DEFENSE THREAT REDUCTION AGENCY17.2 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)

Proposal Submission Instructions

The approved FY17.2 topics solicited for in the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program are listed below. Offerors responding to this Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) must follow all general instructions provided in the Department of Defense (DoD) Program BAA. Specific DTRA requirements that add to or deviate from the DoD Program BAA instructions are provided below with references to the appropriate section of the DoD document.

The DTRA SBIR Program addresses development of innovative ideas against DTRA’s mission to counter Weapons of Mass Destruction (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear) threats and that are consistent with the purpose of the SBIR Program ‒ i.e., to strengthen the role of innovative small business concerns (SBCs) in Federally-funded research or research and development (R/R&D).

For technical questions about specific topics during the pre-release (21 April 2017 – 22 May 2017), contact the DTRA Technical Point of Contact (TPOC) for that specific topic. To obtain answers to technical questions during the formal BAA open period, visit https://sbir.defensebusiness.org/. For general inquiries or problems with the electronic submission, contact the DoD Help Desk 1-800-348-0787 (Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.). Specific questions pertaining to the DTRA SBIR Program should be submitted to:

Mr. Mark Flohr Defense Threat Reduction AgencyDTRA SBIR/STTR Program Manager 8725 John J. Kingman RoadMark.D.Flohr.civ@mail.mil Stop 6201Tel: (703) 767-3368 Ft. Belvoir, VA 22060-6201

PHASE I PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

DTRA will evaluate Phase I proposals using the criteria specified in Section 6.0 of the DoD SBIR Program BAA during the review and evaluation process. The criteria will be in descending order of importance with technical merit, soundness, and innovation of the proposed approach being the most important, followed by qualifications, and followed by the commercialization potential. With other factors being equal, cost of the proposal may be included in the evaluation. DTRA reserves the right to limit awards under any topic and only proposals considered to be of superior quality will be funded. Other than potential Discretionary Technical Assistance, Phase I contracts are limited to a maximum of $150,000 over a period not to exceed seven months. DTRA anticipates funding one or possibly two SBIR Phase I contracts to small businesses for each topic.

The DoD SBIR/STTR Proposal Submission system (https://sbir.defensebusiness.org/) provides instruction and a tutorial for preparation and submission of your proposal. Refer to Section 5.0 of the DoD Announcement for detailed instructions and the Phase I proposal format. You must

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include a Company Commercialization Report (CCR) as part of each proposal you submit. If you have not updated your commercialization information in the past year, or need to review a copy of your report, visit the DoD SBIR/STTR Proposal Submission site. Please note that improper handling of the Commercialization Report may have a direct impact on the review and evaluation of the proposal (refer to section 5.4.e of the DoD Program Announcement). Proposals addressing the topics will be accepted for consideration if received no later than the specified closing hour and date in the DoD Announcement – 8:00 p.m. ET, Wednesday, 21 June 2017. The Agency requires your entire proposal to be submitted electronically through the DoD SBIR/STTR Proposal Submission Web site (https://sbir.defensebusiness.org/). A hardcopy is NOT required and will not be accepted. Hand or electronic signature on the proposal is also NOT required.

DTRA has established a 20-page limitation for Technical Volumes submitted in response to its topics. This does not include the Proposal Cover Sheet (pages 1 and 2, added electronically by the DoD submission site), the Cost Volume, or the Company Commercialization Report. The Technical Volume includes, but is not limited to: table of contents, pages left blank, references and letters of support, appendices, key personnel biographical information, and all attachments. DTRA requires that small businesses complete the Cost Volume form on the DoD Submission site versus submitting it within the body of the uploaded volume. Proposals are required to be submitted in Portable Document Format (PDF), and it is the responsibility of submitters to ensure any PDF conversion is accurate and does not cause the Technical Volume portion of the proposal to exceed the 20-page limit. Any pages submitted beyond the 20-page limit, will not be read or evaluated. If you experience problems uploading a proposal, call the DoD Help Desk at 1-800-348-0787, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time Monday through Friday.

Companies should plan carefully for research involving animal or human subjects, biological agents, etc. (see Sections 4.7 - 4.9 in the DoD Program Announcement). The few months available for a Phase I effort may preclude plans including these elements unless coordinated before a contract is awarded. If the offeror proposes to use a foreign national(s) – refer to Sections 3.5 and 5.4.c(8) in the DoD Program Announcement for definitions and reporting requirements. Please ensure no Privacy Act information is included in this submittal.

PHASE II PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

Small business concerns awarded a Phase I contract are permitted to submit a Phase II proposal for evaluation and potential award selection. The Phase II proposals must be submitted no later than (NLT) 30 days AFTER the end of the 7 month Phase I period of performance.

All SBIR Phase II awards made on topics from solicitations prior to FY13 will be conducted in accordance with the procedures specified in those solicitations.

DTRA is not responsible for any money expended by the proposer prior to contract award.

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DTRA has established a 40-page limitation for Technical Volumes submitted in response to its topics. This does not include the Proposal Cover Sheets (pages 1 and 2, added electronically by the DoD submission site), the Cost Volume, or the Company Commercialization Report. The Technical Volume includes, but is not limited to: table of contents, pages left blank, references and letters of support, appendices, key personnel biographical information, and all attachments.

Further details on the due date, content, and submission requirements of the Phase II proposal will be provided either in the Phase I award or by subsequent notification.

