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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.

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At least 217 records · Page 12

Privacy Preserving Federated Learning for Advanced Scientific Ecosystems

We present a framework to provide privacy preserving (PP) federating learning (FL) across multiple computational and experimental facilities. This work joins the compute capabilities of National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Research Cloud (ORC) with simulated experimental data, such as those produced at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Spallation Neutron Source (SNS). We describe the software infrastructure developed to provide privacy for computational and experimental networks. We developed algorithmic privacy across the federated system by embedding database security, computation, and communication into the federation architecture, utilizing scientific tools developed by the experimental community.

Archibald, Rick [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000245389780)↗

Deep Learning for Vertex Reconstruction of Neutrino-nucleus Interaction Events with Combined Energy and Time Data

We present a deep learning approach for vertex reconstruction of neutrino-nucleus interaction events, a problem in the domain of high energy physics. In this approach, we combine both energy and timing data that are collected in the MIN-ERvA detector to perform classification and regression tasks. We show that the resulting network achieves higher accuracy than previous results while requiring a smaller model size and less training time. In particular, the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art by 4.00% on classification accuracy. For the regression task, our model achieves 0.9919 on the coefficient of determination, higher than the previous work (0.96).

Song, Linghao↗

Machine Learning-Based Investigation of the Associations between Residential Power Consumption and Weather Conditions

Machine learning feature selection analyses were conducted to understand the impact of various weather attributes on power electricity demand and its components in the northwest United States. Load profiles data were obtained from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) and processed to yield hourly load profiles with the same temporal resolution as the weather conditions data obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for representative weather stations. The data were divided into five seasons; for each season, for each load component, the influences of weather factors were evaluated and quantified using cross-correlation, principal component analysis, and mutual information evaluation; then predictive models were developed based on the ranked/screened factors using the regression tree (RT) approach. After multi-fold cross-validation, the optimal complexity/depth of the regress tree models is found to vary for different load components, and the prediction accuracy using RT and weather data can be higher than 80% for heating and refrigeration, or lower than 30% for vent and cooking. The study provides guidance on improvement of load profile generation, or even serves as a standalone predictive tool for approximating load profiles in balance authorities or climate zones where load profile data is absent.

load composite, load profiling, NEEA, mutual infor↗

Scaling deep learning workloads: NVIDIA DGX-1/Pascal and Intel Knights Landing

Deep Learning (DL) algorithms have become ubiquitous in data analytics. As a result, major computing vendors --- including NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, and IBM --- have architectural road-maps influenced by DL workloads. Furthermore, several vendors have recently advertised new computing products as accelerating large DL workloads. Unfortunately, it is difficult for data scientists to quantify the potential of these different products. This paper provides a performance and power analysis of important DL workloads on two major parallel architectures: NVIDIA DGX-1 (eight Pascal P100 GPUs interconnected with NVLink) and Intel Knights Landing (KNL) CPUs interconnected with Intel Omni-Path or Cray Aries. Our evaluation consists of a cross section of convolutional neural net workloads: CifarNet, AlexNet, GoogLeNet, and ResNet50 topologies using the Cifar10 and ImageNet datasets. The workloads are vendor-optimized for each architecture. Our analysis indicates that although GPUs provide the highest overall performance, the gap can close for some convolutional networks; and the KNL can be competitive in performance/watt. We find that NVLink facilitates scaling efficiency on GPUs. However, its importance is heavily dependent on neural network architecture. Furthermore, for weak-scaling --- sometimes encouraged by restricted GPU memory --- NVLink is less important.

Gawande, Nitin A.↗

Machine Learning of Factors Influencing Damping and Frequency of Dominant Inter-area Modes in the WECC Interconnect

The stability of inter-area electromechanical oscillations are critical to power system reliability. Due to the complexities of power systems, relationships between system conditions and oscillation characteristics, such as damping and frequency, tend to be expressed only in generalities. In this study, a list of influential factors on Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) interconnect modal characteristics are identified and evaluated with advanced machine learning techniques including principal component analysis, analysis of variance, random forest feature selection, support vector machine, and artificial neural network approaches.

