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At least 235 records · Page 13

Public data from three US states provide new insights into well integrity

Significance There are over 900,000 active oil and gas wells in the United States. Estimates of the percentage of these wells that leak during their lifetime have been limited by data availability. We mined publicly available records from state regulatory databases and synthesized the results of various well testing methods into a uniform dataset that describes the integrity of 105,031 wells. Our analysis of the dataset provides insight into regional well leakage frequencies in three US states (Colorado, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania), spatial and temporal leakage trends among vertical and directional wells, and the characteristics of leaked fluids. Our findings demonstrate the value of statewide well testing programs and highlight the challenges of interpreting disparate interjurisdictional well testing data.

04 OIL SHALES AND TAR SANDS↗

Machine Learning for Well Log Analysis in Uranium Mining

This project explores the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to automate well log analysis for uranium mining. Geophysical log data—spontaneous potential, resistivity, and gamma ray—were used to classify lithology, correlate well logs and identify roll front zonation patterns, which are critical for locating uranium ore bodies. Supervised ML algorithms such as eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Categorical Boosting (CatBoost), and Random Forest were trained to classify lithology with high accuracy. Gradient Boosting Machines (GBM), XGBoost, Random Forest, and Neural Networks were also used for role front zone identification. Moreover, a Fast Dynamic Time Warping (FastDTW) algorithm was employed for well log correlation. Additionally, sample lag was addressed using dynamic programming. Results demonstrate the potential of AI and ML to streamline well log analysis and enhance uranium exploration workflows.

11 - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Mycoparasites, Gut Dwellers, and Saprotrophs: Phylogenomic Reconstructions and Comparative Analyses of Kickxellomycotina Fungi

Improved sequencing technologies have profoundly altered global views of fungal diversity and evolution. High-throughput sequencing methods are critical for studying fungi due to the cryptic, symbiotic nature of many species, particularly those that are difficult to culture. However, the low coverage genome sequencing (LCGS) approach to phylogenomic inference has not been widely applied to fungi. Here we analyzed 171 Kickxellomycotina fungi using LCGS methods to obtain hundreds of marker genes for robust phylogenomic reconstruction. Additionally, we mined our LCGS data for a set of nine rDNA and protein coding genes to enable analyses across species for which no LCGS data were obtained. The main goals of this study were to: 1) evaluate the quality and utility of LCGS data for both phylogenetic reconstruction and functional annotation, 2) test relationships among clades of Kickxellomycotina, and 3) perform comparative functional analyses between clades to gain insight into putative trophic modes. In opposition to previous studies, our nine-gene analyses support two clades of arthropod gut dwelling species and suggest a possible single evolutionary event leading to this symbiotic lifestyle. Furthermore, we resolve the mycoparasitic Dimargaritales as the earliest diverging clade in the subphylum and find four major clades of Coemansia species. Finally, functional analyses illustrate clear variation in predicted carbohydrate active enzymes and secondary metabolites (SM) based on ecology, that is biotroph versus saprotroph. Saprotrophic Kickxellales broadly lack many known pectinase families compared with saprotrophic Mucoromycota and are depauperate for SM but have similar numbers of predicted chitinases as mycoparasitic.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Two-Fluid and Discrete Element Modeling of a Parallel Plate Fluidized Bed Heat Exchanger for Concentrating Solar Power

A novel high-temperature particle solar receiver is developed using a light trapping planar cavity configuration. As particles fall through the cavity, the concentrated solar radiation warms the boundaries of the receiver and in turn heats the particles. Particles flow through the system, forming a fluidized bed at the lower section, leaving the system from the bottom at a constant flowrate. Air is introduced to the system as the fluidizing medium to improve particle heat transfer and mixing. A laboratory scale cavity receiver is built by collaborators at the Colorado School of Mines and their data are used for model validation. In this experimental setup, near IR quartz lamp is used to provide flux to the vertical wall of the heat exchanger. The system is modeled using the discrete element method and a continuum two-fluid method. The computational model matches the experimental system size and the particle size distribution is assumed monodisperse. A new continuum conduction model that accounts for the effects of solid concentration is implemented, and the heat flux boundary condition matches the experimental setup. Radiative heat transfer is estimated using a widely used correlation during the post-processing step to determine an overall heat transfer coefficient. The model is validated against testing data and achieves less than 30% discrepancy and a heat transfer coefficient greater than 1000 W/m2 K.