Phase II Proposal Instructions

Each Phase II proposal must be submitted through the DoD SBIR/STTR Submission Web site by the deadline specified either in the Phase I award or subsequent notification. Each proposal submission must contain a Proposal Cover Sheet, Technical Volume, Cost Volume, and a Company Commercialization Report (see Sections 5.4.c.and 5.5 of the BAA Announcement).

As instructed in Section 5.4.e of the DoD SBIR Program BAA, the CCR is generated by the submission website based on information provided by you through the “Company Commercialization Report” tool.  

Commercialization Strategy. See Section 7.4 of the DoD SBIR 17.2 BAA.

Phase II Evaluation Criteria Phase II proposals will be reviewed for overall merit based upon the criteria in Section 8.0 of this Program Announcement and will be similar to the Phase I process. PUBLIC RELEASE OF AWARD INFORMATION

If your proposal is selected for award, the technical abstract and discussion of anticipated benefits will be publicly released via the Internet. Therefore, do not include proprietary or classified information in these sections. For examples of past publicly released DoD SBIR/STTR Phase I and II awards, visit https://sbir.defensebusiness.org/resources.

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

In accordance with the Small Business Act (15 U.S.C. 632), DTRA will authorize the recipient of Phase I and II SBIR awards to purchase technical assistance services, such as access to a network of scientists and engineers engaged in a wide range of technologies, or access to technical and business literature available through on-line data bases, for the purpose of assisting such concerns as:

making better technical decisions concerning such projects;

solving technical problems which arise during the conduct of such projects;

minimizing technical risks associated with such projects; and

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developing and commercializing new commercial products and processes resulting from such projects.

If you are interested in proposing use of a vendor for technical assistance, you must provide a cost breakdown in the Cost Volume under “Other Direct Costs (ODCs)” and provide a one-page description of the vendor you will use and the technical assistance you will receive. The proposed amount may not exceed a total of $5,000 per 12-month period of performance and the description should be included as the LAST page of the Technical Volume. This description will not count against the page limit and will NOT be included in the technical evaluation. Approval of technical assistance is not guaranteed and is subject to review of the contracting officer.

DECISION AND NOTIFICATION

DTRA has a single Evaluation Authority (EA) for all proposals received under this solicitation. The EA either selects or rejects Phase I and Phase II proposals based upon the results of the review and evaluation process plus other considerations including limitation of funds, and investment balance across all the DTRA topics in the solicitation. To provide this balance, a lower rated proposal in one topic could be selected over a higher rated proposal in a different topic. DTRA reserves the right to select all, some, or none of the proposals in a particular topic.

Following the EA decision, DTRA STTR will release notification e-mails for each accepted or rejected offer. E-mails will be sent to the addresses provided for the Principal Investigator and Corporate Official. Offerors may request a debriefing of the evaluation of their not selected proposal and should submit this request via email to dtra.belvoir.J9.mbx.sbir@mail.mil and include “SBIR 17.2 Topic XX Debriefing Request” in the subject line. Debriefings are provided to help improve the offeror’s potential response to future solicitations. Debriefings do not represent an opportunity to revise or rebut the EA decision.

For selected offers, DTRA will initiate contracting actions which, if successfully completed, will result in contract award. DTRA Phase I awards are issued as fixed-price purchase orders with a maximum period of performance of seven-months. DTRA may complete Phase I awards without additional negotiations by the contracting officer or without opportunity for revision for proposals that are reasonable and complete.

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DTRA SBIR 17.2 Topic Index

DTRA172-001 Applications of Ultra-Low Cost Differential Pressure Sensors to the Large N Acoustic Sensor Problem

DTRA172-002 High Performance Computing (HPC) Tools for Topology Aware Mapping of Inter-node communication

DTRA172-003 Tools for Memory Hierarchy Optimization on Pre-Exascale HPC Architectures DTRA172-004 Automated Approaches to Analyze and Identify Dual Use Research of Concern from

Scientific PublicationsDTRA172-005 Development of Ultracapacitors with High Energy Density and Low LeakageDTRA172-006 Hardware-in-the-Loop Scintillation Simulator for MILSATCOM links in a Nuclear

Disturbed Communication EnvironmentDTRA172-007 Non-Saturating, Real-Time Battlefield DosimeterDTRA172-008 Field Debris Analysis for Nuclear Forensics

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DTRA SBIR 17.2 Topic Descriptions

DTRA172-001 TITLE: Applications of Ultra-Low Cost Differential Pressure Sensors to the Large N Acoustic Sensor Problem

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Sensors

OBJECTIVE: To develop an economically feasible solution to the Large N sensor problem for acoustic measurements

DESCRIPTION: Seismic and acoustic signals are of interest to DTRA and DoD in several areas including nuclear testing monitoring, terrorist blast forensics, battle damage assessment, and environmental monitoring. In both seismic and acoustic propagation, it is important to understand the scale lengths and uncertainties associated with very local variability in wave fields. For decades both communities have relied on sparsely distributed point measurements to develop and validate propagation models as well as interpret data with respect to the nature of sources. This reliance on single point measurements likely results in significant errors in source inversion as well as potentially overlooked physical processes important to model development. In addition, in the field of infrasound, we currently rely on mechanical filters to reduce wind noise. Implementation of Large N acoustic sensor arrays would enable this to be done digitally rather than mechanically, with associated signal processing benefits. Very low cost technology has recently enabled the practical implementation of Large (~ 1000 sensors) N seismic sensor arrays. To our knowledge this has not been done with acoustic sensors except in very limited cases. The recent appearance on the market of very low (<$25) cost mass produced ultra-low range differential pressure sensors and associated inexpensive electronic modules (e.g. Raspberry Pi modules for one example) suggest that a 50 – 100 element acoustic sensor array might be built with a total off the shelf materials cost that is on the same order as the current cost of a single limited production acoustic sensor. Links to samples of these types of sensors, processors, and Wi-Fi communications boards are given in references 10-13.

