The fission Time Projection Chamber (fissionTPC) is a compact (15 cm diameter) two-chamber
MICROMEGAS TPC designed to make precision cross-section measurements of neutron-induced fission.
The actinide targets are placed on the central cathode and irradiated with a neutron beam that passes
axially through the TPC inducing fission in the target....
The detection of illicit weapons-grade nuclear material is a significant technical challenge receiving a great deal of attention in the nuclear community. A proposed solution is to actively bombard the material under investigation with neutrons, populating nuclear isomers in any potential fissile material. These isomers decay quickly, releasing gamma rays...
An adiabatic calorimeter operating over the range 5 to 300 K has
been automated. Instrumentation includes computer controlled data
acquisition, a low-thermal emf multiplexer for switching low-level dc
signals, and automatic analog shield controls. Temperature
measurements are made with platinum and germanium resistance
thermometers, and the thermometer resistances are determined...
The zirconium-chromium phase diagram was investigated in the
region between 40% and 85% chromium. The ZrCr₂ intermetallic
compound which has been the source of some controversy was especially
considered. It was found that ZrCr₂ transforms from the low
temperature C-15 (MgCu₂, FCC) structure to the high temperature
C-14 (MgZn₂, HCP)...
In this dissertation, I describe the experimental investigation of large superfluid helium droplets. The goal and direction of this thesis is to facilitate the use of these droplets as part of our project ss-EDI. The overall scheme of ss-EDI is to dope proteins inside helium droplets and collect a diffraction...
In this dissertation, I describe the experimental investigation of catching ions in superfluid helium droplets. The ultimate goal of our project is to build a coherent electron diffraction apparatus for atomic structure determination from oriented single macromolecules. This involves generating protein ions from electrospray ionization (ESI) and doping them in...
The focus of this thesis is to design, characterize, and apply novel computational methods and molecular systems to interrogate heterogeneous human gut microbiome-related phenomena. In Chapter 2, I design, implement, and characterize a method for embedding co-occurrence patterns derived from massive 16s amplicon datasets. I use this method to 1....