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At least 217 records · Page 12

(abstract) Transmission Electron Microscopy of Al(sub x)Ga(sub 1-x)N/SiC Multilayer Structures

The potential of wide-band-gap III-V nitrides as solar-blind ultraviolet sensors and light emitters has prompted an increasing amount of work recently, including the fabrication of the first UV sensors from as-deposited single crystal GaN. We have used high resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to study the microstructure of two novel developments of wide-band-gap III-V nitrides: the growth of ultra-short period GaN/AlN super lattices (digital alloys); and the incorporation of SiC layers into Al(sub x)Ga(sub 1-x)N structures. By varying the relative periods in a GaN/AlN superlattice, it should be possible to tailor the band gap of the composite to lie between the elemental values of 365 nm for GaN and 200 nm for AlN. The group IV semiconductor, SiC, has a close lattice match (< 3%) to Al(sub x)Ga(sub 1-x)N for growth on the basal plane. Demonstration of epitaxial growth for Al(sub x)Ga(sub 1-x)N/SiC multilayers could enable an extension of direct band-gap material towards the visible.

microscopy GaN AlN semiconductor SiC↗

Intelligent Change Detection System: Autonomous Intelligent Machine Agent Model Development

NASA’s significant role in facilitating the harmonious integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), with other aerial vehicles operating in the National Airspace System (NAS), has revealed a need for more advanced technological tools than are being utilized currently. This technology would lend itself to significantly assisting Direct-Action Aviation Personnel (DAAP) with the ingress and egress of UAS operations within the NAS. Providing research findings that would reduce technical barriers, associated with UAS-NAS integration, has been a persistent effort by both NASA and the FAA. One such research effort, pursued by NASA’s Transformative Tools and Technologies – Revolutionary Aviation Mobility (T3-RAM) project, is the development of an autonomous intelligent machine (AIM) agent that would aid DAAP functioning as implemented in remote ground control stations (RGCS). This evolution of the “human-machine” symbiosis, within the aviation environment, is necessary for many reasons. For example, there are projections of large increases to the 864,000 registered UAS and 45,000 aviation operations taking place in the NAS each day. With a data output range from 1 to 20 terabytes per flight or each aerial vehicle, which is projected to have proportional rate increase to that of registered UASs. It is evident, that due to the projected increase of UASs and their generated data, the human-agent’s data managing capabilities will be quickly overwhelmed by the enormous amounts of data emanating in the NAS. The research efforts presented in this paper puts forward results from the development, assessment, and verification of a previously conceptualized AIM-Agent that combats actionable-data (information) errors resulting from the visual perception phenomenon known as “change blindness” (CB). CB has been identified as one of the main culprits of information erroring encountered within the ground control station operator (GCSO) community.

Change Blindness↗

Detection of non‐native species formed during fibrillization of the myocilin olfactomedin domain

Abstract Glaucoma is a group of neurodegenerative diseases that together are the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. Myocilin‐associated glaucoma is an inherited form of this disease, caused by intracellular aggregation of misfolded mutant myocilin. In vitro, the myocilin C‐terminal olfactomedin domain (OLF), the relevant domain for glaucoma pathogenesis, can be driven to form amyloid‐like fibrils under mild conditions. Here we characterize a species present during in vitro fibrillization. Purified OLF was subjected to fibrillization at concentrations required for downstream electron microscopy imaging and NMR spectroscopy. Additional biophysical techniques, including analytical ultracentrifugation and X‐ray crystallography, were employed to further characterize the multicomponent mixture. Negative stain transmission electron microscopy (TEM) shows a non‐native species reminiscent of known prefibrillar oligomers from other amyloid systems, NMR indicates a minor population of partially misfolded species is present in solution, and cryo‐EM imaging shows two‐dimensional protein arrays. The predominant soluble species remaining in solution after the fibril reaction is natively folded, as evidenced by X‐ray crystallography. In summary, after incubating OLF under fibrillization‐promoting conditions, there is a heterogeneous mixture consisting of soluble folded protein, mature amyloid‐like fibrils, and partially misfolded intermediate species that at present belie additional molecular detail. The characterization of OLF fibrillar species illustrates the challenges associated with developing a comprehensive understanding of the fibrillization process for large, non‐model amyloidogenic proteins.