Part of the innovation challenge involves the adaption of low cost sensors originally intended for tasks such as engine management and HVAC control systems to the acoustic signal detection problem. Innovative design work involving the addition of a reference volume and controlled leak will be required in order to make these units function as acoustic sensors. In addition, innovative software development will be required to realize the full benefits of the large N arrays. These benefits would include the ability to reduce noise, detect very small localized signals that would be undetectable by a single point acoustic sensor, and develop array approaches for signal detection and characterization (e.g. location and yield).

PHASE I: Using low cost mass produced components, construct a working 100 N acoustic sensor array that is spatially distributed within an area of 100 meters by 100 meters (or a square area 100 meters on a side). The individual sensor elements should have a reasonably flat response band between 0.1 and 100 Hz with a low-end resolution of 0.1 Pa. Digital resolution should be at least 12 bits with a sample rate of at least 100 samples per second. The data streams from all sensors shall be transmitted to a central processing unit where spatial signal stacking, frequency wave number and other signal processing techniques can be accomplished.

PHASE II: Develop and test a prototype system for production employing at least 500 sensors.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: In addition to DoD interests, Large N acoustic sensor arrays can be used to provide valuable supplemental tracking information with respect to severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, severe clear air turbulence, and hurricanes.

REFERENCES:1. Reinke, R.E., J.A. Leverette, and C. Hayward, 2006, “On the use of differential pressure gages for low pressure blast measurements” in Proceedings of the 19th Symposium on the Military Aspects of Blast and Shock (MABS 19), Calgary, October.

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2. Shields, F. D., 2005, “Low frequency wind noise correlation in microphone arrays”, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol 117, pages 3489-3496

3. Hedlin, M.A., B. Alcoverro, and G. D’Spain, 2003, “Evaluation of rosette infrasonic noise reducing spatial filters”, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol 114, pages 1807-1820

4. Chen, II-Young, Tae Sung Kim, Jeung Soo Jeon, and Hee-II Lee, 2009, “Infrasound observations of the apparent North Korean nuclear test of 25 May, 2009”, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 36, No. 22

5. Koper, K.D., T.C. Wallace, R. Reinke, and J. Leverette, 2002, “Empirical scaling laws for truck bomb explosions based o seismic and acoustic data”, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Vol. 92, pages 527-542

6. Kim, K. and A. Rodgers, 2016, “Waveform inversion of acoustic waves for explosion yield estimation”, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 43, pages 6883-6890

7. Farges, T. and E. Blanc, 2010, “Characteristics of infrasound from lightning and sprites near thunderstorm areas”, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 115

8. Paschall, Olivia, C., 2016, “Reflection Processing of the Large N seismic data from the Source Physics Experiment (SPE), LANL Tech Report LA-UR-16-25181

9. Mentink. J.H. and L.G. Evers,2011, “Frequency response and design parameters for differential microbarometers”, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 130, pages 33-41

10. https://www.servoflo.com/pressure-sensors/suppliers/silicon-microstructures/398-sm5852

11. https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero/

12. https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-2-model-b/

13. https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/usb-wifi-dongle/

KEYWORDS: acoustic sensors; large N array;

DTRA172-002 TITLE: High Performance Computing (HPC) Tools for Topology Aware Mapping of Inter-node communication

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Information Systems, Materials/Processes, Weapons

OBJECTIVE: Modern High Performance Computers often feature a hierarchal interconnect topology that features non-uniform latency and or bandwidth between nodes. The objective of this project is to develop approaches for building a (HPC) High Performance Computing oriented performance Toolkit containing libraries, runtime, and or tools that can be used by an application developer to perform topology-aware domain placement on distributed memory parallel computers to optimize cross node communications. This will significantly increase the effective use of HPC resources for efficiently (computing time required / # of processors required…2X-4X reduction) conducting vital high fidelity calculations needed for developing state-of-art CWMD Modeling & Simulation (M&S) decision support tools.

DESCRIPTION: DTRA uses High Fidelity computer codes to investigate weapon effects phenomenology and techniques for countering WMD. End to end High Fidelity simulations in support of DTRA programs that use

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significant HPC include Agent Defeat Modeling Baseline, Large Caliber Penetrator, Enhanced Consequence Analysis and Nuclear Survivability.

Modern distributed memory High Performance Computers use either commodity or proprietary interconnects. Regardless of the technology, the interconnect topology can vary. Examples are Fat Tree, Hypercube, n-dimensional Torus and Dragonfly. As the number of compute nodes increases, certain networks, particularly Fat Tree’s require an interconnect switch hierarchy requiring multiple hops to traverse the interconnect, with each hop causing increased latency.

