Energy Focus (United States)

Recent historic results in inertial fusion on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser have now demonstrated a fusion gain (fusion energy divided by laser driver energy) greater than one [Abu-Shawareb et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 065102 (2024)]. These achievements now demonstrate the conditions for fusion ignition can be achieved in the Laboratory and serve as a physics proof of principle for inertial fusion energy. However, there are still significant challenges to take the NIF result and create a fusion energy power plant. Over the last few years, several private fusion companies have been formed with the goal of producing a fusion pilot power plant. We discuss lessons learned from NIF and how those lessons can impact plans for inertial fusion energy. As excitement and funding for fusion energy is increased, we will need to expand the fusion workforce which is an excellent opportunity to increase the diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility of our field as well as forming partnerships between private fusion companies and public universities and National Laboratories.

Reference 39 (Puviani, M. & Manskea, D. Quench-drive spectroscopy of cuprates. Faraday Discuss. 237, 125-147 ( 2022)) has been added with an explanatory note, as it contributes a potentially helpful item in the existing literature. Subsequent references have been appropriately renumbered.

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BACKGROUND Video is a versatile and popular medium for digital health interventions. As mobile device and app technology advances, it is likely that video-based interventions will become increasingly common. Although clinic waiting rooms are complex and busy environments, they offer the opportunity to facilitate engagement with video-based digital interventions as patients wait to see their providers. However, to increase efficiency in public health, leverage the scalability and low cost of implementing digital interventions, and keep up with rapidly advancing technology and user needs, more design and development guidance is needed for video-based tailored interventions. OBJECTIVE We provide a tutorial for digital intervention researchers and developers to efficiently design and develop video-based tailored digital health interventions. We describe the challenges and solutions encountered with Positive Health Check (PHC), a hybrid app used to deliver a brief, interactive, individually tailored video-based HIV behavioral counseling intervention. PHC uses video clips and multimedia digital assets to deliver intervention content, including interactive tailored messages and graphics, a repurposed animated video, and patient and provider handouts generated in real time by PHC. METHODS We chronicle multiple challenges and solutions for the following: (1) using video as a medium to enhance user engagement, (2) navigating the complexity of linking a database of video clips with other digital assets, and (3) identifying the main steps involved in building an app that will seamlessly deliver to users individually tailored messages, graphics, and handouts. RESULTS We leveraged video to enhance user engagement by featuring “video doctors,” full-screen video, storyboards, and streamlined scripts. We developed an approach to link the database of video clips with other digital assets through script coding and flow diagrams of algorithms to deliver a tailored user experience. We identified the steps to app development by using keyframes to design the integration of video and digital assets, using agile development methods to gather iterative feedback from multidisciplinary teams, and creating an intelligent data-driven back-end solution to tailor message delivery to individual users. CONCLUSIONS Video-based digital health interventions will continue to play an important role in the future of HIV prevention and treatment, as well as other clinical health practices. However, facilitating the adoption of an HIV video intervention in HIV clinical settings is a work in progress. Our experience in designing and developing PHC presented unique challenges due to the extensive use of a large database of videos tailored individually to each user. Although PHC focuses on promoting the health and well-being of persons with HIV, the challenges and solutions presented in this tutorial are transferable to the design and development of video-based digital health interventions focused on other areas of health.

With the expansion of ethanol production in Brazilian distilleries, the incorporation of new technologies in the fermentation process has become essential in order to raise ethanol production potential and minimize the impacts generated, especially with regard to the reduction of vinasse volume. One technology that has attracted a lot of interest is Very High Gravity (VHG) fermentation, which involves the preparation of media with high concentrations of sugars. This technology has advantages over conventional approaches, musts with high alcohol content, minimization of production costs and reduction of vinasse volume. In this context, the objective of this work was to study the influence of temperature, sugar concentration and cell concentration on the batch reactor using Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast strain C2/00 using a Central Compound Designation (CCD). The conditions adopted by CCD were: temperature (21-29°C), sugar concentration (240-320g/L) and cell concentration (12-30%v/v). The tests were carried out in shaker under temperature and rotation control, using synthetic medium sugar and yeast extract. The fermentations were monitored over time by the measurements of sugars and ethanol concentrations during 24 hours of fermentation. And cell viability was analyzed at the beginning and end of the fermentation. The ranges of the variables analyzed in the CCD that maximized yield, cell concentration and productivity responses and minimized the residual sugar response were temperature of 25-29°C, initial TRS concentration of 260-310 g/L and cellular concentration of 22-30% (v/v). It was observed that using the conditions generated by Statistica® for the validation, the models obtained by the surfaces of responses and contour curves, presented good reproducibility, since the experimental results were similar to the predicted results. The batch alcoholic fermentations in a fed under VHG conditions provided alcoholic contents of 17.64-18.54°GL and yields of 90.78-94.12% satisfactory when compared to the conventional process and other authors. The efficiency of the batch process fed with cell reuse remained relatively constant, and in the 1st fermentation the viability was 84.85% while the 2nd fermentation reusing the 1st cells was 88.18%, evidencing the possibility of reuse in successive cycles in fermentations with high alcohol content

According to Horgan’s transvaluationist approach, the robustness that characterizes vague terms is inherently incoherent. He analyzes that robustness into two conceptual poles, individualistic and collectivistic, and ascribes the incoherence to the former. However, he claims vague terms remain useful nonetheless, because the collectivistic pole can be realized with a suitable non-classical logic and can quarantine the incoherence arising out of the individualistic pole. I argue, on the contrary, that the nonclassical logic fails to resolve the difficulty and that the incoherence afflicts Horgan’s collectivistic pole as well, consequently invalidating the entire transvaluationist approach. An alternative, coherent conception of robustness is suggested.

The research described in this paper assembles a set of tools on the basis of experiences and best practices in a diverse set of states for linking strategic goals to resource allocation and implementation decisions using aspects of asset management. A survey of practices in each of the state DOTs explored documents and synthesized both strategic planning processes and asset management. With input from an expert advisory panel, five states were the subjects of detailed analysis: Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, and Pennsylvania. Each of the states was visited by a project team that spent 2 days on-site. Information on the strategic planning and asset management process was obtained through personal interviews with DOT officials and the acquisition of materials describing these processes. Based on detailed documentation of the practices in each of these states, a synthesis of best practices of the linkage between asset management and strategic planning was developed. The resulting model process does not represent any particular state, but incorporates elements from all five states. This synthesis can provide useful guidance to states interested in augmenting their existing processes.

To use a retrospective pre/post self-assessment survey to determine the attitudes of family nurse practitioner (FNP) students toward homeless individuals before and after participating in a homeless outreach clinic (HOC) and to elicit, through focus groups, their perspectives on the homeless population after their HOC participation. A mixed-methods study using focus group tapes and transcripts of 15 FNP students who were divided into two separate focus groups as well as three completed survey measures: Demographic Data Form, Attitudes Toward Homelessness Inventory, and HOC Attendance Form. Overall, the FNP students revealed no stigmatizing attitudes toward homeless people prior to their HOC participation, but a significant positive change in their attitudes occurred after the experience. There were significant mean differences in 6 out of the 11 scale items and in the overall total mean scores after the HOC experience (p = .013). The focus groups revealed the transformation of the students' attitudes toward homeless individuals after their HOC participation, supporting and illuminating the survey findings. The study findings underscore the importance of including the care of homeless patients in FNP educational programs. Such exposure provides FNP students with an opportunity to develop the social responsibility to care for all segments of society, especially homeless people, in keeping with nursing's social contract as a helping profession.