Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “explainability”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 181 records · Page 10
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2014

Purely dry mergers do not explain the observed evolution of massive early-type galaxies since z ∼ 1

Several studies have suggested that the observed size evolution of massive early-type galaxies (ETGs) can be explained as a combination of dry mergers and progenitor bias, at least since z ∼ 1. In this paper we carry out a new test of the dry-merger scenario based on recent lensing measurements of the evolution of the mass density profile of ETGs. We construct a theoretical model for the joint evolution of the size and mass density profile slope γ' driven by dry mergers occurring at rates given by cosmological simulations. Such dry-merger model predicts a strong decrease of γ' with cosmic time, inconsistent with the almost constant γ' inferred from observations in the redshift range 0 < z < 1. We then show with a simple toy model that a modest amount of cold gas in the mergers—consistent with the upper limits on recent star formation in ETGs—is sufficient to reconcile the model with measurements of γ'. By fitting for the amount of gas accreted during mergers, we find that models with dissipation are consistent with observations of the evolution in both size and density slope, if ∼4% of the total final stellar mass arises from the gas accreted since z ∼ 1. Purely dry merger models are ruled out at >99% CL. We thus suggest a scenario where the outer regions of massive ETGs grow by accretion of stars and dark matter, while small amounts of dissipation and nuclear star formation conspire to keep the mass density profile constant and approximately isothermal.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Burying a binary: Dynamical mass loss and a continuous optically thick outflow explain the candidate stellar merger V1309 Scorpii

V1309 Sco was proposed to be a stellar merger and a common envelope transient based on the pre-outburst light curve of a contact eclipsing binary with a rapidly decaying orbital period. Using published data, I show that the period decay timescale P/ P-dot of V1309 Sco decreased from ∼1000 to ∼170 yr in ≲ 6 yr, which implies a very high value of P{sup ¨}. I argue that V1309 Sco experienced an onset of dynamical mass loss through the outer Lagrange point, which eventually obscured the binary. The photosphere of the resulting continuous optically thick outflow expands as the mass-loss rate increases, explaining the ∼200 day rise to optical maximum. The model yields the mass-loss rate of the binary star as a function of time and fits the observed light curve remarkably well. It is also possible to observationally constrain the properties of the surface layers undergoing the dynamical mass loss. V1309 Sco is thus a prototype of a new class of stellar transients distinguished by a slow rise to optical maximum that are driven by dynamical mass loss from a binary. I discuss the implications of these findings for stellar transients and other suggested common envelope events.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

IS COMPTON COOLING SUFFICIENT TO EXPLAIN EVOLUTION OF OBSERVED QUASI-PERIODIC OSCILLATIONS IN OUTBURST SOURCES?

In outburst sources, quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) frequency is known to evolve in a certain way: in the rising phase, it monotonically goes up until a soft intermediate state is achieved. In the propagating oscillatory shock model, oscillation of the Compton cloud is thought to cause QPOs. Thus, in order to increase QPO frequency, the Compton cloud must collapse steadily in the rising phase. In decline phases, the exact opposite should be true. We investigate cause of this evolution of the Compton cloud. The same viscosity parameter that increases the Keplerian disk rate also moves the inner edge of the Keplerian component, thereby reducing the size of the Compton cloud and reducing the cooling timescale. We show that cooling of the Compton cloud by inverse Comptonization is enough for it to collapse sufficiently so as to explain the QPO evolution. In the two-component advective flow configuration of Chakrabarti-Titarchuk, centrifugal force-induced shock represents the boundary of the Compton cloud. We take the rising phase of 2010 outburst of Galactic black hole candidate H 1743-322 and find an estimation of variation of the α parameter of the sub-Keplerian flow to be monotonically rising from 0.0001 to 0.02, well within the range suggested by magnetorotational instability. We also estimate the inward velocity of the Compton cloud to be a few meters per second, which is comparable to what is found in several earlier studies of our group by empirically fitting the shock locations with the time of observations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

The magnetic gradient scale length explains why certain plasmas require close external magnetic coils

Abstract The separation between the last closed flux surface of a plasma and the external coils that magnetically confine it is a limiting factor in the construction of fusion-capable plasma devices. This plasma-coil separation must be large enough so that components such as a breeding blanket and neutron shielding can fit between the plasma and the coils. Plasma-coil separation affects reactor size, engineering complexity, and particle loss due to field ripple. For some plasmas it can be difficult to produce the desired flux surface shaping with distant coils, and for other plasmas it is infeasible altogether. Here, we seek to understand the underlying physics that limits plasma-coil separation and explain why some configurations require close external coils. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that the limiting plasma-coil separation is set by the shortest scale length of the magnetic field as expressed by the ∇ B tensor. We tested this hypothesis on a database of > 40 stellarator and tokamak configurations. Within this database, the coil-to-plasma distance compared to the minor radius varies by over an order of magnitude. The magnetic scale length is well correlated to the coil-to-plasma distance of actual coil designs generated using the REGCOIL method (Landreman 2017 Nucl. Fusion 57 046003). Additionally, this correlation reveals a general trend that larger plasma-coil separation is possible with a small number of field periods.