For this topic, we are interested in the use case where an application code is distributed among multiple compute nodes. Each node contains multiple cores with shared memory. Communication between and among nodes is performed using a message passing library such as Message Passing Interface (MPI). Each application code has exclusive use of each node assigned to a job during execution. The nodes are assigned by a Workload Management System such as the Portable Batch System (PBS), and may not be contiguous. Although each job has exclusive use of its nodes, the interconnect is shared among all the jobs running on the HPC system.

Compute node names can sometimes be used to infer node proximity but the interconnect topology must be known a. priori or retrieved from some system command. Such data would not be sufficient to take into account any dynamic routing or network contention from other work on the HPC system. Approaches might include, but are not limited to performing periodic MPI ping testing to obtain interconnect performance data to inform decisions on data decomposition, renumbering, or other load balancing techniques.

Significant characteristics of tools desired are ability to profile a code on an existing architecture, and develop estimates of suitability for use on other architectures, and improved robustness of tools to deal with complex algorithms such as commonly found in codes of interest. These may include unstructured, adaptive mesh, coupled (CFD) Computational Fluid Dynamics / (CSM) Computational Structural Mechanics codes, explicit finite element codes used for short strong shocks, and chemistry codes used in conjunction with CFD codes.

PHASE I: Develop an approach for design or modification of existing tools to assist application code developers in performing topologically aware data layout to minimize latency and maximize bandwidth among distributed compute nodes. The software should utilize existing profiling tools to identify communication patterns in the application code and then use the software developed, to recommend topologically aware load balancing.

PHASE II: Develop a production ready suite of tools based on the approach identified in PHASE 1, including end user documentation as well as documentation useful for a system administrator.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: The tools developed for use on DTRA’s very demanding application codes will be well suited, once refined, for use on more general HPC workloads.

REFERENCES:1. Productive Parallel Linear Algebra Programming with Unstructured Topology Adaption. Peter Gottschling, Torsten Hoefler Proceedings - 12th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing, CCGrid 2012 05/2012; DOI: 10.1109/CCGrid.2012.51 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254038557_Productive_Parallel_Linear_Algebra_Programming_with_Unstructured_Topology_Adaption

2. Maximizing Throughput on a Dragonfly Network. Nikhil Jain, Abhinav Bhateley, Xiang Ni, Nicholas J. Wrightz, Laxmikant V. Kale Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 USA, Center for Applied Scientific Computing, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94551 USA. NERSC, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720 USA. /~bhatele/pubs/pdf/2014/sc2014a.pdf

3. Topology Aware Process Mapping. Sebastian von Alfthan, Ilja Honkonen, Minna Palmroth Chapter Applied Parallel and Scientific Computing. Volume 7782 of the series Lecture Notes in Computer Science pp 297-308. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-36803-5_21#page-1

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KEYWORDS: Topologically aware data placement, latency, bandwidth, interconnect, distributed memory, MPI, Application Profiling, communication patterns

DTRA172-003 TITLE: Tools for Memory Hierarchy Optimization on Pre-Exascale HPC Architectures

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Information Systems, Materials/Processes, Weapons

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this project is to develop a performance analysis toolkit (augmenting an existing overall performance tools framework) that can be utilized by developers to guide code modernization and optimization for upcoming pre-Exascale high performance computing (HPC) platforms. Planned pre-Exascale HPC platforms will feature many-core systems with deep memory hierarchies. For example, the second generation Intel Xeon Phi processor, codenamed Knights Landing (KNL), consists of up to 72 cores per processor, with each core capable of 4-way Simultaneous Multi-threading. KNL features a more complex memory hierarchy in the form of a high-bandwidth, low-capacity on-package MCDRAM memory (referred to as “near” memory) and off-package traditional DRAM memory (referred to as “far” memory). Significant code refactoring and optimizations efforts may be required to “map” DTRA’s critical High Fidelity computer codes (described below) to run efficiently on upcoming systems with KNL and similar architectures. Such efforts can be intelligently guided by workload performance characterization and analysis tools, which inspect the behavior of large-scale, High Fidelity codes and suggest refactoring and optimization strategies (e.g., which data structures in the code should be allocated on “near” memory for better performance). The approach will combine a code-centric view (i.e., inspect performance issues in terms of code structures such as loops and functions) with a data-centric view that analyzes performance in terms of key data structures in the codes; this hybrid approach is required to guide the preparation for pre-Exascale systems with deep memory hierarchies.

DESCRIPTION: DTRA uses High Fidelity computer codes to investigate weapon effects phenomenology and techniques for countering WMD. End to end High Fidelity simulations in support of DTRA programs that use significant HPC include Agent Defeat Modeling Baseline, Large Caliber Penetrator, Enhanced Consequence Analysis and Nuclear Survivability. Such codes will not scale and the run times will be prohibitively long without optimization for pre-Exascale architectures. To address the need to improve memory placement for applications as described above, a performance analysis toolkit (augmenting an existing overall performance tools framework) is needed, that can be utilized by developers to guide code modernization and optimization on systems with deep memory hierarchies.

PHASE I: Develop an approach for design of a data-centric analysis tool capable of handling High Fidelity codes as described above. The tool will fit into an overall performance tools framework being developed under a previous effort. Identify key concepts and methods that, when implemented, will provide non-intrusive tools that are effectively operable on complex High Fidelity codes. State-of-the-art and innovative application code profiling tools are envisioned here that work directly on the optimized executables (not source code) and produce intelligent and actionable insights on data placement (i.e., which data structures in the code are best allocated on “near” versus “far” memory) via direct simulation of the targeted memory configurations [1, 2]. Develop a technical approach for implementation of additional capabilities in the tools to address other performance enhancing features of upcoming HPC platforms (e.g., massive on-node multithreading).