Scelsi, Hailee F. [School of Chemistry and Biochem↗

Tensioned metastable fluid detector sensing technology for multifarious-multiscale applications in the nuclear fuel cycle

The nuclear fuel cycle presents formidable 10 30+ multiscale challenges for high-efficiency spectroscopic sensing of alpha-neutron-fission radiation signatures amidst extreme gamma-beta radiation backgrounds at various stages of the cycle; it involves diverse arenas ranging from continuous/pulsed power production, security/safeguards, spent fuel, environmental remediation, and personnel health-dosimetry. This paper discusses the novel tensioned metastable fluid detector (TMFD) sensor technology. It discusses the results of studies demonstrating extreme (10 4 Sv/h) gamma-beta field blind high intrinsic efficiencies (80–100%) for neutron-alpha-fission radiation spectrometric detection. Example studies discussed in this paper include Neutron detection with spectroscopy; H*10 neutron radiation dosimetry upwards from ultra-low10 −2 µSv/h levels; Air and/or liquid-borne trace (10 –3 Bq/mL) quantity, 1 keV energy resolved alpha/fission spectroscopy for Rn/Po/U/Pu/Am environmental isotope assays at 106:1 (β:α) ratios; Directional-position enabled extended standoff tracking of neutron emitting (shielded/unshielded) special nuclear materials while stationary or moving at highway speeds; and, U.S. Department of Energy nuclear complex wide nuclear waste reprocessing, criticality safety, health physics, and environmental applications.

Alpha-fission-neutron spectrometry↗

ESM data downscaling: a comparison of super-resolution deep learning models

Abstract Climate projections at fine spatial resolutions are required to conduct accurate risk assessment for critical infrastructure and design adaptation planning. Generating these projections using advanced Earth system models (ESM) requires significant computational resources. To address this issue, various statistical downscaling techniques have been introduced to generate fine-resolution data from coarse-resolution simulations. In this study, we evaluate and compare five deep learning-based downscaling techniques, namely, super-resolution convolutional neural networks, fast super-resolution convolutional neural network ESM, efficient sub-pixel convolutional neural network, enhanced deep residual network (EDRN), and super-resolution generative adversarial network (SRGAN). These techniques are applied to a dataset generated by the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM), focusing on key surface variables such as surface temperature, shortwave heat flux, and longwave heat flux. Models are trained and validated using paired fine-resolution (0.25 $$^{\circ }$$ ∘ ) and coarse-resolution (1 $$^{\circ }$$ ∘ ) monthly data obtained from a 9-year simulation. Next, blind testing is performed using monthly data obtained from two different years outside of the training and validation set. To evaluate the efficiency of each technique, different statistical metrics are used, including mean squared error (MSE), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index measure (SSIM), and learned perceptual image patch similarity (LPIPS). The results show that EDRN outperforms other algorithms in terms of PSNR, SSIM, and MSE, but struggles to capture fine-scale features in the data. In contrast, SRGAN, a generative model that uses perceptual loss, excels in capturing fine details at boundaries and internal structures, resulting in lower LPIPS than other methods.

Pawar, Nikhil M. (ORCID:0000000211613289)↗

Outcomes and Conclusions from the 2022 AM Bench Measurements, Challenge Problems, Modeling Submissions, and Conference