Physics↗
DOE OSTI2014

GeV WIMPs scattering off of OH impurities cannot explain the DAMA signal

In the presence of OH impurities in the DAMA crystals, GeV-scale WIMPs elastically scattering off of hydrogen nuclei with a spin independent cross section of ∼10{sup −33}cm{sup 2} might explain the annual modulation observed by the DAMA experiment, while being consistent with other direct dark matter searches, as scattering would occur at energies below the energy threshold of other detectors. In this work we examine this possibility and show that, independent of the level of OH impurities in the DAMA crystals, for several reasons this scenario does not provide a viable explanation to the DAMA signal.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Can self-ordering scalar fields explain the BICEP2 B-mode signal?

We show that self-ordering scalar fields (SOSF), i.e. non-topological cosmic defects arising after a global phase transition, cannot explain the B-mode signal recently announced by BICEP2. We compute the full C{sub ℓ}{sup B} angular power spectrum of B-modes due to vector and tensor perturbations of SOSF, modeled in the large N limit of a spontaneously broken global O(N) symmetry. We conclude that the low ℓ multipoles detected by BICEP2 cannot be due mainly to SOSF, since they have the wrong spectrum at low multipoles. As a byproduct we derive the first cosmological constraints on this model, showing that the BICEP2 B-mode polarization data admits at most a 2-3% contribution from SOSF in the temperature anisotropies, similar to (but somewhat tighter than) the recently studied case of cosmic strings.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Dark antiatoms can explain DAMA

We show that the existence of a sub-dominant form of dark matter, made of dark ''antiatoms'' of mass m∼ 1 TeV and size a-dot {sub 0}∼ 3 fm, can explain the results of direct detection experiments, with a positive signal in DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA and no signal in other experiments. The signal comes from the binding of the dark antiatoms to thallium, a dopant in DAMA, and is not present for the constituent atoms of other experiments. The dark antiatoms are made of two particles oppositely charged under a dark U(1) symmetry and can bind to terrestrial atoms because of a kinetic mixing between the photon and the massless dark photon, such that the dark particles acquire an electric millicharge ∼ ± 5.10{sup −4}e. This millicharge enables them to bind to high-Z atoms via radiative capture, after they thermalize in terrestrial matter through elastic collisions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

EXPLAINING THE Sr AND Ba SCATTER IN EXTREMELY METAL-POOR STARS

Compilations of abundances of strontium and barium in extremely metal-poor stars show that an apparent cutoff is observed for [Sr/Ba] at [Fe/H] < -3.6 and large fluctuations for [Fe/H] > -3.6 with a clear upper bound depending on metallicity. We study the factors that place upper limits on the logarithmic ratio [Sr/Ba]. A model is developed in which the collapses of type II supernovae are found to reproduce many of the features seen in the data. This model is consistent with galactic chemical evolution constraints of light-element enrichment in metal-poor stars. Effects of turbulence in an explosive site have also been simulated, and are found to be important in explaining the large scatter observed in the [Sr/Ba] data.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

CAN CHARGE EXCHANGE EXPLAIN ANOMALOUS SOFT X-RAY EMISSION IN THE CYGNUS LOOP?

Recent X-ray studies have shown that supernova shock models are unable to satisfactorily explain X-ray emission in the rim of the Cygnus Loop. In an attempt to account for this ''anomalously'' enhanced X-ray flux, we fit the region with a model including theoretical charge exchange (CX) data along with shock and background X-ray models. The model includes the CX collisions of O{sup 8} {sup +}, O{sup 7} {sup +}, N{sup 7} {sup +}, N{sup 6} {sup +}, C{sup 6} {sup +}, and C{sup 5} {sup +} with H with an energy of 1 keV u{sup –1} (438 km s{sup –1}). The observations reveal a strong emission feature near 0.7 keV that cannot fully be accounted for by a shock model, nor the current CX data. Inclusion of CX, specifically O{sup 7} {sup +} + H, does provide for a statistically significant improvement over a pure shock model.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