PHASE II: Develop a production ready tool component based on the Phase I approach and integrate within the overall tools framework. Implement additional capabilities in the tools to address other performance enhancing features of upcoming HPC platforms (e.g., massive on-node multithreading). Demonstrate the use of the tools on DTRA in-house and DOD HPCMP systems on a broad range of High Fidelity application codes to include both rectangular grid and unstructured, three-dimensional adaptive mesh, coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) / Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM) codes, explicit finite element codes used for short strong shocks, and chemistry codes used in conjunction with CFD codes.

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PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: The performance tools developed for use on very demanding application codes will be well suited, once refined, for use on more general HPC workloads on pre-Exascale architectures. Improvements in this phase are expected to involve ease of use enhancements and hardening of the profiling tools for use on a wide range of application software used in Government research and industry.

REFERENCES:1. Laurenzano, M.A.; Tikir, M.M.; Carrington, L.; Snavely, A., “PEBIL: Efficient static binary instrumentation for Linux,” in Performance Analysis of Systems & Software (ISPASS), 2010 IEEE International Symposium on, pp.175-183, 28-30 March 2010

2. Olschanowsky, C.M.; Tikir, M.M.; Carrington, L.; Snavely, A., “PSnAP: Accurate Synthetic Address Streams Through Memory Profiles,” in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing (LCPC) 2009

3. Explicit Management of Memory Hierarchy. Jarek Nieplocha, Robert Harrison, Ian Foster. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory. Richland, WA 99352, USA Argonne, IL 60439, USA

4. Improving the Cache Locality of Memory Allocation Dirk Grunwald Benjamin Zorn Robert Henderson Department of Computer Science Campus Box #430 University of Colorado, Boulder 80309–0430 PLDI '93 Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1993 conference on Programming language design and implementation

KEYWORDS: High Performance Computing (HPC), Exascale, memory hierarchies, high bandwidth memory

DTRA172-004 TITLE: Automated Approaches to Analyze and Identify Dual Use Research of Concern from Scientific Publications

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Biomedical, Chemical/Biological Defense, Information Systems

OBJECTIVE: Conduct proof of concept studies that will enable the automatic identification of open scientific publications that pose dual use concern.

DESCRIPTION: Dual use research of concern (DURC) are life sciences research that, based on current understanding, can be reasonably anticipated to provide knowledge, information, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied to pose a significant threat with broad potential consequences to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, materiel and therefore to national security.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in particular is concerned with life sciences research that falls under one of 15 high consequence pathogens and toxins and 7 experimental categories listed below. The a) high consequence pathogens and toxins are; 1. Avian influenza virus (highly pathogenic), 2. Bacillus anthracis, 3. Botulinum neurotoxin, 4. Burkholderia mallei, 5. Burkholderia pseudomallei, 6. Ebola virus, 7. Foot-and-mouth disease virus, 8. Francisella tularensis, 9. Marburg virus, 10. Reconstructed 1918 Influenza virus, 11. Rinderpest virus, 12. Toxin-producing strains of Clostridium botulinum, 13. Variola major virus, 14. Variola minor virus, and 15. Yersinia pestis. The b) 7 experimental categories are; 1. Enhances the harmful consequences of the agent or toxin, 2. Disrupts immunity or the effectiveness of an immunization against the agent or toxin without clinical or agricultural justification, 3. Confers to the agent or toxin resistance to clinically or agriculturally useful prophylactic or therapeutic interventions against that agent or toxin or facilitates their ability to evade detection methodologies, 4. Increases the stability, transmissibility, or the ability to disseminate the agent or toxin, 5. Alters the host range or tropism of the agent or toxin, 6. Enhances the susceptibility of a host population to the agent or toxin, 7. Generates or reconstitutes an eradicated or extinct agent or toxin from the list of 15 agents and toxins listed above.

Automated approaches to analyze & identify potential dual use research publications from open scientific literature requires identifying and extracting relationships at the molecular and cellular level6,7. However, single sentences

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often do not incorporate biochemical entities in the same sentence where a relationship is described. Another challenge is properly assigning biochemical entities (i.e. DNA, RNA, proteins, chemicals, etc.) to a particular species (e.g. Bacillus anthracis) as opposed to the host (e.g. human, non-human primates, etc.). Additionally experimental techniques and procedures need to be taken into account (e.g. selection for antibiotic resistant bacterial mutants, methods/procedures involved in creating recombinant systems). In order to allow for greater flexibility approaches such as weakly supervised learning should be optimized to draw as much knowledge from experts (e.g. microbiologists) as possible while at the same time minimizing the time and effort required from the expert. Proposals which include multidisciplinary teams (e.g. microbiologists and computer scientists) are preferred.

PHASE I: Define and develop approaches needed to automatically identify open source scientific publications that pose a dual use concern. Identify a representative list of research that satisfies the 7 experimental categories in the open scientific literature to use as a training set. The phase I deliverable is a report and preliminary proof of concept demonstration detailing the (1) advantages and disadvantages/limitations of the proposed methods with respect to adaptability, precision, recall, time and effort required of subject matter experts, and ease of use (2) identification of a training set of scientific publications in the open scientific literature that satisfies the 7 experimental categories (3) preliminary proof of concept demonstration for 1 of the 7 experimental categories.

