In Brief

Performance ImprovementVolume 39, Issue 9 p. 40-44 Article Unexpected benefits of testing Edmond T. Parker, Edmond T. Parker Edmond T. Parker is Director, Consulting at ICUS, a company that designs, implements, and runs e-learning programs for corporations. Its learning strategies make use of advanced techniques in instructional design and information technology while maintaining the human touch through interactive coaching. Until recently, he was a distinguished member of technical staff, development manager, and instructional technologist with Lucent Technologies where his chief responsibilities were in the training of software developers, evaluation, and test design. Trained as a social scientist, much of his career has been international. At various times he has been director of the Office for Intercultural Education at Boston University, an interculturalist and negotiator for an American publisher, a Senior Fulbright-Hays Professor in Egypt, and a training manager in the Arabian-American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia. More recently, he worked for AT&T, Bell Laboratories, and Lucent Technologies. While many of his publications have been about international training, for the past three years testing has been one of his primary interests. He may be reached at ICUS Pte. Ltd., 1 International Business Park, #01-13B, The Synergy, Singapore 609917; Phone: (65) 566-1411; E-mail: Edmond@icus.net.Search for more papers by this author Edmond T. Parker, Edmond T. Parker Edmond T. Parker is Director, Consulting at ICUS, a company that designs, implements, and runs e-learning programs for corporations. Its learning strategies make use of advanced techniques in instructional design and information technology while maintaining the human touch through interactive coaching. Until recently, he was a distinguished member of technical staff, development manager, and instructional technologist with Lucent Technologies where his chief responsibilities were in the training of software developers, evaluation, and test design. Trained as a social scientist, much of his career has been international. At various times he has been director of the Office for Intercultural Education at Boston University, an interculturalist and negotiator for an American publisher, a Senior Fulbright-Hays Professor in Egypt, and a training manager in the Arabian-American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia. More recently, he worked for AT&T, Bell Laboratories, and Lucent Technologies. While many of his publications have been about international training, for the past three years testing has been one of his primary interests. He may be reached at ICUS Pte. Ltd., 1 International Business Park, #01-13B, The Synergy, Singapore 609917; Phone: (65) 566-1411; E-mail: Edmond@icus.net.Search for more papers by this author First published: 08 February 2007 https://doi.org/10.1002/pfi.4140390912Citations: 1 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume39, Issue9October 2000Pages 40-44 RelatedInformation

"Stormer, Prof. Horst Ludwig, (born 6 April 1949), physicist; Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Columbia University, 1998, now Emeritus; Adjunct Physics Director, Lucent Technologies (formerly AT&T Bell Laboratories), 1997–2006" published on by Oxford University Press.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center (SEC) is the principal U.S. governmental agency for providing space weather data, information, and forecasts across the user spectrum, including industry, other government entities, and the public. A major change in the reporting structure of the center is poised to occur later this year when Congress approves the fiscal year 2005 budget proposed by the Bush administration. The activities of the SEC, together with its proposed budget, will move from under NOAA's research budget and administration to that of the National Weather Service (NWS), which is also administered by NOAA. The weather service will receive augmented funding to accommodate the SEC as one of the service's National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The move, however, is more than a mere change in the wiring diagram for NOAA's administration. It would appear that NOAA is becoming more serious in recognizing and appreciating the essential responsibility that it, through the SEC, holds for supporting the nation's space environment needs. Indeed, the wording in the NWS portion of the NOAA budget strongly acknowledges this, requesting that Congress “allow the NWS to maintain the SEC's critical forecasts and products in support of the Nation's energy and telecommunications industries, NASA, and the [U.S. Department of Defense].” The SEC has long had, as a part of its mission, a research component. This activity allows the center to maintain an awareness of, and contribute to, advances in solar-terrestrial research, especially as applied to space weather. The NOAA budget for FY2005 suggests that this will continue as the SEC comes under the NWS umbrella, stating that the center “will continue to support the research framework necessary to ensure that new research findings are utilized.” We hope this will continue to be the case over the long term. In addition, the National Weather Service has a long history of interacting with private suppliers of weather information and providing value-added products. Such private-public interactions have sparked tensions in the past between the weather service and the atmospheric weather community, similar to concerns now beginning to be felt in the space weather community (see the related article on this topic by Genene Fisher in Space Weather). We hope the experiences encountered, and lessons learned, in the space and atmospheric weather communities will be beneficial to all parties as private-sector space weather services become stronger over time and as the SEC continues to grow in its service to all users. Louis J. Lanzerotti is Editor of Space Weather, a distinguished research professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and a consulting physicist at Lucent Technologies’ Bell Laboratories.

Electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) and current drive (ECCD), disruptive instability events and sawtooth activity have been demonstrated to produce suprathermal electrons in fusion devices. The importance of these phenomena for fusion reactors renders suprathermal electron generation and dynamics a key topic in the physics of burning plasmas. Here some significant results from the TCV tokamak are briefly reviewed and a preliminary design of a novel tomographic hard X‐ray spectrometer proposed for TCV is discussed. The design is aided by simulations of tomographic reconstruction.

Understanding the properties of high gain (alpha-dominated) fusion plasmas in an advanced toroidal configuration is a critical issue that must be addressed to provide the scientific foundation for an attractive magnetic fusion reactor. The functional fusion plasma objectives for major next physics steps in magnetic fusion research can be described as: Burning Plasma Physics - The achievement and understanding of alpha-dominated plasmas that have characteristics similar to those expected in a fusion energy source, and Advanced Toroidal Physics - The achievement and understanding of bootstrap-current-dominated plasmas with externally controlled profiles and other characteristics (e.g. confinement and beta) similar to those expected in an attractive fusion system.

James Arthur Krumhansl

SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON was born at Litchfield, Illinois, in 1861. He graduated in 1884 from the University of Illinois, where he remained for the next eight years, at first as an instructor, then as professor of mathematics, and finally as professor of physics and electrical engineering. In 1892 he became assistant professor of physics and later professor in the University of Chicago. Nine years afterwards he was invited by the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury to formulate a project for the development of work on weights and measures, and in 1901 was mainly responsible for the Act which established the Bureau of Standards at Washington. Of this he became the first director, retaining the position until 1923, when he was appointed president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had a lifelong connexion with the American Navy, and in 1898 served during the Spanish American War. This brief summary of his activities shows that the most important part of his work was connected with the Bureau of Standards, which is indebted to him for its existence and for many of its most striking developments.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) continues to surpass its operational target goals of supporting users; delivering fast, reliable computational ecosystems; creating innovative solutions for high-performance computing (HPC) needs; contributing to the community to build the next generation HPC workforce, and managing risks, safety, and security associated with operating some of the most powerful computers in the world. The results can be seen in the cutting-edge science conducted by users and the praise from the research community. Calendar year (CY) 2021 saw continued excellence in research supported by the OLCF’s leadership-class computing resources, including Summit (the nation’s most powerful supercomputer), the global scratch file system Alpine, the Scalable Protected Infrastructure (SPI), the Exploratory Visualization Environment for Research in Science and Technology (EVEREST), and the archival mass-storage resource High-Performance Storage System (HPSS). While maintaining access and exceptional user support for Summit, the OLCF continued to make progress on the installation and deployment of Frontier, which will be the nation’s first exascale system when it comes online at the start of CY 2023. Users have already begun running and optimizing scientific codes on Crusher, the OLCF test and development system equipped with Frontier’s architecture. Throughout the year, the OLCF maintained a strong culture of operational excellence, including risk management, workplace safety, and cybersecurity. The OLCF’s rigorous risk management strategy anticipated and mitigated risks, and at this time there are no high-priority operational risks. Similarly, ORNL and the OLCF were committed to operating under the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) safety regulations that ensure a safe workplace. Technical staff tracked and monitored existing threats and vulnerabilities within the OLCF while continually developing tools and practices to enhance operations without increasing the facility’s risk. CY 2021 was filled with outstanding results and accomplishments, including a very high rating from users on overall satisfaction for the eighth consecutive year; a tremendous number of node hours delivered to 1,671 researchers on Summit; and the successful delivery of the allocation split of roughly 60%, 20%, and 20% of core-hours offered for the Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE), Advanced Scientific Computing Research Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC), and Director’s Discretionary (DD) programs, respectively (Section 2). COVID-19 research remained a focus in 2021, and the ALCC and DD programs allocated over 1 million Summit hours to the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium. These accomplishments, coupled with the high utilization rates (i.e., overall and capability usage), represent the fulfillment of the promise of leadership class machines: efficient facilitation of leadership-class computational applications.

The front cover of Interface illustrates one of the greatest challenges and successes of dielectrics in microelectronics today, the growth of a layer of SiO2, 60 nanometers long and 1.2 nanometers thick, that is essentially defect free. This electronic gate, approximately 240 atoms long by 5 atoms thick, permits precise control of the flow of electrons across the channel of the transistor. The work shown here was done by Greg Timp and his colleagues at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies. In this case, it is the insulator that ultimately controls the performance of the transistor. The work represented on the cover is just one example of how the interests of the Dielectric Science and Technology Division of ECS are having some of the greatest impact in the field of microelectronics.