The Additive Manufacturing Benchmark Test Series (AM Bench) provides rigorous measurement data for validating additive manufacturing (AM) simulations for a broad range of AM technologies and material systems. AM Bench includes extensive in situ and ex situ measurements, simulation challenges for the AM modeling community, and a corresponding conference series. In 2022, the second round of AM Bench measurements, challenge problems, and conference were completed, focusing primarily upon laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) processing of metals, and both material extrusion processing and vat photopolymerization of polymers. In all, more than 100 people from 10 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) divisions and 21 additional organizations were directly involved in the AM Bench 2022 measurements, data management, and conference organization. The international AM community submitted 138 sets of blind modeling simulations for comparison with the in situ and ex situ measurements, up from 46 submissions for the first round of AM Bench in 2018. Analysis of these submissions provides valuable insight into current AM modeling capabilities. The AM Bench data are permanently archived and freely accessible online. The AM Bench conference also hosted an embedded workshop on qualification and certification of AM materials and components.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Benchmark study of the DTU OWC chamber with both two-way and one-way absorption

This paper reports on a benchmark study based on small-scale (1:50) measurements of a single, oscillating water column chamber mounted sideways in a long flume. The geometry of the OWC chamber is extracted from a barge-like, attenuator-type floating concept “KNSwing” with 40 chambers targeted for deployment in the Danish part of the North Sea. In addition to traditional two-way energy extraction we also consider one-way energy extraction with passive venting and compare chamber response, pressures and total absorbed energy between the two methods. A blind study was established for the numerical modeling, with participants applying several implementations of weakly nonlinear potential flow theory and commercial Navier–Stokes solvers (CFD). Both compressible and incompressible models were used for the air phase. Potential flow calculations predict more energy absorption near the chamber resonance for one-way absorption than for two-way absorption, but the opposite is found from the experimental measurements. This outcome is mainly attributed to energy losses in the experimental passive valve system, but this conclusion must be confirmed by better experimental measurements. Modeling the one-way valve in CFD proved to be very challenging and only one team was able to provide results which were generally closer to the experiments. The study illustrates the challenges associated with both numerical and experimental analysis of OWC chambers. Air compressibility effects were not found to be important at this scale, even with the large volume of additional air used for the one-way case.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗

Neural architecture search via similarity adaptive guidance

Evolutionary neural network architecture search (ENAS) has attracted the attention of many experts due to its global optimization capabilities to automatically search for convolutional neural network architectures based on the target task. The current search space for ENAS is not to design a fully structured network, but to search for smaller cell architectures to reduce search costs. However, blind search strategies do not effectively utilize the potential experience of the population. In order to utilize the potential experience learned by the current population to guide the evolutionary search of the population, we propose a similarity guided neural network architecture search algorithm based on cell architecture, which utilizes the similarity between pairwise architectures in the population as empirical knowledge learned by the population. Our proposed algorithm provides a novel method for calculating architecture similarity, which calculates architecture similarity separately from the cell and macro-structure. Then we decouple the connections and operations in the cell and calculate connection and operation similarity separately. In addition, we propose adaptive similarity selection and binary tournament selection strategies to enhance the algorithm’s global and local search capabilities and effectively explore the search space. Finally, we design an improved single-point crossover operator to enhance the local search ability of the evolutionary operator. The experimental results show that SAGNAS is a competitive algorithm that achieves 97.44% and 81.60% in CIFAR10 and CIFAR100 with only 1.9 GPU-days spent.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Challenges in predicting protein-protein interactions of understudied viruses: Arenavirus-human interactions

Understanding protein-protein interactions (PPIs) between viruses and host organisms is crucial for uncovering infection mechanisms and identifying potential therapeutic targets. The ability to generalize PPI predictive models across understudied viruses presents a significant challenge. In this work, we use arenavirus-human PPIs to illustrate the difficulties associated with model generalization, which are compounded by a lack of both positive and negative data. We employ a Transfer Learning approach to investigate arenavirus-human PPIs by utilizing models trained on better-studied virus-human and human-human PPIs. Additionally, we curate and assess four types of negative sampling datasets to evaluate their impact on model performance. Despite the overall high accuracies (93–99 %) and AUPRC scores (0.8–0.9) appearing promising, further analysis indicates that these performance metrics can be misleading due to data leakage, data bias, and overfitting, especially concerning under-represented viral proteins. We reveal these gaps and assess the impact of data imbalance using standard k-fold cross-validation and Independent Blind Testing with a Balanced Dataset, resulting in a drop in accuracy below 50 %. We propose a viral protein-specific evaluation framework that categorizes viral proteins into majority and minority classes based on their representation in the dataset, enabling comparison of model performance across these groups using balanced accuracies. This framework offers a more robust evaluation of model generalizability, addressing biases inherent in standard evaluation techniques and paving the way for more reliable PPI prediction models for understudied viruses.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Dataset describing two reference models for full-spectral lighting and daylight simulations together with implementations for two software systems