PHASE II: Further develop and refine DURC software. Conduct proof of concept demonstration for all 7 experimental categories. The Phase II deliverable is a report, proof of concept demonstration, and code detailing a (1) Description of finalized approaches and analysis of performance with respect to adaptability, precision, recall, time and effort required of subject matter experts, and ease of use (2) software code (3) final proof of concept demonstration

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Finalize and commercialize software for use by customers (e.g. government, academic journal, etc.). Although additional funding may be provided through DoD sources, the awardee should look to other public or private sector funding sources for assistance with transition and commercialization.

REFERENCES:1. http://osp.od.nih.gov/office-biotechnology-activities/biosecurity/nsabb

2. Casadevall, Arturo, et al. "Dual-use research of concern (dURC) review at American society for microbiology journals." mBio 6.4 (2015): e01236-15 3. Duprex, W. Paul, et al. "Gain-of-function experiments: time for a real debate." Nature Reviews Microbiology 13.1 (2015): 58-64

4. Selgelid, Michael J. "Governance of dual-use research: an ethical dilemma." Bulletin of the World Health Organization 87.9 (2009): 720-723

5. Guide, A. Companion. "Dual Use Research of Concern." (2014)

6. Durmuş, Saliha, et al. "A review on computational systems biology of pathogen–host interactions." Frontiers in microbiology 6 (2015): 235

7. Ananiadou, Sophia, et al. "Event-based text mining for biology and functional genomics." Briefings in functional genomics (2014): elu015

8. Rosengard, Ariella M., et al. "Variola virus immune evasion design: expression of a highly efficient inhibitor of human complement." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99.13 (2002): 8808-8813

9. Sudo, Kiyoshi, Satoshi Sekine, and Ralph Grishman. "An improved extraction pattern representation model for automatic IE pattern acquisition." Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting on Association for Computational

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Linguistics-Volume 1. Association for Computational Linguistics, 2003

10. Cello, Jeronimo, Aniko V. Paul, and Eckard Wimmer. "Chemical synthesis of poliovirus cDNA: generation of infectious virus in the absence of natural template." science 297.5583 (2002): 1016-1018

KEYWORDS: Dual Use Research of Concern, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing

DTRA172-005 TITLE: Development of Ultracapacitors with High Energy Density and Low Leakage

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Electronics, Materials/Processes, Sensors

OBJECTIVE: Develop an ultracapacitor with energy greater than 450 Wh/L, retain charge for at least 30 days, and operate from -40 degrees C to +60 degrees C.

DESCRIPTION: Military operations, particularly surveillance and remotely operated technology-based activities, require increasingly energy dense power supplies, while remaining small, low-noise, and long lived. Additionally, it is advantageous to have long component life (many charge/discharge cycles), the ability to charge quickly, be able to operate in a wide variety of environmental conditions. Ultracapacitors may be able to answer these requirements, providing performance equal or superior to battery technology.

The purpose of this technology is to provide power to low-observable sensors and surveillance equipment for periods up to thirty days, in an operating range of -40 degrees C to +60 degrees C. It is estimated that an optimal solution would provide 450 Wh/L. However, as a key object of this research is to reduce DTRA’s dependence on batteries and their associated logistics train, lower energy densities will be considered.

PHASE I: Develop, evaluate, and validate innovative materials or techniques for use in an ultra-high energy density ultracapacitor while demonstrating satisfactory charge retention. By the end of phase one, materials and techniques should have been demonstrated to have the potential for fulfilling the needs of a full-up end item.

PHASE II: Utilize the materials and techniques developed in phase I of this research to develop a prototype ultracapacitor and demonstrate its ability to meet the requirements laid out in the description. The end item will need to be sufficiently rugged as to withstand rough or industrial handling, the temperature extremes noted above, and be simple to use. Additionally, the end item should be contained in such a way that it can be safely handled by untrained personnel without preemptive discharge.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Defense Threat Reduction Agency requires power supplies for its equipment, and would find it useful; in addition, the world market for power supplies supports the commercialization of any technology that is competitive with lithium battery technology.

REFERENCES:1. Lele Peng, Xu Peng, Borui Liu, Changzheng Wu, Yi Xie, and Guihua Yu, “Ultrathin Two-Dimensional MnO2/Graphene Hybrid Nanostructures for High-Performance, Flexible Planar Supercapacitors,” Nano Letters 2013 13 (5), 2151-2157

2. Hertzberg, B., Kaidos, A., Koyalenko, I., Magasinski, A., Dixon, P., Yushin, G., “Novel materials for advanced supercapacitors and Li-ion batteries,” International SAMPE Technical Conference, 2010, 2010 SAMPE Fall Technical Conference and Exhibition

KEYWORDS: ultracapacitors, supercapacitors, high energy density, distributed energy storage, long-term energy storage

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DTRA172-006 TITLE: Hardware-in-the-Loop Scintillation Simulator for MILSATCOM links in a Nuclear Disturbed Communication Environment

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Air Platform, Electronics, Ground/Sea Vehicles, Nuclear Technology, Space Platforms

OBJECTIVE: To develop a simulator or simulators that accurately replicate the statistics that describe the radio frequency channel parameters, for satellite communication links, in a nuclear scintillated environment.