EARTHSHINE ON A YOUNG MOON: EXPLAINING THE LUNAR FARSIDE HIGHLANDS

The lunar farside highlands problem refers to the curious and unexplained fact that the farside lunar crust is thicker, on average, than the nearside crust. Here we recognize the crucial influence of Earthshine, and propose that it naturally explains this hemispheric dichotomy. Since the accreting Moon rapidly achieved synchronous rotation, a surface and atmospheric thermal gradient was imposed by the proximity of the hot, post-giant impact Earth. This gradient guided condensation of atmospheric and accreting material, preferentially depositing crust-forming refractories on the cooler farside, resulting in a primordial bulk chemical inhomogeneity that seeded the crustal asymmetry. Our model provides a causal solution to the lunar highlands problem: the thermal gradient created by Earthshine produced the chemical gradient responsible for the crust thickness dichotomy that defines the lunar highlands.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

SUPRATHERMAL ELECTRONS IN THE SOLAR CORONA: CAN NONLOCAL TRANSPORT EXPLAIN HELIOSPHERIC CHARGE STATES?

There have been several ideas proposed to explain how the Sun's corona is heated and how the solar wind is accelerated. Some models assume that open magnetic field lines are heated by Alfvén waves driven by photospheric motions and dissipated after undergoing a turbulent cascade. Other models posit that much of the solar wind's mass and energy is injected via magnetic reconnection from closed coronal loops. The latter idea is motivated by observations of reconnecting jets and also by similarities of ion composition between closed loops and the slow wind. Wave/turbulence models have also succeeded in reproducing observed trends in ion composition signatures versus wind speed. However, the absolute values of the charge-state ratios predicted by those models tended to be too low in comparison with observations. This Letter refines these predictions by taking better account of weak Coulomb collisions for coronal electrons, whose thermodynamic properties determine the ion charge states in the low corona. A perturbative description of nonlocal electron transport is applied to an existing set of wave/turbulence models. The resulting electron velocity distributions in the low corona exhibit mild suprathermal tails characterized by ''kappa'' exponents between 10 and 25. These suprathermal electrons are found to be sufficiently energetic to enhance the charge states of oxygen ions, while maintaining the same relative trend with wind speed that was found when the distribution was assumed to be Maxwellian. The updated wave/turbulence models are in excellent agreement with solar wind ion composition measurements.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Can assembly bias explain the lensing amplitude of the BOSS CMASS sample in a Planck cosmology?

ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate whether galaxy assembly bias can reconcile the 20–40 ${{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ disagreement between the observed galaxy projected clustering signal and the galaxy–galaxy lensing signal in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey CMASS galaxy sample. We use the suite of abacuscosmos lambda cold dark matter simulations at Planck best-fitting cosmology and two flexible implementations of extended halo occupation distribution (HOD) models that incorporate galaxy assembly bias to build forward models and produce joint fits of the observed galaxy clustering signal and the galaxy–galaxy lensing signal. We find that our models using the standard HODs without any assembly bias generalizations continue to show a 20–40 ${{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ overprediction of the observed galaxy–galaxy lensing signal. We find that our implementations of galaxy assembly bias do not reconcile the two measurements at Planck best-fitting cosmology. In fact, despite incorporating galaxy assembly bias, the satellite distribution parameter, and the satellite velocity bias parameter into our extended HOD model, our fits still strongly suggest a $\sim \! 34{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ discrepancy between the observed projected clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing measurements. It remains to be seen whether a combination of other galaxy assembly bias models, alternative cosmological parameters, or baryonic effects can explain the amplitude difference between the two signals.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Could multiple voids explain the cosmic microwave background Cold Spot anomaly?

Understanding the observed Cold Spot (CS) (temperature of ~ -150 mu K at its centre) on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is an outstanding problem. Explanations vary from assuming it is just a ≳ 3σ primordial Gaussian fluctuation to the imprint of a supervoid via the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe and Rees-Sciama (ISW+RS) effects. Since single spherical supervoids cannot account for the full profile, the ISW+RS of multiple line-of-sight voids is studied here to mimic the structure of the cosmic web. Two structure configurations are considered. The first, through simulations of 20 voids, produces a central mean temperature of ~-50 mu K. In this model the central CS temperature lies at ~ 2σ but fails to explain the CS hot ring. An alternative multi-void model (using more pronounced compensated voids) produces much smaller temperature profiles, but contains a prominent hot ring. Arrangements containing closely placed voids at low redshift are found to be particularly well suited to produce CS-like profiles. We then measure the significance of the CS if CS-like profiles (which are fitted to the ISW+RS of multi-void scenarios) are removed. Furthermore, the CS tension with the LCDM model can be reduced dramatically for an array of temperature profiles smaller than the CS itself.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Quantum biological insights into CRISPR-Cas9 sgRNA efficiency from explainable-AI driven feature engineering