concentrating solar power↗

Micromechanical Surrogate Machine Learning Model for Creep Deformation Modeling

Process variability during the manufacture of gas turbine engine hot section components can significantly affect the material’s resulting microstructure. In casting, for instance, geometric variation within a component (thin sections versus thick sections, radial location) influences cooling rates and the resulting grain size. The high temperature creep response is known to be sensitive to grain size owing to a diffusional creep mechanism which occurs more readily along grain boundaries. Microstructural variation correspondingly drives mechanical behavior which propagates into component scale performance uncertainty. These factors are essential when planning inspection, maintenance, and repair strategies within a reliability framework. These benefits provide opportunities to increase overall energy efficiency through refined margins. Critically, there is an opportunity to bolster existing data-driven reliability models using physics-driven process-structure-property relations. Here we present recent work establishing a framework for evaluating the probabilistic creep performance of high-temperature materials. A novel microstructure-sensitive crystal plasticity finite element model is established that captures both grain boundary and crystallographic deformation effects. The computationally expensive physics model is calibrated using a statistical approach and this high-fidelity model is subsequently used to train a computationally efficient machine learning surrogate model. The surrogate model is essential for sampling a large ensemble of simulated structure-property pair results. The ensemble data are then mined to extract salient trends to be incorporated into a microstructure-sensitive reliability model. The proposed approach represents a novel way to capture microstructure-sensitive trends from physics-based models within a modern reliability framework.

Fernandez-Zelaia, Patxi [ORNL]↗

GeoTGo: AI/ML software for development of community geothermal resources

For effective and equitable outcomes in achieving the national goal of net-zero carbon emissions, communities must be not only included, but even lead the implementation of innovative green-energy technologies. Collaborations with communities should happen through informed decision-making, community-centered research and engagement of stakeholders at the local, state, and regional levels. Community-led research and implementation are fundamental to achieving success. These collaborations include rule makers, environmental regulators, clean energy industries, and technology researchers and developers. Unfortunately, many green infrastructure initiatives still adhere to a top-down and expert-driven process of site selection and design without awareness and acknowledgment of public engagement needs. This can lead to costly delays, including lawsuits, and ultimately less than desired or lacking outcomes as well as missed opportunities1. Geothermal, like many new technologies whose social and economic impacts are not fully understood, often cause disproportionately high adverse effects on disadvantaged communities. These effects can be related to human health, environmental, climate, and other cumulative impacts, as well as the accompanying economic challenges of these impacts. We are focusing our work on the needs of the New Mexico Native American Pueblos and Tribes (NMP&T). To address these needs, we are developing a novel web-based interactive software and user friendly interface called GeoTGO (https://geotgo.com) that provides everything that is needed for communities to better understand and develop their geothermal resources. We will bridge the gap between technology advancements and community needs by facilitating the interactions between the geothermal industry, regulators, stakeholders, and end-users. GeoTGO will merge data, software (including data analysis, text mining, artificial intelligence, and modeling tools), knowledge, expertise, and experience to provide fast processing and dissemination of the latest information about cutting-edge geothermal technologies to users and communities. More information about the project is available at https://envitrace.com/projects/geotgo.html.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

Structural Similarities and Overlapping Activities among Dihydroflavonol 4-Reductase, Flavanone 4-Reductase, and Anthocyanidin Reductase Offer Metabolic Flexibility in the Flavonoid Pathway

