The acceleration of a high-charge electron bunch to 10 GeV in a 10-cm nanoparticle-assisted wakefield accelerator

An intense laser pulse focused onto a plasma can excite nonlinear plasma waves.Under appropriate conditions,electrons from the background plasma are trapped in the plasma wave and accelerated to ultra-relativistic velocities.This scheme is called a laser wakefield accelerator.In this work,we present results from a laser wakefield acceleration experiment using a petawatt-class laser to excite the wakefields as well as nanoparticles to assist the injection of electrons into the accelerating phase of the wakefields.We find that a 10-cm-long,nanoparticle-assisted laser wakefield accelerator can generate 340 pC,10±1.86 GeV electron bunches with a 3.4 GeV rms convolved energy spread and a 0.9 mrad rms divergence.It can also produce bunches with lower energies in the 4–6 GeV range.

Stepped-up development of accelerator mass spectrometry method for the detection of ^(60)Fe with the HI-13 tandem accelerator

The Moon provides a unique environment for investigating nearby astrophysical events such as supernovae.Lunar samples retain valuable information from these events,via detectable long-lived“fingerprint”radionuclides such as^(60)Fe.In this work,we stepped up the development of an accelerator mass spectrometry(AMS)method for detecting^(60)Fe using the HI-13tandem accelerator at the China Institute of Atomic Energy(CIAE).Since interferences could not be sufficiently removed solely with the existing magnetic systems of the tandem accelerator and the following Q3D magnetic spectrograph,a Wien filter with a maximum voltage of±60 kV and a maximum magnetic field of 0.3 T was installed after the accelerator magnetic systems to lower the detection background for the low abundance nuclide^(60)Fe.A 1μm thick Si_(3)N_(4) foil was installed in front of the Q3D as an energy degrader.For particle detection,a multi-anode gas ionization chamber was mounted at the center of the focal plane of the spectrograph.Finally,an^(60)Fe sample with an abundance of 1.125×10^(-10)was used to test the new AMS system.These results indicate that^(60)Fe can be clearly distinguished from the isobar^(60)Ni.The sensitivity was assessed to be better than 4.3×10^(-14)based on blank sample measurements lasting 5.8 h,and the sensitivity could,in principle,be expected to be approximately 2.5×10^(-15)when the data were accumulated for 100 h,which is feasible for future lunar sample measurements because the main contaminants were sufficiently separated.

On-chip ultrafast stackable dielectric laser positron accelerator

We present a first on-chip positron accelerator based on dielectric laser acceleration.This innovative approach significantly reduces the physical dimensions of the positron acceleration apparatus,enhancing its feasibility for diverse applications.By utilizing a stacked acceleration structure and far-infrared laser technology,we are able to achieve a seven-stage acceleration structure that surpasses the distance and energy gain of using the previous dielectric laser acceleration methods.Additionally,we are able to compress the positron beam to an ultrafast sub-femtosecond scale during the acceleration process,compared with the traditional methods,the positron beam is compressed to a greater extent.We also demonstrate the robustness of the stacked acceleration structure through the successful acceleration of the positron beam.

A Study of the TPS Based Beam-Matching Concept for Medical Linear Accelerators at a Tertiary Hospital

The flexibility in radiotherapy can be improved if patients can be moved between any one of the department’s medical linear accelerators (LINACs) without the need to change anything in the patient’s treatment plan. For this to be possible, the dosimetric characteristics of the various accelerators must be the same, or nearly the same. The purpose of this work is to describe further and compare measurements and parameters after the initial vendor-recommended beam matching of the five LINACs. Deviations related to dose calculations and to beam matched accelerators may compromise treatment accuracy. The safest and most practical way to ensure that all accelerators are within clinical acceptable accuracy is to include TPS calculations in the LINACs matching evaluation. Treatment planning system (TPS) was used to create three photons plans with different field sizes 3 × 3 cm, 10 × 10 cm and 25 × 25 cm at a depth of 4.5 cm in Perspex. Calculated TPS plans were sent to Mosaiq to be delivered by five LINACs. TPS plans were compared with five LINACs measurements data using Gamma analyses of 2% and 2 mm. The results suggest that for four out of the five LINACs, there was generally good agreement, less than a 2% deviation between the planned dose distribution and the measured dose distribution. However, one specific LINAC named “Asterix” exhibited a deviation of 2.121% from the planned dose. The results show that all of the LINACs’ performance were within the acceptable deviation and delivering radiation dose consistently and accurately.