Abstract CRISPR-Cas9 tools have transformed genetic manipulation capabilities in the laboratory. Empirical rules-of-thumb have been developed for only a narrow range of model organisms, and mechanistic underpinnings for sgRNA efficiency remain poorly understood. This work establishes a novel feature set and new public resource, produced with quantum chemical tensors, for interpreting and predicting sgRNA efficiency. Feature engineering for sgRNA efficiency is performed using an explainable-artificial intelligence model: iterative Random Forest (iRF). By encoding quantitative attributes of position-specific sequences for Escherichia coli sgRNAs, we identify important traits for sgRNA design in bacterial species. Additionally, we show that expanding positional encoding to quantum descriptors of base-pair, dimer, trimer, and tetramer sequences captures intricate interactions in local and neighboring nucleotides of the target DNA. These features highlight variation in CRISPR-Cas9 sgRNA dynamics between E. coli and H. sapiens genomes. These novel encodings of sgRNAs enhance our understanding of the elaborate quantum biological processes involved in CRISPR-Cas9 machinery.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Explaining the extra crystal-field mode in 𝐴 ⁢Ce ⁢𝑋 2 (𝐴 = K, Rb, Na; 𝑋 = O, S, Se, Te)

A growing list of Ce-based magnets have shown an extra and heretofore unexplained crystal electric field (CEF) mode at high energies. We describe a process whereby an optical phonon can produce a split CEF mode well above the phonon energy. We use density functional theory and point-charge model calculations to estimate the phonon distortions and coupling to model this effect in KCeO 2 , showing that it accounts for the extra CEF mode observed. Furthermore, this mechanism is generic and may explain the extra modes observed on a variety of Ce 3+ compounds.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Explaining Snowball-in-Hell Phenomena in Heavy-Ion Collisions Using a Novel Thermodynamic Variable

A loosely bound hadronic molecule produced by a relativistic heavy-ion collision has been described as a “snowball in hell” since it emerges from a hadron resonance gas whose temperature is orders of magnitude larger than the binding energy of the molecule. This remarkable phenomenon can be explained in terms of a novel thermodynamic variable called the “contact” that is conjugate to the binding momentum of the molecule. The production rate of the molecule can be expressed in terms of the contact density at the kinetic freeze-out of the hadron resonance gas. It approaches a nonzero limit as the binding energy goes to 0.

Relativistic heavy-ion collisions↗
DOE OSTI2018

Explaining Cold-Pulse Dynamics in Tokamak Plasmas Using Local Turbulent Transport Models

A long-standing enigma in plasma transport has been resolved by modeling of cold-pulse experiments conducted on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak. Controlled edge cooling of fusion plasmas triggers core electron heating on time scales faster than an energy confinement time, which has long been interpreted as strong evidence of nonlocal transport. Here, this Letter shows that the steady-state profiles, the cold-pulse rise time, and disappearance at higher density as measured in these experiments are successfully captured by a recent local quasilinear turbulent transport model, demonstrating that the existence of nonlocal transport phenomena is not necessary for explaining the behavior and time scales of cold-pulse experiments in tokamak plasmas.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Structures of the Porphyromonas gingivalis OxyR regulatory domain explain differences in expression of the OxyR regulon in Escherichia coli and P. gingivalis

Differences in OxyR regulated expression of oxidative stress genes between Escherichia coli and Porphyromonas gingivalis are explained by very minor differences in structure and amino-acid sequence of the respective oxidized and reduced OxyR regulatory domains. These differences affect OxyR quaternary structures and are predicted from model building of full length OxyR–DNA complexes to confer distinct modes of DNA binding on this transcriptional regulator. OxyR transcriptionally regulates Escherichia coli oxidative stress response genes through a reversibly reducible cysteine disulfide biosensor of cellular redox status. Structural changes induced by redox changes in these cysteines are conformationally transmitted to the dimer subunit interfaces, which alters dimer and tetramer interactions with DNA. In contrast to E. coli OxyR regulatory-domain structures, crystal structures of Porphyromonas gingivalis OxyR regulatory domains show minimal differences in dimer configuration on changes in cysteine disulfide redox status. This locked configuration of the P. gingivalis OxyR regulatory-domain dimer closely resembles the oxidized (activating) form of the E. coli OxyR regulatory-domain dimer. It correlates with the observed constitutive activation of some oxidative stress genes in P. gingivalis and is attributable to a single amino-acid insertion in P. gingivalis OxyR relative to E. coli OxyR. Modelling of full-length P. gingivalis, E. coli and Neisseria meningitidis OxyR–DNA complexes predicts different modes of DNA binding for the reduced and oxidized forms of each.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