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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 343 records · Page 19

Stress-Induced Orientation of Cocontinuous Nanostructures within Randomly End-Linked Copolymer Networks

Randomly end-linked copolymer networks (RECNs) provide a robust route to self-assembled cocontinuous nanostructures. Here, we study the orientation of cocontinuous polystyrene/poly(D,L-lactide) (PS/PLA) RECNs induced by uniaxial stretching above the glass transition temperatures of the components. Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) reveals that the domains initially undergo nonaffine stretching at low strain (ε < 0.4), followed by domain rotation at larger strains, yielding a “soft elastic” response and providing a high degree of orientation. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) tomography confirms that stretching leads to topological changes in the nanostructure, corresponding to reorganization of domain interfaces. The combination of orientation at the molecular and nanostructural levels provides substantial improvements in yield strength, toughness, and stiffness. In addition to possibilities for improving mechanical properties, cocontinuous nanostructures with controlled levels of orientation have potential in a variety of contexts including directional ion transport and energy absorption.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Modeling Methane Adsorption in Interpenetrating Porous Polymer Networks

Porous polymer networks (PPNs) are a class of porous materials of particular interest in a variety of energy-related applications because of their stability, high surface areas, and gas uptake capacities. Computationally derived structures for five recently synthesized PPN frameworks, PPN-2, -3, -4, -5, and -6, were generated for various topologies, optimized using semiempirical electronic structure methods, and evaluated using classical grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations. We show that a key factor in modeling the methane uptake performance of these materials is whether, and how, these material frameworks interpenetrate and demonstrate a computational approach for predicting the presence, degree, and nature of interpenetration in PPNs that enables the reproduction of experimental adsorption data.

Martin, RL↗

Upscaling Wetland Methane Emissions From the FLUXNET–CH4 Eddy Covariance Network (UpCH4 v1.0): Model Development, Network Assessment, and Budget Comparison

Wetlands are responsible for 20%–31% of global methane (CH 4 ) emissions and account for a large source of uncertainty in the global CH 4 budget. Data-driven upscaling of CH 4 fluxes from eddy covariance measurements can provide new and independent bottom-up estimates of wetland CH 4 emissions. Here, we develop a six-predictor random forest upscaling model (UpCH4), trained on 119 site-years of eddy covariance CH 4 flux data from 43 freshwater wetland sites in the FLUXNET-CH4 Community Product. Network patterns in site-level annual means and mean seasonal cycles of CH 4 fluxes were reproduced accurately in tundra, boreal, and temperate regions (Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency ~0.52–0.63 and 0.53). UpCH4 estimated annual global wetland CH 4 emissions of 146 ± 43 TgCH 4 y –1 for 2001–2018 which agrees closely with current bottom-up land surface models (102–181 TgCH 4 y –1 ) and overlaps with top-down atmospheric inversion models (155–200 TgCH 4 y –1 ). However, UpCH4 diverged from both types of models in the spatial pattern and seasonal dynamics of tropical wetland emissions. We conclude that upscaling of eddy covariance CH 4 fluxes has the potential to produce realistic extra-tropical wetland CH 4 emissions estimates which will improve with more flux data. To reduce uncertainty in upscaled estimates, researchers could prioritize new wetland flux sites along humid-to-arid tropical climate gradients, from major rainforest basins (Congo, Amazon, and SE Asia), into monsoon (Bangladesh and India) and savannah regions (African Sahel) and be paired with improved knowledge of wetland extent seasonal dynamics in these regions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Intermetallic Pd3Pb Nanowire Networks Boost Ethanol Oxidation and Oxygen Reduction Reaction with Significantly Improved Methanol Tolerance