Current efforts in the Process Analytical Chemistry and Control Technology group at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, have focused on the development of an on-line method for real-time characterization of organic-containing effluents (principally trimethyamine (TMA) and methanol) produced during a high-temperature processing. On-line analysis of the gas streams was performed by combining FT-IR spectrometry with partial least squares (PLS) to obtain quantitative information for process control. The gas-phase infrared spectra were measured at a resolution of 16 cm-1 under atmospheric conditions. The correlation coefficients for all the components including water were larger than 0.999, and the standard errors of prediction were much less than 1% by weight. The effect of CO2 on the predictability of other components is discussed. Results of our experiment showed that the predicted errors for TMA and methanol increased by as much as 10 and 15%, respectively, as the amount of CO2 increased to 100% of the...

We disagree with Alexander J. Glass's assertion (Letters, 19 June, p. [1817][1]) that the tokamak must be as large as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) to achieve sustained thermonuclear burn and that this does not bode well for the tokamak as a potential power-plant concept. In fact, recent advances worldwide indicate that smaller tokamak power plants should be feasible. In current, few-second experiments, heat transport within the plasma has been reduced by suppressing turbulence, plasma pressure limits have been increased, the potential for steady-state operation by naturally driven currents has been demonstrated, and concerns about handling exhaust heat have been mitigated. Integrating and extending these advances toward steady state is now a focus of international tokamak research. With such advanced tokamak physics, a smaller ITER, now being pursued internationally, would likely produce sustained plasma burn, and the tokamak power plant of the future becomes much more attractive. After several decades of intensively competitive research on a broad range of magnetic fusion concepts, the tokamak emerged and matured into the only concept that is ready to produce the plasma conditions required to explore the next fusion science frontier, the physics of sustained burning plasmas. This is not to say that other concepts should not be investigated. On the contrary, they should be pursued to further optimize fusion power systems; physics understanding is transferable both ways. Our conclusion is that a strong experimental and computational tokamak research program with a healthy alternative concept program is the optimum fusion research strategy. We strongly support the international construction of a tokamak burning plasma experiment as soon as possible. Fusion research is ready to enter the burning plasma era. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.280.5371.1815d

An in depth understanding of the collective modes that can be excited in a wide range of high-energy plasmas is necessary to advance nuclear fusion research in parallel with other fields that include space and astrophysics in particular. Important achievements are shown to have resulted from implementing programs based on this reality, maintaining a tight connection with different areas of investigations. This involves the undertaking of a plurality of experimental approaches aimed at understanding the physics of fusion burning plasmas. At present, the most advanced among these is the Ignitor experiment involving international cooperation, that is designed to investigate burning plasma regimes near ignition for the first time.

Editorial introductions

The Fusion community could soon have available an opportunity to significantly advance fusion development, an opportunity afforded by the potential of the spherical torus as a plasma confinement system. That opportunity is, in a single device at an affordable price and at a suitable site, to move sequentially through the major fusion objectives of advanced confinement physics, burning plasma and DT physics, blanket and other fusion nuclear technology development, tritium self-sufficiency, and, perhaps at the end with an upside performance outcome, a chance at net electric breakeven. Meeting this set of objectives would dramatically advance the development of fusion.

Professor Emmanuel Tsesmelis: is an experimental particle physicist with a career spanning scientific research, academic teaching, science communication, international relations and management at CERN and at several universities. He is a Senior Physicist and Deputy Head of International Relations in CERN's Director-General Unit and a Visiting Professor in Particle and Accelerator Physics at the University of Oxford. He is an elected Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics and a supernumerary member of Jesus College, Oxford. Professor Albert De Roeck: is a senior research scientist and staff member at CERN. He is also a professor at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and a visiting professor at the Institute of Particle Physics and Phenomenology in Durham (UK). He obtained his PhD at the university of Antwerp on an experiment at CERN, studying the multiparticle dynamics in hadron-hadron interactions, by colliding meson beams on protons and nuclear targets. After his PhD, Albert spent 10 years at the German particle physics laboratory, DESY, where he and his team made very precise measurements of the quark and gluon structure of the proton. In the late 90's his interest turned to the possibility to discover new physics, in particular Supersymmetry and Extra Dimensions, and he returned to CERN and joined an experiment at the large electron-positron collider LEP. Albert is now one the leaders of the physics program and preparation for physics analysis at the CMS experiment at the LHC.