Flavonoids are potent antioxidants that play a role in defense against pathogens, UV-radiation, and the detoxification of reactive oxygen species. Dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (DFR) and flavanone 4-reductase (FNR) reduce dihydroflavonols and flavanones, respectively, using NAD(P)H to produce flavan-(3)-4-(di)ols in flavonoid biosynthesis. Anthocyanidin reductase (ANR) reduces anthocyanidins to flavan-3-ols. In addition to their sequences, the 3D structures of recombinant DFR, FNR and ANR from sorghum and switchgrass showed a high level of similarity. The catalytic mechanism, substrate-specificity and key residues of three reductases were deduced from crystal structures, site-directed mutagenesis, molecular docking, kinetics, and thermodynamic ana-lyses. Although DFR displayed its highest activity against dihydroflavonols, it also showed activity against flavanones and anthocyanidins. It was inhibited by the flavonol quercetin and high concentrations of dihydroflavonols/flavonones. SbFNR1 and SbFNR2 did not show any activity against dihydroflavonols. However, SbFNR1 displayed activity against flavanones and ANR activity against two anthocyanidins, cyanidin and pelargonidin. Therefore, SbFNR1 and SbFNR2 could be specific ANR isozymes without delphinidin activity. Sorghum has high concentrations of 3-deoxyanthocyanidins in vivo, supporting the observed high activity of SbDFR against flavonols. Mining of expression data indicated substantial induction of these three reductase genes in both switchgrass and sorghum in response to biotic stress. Key signature sequences for proper DFR/ANR classification are proposed and could form the basis for future metabolic engineering of flavonoid metabolism.

3-deoxyanthocyanidin↗

Data-driven materials research enabled by natural language processing and information extraction

Given the emergence of data science and machine learning throughout all aspects of society, but particularly in the scientific domain, there is increased importance placed on obtaining data. Data in materials science are particularly heterogeneous, based on the significant range in materials classes that are explored and the variety of materials properties that are of interest. This leads to data that range many orders of magnitude, and these data may manifest as numerical text or image-based information, which requires quantitative interpretation. The ability to automatically consume and codify the scientific literature across domains - enabled by techniques adapted from the field of natural language processing - therefore has immense potential to unlock and generate the rich datasets necessary for data science and machine learning. This review focuses on the progress and practices of natural language processing and text mining of materials science literature and highlights opportunities for extracting additional information beyond text contained in figures and tables in articles. Here, we discuss and provide examples for several reasons for the pursuit of natural language processing for materials, including data compilation, hypothesis development, and understanding the trends within and across fields. Current and emerging natural language processing methods along with their applications to materials science are detailed. We, then, discuss natural language processing and data challenges within the materials science domain where future directions may prove valuable.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Detection and Association of Operational Events using DAS and Seismometers (FY 2025 Mid-Year Report)

This mid-year report summarizes ongoing work to identify anomalous vibration signals indicative of potential containment breaches. This work includes compiling continuous seismic datasets and testing and refining underground detection and geolocation techniques. In the first two quarters of FY25, we have completed two project work plan tasks: (1) creating a database of continuous waveforms and ground truth event data from multiple modalities and (2) refining and implementing a detection and association algorithm to create a catalog of anomalous underground activities. This report contains a summary of the seismic database including the continuous seismic data collected by a dense array of surface seismic stations above Pleasant Gap Mine, and continuous seismic data collected using subsurface distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) in the subsurface at Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) and the ground truth information gathered from both sites. This report also includes results from refining and applying a dynamic power spectral density detector to both continuous seismic datasets. Finally, the report provides an initial catalog of subsurface operational events from both sensing modalities.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

NEWTS Coal Mine Drainage Dataset from Cravotta Brady (2015)

Data from Cravotta, Brady, "Priority pollutants and associated constituents in untreated and treated discharges from coal mining or processing facilities in Pennsylvania, USA". Applied Geochemistry, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeochem.2015.03.001 Dataset includes information on water quality composition including inorganic compounds from untreated and treated streams of coal-mine discharge from coal mining and coal processing locations. Data is provided in the original version as well as in a summarized version for easy input into aqueous chemistry modeling software.