Hou, Zhangshuan↗

167-PFlops Deep Learning for Electron Microscopy: From Learning Physics to Atomic Manipulation

An artificial intelligence system called MENNDL, which used 25,200 Nvidia Volta GPUs on Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit machine, automatically designed an optimal deep learning network in order to extract structural information from raw atomic-resolution microscopy data. In a few hours, MENNDL creates and evaluates millions of networks using a scalable, parallel, asynchronous genetic algorithm augmented with a support vector machine to automatically find a superior deep learning network topology and hyper-parameter set than a human expert can find in months. For the application of electron microscopy, the system furthers the goal of improving our understanding of the electron-beam-matter interactions and real-time image-based feedback, which enables a huge step beyond human capacity toward nanofabricating materials automatically. Finally, MENNDL has been scaled to the 4,200 available nodes of Summit achieving a measured 152.5 PFlops, with an estimated sustained performance of 167 PFlops when the entire machine is available.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Predicting nepheline precipitation in waste glasses using ternary submixture model and machine learning

Nepheline precipitation in nuclear waste glasses during vitrification can be detrimental due to its negative effect on chemical durability. Developing models to accurately predict nepheline precipitation from compositions is important to increase waste loading since existing models can be overly conservative. In this study, an expanded dataset containing 955 glasses was compiled from literature data, where 355 glasses are for high-level waste (HLW). Previously developed submixture models were refitted using the new dataset, where a misclassification rate of 7.8% was achieved. Nine machine learning (ML) algorithms (e.g., k-nearest neighbor, Gaussian process regression, artificial neural network, support vector machine, decision tree, etc.) were applied to evaluate their ability of predicting nepheline precipitation from compositions. Model accuracy, precision, recall/sensitivity, and F1 score were systemically compared between different ML algorithms and modeling protocols. Good model prediction with an accuracy ~0.9 (misclassification rate of ~10%) was observed with different algorithms under certain protocol. This study evaluated various ML models to predict nepheline precipitations in waste glasses, highlighting the importance of data preparation, modeling protocol, and their effect on model stability and reproducibility. The results provide insights into applying ML to predict glass properties and suggest areas for future research on modeling nepheline precipitations.

Lu, Xiaonan↗

DP-TwoLevel: two-stage gradient subspace learning for differentially private federated learning

Federated learning (FL) enables collaborative model training across distributed data sources without sharing raw data, but faces fundamental challenges in communication efficiency and privacy. Differentially private (DP) training mitigates information leakage but introduces noise that degrades model performance, especially in high-dimensional settings. We propose DP-TwoLevel, a hierarchical gradient projection method that improves utility under fixed DP constraints by exploiting low-dimensional structure in model updates. Our approach learns a two-level PCA-based representation of gradients and applies DP noise in a reduced-dimensional subspace, thereby lowering the effective noise magnitude while preserving dominant signal components. We evaluate the method across three datasets (MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, CIFAR-10) and three privacy regimes (ϵ∈0.5, 1.0, 2.0). Across nine experimental settings, DP-TwoLevel consistently outperforms DP-FedAvg, achieving an average accuracy improvement of 9.44%, with larger gains observed in lower ϵ(higher-noise) regimes (up to +22.31%). We further analyze scalability across models ranging from 100K to 1.49M parameters and identify a variance-based success criterion: performance remains strong when the projection preserves more than 75% of gradient variance, degrades in a marginal regime (65–75%), and fails below this threshold. Our results demonstrate that structure-aware dimensionality reduction can significantly improve the privacy–utility tradeoff in FL without modifying formal privacy guarantees. We also provide empirical evidence of scaling limitations for global projections and motivate per-layer extensions for larger models.

Kotevska, Olivera [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000316772243)↗

TU-G-303-03: Machine Learning to Improve Human Learning From Longitudinal Image Sets

‘Radiomics’ refers to studies that extract a large amount of quantitative information from medical imaging studies as a basis for characterizing a specific aspect of patient health. Radiomics models can be built to address a wide range of outcome predictions, clinical decisions, basic cancer biology, etc. For example, radiomics models can be built to predict the aggressiveness of an imaged cancer, cancer gene expression characteristics (radiogenomics), radiation therapy treatment response, etc. Technically, radiomics brings together quantitative imaging, computer vision/image processing, and machine learning. In this symposium, speakers will discuss approaches to radiomics investigations, including: longitudinal radiomics, radiomics combined with other biomarkers (‘pan-omics’), radiomics for various imaging modalities (CT, MRI, and PET), and the use of registered multi-modality imaging datasets as a basis for radiomics. There are many challenges to the eventual use of radiomics-derived methods in clinical practice, including: standardization and robustness of selected metrics, accruing the data required, building and validating the resulting models, registering longitudinal data that often involve significant patient changes, reliable automated cancer segmentation tools, etc. Despite the hurdles, results achieved so far indicate the tremendous potential of this general approach to quantifying and using data from medical images. Specific applications of radiomics to be presented in this symposium will include: the longitudinal analysis of patients with low-grade gliomas; automatic detection and assessment of patients with metastatic bone lesions; image-based monitoring of patients with growing lymph nodes; predicting radiotherapy outcomes using multi-modality radiomics; and studies relating radiomics with genomics in lung cancer and glioblastoma. Learning Objectives: Understanding the basic image features that are often used in radiomic models. Understanding requirements for reliable radiomic models, including robustness of metrics, adequate predictive accuracy, and generalizability. Understanding the methodology behind radiomic-genomic (’radiogenomics’) correlations. Research supported by NIH (US), CIHR (Canada), and NSERC (Canada)