A dataset of two spectral lighting simulation reference models - one office and one factory hall - is presented. It aims to demonstrate and support full-spectral daylight and electric lighting simulations and facilitate evaluation of non-visual effects of light. The dataset includes Rhino CAD geometry, comprehensive spectral material and light source data and window system BSDF data. Example implementations in the two software tools, Radiance and OWL, enable reproducible workflows and support adoption in other software. The dataset is openly available on Zenodo. The office model reproduces Room 518 at the University of Innsbruck, including a west-facing façade and interior furnishings. The factory hall model follows the proposed geometry in the European standard 15193 for building energy performance. Interior reflectances in the office were measured in-situ using a handheld spectrometer. Exterior spectra and factory hall materials matching specified reflectances were obtained from an online spectral materials database. Glazing transmittance was derived from IGDB data using LBNL Optics/WINDOW. BSDFs for venetian blinds at various tilt angles, and for a diffusing pane adapted from the Complex Glazing Database, were generated in WINDOW. Luminaires in both models are specified with photometric files (Eulumdat/IES) and lamp spectra (Fluorescent 840, 4000 K LED). The provided example implementations (Radiance, OWL) include prepared input data and scripts to run first spectral simulations; example results are also included. The dataset is prepared to support reuse by researchers, designers and software developers for method validation, software engineering and comparison, and development of spectral metrics and controls.

Geisler-Moroder, David↗

The damage Mechanics challenge Results: Participant predictions compared with experiment

In this article, We present results from a recent exercise where participating organizations were asked to provide model-based blind predictions of damage evolution in 3D-printed geomaterial analogue test articles. Participants were provided with a range of data characterizing both the undamaged state (e.g., ultrasonic measurements) and damage evolution (e.g., 3-point bending, unconfined compression, and Brazilian testing) of the material. In this paper, we focus on comparisons between the participants’ predictions and the previously secret challenge problem experimental observations. We present valuable lessons learned for the application of numerical methods to deformation and failure in brittle-ductile materials. The exercise also enables us to identify which specific types of calibration data were of most utility to the participants in developing their predictions. Further, we identify additional data that would have been useful for participants to improve the confidence of their predictions. Consequently, this work improves our understanding of how to better characterize a material to enable more accurate prediction of damage and failure propagation in natural and engineered brittle-ductile materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Scintillation properties of diamond powders and feasibility of using them in thermal neutron detectors

Diamond offers unique properties for radiation detection, including high radiation hardness, very low gamma sensitivity, and fast response. Conventional diamond detectors rely on charge collection, but this approach requires ultra-pure single crystals and suffers from radiation-induced degradation. Here, in this work, we demonstrate an alternative approach using diamonds as scintillators for detection of charged particles and thermal neutrons. Prototypes were fabricated from commercially available diamond powders bonded to glass substrates and coupled with 6 LiF converters and silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) and conventional PMTs. We characterized their scintillation properties under alpha particle excitation, x-ray photoluminescence, and thermal neutrons. The tryout detectors exhibit strong scintillation light signals, nanosecond-scale response times, and neutron detection efficiencies up to approximately 14 %, evaluated by comparison to conventional 3 He detector with known efficiency. These results demonstrate the feasibility of cost-effective, lightweight and robust diamond scintillation detectors for applications in space and planetary science, nuclear security, safeguards and environmental monitoring requiring efficient, robust, gamma-blind neutron detectors.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

International fuel performance study of fresh fuel experiments for PCMI effects during RIA experiments