Uniformity Control of Scanned Beam in 300 MeV Proton and Heavy Ion Accelerator Complex at SESRI

In recent years,heavy ion accelerator technology has been rapidly developing worldwide and widely applied in the fields of space radiation simulation and particle therapy.Usually,a very high uniformity in the irradiation area is required for the extracted ion beams,which is crucial because it directly affects the experimental precision and therapeutic effect.Specifically,ultra-large-area and high-uniformity scanning are crucial requirements for spacecraft radiation effects assessment and serve as core specification for beamline terminal design.In the 300 MeV proton and heavy ion accelerator complex at the Space Environment Simulation and Research Infrastructure(SESRI),proton and heavy ion beams will be accelerated and ultimately delivered to three irradiation terminals.In order to achieve the required large irradiation area of 320 mm×320 mm,horizontal and vertical scanning magnets are used in the extraction beam line.However,considering the various requirements for beam species and energies,the tracking accuracy of power supplies(PSs),the eddy current effect of scanning magnets,and the fluctuation of ion bunch structure will reduce the irradiation uniformity.To mitigate these effects,a beam uniformity optimization method based on the measured beam distribution was proposed and applied in the accelerator complex at SESRI.In the experiment,the uniformity is successfully optimized from 75%to over 90%after five iterations of adjustment to the PS waveforms.In this paper,the method and experimental results were introduced.

A Novel Quantization and Model Compression Approach for Hardware Accelerators in Edge Computing

Massive computational complexity and memory requirement of artificial intelligence models impede their deploy-ability on edge computing devices of the Internet of Things(IoT).While Power-of-Two(PoT)quantization is pro-posed to improve the efficiency for edge inference of Deep Neural Networks(DNNs),existing PoT schemes require a huge amount of bit-wise manipulation and have large memory overhead,and their efficiency is bounded by the bottleneck of computation latency and memory footprint.To tackle this challenge,we present an efficient inference approach on the basis of PoT quantization and model compression.An integer-only scalar PoT quantization(IOS-PoT)is designed jointly with a distribution loss regularizer,wherein the regularizer minimizes quantization errors and training disturbances.Additionally,two-stage model compression is developed to effectively reduce memory requirement,and alleviate bandwidth usage in communications of networked heterogenous learning systems.The product look-up table(P-LUT)inference scheme is leveraged to replace bit-shifting with only indexing and addition operations for achieving low-latency computation and implementing efficient edge accelerators.Finally,comprehensive experiments on Residual Networks(ResNets)and efficient architectures with Canadian Institute for Advanced Research(CIFAR),ImageNet,and Real-world Affective Faces Database(RAF-DB)datasets,indicate that our approach achieves 2×∼10×improvement in the reduction of both weight size and computation cost in comparison to state-of-the-art methods.A P-LUT accelerator prototype is implemented on the Xilinx KV260 Field Programmable Gate Array(FPGA)platform for accelerating convolution operations,with performance results showing that P-LUT reduces memory footprint by 1.45×,achieves more than 3×power efficiency and 2×resource efficiency,compared to the conventional bit-shifting scheme.

Design of 10 MeV electron linear accelerator for space environment simulation

A compact 10 MeV S-band irradiation electron linear accelerator(linac)was developed to simulate electronic radiation in outer space and perform electron irradiation effect tests on spacecraft materials and devices.According to the requirements of space environment simulation,the electron beam energy can be adjusted in the range from 3.5 to 10 MeV,and the average current can be adjusted in the range from 0.1 to 1 mA.The linac should be capable of providing beam irradiation over a large area of 1 m^(2) with a uniformity greater than 90% and a scanning rate of 100 Hz.A novel method was applied to achieve such a high beam scanning rate by combining a kicker and a scanning magnet.Based on this requirement,a design for the10 MeV linac is proposed with an RF power pulse repetition rate of 500 Hz;it includes a thermal cathode electron gun,a bunching-accelerating section,and a scanning transport line.The detailed physical design and dynamic simulation results of the proposed 10 MeV electron linac are presented in this paper.