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Reliability Lessons Learned From GPU Experience With The Titan Supercomputer at Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility

The high computational capability of graphics processing units (GPUs) is enabling and driving the scientific discovery process at large-scale. The world’s second fastest supercomputer for open science, Titan, has more than 18,000 GPUs that computational scientists use to perform scientific simu- lations and data analysis. Understanding of GPU reliability characteristics, however, is still in its nascent stage since GPUs have only recently been deployed at large-scale. This paper presents a detailed study of GPU errors and their impact on system operations and applications, describing experiences with the 18,688 GPUs on the Titan supercom- puter as well as lessons learned in the process of efficient operation of GPUs at scale. These experiences are helpful to HPC sites which already have large-scale GPU clusters or plan to deploy GPUs in the future.

Tiwari, Devesh↗

DEPRECATED BSM-Learning (Bioenergy Scenario Model-Learning) [SWR-09-09]

This repository was archived by the owner on Jun 30, 2026. It is now read-only. This DEPRECATED software is a learning model excerpted from NREL's BSM (Bioenergy Scenario Model) that can be used to examine effects of different learning rates and different techno-economics on industry evolution.

Peterson, Steve↗

Fine-tuning TrailMap: The utility of transfer learning to improve the performance of deep learning in axon segmentation of light-sheet microscopy images

Light-sheet microscopy has made possible the 3D imaging of both fixed and live biological tissue, with samples as large as the entire mouse brain. However, segmentation and quantification of that data remains a time-consuming manual undertaking. Machine learning methods promise the possibility of automating this process. This study seeks to advance the performance of prior models through optimizing transfer learning. We fine-tuned the existing TrailMap model using expert-labeled data from noradrenergic axonal structures in the mouse brain. By changing the cross-entropy weights and using augmentation, we demonstrate a generally improved adjusted F1-score over using the originally trained TrailMap model within our test datasets.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

SRF cavity instability detection with machine learning at CEBAF

During the operation of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), one or more unstable superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities often cause beam loss trips while the unstable cavities themselves do not necessarily trip off. The present RF controls for the legacy cavities report at only 1 Hz, which is too slow to detectfast transient instabilities during these trip events. These challenges make the identification of an unstable cavity out of the hundreds installed at CEBAF a difficult and time-consuming task. To tackle these issues, a fast data acquisition system (DAQ) for the legacy SRF cavities has been developed, which records the sample at 5 kHz. An unsupervised learning framework has been developed to identify anomalous SRF cavity behavior. We will discuss the present status of the DAQ system and our framework, along with recent successes in detecting anomalous cavity behavior. Overall, our method offers a practical solution for identifying unstable SRF cavities, contributing to increased beam availability and machine reliability.

Accelerator Physics↗

Development of Gamma Background Radiation Digital Twin with Machine Learning Algorithms: Application of Unsupervised Machine Learning to Detection of Anomalies and Nuisances in Gamma Background Radiation Environmental Screening Data

Environmental screening of gamma radiation consists of detecting weak nuisance and anomaly signal in the presence of strong and highly varying background. In a typical scenario, a mobile detector-spectrometer continuously measures gamma radiation spectra in short, e.g., one-second, signal acquisition intervals. The measurement data is a 2D matrix, where one dimension is gamma ray energy, and the other dimension is the number of measurements or total time. In principle, gamma radiation sources can be detected and identified from the measured data by their unique spectral lines. Detecting sources from data measured in a search scenario is difficult due to the highly varying background because of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM), and low signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of spectral signal measured during one-second acquisition intervals. The objective of this work is to explore unsupervised machine learning (ML) algorithms for development of a digital twin of gamma radiation background, and for detection and identification of weak nuisances and anomalies events in the presence of highly fluctuating background. In one segment of work, we developed a gamma background estimation model using a Longshort term memory (LSTM) network for one-step CPS time series prediction. The LSTM model was validated with two data sets of measurements from two independent NaI detectors positioned on a mobile platform. The data sets contained background radiation only and no orphan isotope sources. The LSTM model was constructed and tested using data from one of the detectors. Performance of the LSTM model was validate through one-step prediction of CPS time series of another NaI detector without re-training. This approach allows to create a digital twin for nuclear background estimation. Using LSTM, it could be possible to detect a source through subtraction of the estimated counts from the measured background. In another segment of work, we investigated detection of gamma emitting sources in the presence of complex background using unsupervised machine learning. Spectral lines of isotopes are difficult to observe in one-second measurements. Averaging over the entire measurement campaign data set reveals spectral lines of most common background isotopes. Spectral lines of orphan sources, which might appear only in a few measurements during the campaign, will be washed out if averaging is performed over the entire measurement data set. The approach we have explored consists of extracting one-second measurements containing weak spectral features through data clustering. Averaging one-second spectra in a cluster should reveal the presence of anomaly sources. We created two ML models using K-means clustering and Neural Network Self-organizing Map (SOM). Performance of these ML models was benchmarked using search data. One data set contained 137 Cs source, and another dataset contained 131 I source.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Developing predictive models for µ opioid receptor binding using machine learning and deep learning techniques