This paper presents the results of High-burnup Experiments for Reactivity-initiated Accident (HERA) Modeling & Simulation (M&S) exercise. The HERA project under the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Second Framework for Irradiation Experiments (FIDES-II) program is focused on studying Light Water Reactor (LWR) fuel behavior during Reactivity-Initiated Accident (RIA) conditions. The Part I M&S cases are based on a series of tests in the Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) facility in the United States and the Nuclear Safety Research Reactor (NSRR) in Japan. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the test design to accomplish its goals in establishing clearer understanding of the effects of power pulse width during RIA conditions. Further, the blind predictions using various computational tools have been performed and compared amongst to interpret the behaviors of high burnup fuels during RIA. While many international participants evaluate the thermal–mechanical behavior of fuel rod under different conditions, a considerable scatter of outputs comes out for the cases due to the disparity between codes in predicting mechanical behaviors. In general, however, the results of thermal–mechanical analysis elaborate that nominal design conditions the shorter pulse width tests in NSRR should cause cladding failures while the TREAT tests appear to have more split prediction of failure or not. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis varying key testing parameters reveals the considerable effect of power pulse width and total energy deposition on prediction of fuel rod failure.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Beam energy dependence of net-hyperon yield and its implication on baryon transport mechanism

In the constituent quark model, each quark inside a baryon carries 1/3 unit of the baryon number. An alternative picture exists where the center of a Y-shaped topology of gluon fields, called the baryon junction, carries a unit baryon number. Studying baryon transport over a large rapidity gap (δy) in nuclear collisions provides a possible tool to distinguish these two pictures. A recent analysis of global data on net-proton yield at mid-rapidity in Au+Au collisions showed an exponential dependence on δy and the exponential slope does not vary with event centrality, favoring the baryon junction picture. Since junctions are flavor blind, hyperons – baryons containing valence strange quarks – are expected to exhibit a similar behavior as the proton. This study aims to test this prediction by analyzing hyperon yields in Au+Au collisions at various energies. We observe that net-hyperon yields, after correcting for the strangeness production suppression, adhere to the expected exponential form. The extracted slope parameters for net-Λ, net-$Ξ$ and net-Ω are consistent with each other and with those of net-proton within uncertainties, and exhibit no centrality dependence. Various implementations of the PYTHIA event generator, primarily based on valence quarks for baryon transport, are unable to simultaneously describe the slope parameters for all baryons.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Uncertainty estimation of bifurcated solutions in the Rayleigh–Bénard problem for advanced nuclear reactors applications

Multiphysics models of nuclear reactors frequently comprise nonlinear systems of equations. The nonlinear nature of these models could lead to solution bifurcations, where a small change in a certain parameter, e.g., the thermophysical properties of the coolant, can lead to a sudden change in the system’s behavior. At the point in parameter space where this happens, called a critical point, the Jacobian matrix of the model’s nonlinear operator becomes singular potentially permitting multiple solutions to coexist. In this paper, we perform uncertainty estimation (UE) in a parameter range that includes bifurcated solutions within the context of Rayleigh–Bénard problem. We perform this analysis assuming uncertain temperature difference, and tilt angle for the iterative solution algorithm with a unit Prandtl number (Pr = 1). Also, we perform this analysis under uncertain thermophysical properties for both FLiBe molten salt and liquid sodium as working fluid. We deploy two approaches to compute statistical moments for the resulting distributions of selected flow-field variables. The first approach is the blind computation of the mean and the standard deviation without any consideration of solution bifurcation, while the second approach utilizes k-means clustering to cluster each branch’s solutions together and compute separate statistical moments for each branch. The statistical distributions are obtained by perturbing the selected parameters about nominal values that correspond to a solution on one of the valid branches, and that solution is used as initial guess for the iterative solution algorithm. We found that perturbation of any parameter when its nominal value is close to its critical point always leads to branch jumping, i.e., the iterations converge to a solution on a branch different from the branch of the initial guess. This produces a statistical ensemble comprised of fundamentally different solutions leading to wrong mean values and uncertainty estimates, whereas clustering provides an efficient way to deal with this type of computation. This work is important for developing Gen IV nuclear systems because many of these systems rely on natural convection for cooling especially in accident conditions.

