The 21st U.S. Transport Taskforce Workshop website has begun posting the presentations of its attendees. These can be downloaded from the conference program page.

The Transport Taskforce, in addition to having one of the more exciting conference names, is concerned with providing a forum to fusion researchers in which to discuss and further the understanding of plasma transport issues. That makes this a great conference to learn about some of the cutting edge research in fusion.

Some Notes

• The opening talk reviewed advanced turbulence simulations and presented interesting information about synthetic diagnostics (no slide numbers on the presentation, but the synthetic diagnostics section is labeled in the PDF link to follow). The simulation code outputs profiles of plasma density and temperature fluctuations. Synthetic diagnostics take the full profiles of the simulation and pare them down into what an experimental diagnostic would have measured. This is used to compare the simulation results with experimental measurements.
  
  Validation of Nonlinear Simulations of Core Tokamak Turbulence: Current Status and Future Directions [PDF]
• ITER received considerable attention and was mentioned in many presentations, either as a side note or as the main point. This makes sense in the context of increased simulation and modeling because only computer-based ITER work can be done right now, unless you work in Cadarache (this ITER movie contains music).
• My talk focused on power spectra characteristics associated with intermittent plasma pulses and increased transport levels. Since the TTF website is already hosting this file, I'm not going to put it on my site.
  
  Exponential Frequency Spectrum and Anomalous Transport [PDF]

Bad Apples

Apple laptops had a surprising and uncharacteristic poor performance. Computer problems during a conference are nothing new, but it's usually Windows software that does the crashing. When this happens, the Mac users are happy to point out that their hardware works wonderfully. They might even add that Keynote is better than PowerPoint. At TTF, however, at least three Macs delayed presentations. The opening talk was delayed when the Apple laptop running on the projector froze. It was the worst kind of freeze because the cursor was still active even though no files could be opened. Someone sitting in front of me said, "so much for the stability of Macs" and garnered a few chuckles. The other delays were caused by complete crashes in which the laptop had to be forced off and restarted.

The one Linux laptop I saw used did not have any problems at all, though it did take a lot longer to set up in the first place.

Technorati Tags: plasma physics, physics conference

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.