Opioids exert their analgesic effect by binding to the µ opioid receptor (MOR), which initiates a downstream signaling pathway, eventually inhibiting pain transmission in the spinal cord. However, current opioids are addictive, often leading to overdose contributing to the opioid crisis in the United States. Therefore, understanding the structure-activity relationship between MOR and its ligands is essential for predicting MOR binding of chemicals, which could assist in the development of non-addictive or less-addictive opioid analgesics. This study aimed to develop machine learning and deep learning models for predicting MOR binding activity of chemicals. Chemicals with MOR binding activity data were first curated from public databases and the literature. Molecular descriptors of the curated chemicals were calculated using software Mold2. The chemicals were then split into training and external validation datasets. Random forest, k-nearest neighbors, support vector machine, multi-layer perceptron, and long short-term memory models were developed and evaluated using 5-fold cross-validations and external validations, resulting in Matthews correlation coefficients of 0.528–0.654 and 0.408, respectively. Furthermore, prediction confidence and applicability domain analyses highlighted their importance to the models’ applicability. Our results suggest that the developed models could be useful for identifying MOR binders, potentially aiding in the development of non-addictive or less-addictive drugs targeting MOR.

Research & Experimental Medicine↗

Learning Spectral Templates for Photometric Redshift Estimation from Broadband Photometry

Estimating redshifts from broadband photometry is often limited by how accurately we can map the colors of galaxies to an underlying spectral template. Current techniques utilize spectrophotometric samples of galaxies or spectra derived from spectral synthesis models. Both of these approaches have their limitations: either the sample sizes are small and often not representative of the diversity of galaxy colors, or the model colors can be biased (often as a function of wavelength), which introduces systematics in the derived redshifts. In this paper, we learn the underlying spectral energy distributions from an ensemble of ∼100 K galaxies with measured redshifts and colors. We show that we are able to reconstruct emission and absorption lines at a significantly higher resolution than the broadband filters used to measure the photometry for a sample of 20 spectral templates. We find that our training algorithm reduces the fraction of outliers in the derived photometric redshifts by up to 28%, bias up to 91%, and scatter up to 25%, when compared to estimates using a standard set of spectral templates. We discuss the current limitations of this approach and its applicability for recovering the underlying properties of galaxies. Our derived templates and the code used to produce these results are publicly available in a dedicated Github repository: https://github.com/dirac-institute/photoz-template-learning.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Learning about primates' learning, language, and cognition

Results are presented of many years of research on the methods of teaching primates the language and cognitive skills which were long considered to be unteachable to particular species of primates. It was found that chimpanzee subjects could not only learn a number of 'stock sentences' but to use them in variations and several combinations for the purpose of solving various problems. Apes placed in different rooms could be taught to communicate via computer, and collaborate with each other on doing specific tasks. Contrary to expectations, young rhesus monkeys proved to be able to learn as much as the chimpanzee species.

Rumbaugh, Duane M.↗

167-PFlops deep learning for electron microscopy: from learning physics to atomic manipulation

An artificial intelligence system called MENNDL, which used 25,200 NVIDIA Volta GPUs on Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Summit machine, automatically designed an optimal deep learning network in order to extract structural information from raw atomic-resolution microscopy data. In a few hours, MENNDL creates and evaluates millions of networks using a scalable, parallel, asynchronous genetic algorithm augmented with a support vector machine to automatically find a superior deep learning network topology and hyper-parameter set than a human expert can find in months. For the application of electron microscopy, the system furthers the goal of improving our understanding of the electron-beam-matter interactions and real-time image-based feedback, which enables a huge step beyond human capacity towards nanofabricating materials automatically. MENNDL has been scaled to the 4,200 available nodes of Summit achieving a measured 152.5 PFlops, with an estimated sustained performance of 167 PFlops when the entire machine is available.

Patton, Robert↗