97 - MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Enhanced Detection of Primary Biological Aerosol Particles Using Machine Learning and Single-Particle Measurement

Accurately identifying primary biological aerosol particles (PBAPs) using analytical techniques poses inherent challenges due to their resemblance to other atmospheric carbonaceous particles. Here, we present a study of an enhanced method for detecting PBAPs by combining single-particle measurement with advanced supervised machine learning (SML) techniques. We analyzed ambient particles from a variety of environments and lab-generated standards, focusing on chemical composition for traditional rule-based and clustering approaches and incorporating morphological features into the SML approaches, neural networks and XGBoost, for improved accuracy. This study demonstrates that SML methods outperform traditional methods in quantifying PBAPs, achieving significant improvements in precision, recall, F1-score, and accuracy, leading to an increased number of detected PBAPs by at least 19%. The adaptability of the proposed XGBoost-based SML model is showcased in comparison to traditional methods in categorizing PBAPs for blind data sets from different geographical locations. Two field case studies were investigated, over agricultural land and Amazonia rain forest, representing relatively low and high concentrations of PBAPs, respectively, where XGBoost consistently detected up to 3.5 times more PBAPs than traditional methods. Precise detection of PBAPs in the atmosphere could significantly improve the prediction of climatic impacts by them.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Detection and imaging of chemicals and hidden explosives using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy and deep learning

Detecting concealed chemicals and explosives remains a critical challenge in global security. Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) offers a promising non-invasive and stand-off detection technique owing to its ability to penetrate optically opaque materials without causing ionization damage. While many chemicals exhibit distinct spectral features in the terahertz range, conventional terahertz-based detection methods often struggle in real-world environments, where variations in sample geometry, thickness, and packaging can lead to inconsistent spectral responses. In this study, we present a chemical imaging system that integrates THz-TDS with deep learning to enable accurate pixel-level identification and classification of different explosives. Operating in reflection mode and enhanced with plasmonic nanoantenna arrays, our THz-TDS system achieves a peak dynamic range of 96 dB and a detection bandwidth of 4.5 THz, supporting practical, stand-off operation. By analyzing individual time-domain pulses with deep neural networks, the system exhibits strong resilience to environmental variations and sample inconsistencies. Blind testing across eight chemicals—including pharmaceutical excipients and explosive compounds—resulted in an average classification accuracy of 99.42% at the pixel level. Notably, the system maintained an average accuracy of 88.83% when detecting explosives concealed under opaque paper coverings, demonstrating its robust generalization capability. These results highlight the potential of combining advanced terahertz spectroscopy with neural networks for highly sensitive and specific chemical and explosive detection in diverse and operationally relevant scenarios.

Imaging and sensing↗

High-resolution national mapping of natural gas composition substantially updates methane leakage impacts

Methane is emitted from oil and gas operations alongside heavier hydrocarbons and non-hydrocarbon gases, shaping emissions management decision-making, including air quality impacts. Yet, most assessments assume fixed gas composition, overlooking significant spatial and temporal variations. Here, we generate a high-resolution, data-driven map of natural gas composition across the United States, reconstructing methane, heavier hydrocarbons, and non-hydrocarbon species using spatio-temporal interpolation and oil-and-gas production patterns. Our approach is able to reduce composition prediction errors by 39% in terms of Mean Absolute Error (MAE) compared to standard techniques and reveals that methane loss rates have been underestimated by more than 50% in some regions. Beyond methane, we uncover substantial variability in co-emitted gases, exposing blind spots in current emissions inventories and emissions management frameworks. Our work enables more accurate emissions assessments, guides targeted measurement strategies, and informs emissions management decision-making. It also provides a general framework for prediction in environmental applications that integrate sparse measurements with auxiliary variables.

03 NATURAL GAS↗