Aqueous Chemistry↗

SNAD transient miner: Finding missed transient events in ZTF DR4 using k-D trees

Here we report the automatic detection of 11 transients (7 possible supernovae and 4 active galactic nuclei candidates) within the Zwicky Transient Facility fourth data release (ZTF DR4), all of them observed in 2018 and absent from public catalogs. Among these, three were not part of the ZTF alert stream. Our transient mining strategy employs 41 physically motivated features extracted from both real light curves and four simulated light curve models (SN Ia, SN II, TDE, SLSN-I). These features are input to a k-D tree algorithm, from which we calculate the 15 nearest neighbors. After pre-processing and selection cuts, our dataset contained approximately a million objects among which we visually inspected the 105 closest neighbors from seven of our brightest, most well-sampled simulations, comprising 89 unique ZTF DR4 sources. Our result illustrates the potential of coherently incorporating domain knowledge and automatic learning algorithms, which is one of the guiding principles directing the SNAD team. It also demonstrates that the ZTF DR is a suitable testing ground for data mining algorithms aiming to prepare for the next generation of astronomical data.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

BioHackathon 2015: Semantics of data for life sciences and reproducible research

We report on the activities of the 2015 edition of the BioHackathon, an annual event that brings together researchers and developers from around the world to develop tools and technologies that promote the reusability of biological data. We discuss issues surrounding the representation, publication, integration, mining and reuse of biological data and metadata across a wide range of biomedical data types of relevance for the life sciences, including chemistry, genotypes and phenotypes, orthology and phylogeny, proteomics, genomics, glycomics, and metabolomics. We describe our progress to address ongoing challenges to the reusability and reproducibility of research results, and identify outstanding issues that continue to impede the progress of bioinformatics research. We share our perspective on the state of the art, continued challenges, and goals for future research and development for the life sciences Semantic Web.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Comparative Assessment of Data-driven Process Models in Health Information Technology

Process mining for conformance analysis consists of comparing a reference process model against a data-driven process model generated via log files from information technology systems. However, in the absence of a complete reference process model, we found no suggested approaches in the literature to address the need for evaluating process conformance among different healthcare facilities to assess standardization of care. Our goal is to find similarities and dissimilarities in data-driven process models among US Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities that can be indicative of patient safety issues. Our hypothesis was that the analysis would not produce statistically significant differences in outcome. We present a unique implementation of conformance analysis in process mining that consists of combining process mining, process mapping and statistical metrics. We illustrate our approach by applying it to the analysis of two clinical radiology order process models generated from healthcare data provided by two similar facilities in the VHA. The comparative assessment showed that about 70% of the orders completed successfully and 30% were not completed due to policy and duplications. Our analysis found a good statistical correlation between both facilities, as the Spearman’s correlation coefficient between facilities for the frequency of cases per total hours was 0.87879, for the frequency of cases by state transition was 0.79702 and for the throughput time per state transition was 0.63582. Additional statistical analyses using the Mann-Whitney U test and the root mean square error both produced values that were not significant. The foregoing approach validated our hypothesis by demonstrating a good statistical correlation of data describing the flow of clinical radiology orders absent a credible reference model. Finding good agreement between both facilities was important in confirming that the clinical orders flow in a similar manner, suggesting standardization of care.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A universal language for finding mass spectrometry data patterns

Despite being information rich, the vast majority of untargeted mass spectrometry data are underutilized; most analytes are not used for downstream interpretation or reanalysis after publication. The inability to dive into these rich raw mass spectrometry datasets is due to the limited flexibility and scalability of existing software tools. Here, in this study, we introduce a new language, the Mass Spectrometry Query Language (MassQL), and an accompanying software ecosystem that addresses these issues by enabling the community to directly query mass spectrometry data with an expressive set of user-defined mass spectrometry patterns. Illustrated by real-world examples, MassQL provides a data-driven definition of chemical diversity by enabling the reanalysis of all public untargeted metabolomics data, empowering scientists across many disciplines to make new discoveries. MassQL has been widely implemented in multiple open-source and commercial mass spectrometry analysis tools, which enhances the ability, interoperability and reproducibility of mining of mass spectrometry data for the research community.

