Design of the shattered pellet injection system for ASDEX Upgrade.

A new shattered pellet injection system was designed and built to perform disruption mitigation experiments on ASDEX Upgrade. The system can inject pellets with diameters of 1, 2, 4, or 8 mm with variable lengths over a range of L/D ratios of ∼0.5-1.

Reference Data for Attentional, Executive, Linguistic, and Visual Processing Tests Obtained from Cognitively Healthy Individuals with Normal Alzheimer's Disease Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarker Levels.

Background: Conventional neuropsychological norms likely include cognitively unimpaired (CU) individuals with preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology (amyloid-β, tau, and neurodegeneration) since they are based on cohorts without AD biomarkers data. Due to this limitation, population-based norms would lack sensitivity for detecting subtle cognitive decline due to AD, the transitional stage between healthy cognition and mild cognitive impairment. We have recently published norms for memory tests in individuals with normal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) AD biomarker levels.

Enhancing the Sensitivity of Memory Tests: Reference Data for the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test and the Logical Memory Task from Cognitively Healthy Subjects with Normal Alzheimer's Disease Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarker Levels.

Background: Cognitive performance of a given individual should be interpreted in the context of reference standards obtained in cognitively healthy populations. Recent evidence has shown that removing asymptomatic individuals with biomarker evidence of Alzheimer's disease pathology from normative samples increases the sensitivity of norms to detect memory impairments. These kind of norms may be useful for defining subtle cognitive decline, the transitional cognitive decline between normal cognition and mild cognitive impairment.

First measurements of a scintillator based fast-ion loss detector near the ASDEX Upgrade divertor.

A new reciprocating scintillator based fast-ion loss detector has been installed a few centimeters above the outer divertor of the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak and between two of its lower Edge Localized Modes (ELM) mitigation coils. The detector head containing the scintillator screen, Faraday cup, calibration lamp, and collimator systems are installed on a motorized reciprocating system that can adjust its position via remote control in between plasma discharges. Orbit simulations are used to optimize the detector geometry and velocity-space coverage.

Fast piezoelectric valve offering controlled gas injection in magnetically confined fusion plasmas for diagnostic and fuelling purposes.

In magnetically confined fusion plasmas controlled gas injection is crucial for plasma fuelling as well as for various diagnostic applications such as active spectroscopy. We present a new, versatile system for the injection of collimated thermal gas beams into a vacuum chamber. This system consists of a gas pressure chamber, sealed by a custom made piezo valve towards a small capillary for gas injection.