect, and measurements of the jitter between RF stations. Finally, the status and preliminary results of the Echo-7 experiment will be outlined.

This report explores using GPUs as a platform for performing high performance medical image data processing, specifically smoothing using a 3D bilateral filter, which performs anisotropic, edge-preserving smoothing. The algorithm consists of a running a specialized 3D convolution kernel over a source volume to produce an output volume. Overall, our objective is to understand what algorithmic design choices and configuration options lead to optimal performance of this algorithm on the GPU. We explore the performance impact of using different memory access patterns, of using different types of device/on-chip memories, of using strictly aligned and unaligned memory, and of varying the size/shape of thread blocks. Our results reveal optimal configuration parameters for our algorithm when executed sample 3D medical data set, and show performance gains ranging from 30x to over 200x as compared to a single-threaded CPU implementation.

At the request of the Savannah River Remediation (SRR) customer, the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) examined the plutonium (Pu) and uranium (U) uptake into the Next Generation Solvent (NGS) that will be used at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). SRNL examined archived samples of solvent used in Extraction-Scrub-Strip (ESS) tests, as well as samples from new tests designed explicitly to examine the Pu and U uptake. Direct radiocounting for Pu and U provided the best results. Using the radiocounting results, we found that in all cases there were <3.41E-12 g Pu/g of NGS and <1.17E-05 g U/g of NGS in multiple samples, even after extended contact times and high aqueous:organic volume phase ratios. These values are conservative as they do not allow for release or removal of the actinides by scrub, strip, or solvent wash processes. The values do not account for extended use or any increase that may occur due to radiolytic damage of the solvent.

Since the 1960s, the U.S. electric power system has experienced a major blackout about once every 10 years. Each has been a vivid reminder of the importance society places on the continuous availability of electricity and has led to calls for changes to enhance reliability. At the root of these calls are judgments about what reliability is worth and how much should be paid to ensure it. In principle, comprehensive information on the actual reliability of the electric power system and on how proposed changes would affect reliability ought to help inform these judgments. Yet, comprehensive, national-scale information on the reliability of the U.S. electric power system is lacking. This report helps to address this information gap by assessing trends in U.S. electricity reliability based on information reported by electric utilities on power interruptions experienced by their customers. Our research augments prior investigations, which focused only on power interruptions originating in the bulk power system, by considering interruptions originating both from the bulk power system and from within local distribution systems. Our research also accounts for differences among utility reliability reporting practices by employing statistical techniques that remove the influence of these differences on the trends that we identify. The …

None