Cambricon-QR:a sparse and bitwise reproducible quantized training accelerator

Quantized training has been proven to be a prominent method to achieve deep neural network training under limited computational resources.It uses low bit-width arithmetics with a proper scaling factor to achieve negligible accuracy loss.Cambricon-Q is the ASIC design proposed to efficiently support quantized training,and achieves significant performance improvement.However,there are still two caveats in the design.First,Cambricon-Q with different hardware specifications may lead to different numerical errors,resulting in non-reproducible behaviors which may become a major concern in critical applications.Second,Cambricon-Q cannot leverage data sparsity,where considerable cycles could still be squeezed out.To address the caveats,the acceleration core of Cambricon-Q is redesigned to support fine-grained irregular data processing.The new design not only enables acceleration on sparse data,but also enables performing local dynamic quantization by contiguous value ranges(which is hardware independent),instead of contiguous addresses(which is dependent on hardware factors).Experimental results show that the accuracy loss of the method still keeps negligible,and the accelerator achieves 1.61×performance improvement over Cambricon-Q,with about 10%energy increase.

Research on intelligent search-and-secure technology in accelerator hazardous areas based on machine vision

Prompt radiation emitted during accelerator operation poses a significant health risk,necessitating a thorough search and securing of hazardous areas prior to initiation.Currently,manual sweep methods are employed.However,the limitations of manual sweeps have become increasingly evident with the implementation of large-scale accelerators.By leveraging advancements in machine vision technology,the automatic identification of stranded personnel in controlled areas through camera imagery presents a viable solution for efficient search and security.Given the criticality of personal safety for stranded individuals,search and security processes must be sufficiently reliable.To ensure comprehensive coverage,180°camera groups were strategically positioned on both sides of the accelerator tunnel to eliminate blind spots within the monitoring range.The YOLOV8 network model was modified to enable the detection of small targets,such as hands and feet,as well as larger targets formed by individuals near the cameras.Furthermore,the system incorporates a pedestrian recognition model that detects human body parts,and an information fusion strategy is used to integrate the detected head,hands,and feet with the identified pedestrians as a cohesive unit.This strategy enhanced the capability of the model to identify pedestrians obstructed by equipment,resulting in a notable improvement in the recall rate.Specifically,recall rates of 0.915 and 0.82were obtained for Datasets 1 and 2,respectively.Although there was a slight decrease in accuracy,it aligned with the intended purpose of the search-and-secure software design.Experimental tests conducted within an accelerator tunnel demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach in achieving reliable recognition outcomes.

FPGA Accelerators for Computing Interatomic Potential-Based Molecular Dynamics Simulation for Gold Nanoparticles:Exploring Different Communication Protocols

Molecular Dynamics(MD)simulation for computing Interatomic Potential(IAP)is a very important High-Performance Computing(HPC)application.MD simulation on particles of experimental relevance takes huge computation time,despite using an expensive high-end server.Heterogeneous computing,a combination of the Field Programmable Gate Array(FPGA)and a computer,is proposed as a solution to compute MD simulation efficiently.In such heterogeneous computation,communication between FPGA and Computer is necessary.One such MD simulation,explained in the paper,is the(Artificial Neural Network)ANN-based IAP computation of gold(Au_(147)&Au_(309))nanoparticles.MD simulation calculates the forces between atoms and the total energy of the chemical system.This work proposes the novel design and implementation of an ANN IAP-based MD simulation for Au_(147)&Au_(309) using communication protocols,such as Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter(UART)and Ethernet,for communication between the FPGA and the host computer.To improve the latency of MD simulation through heterogeneous computing,Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter(UART)and Ethernet communication protocols were explored to conduct MD simulation of 50,000 cycles.In this study,computation times of 17.54 and 18.70 h were achieved with UART and Ethernet,respectively,compared to the conventional server time of 29 h for Au_(147) nanoparticles.The results pave the way for the development of a Lab-on-a-chip application.