DESCRIPTION: The Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Nuclear Technology Program works with stakeholders to develop and ensure critical equipment can survive during a nuclear event. High altitude, exo-atmospheric nuclear detonations create atmospheric ionization that affects Radio Frequency (RF) propagation and the operation of RF communication systems. The statistics that describe the RF propagation channel are referred to as the RF Channel Parameters. The RF channel parameters provide a complete characterization of the propagation channel and are all that is required to specify the behavior of the channel in a disturbed environment. The waves propagating through this environment, depending on the specific atmospheric conditions, will either experience fast fading or slow fading. Fading can disrupt RF communication links and accurate and reliable means of testing these links is critical.

While several simulators have been developed (such as the Advanced Channel Simulator, MILSATCOM Atmospheric Scintillation Simulator, Configurable Link Test Set simulator, and the Wideband Chanel Simulator) they have often been created for very specific systems, are not fully certified, are no longer working, or are lacking documentation to qualify them for Key Performance Parameter (KPP) or similar requirements testing. With increased demand for scintillation testing, this topic seeks proposals to develop a reliable hardware-in-the-loop simulator (or simulators) that can be developed to accurately replicate the statistics that describe the RF channel parameters for a wide range of Military Satellite Communication (MILSATCOM).

PHASE I: A study should be conducted to assess the best method/approach for tackling the MILSATCOM spectrum of links. A proof of principle experiment or initial prototype should be designed/carried out to demonstrate viability.

PHASE II: Phase II projects should expand/develop the prototype device(s). Performer will work with DTRA on initial certification planning and testing during this phase and documentation (to include user manuals, certification procedures, documentation, etc) will begin. This Phase will focus on expanding the prototype to meet the wide range of MILSATCOM links, identify bugs, issues, and potential problem areas.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: This technology should be expanded to production level quality in Phase III. This should include full documentation, user’s manual(s), certification, maintenance plans etc. All bugs, issues, and other items discovered during Phase II will be resolved and final certification will be completed during this phase.

REFERENCES:1. “Propagation of RF Signals through Structured Ionization: Theory and Antenna Aperture Effect Applications (U),” May 1986, DNA-TR-86-1, Unclassified

2. “ACIRF User's Guide: Theory and Examples (U),” December 1989, DNA-TR-88-175, Unclassified

3. “Propagation of RF Signals Through Structured Ionization: The General Model," March 1991, DNA-TR-90-9, Unclassified

4. “Satellite System Natural and Nuclear Survivability Standard”, MIL-STD-3053, 19 November 2015, SECRET//RD-N

KEYWORDS: Scintillation, Simulators, SATCOM

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DTRA172-007 TITLE: Non-Saturating, Real-Time Battlefield Dosimeter

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Battlespace, Electronics, Nuclear Technology, Sensors

OBJECTIVE: To develop a compact neutron/gamma real-time dosimeter for replacement of currently deployed systems such as the UDR-13 and PDR-75A. Proposed systems must provide highly accurate dose measurements within a few seconds of dwell time, and avoid saturation while measuring the extremely high radiation flux from the prompt neutrons and gammas following a nuclear blast.

DESCRIPTION: The Defense community has a need for detecting and measuring radiation dose, accurately and in real-time, in operations of high dose rates [1-4] following a nuclear blast. The propagation of prompt neutrons following a nuclear blast takes less than a second out to 1000 meters. Most of the dose is delivered within 1 ms. At this distance, the dose absorbed by the human body following the explosion of a 20 kiloton fission weapon is about 37 Gy (3700 rad) [5,6]. An accurate measurement of this dose in real time is very challenging and not adequately addressed with current solutions. In addition, prompt radiation includes a strong gamma component, that reaches the same radius over 10 s, with a total dose of 38 Gy (3800 rad). Proposed solutions should include considerations for a mechanism for hardening against interference caused by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) associated with the nuclear blast. Most electronics are rendered inoperable for some period of time by this pulse. This dictates that elements be incorporated to guard against loss of data in such instances [6].

Innovative neutron and gamma detector solutions are sought that can accurately measure the dose due to prompt radiation, but also have sufficient sensitivity to measure the dose due to residual radiation following a nuclear blast, in the aftermath of a conventional explosion that disperses radioactive materials (dirty bomb), and during background conditions. Multiple distinct detector modules may be combined to capture the ranges outlined below. At the same time the device must produce rapid measurement of much lower doses encountered during post blast and post dirty bomb surveys during the cleanup phase.

Proposed solutions should be capable of direct readout of data that is buffered in very robust memory, dose-rate independence up to 100 cGy/sec for gammas and 106 cGy/sec for neutrons, as delivered by an initial burst of a nuclear weapon. Residual sensitivity must be measurable in the range of 0.1 to 999 cGy/hr for neutron energies up to 14 MeV and for gamma energies up to 3 MeV. The weight of the dosimeter must not exceed 10 ounces, and the volume must not exceed 10.5 in3. Dosimeter accuracy must be the greater of either ±20% or ±15 cGy of the tissue dose. The standard deviation of statistical fluctuations in the data from the average response should not exceed 10%. The data should be available via an RS-232 port. An LCD should display the readout in a size large enough to read in day or night at 3 feet away. The dosimeter battery must support 100 hours of active operation or 1000 hours of inactive but monitoring modes.