Damiani, Tito [Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS), Pr↗

Uncovering DNA-PKcs ancient phylogeny, unique sequence motifs and insights for human disease

DNA-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunit (DNA-PKcs) is a key member of the phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase-like (PIKK) family of protein kinases with critical roles in DNA-double strand break repair, transcription, metastasis, mitosis, RNA processing, and innate and adaptive immunity. The absence of DNA-PKcs from many model organisms has led to the assumption that DNA-PKcs is a vertebrate-specific PIKK. Here, we find that DNA-PKcs is widely distributed in invertebrates, fungi, plants, and protists, and that threonines 2609, 2638, and 2647 of the ABCDE cluster of phosphorylation sites are highly conserved amongst most Eukaryotes. Furthermore, we identify highly conserved amino acid sequence motifs and domains that are characteristic of DNA-PKcs relative to other PIKKs. These include residues in the Forehead domain and a novel motif we have termed YRPD, located in an α helix C-terminal to the ABCDE phosphorylation site loop. Combining sequence with biochemistry plus structural data on human DNA-PKcs unveils conserved sequence and conformational features with functional insights and implications. The defined generally progressive DNA-PKcs sequence diversification uncovers conserved functionality supported by Evolutionary Trace analysis, suggesting that for many organisms both functional sites and evolutionary pressures remain identical due to fundamental cell biology. The mining of cancer genomic data and germline mutations causing human inherited disease reveal that robust DNA-PKcs activity in tumors is detrimental to patient survival, whereas germline mutations compromising function are linked to severe immunodeficiency and neuronal degeneration. We anticipate that these collective results will enable ongoing DNA-PKcs functional analyses with biological and medical implications.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Automated electrosynthesis reaction mining with multimodal large language models (MLLMs)

Leveraging the chemical data available in legacy formats such as publications and patents is a significant challenge for the community. Automated reaction mining offers a promising solution to unleash this knowledge into a learnable digital form and therefore help expedite materials and reaction discovery. However, existing reaction mining toolkits are limited to single input modalities (text or images) and cannot effectively integrate heterogeneous data that is scattered across text, tables, and figures. In this work, we go beyond single input modalities and explore multimodal large language models (MLLMs) for the analysis of diverse data inputs for automated electrosynthesis reaction mining. We compiled a test dataset of 65 articles (MERMES-T24 set) and employed it to benchmark five prominent MLLMs against two critical tasks: (i) reaction diagram parsing and (ii) resolving cross-modality data interdependencies. The frontrunner MLLM achieved ≥96% accuracy in both tasks, with the strategic integration of single-shot visual prompts and image pre-processing techniques. We integrate this capability into a toolkit named MERMES (multimodal reaction mining pipeline for electrosynthesis). Our toolkit functions as an end-to-end MLLM-powered pipeline that integrates article retrieval, information extraction and multimodal analysis for streamlining and automating knowledge extraction. This work lays the groundwork for the increased utilization of MLLMs to accelerate the digitization of chemistry knowledge for data-driven research.

Leong, Shi Xuan↗

Draft genome of multiple resistance donor plant Sinapis alba: An insight into SSRs, annotations and phylogenetics

Sinapis alba is a wild member of the Brassicaceae family reported to possess genetic resistance against major biotic and abiotic stresses of oilseed brassicas. However, the resistance nature of S. alba was not exploited generously due to the unavailability of usable genome sequences in public databases. Therefore, the present study was conducted to assemble the first draft genome from raw whole genome shotgun sequences with annotation and develop simple sequence repeat markers for molecular genetics and marker-assisted breeding. Results The raw genome sequences had 96x coverage on the Illumina platform with 170 Gbp data. The developed assembly by SOAPdenovo2 has ~459 Mbp genome size covered in 403,423 contigs with an average size of 1138.04 bp. The assembly was BLASTX with Arabidopsis thaliana which showed 32.9% positive hits between both plants. The top hit species distribution analysis showed the highest similarity with A. thaliana. A total of 809,597 GO level annotations were recorded after BLASTX results, and 34,012 sequences were annotated with different enzyme codes grouped under seven classes. The gene prediction tool AUGUSTUS identified 113,107 probable genes with an average size of 684 bp. The biochemical pathway annotation assigned 16,119 potential genes to 152 KEGG maps and 1751 enzyme codes. The development of potential SSRs from the de-novo assembly yielded 70731 unique primer pairs. Out of 159 randomly selected SSR markers for validation, 149 successfully amplified in S. alba. However, 10 SSR markers did not amplify during the validation experiment. Conclusion The annotated genome assembly with a large number of SSRs was developed in the present study. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of S. alba genome assembly development, annotation, and SSRs mining to date. The data presented here will be a very important resource for future crop improvement programs, especially for resistant breeding.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