Design and implementation of dual-mode configurable memory architecture for CNN accelerator

With the rapid development of deep learning algorithms,the computational complexity and functional diversity are increasing rapidly.However,the gap between high computational density and insufficient memory bandwidth under the traditional von Neumann architecture is getting worse.Analyzing the algorithmic characteristics of convolutional neural network(CNN),it is found that the access characteristics of convolution(CONV)and fully connected(FC)operations are very different.Based on this feature,a dual-mode reronfigurable distributed memory architecture for CNN accelerator is designed.It can be configured in Bank mode or first input first output(FIFO)mode to accommodate the access needs of different operations.At the same time,a programmable memory control unit is designed,which can effectively control the dual-mode configurable distributed memory architecture by using customized special accessing instructions and reduce the data accessing delay.The proposed architecture is verified and tested by parallel implementation of some CNN algorithms.The experimental results show that the peak bandwidth can reach 13.44 GB·s^(-1)at an operating frequency of 120 MHz.This work can achieve 1.40,1.12,2.80 and 4.70 times the peak bandwidth compared with the existing work.

Research on High-Precision Stochastic Computing VLSI Structures for Deep Neural Network Accelerators

Deep neural networks(DNN)are widely used in image recognition,image classification,and other fields.However,as the model size increases,the DNN hardware accelerators face the challenge of higher area overhead and energy consumption.In recent years,stochastic computing(SC)has been considered a way to realize deep neural networks and reduce hardware consumption.A probabilistic compensation algorithm is proposed to solve the accuracy problem of stochastic calculation,and a fully parallel neural network accelerator based on a deterministic method is designed.The software simulation results show that the accuracy of the probability compensation algorithm on the CIFAR-10 data set is 95.32%,which is 14.98%higher than that of the traditional SC algorithm.The accuracy of the deterministic algorithm on the CIFAR-10 dataset is 95.06%,which is 14.72%higher than that of the traditional SC algorithm.The results of Very Large Scale Integration Circuit(VLSI)hardware tests show that the normalized energy efficiency of the fully parallel neural network accelerator based on the deterministic method is improved by 31%compared with the circuit based on binary computing.

Seismic Reduction and Isolation Design Strategies for Bridges in High-Intensity Earthquake Areas

High-intensity earthquakes can cause severe damage to bridges,buildings,and ground surfaces,as well as disrupt human activities.Such earthquakes can create long-distance,high-intensity surface movements that negatively impact bridge structures.This article delves into the seismic reduction and isolation design strategies for bridges in high-intensity earthquake areas.It analyzes various seismic reduction and isolation technologies and provides case studies to help relevant units understand the design strategies of these technologies.The results of this article can be used as a guideline to effectively enhance the seismic performance of bridges in high-intensity earthquake areas.

Analysis of the Risk of Water Breakout in the Bottom Plate of High-Intensity Mining of Extra-Thick Coal Seams

In order to clarify the danger of water breakout in the bottom plate of extra-thick coal seam mining, 2202 working face of a mine in the west is taken as the research object, and it is proposed to use the on-site monitoring means combining borehole peeping and microseismic monitoring, combined with the theoretical analysis to analyze the danger of water breakout in the bottom plate. The results show that: 1) the theoretically calculated maximum damage depth of the bottom plate is 27.5 m, and its layer is located above the Austrian ash aquifer, which has the danger of water breakout;2) the drill hole peeping at the bottom plate of the working face shows that the depth of the bottom plate fissure development reaches 26 m, and the integrity of the water barrier layer has been damaged, so there is the risk of water breakout;3) for the microseismic monitoring of the anomalous area, the bottom plate of the return air downstream channel occurs in the field with a one-week lag, which shows that microseismic monitoring events may reflect the water breakout of the underground. This shows that the microseismic monitoring events can reflect the changes of the underground flow field, which can provide a reference basis for the early warning of water breakout. The research results can provide reference for the prediction of sudden water hazard.