PHASE I: Design all neutron and gamma detector modules, and estimate performance based on computer simulations. Demonstrate that the proposed design satisfies requirements outlined above, by fabricating and testing laboratory prototypes. Design and test the electronic readout, including analog and digital components as well as wireless communications, in order to minimize both cost and power consumption. Demonstrate non-saturation in simulated nuclear blast radiation fields or against prompt gamma and neutron environment, and demonstrate pathways to meeting this performance goal in Phase II.

PHASE II: Deliver an integrated gamma/neutron dosimeter for real-time and accumulated dose measurement at the end of Phase II. The prototype will package neutron and gamma detectors together with a digital display, batteries and electronics. The overall volume will be on the order of 200 cm3 (preferably less than 150 cm3), with a weight less than 250 g. Capability for wireless communications (Bluetooth or IP-based protocols), is required to transmit data to a host portable device (smart phone, tablet, laptop computer, etc). The system will support autonomous operation on batteries (preferably rechargeable), for at least one week of low-rate counting.

The prototype will be tested in relevant environment, in order to demonstrate accurate measurements of prompt

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gamma and neutron doses in real-time. Additional testing will demonstrate robust operation under environmental extremes (temperature, humidity), shock, vibration, and EMI. Test results will be evaluated to determine the ability of the proposed solution to satisfy requirements for military use in the field.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Following a successful Phase II development, Phase III will further improve detector designs, engineering, ruggedization, and manufacturability to meet DTRA and end-user requirements. Develop a commercial dosimeter meets or exceed the requirements for homeland security and commercial applications.

REFERENCES:1. M. Sasaki, T. Nakamura, N. Tsujimura, O. Ueda, and T. Suzuki, “Development and characterization of real-time personal neutron dosemeter with two silicon detectors,” Nucl. Instruments Methods Phys. Res. Sect. A Accel. Spectrometers, Detect. Assoc. Equip., vol. 418, no. 2–3, pp. 465–475, 1998

2. T. Nakamura, T. Nunomiya, and M. Sasaki, “Development of active environmental and personal neutron dosemeters,” Radiat. Prot. Dosimetry, vol. 110, no. 1–4, pp. 169–181, 2004

3. T. Nakamura, “Neutron detector development and measurements around particle accelerators,” Indian J. Pure Appl. Phys., vol. 50, no. 7, pp. 427–438, 2012

4. V. K. Mathur, “Ion storage dosimetry,” Nucl. Instruments Methods Phys. Res. Sect. B Beam Interact. with Mater. Atoms, vol. 184, no. 1–2, pp. 190–206, 2001

5. I. Rosenberg, “Radiation Oncology Physics: A Handbook for Teachers and Students,” Br. J. Cancer, vol. 98, p. 1020, 2008

6. Glasstone, Samuel and Dolan, Philip J. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (third edition). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977

KEYWORDS: dosimeter, real-time, non-saturating, prompt neutron/gamma, radiation detector

DTRA172-008 TITLE: Field Debris Analysis for Nuclear Forensics

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Materials/Processes, Nuclear Technology, Sensors

OBJECTIVE: Develop a field-deployable mass spectrometer for nuclear forensics debris analysis.

DESCRIPTION: The Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Basic Research Program supports research to develop capabilities for post-detonation nuclear forensics. A nuclear forensic analysis following a detonation relies on the collection and analysis of debris samples. The DTRA basic research program has shown some promising results in developing techniques to analyze these samples in the field through air-ionization and compact mass spectrometry techniques. This research has shown the ability to minimize the chemical preparation of samples, measure samples at atmospheric pressure, and reproducibly measure isotopic ratios with 1-3% precision.

This topic seeks to expand upon these basic research investigations by developing a compact, field-deployable mass analysis system. The system should be able to ionize and analyze samples with minimal sample preparation and should operate with samples at atmospheric pressure in either solid or liquid state. The final design should account for power and vacuum considerations so that the final system is compact and portable. The isotopic measurements should aim to match the precision of a conventional lab-based system.

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PHASE I: A trade study should be conducted to assess the possible methods for compact mass spectrometers. Although a full prototype is not necessary, the work should undertake to demonstrate the necessary basic physical principles. Consideration should be given to the analytical accuracy and precision of the system, the ease of measuring samples in the field, and the portability of the system.

PHASE II: Phase II projects should develop a prototype device. The prototype should demonstrate accurate isotopic measurements with near-laboratory level precision from the analysis of samples with minimal or no chemical preparation.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: A field-deployable mass spectrometer could have wide commercial applications including for environmental sampling.

REFERENCES:1. Lynn X. Zhang and R. Kenneth Marcus. "Mass spectra of diverse organic species utilizing the liquid sampling-atmospheric pressure glow discharge (LS-APGD) microplasma ionization source." J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2016, 31, 145

2. B. H. Isselhardt, S. G. Prussin, M. R. Savina, D. G. Willingham, K. B. Knight and I. Hutcheon. “Rate equation model of laser induced bias in uranium isotope ratios measured by resonance ionization mass spectrometry.” J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2016, 31, 666-678

3. Kenneth J. Moody, Patrick M. Grant, Ian D. Hutcheon. “Nuclear Forensics Analysis." CRC Press, 2015 (2nd Edition), Chapter 5 "Principles of Nuclear Explosive Devices and Debris Analysis"

KEYWORDS: compact mass spectrometry, nuclear forensics, field-deployable mass spectrometer

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