High-intensity focused ultrasound ablation:An effective bridging therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma patients

AIM:To analyze whether high-intensity focused ultrasound(HIFU) ablation is an effective bridging therapy for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC).METHODS:From January 2007 to December 2010,49 consecutive HCC patients were listed for liver transplantation(UCSF criteria).The median waiting time for transplantation was 9.5 mo.Twenty-nine patients received transarterial chemoembolization(TACE) as a bringing therapy and 16 patients received no treatment before transplantation.Five patients received HIFU ablation as a bridging therapy.Another five patients with the same tumor staging(within the UCSF criteria) who received HIFU ablation but not on the transplant list were included for comparison.Patients were comparable in terms of Child-Pugh and model for end-stage liver disease scores,tumor size and number,and cause of cirrhosis.RESULTS:The HIFU group and TACE group showed no difference in terms of tumor size and tumor number.One patient in the HIFU group and no patient in the TACE group had gross ascites.The median hospital stay was 1 d(range,1-21 d) in the TACE group and two days(range,1-9 d) in the HIFU group(P < 0.000).No HIFU-related complication occurred.In the HIFU group,nine patients(90%) had complete response and one patient(10%) had partial response to the treatment.In the TACE group,only one patient(3%) had response to the treatment while 14 patients(48%) had stable disease and 14 patients(48%) had progressive disease(P = 0.00).Seven patients in the TACE group and no patient in the HIFU group dropped out from the transplant waiting list(P = 0.559).CONCLUSION:HIFU ablation is safe and effective in the treatment of HCC for patients with advanced cirrhosis.It may reduce the drop-out rate of liver transplant candidate.

High-intensity focused ultrasound treatment for patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer

BACKGROUND: High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a non-invasive method of solid tissue ablation therapy. However, only a few studies have reported the effect of HIFU for unresectable pancreatic cancer. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical benefits, survival time and complications associated with the use of HIFU ablation in patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer. METHODS: Twenty-five patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer were enrolled in our study. All patients received HIFU therapy for tumors at least once. The therapeutic effects of HIFU was evaluated in terms of Karnofsky performance status (KPS) scores, pain relief, serum CA19-9, and imaging by B-US and CT before and after the therapy. We also recorded median overall survival time and complications caused by the treatment. RESULTS: In the 25 patients, KPS scores were above 60, and increased KPS was observed in 23 patients after treatment. Pain relief occurred in 23 patients. Serum CA19-9 levels were significantly reduced one month after HIFU treatment and became negative in 5 patients. B-US revealed enhanced tumor echogenicity in 13 patients and decreased tumor blood supply in 9. Tumor necrosis was confirmed by CT in 8 patients one month after HIFU treatment. The median overall survival time was 10 months, and the 1-year survival rate was 42%. No severe complications were observed after HIFU treatment. CONCLUSION: HIFU can effectively relieve pain, increase KPS, decrease tumor growth and prolong the survival time of patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer.

Production of light nuclei and hypernuclei at High Intensity Accelerator Facility energy region

Heavy-ion collisions are powerful tools for studying hypernuclear physics.We develop a dynamical coalescence model coupled with an ART model(version1.0) to study the production rates of light nuclear clusters and hypernuclei in heavy-ion reactions,for instance,the deuteron(d),triton(t),helium(~3He),and hypertriton(_A^3H)in minimum bias(0-80%centrality)~6Li+^(12)C reactions at beam energy of 3.5A GeV.The penalty factor for light clusters is extracted from the yields,and the distributions of 0 angle of particles,which provide direct suggesetions about the location of particle detectors in the near future facility-High Intensity heavy-ion Accelerator Facility(HIAF) are investigated.Our calculation demonstrates that HIAF is suitable for studying hypernuclear physics.

Investigation of production of medical ^(82)Sr and ^(68)Ge for ^(82)Sr/^(82)Rb and ^(68)Ge/^(68)Ga generators via proton accelerator

How to operate^(82)Sr/^(82)Rb and ^(68)Ge/^(68)Ga generators used in the positron emission tomography scan process is explained, and the importance of ^(82)Sr and ^(68)Ge radionuclides for these generators is revealed. To produce medical ^(82)Sr and ^(68)Ge by means of a proton accelerator in an irradiation time of 24 h, a proton beam current of250 l A, and an energy range E_(proton)= 100 →5 MeV, the cross sections and the neutron emission spectrum curves of(p,xn) reaction processes on Rb-85, Ga-69 and Ga-71 targets were calculated, and the activities and yields of the product were simulated for the reaction processes. Additionally, the integral yields of the reaction processes were determined via the calculated cross-sectional curves and the mass stopping power obtained from the X-PMSP program. Furthermore, based on the obtained results, the appropriate reaction processes for the production of ^(82)Sr and ^(68)Ge isotopes on Rb-85, Ga-69, and Ga-71 targets are discussed.

Impact of a single bout of high-intensity interval exercise and short-term interval training on interleukin-6, FNDC5, and METRNL mRNA expression in human skeletal muscle

Background: Exercise promotes numerous phenotypic adaptations in skeletal muscle that contribute to improved function and metabolic capacity. An emerging body of evidence suggests that skeletal muscle also releases a myriad of factors during exercise, termed "myokines". The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of high-intensity interval training(HIIT) on the acute regulation of the mRNA expression of several myokines, including the prototypical myokine interleukin-6(IL-6), and recently identified myokines fibronectin type III domain-containing protein 5(FNDC5)(irisin) and meteorin-like protein(METRNL).Methods: Both before and after a 20-day period of twice-daily high-volume HIIT, 9 healthy males(20.5 ± 1.5 years performed a standardized bout of high-intensity interval exercise(HIIE; 5 × 4 min at ~80% pretraining peak power output) with skeletal muscle biopsy samples(vastus lateralis) obtained at rest, immediately following exercise, and at 3 h recovery.Results: Before training, a single bout of HIIE increased IL-6(p < 0.05) and METRNL(p < 0.05) mRNA expression measured at 3 h recovery when compared to rest. Following 20 days of HIIT, IL-6 and FNDC5 mRNA were increased at 3 h recovery from the standardized HIIE bout when compared to rest(both p < 0.05). Resting METRNL and FNDC5 mRNA expression were higher following training(p < 0.05), and there was an overall increase in FNDC5 mRNA post-training(main effect of training, p < 0.05).Conclusion: In human skeletal muscle(1) an acute bout of HIIE can induce upregulation of skeletal muscle IL-6 mRNA both before and after a period of intensified HIIT;(2) Resting and overall FNDC5 mRNA expression is increased by 20 days of HIIT; and(3) METRNL mRNA expression is responsive to both acute HIIE and short-term intense HIIT. Future studies are needed to confirm these findings at the protein and secretion level in humans.

Safety trial of high-intensity focused ultrasound therapy for pancreatic cancer

AIM:To evaluate the safety and clinical application of high-intensity focused ultrasound(HIFU)therapy for unresectable pancreatic cancer(PC).METHODS:Thirty PC patients(16 cases in stage III and 14 cases in stage IV)with visualized pancreatic tumors were admitted for HIFU therapy as an optional local therapy in addition to systemic chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy.Informed consent was obtained.This study began at the end of 2008 and was approved by the ethics committee of our hospital[Institutional Review Board(IRB):890].The HIFU device used was the FEP-BY02(Yuande Bio-Medical Engineering,Beijing,China).RESULTS:The mean tumor size after HIFU therapy changed to 30.9±1.7 mm from 31.7±1.7 mm at pre-therapy.There were no significant changes in tumor size,mean number of treatment sessions(2.7±0.1 mm),or mean total treatment time(2.4±0.1 h).The rate of symptom relief effect was 66.7%.The effectiveness of primary lesion treatment was as follows:complete response,0;partial response,4;stable disease,22;progressive disease,4.Treatment after HIFU therapy included 2 operations,24 chemotherapy treatments,and 4 best supportive care treatments.Adverse events occurred in 10%of cases,namely pseudocyst formation in 2 cases and mild pancreatitis development in 1.However,no severe adverse events occurred in this study.CONCLUSION:We suggest that HIFU therapy is safe and has the potential to be a new method of combination therapy for PC.