Intermetallic nanocrystals are currently receiving extensive attentions due to their well- defined crystal structures, highly ordered atomic distribution and superior structural stability that endow them with optimized catalytic activities, stabilities and high selectivity as electrocatalysts for fuel cells. Here, for the first time, we reported the facile synthesis of intermetallic Pd3Pb nanowire networks (IM-Pd3Pb NNs) with a one-step wet-chemical strategy at a relatively low temperature (i.e. 170 °C) in 1 h. The as-prepared IM-Pd3Pb NNs exhibited superior bifunctional catalytic performances toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and ethanol oxidation reaction (EtOR) compared to commercial Pt/C and Pd black, respectively. Significantly, IM-Pd3Pb NNs also showed excellent methanol- and CO-tolerant ability as ORR cathode and EtOR anode electrocatalysts, respectively. The electrochemical active surface area and mass activity of IM-Pd3Pb NNs are about 3.4 times and 2 times higher than Pd black toward EtOR, respectively. As the Pt-free bifunctional electrocatalysts, 3D IM-Pd3Pb architectures with exceptional catalytic performances hold great promise in various applica-tions of energy conversion and storage devices, sensors, electronics, optics and so on.

Shi, Qiurong↗

Three‐phase probabilistic load flow in radial and meshed distribution networks

With the introduction of higher levels of renewables and demand response programs, traditional deterministic power system tools fall short of expectations. Probabilistic load flow (PLF) takes into account the inconsistency or the unknown loads, and generation in the fundamental load flow analysis. This study proposes a PLF solution for both balanced and unbalanced, radial and weakly meshed networks without explicitly using the Y ‐bus matrix. It allows for discrete probability density functions as input variables without having to assume a predefined distribution. The nodal voltages and the power flows can be calculated independently from one another. The proposed method is applied to the IEEE 123 Node Test Feeder and the IEEE 13 Node Test Feeder in both its original radial configuration and a modified mesh configuration, including a load replaced with a wind turbine. The results are validated by comparison of the proposed method's solutions to those obtained using cumulants and Monte Carlo simulation. The proposed PLF method provides an accurate and practical way for finding the solution to stochastic problems occurring in power distribution systems allowing for real‐system data to be analysed.

Melhorn, Alexander C.↗

Highly efficient nonprecious metal catalyst prepared with metal–organic framework in a continuous carbon nanofibrous network

Fuel cell vehicles, the only all-electric technology with a demonstrated >300 miles per fill travel range, use Pt as the electrode catalyst. The high price of Pt creates a major cost barrier for large-scale implementation of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. Nonprecious metal catalysts (NPMCs) represent attractive low-cost alternatives. However, a significantly lower turnover frequency at the individual catalytic site renders the traditional carbon-supported NPMCs inadequate in reaching the desired performance afforded by Pt. Unconventional catalyst design aiming at maximizing the active site density at much improved mass and charge transports is essential for the next-generation NPMC. We report here a method of preparing highly efficient, nanofibrous NPMC for cathodic oxygen reduction reaction by electrospinning a polymer solution containing ferrous organometallics and zeolitic imidazolate framework followed by thermal activation. The catalyst offers a carbon nanonetwork architecture made of microporous nanofibers decorated by uniformly distributed high-density active sites. In a single-cell test, the membrane electrode containing such a catalyst delivered unprecedented volumetric activities of 3.3 A∙cm -3 at 0.9 V or 450 A∙cm -3 extrapolated at 0.8 V, representing the highest reported value in the literature. Improved fuel cell durability was also observed.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗

RWRtoolkit: multi-omic network analysis using random walks on multiplex networks in any species

Abstract We introduce RWRtoolkit, a multiplex generation, exploration, and statistical package built for R and command-line users. RWRtoolkit enables the efficient exploration of large and highly complex biological networks generated from custom experimental data and/or from publicly available datasets, and is species agnostic. A range of functions can be used to find topological distances between biological entities, determine relationships within sets of interest, search for topological context around sets of interest, and statistically evaluate the strength of relationships within and between sets. The command-line interface is designed for parallelization on high-performance cluster systems, which enables high-throughput analysis such as permutation testing. Several tools in the package have also been made available for use in reproducible workflows via the KBase web application.

Kainer, David (ORCID:0000000172714676)↗

de Sitter space as a tensor network: Cosmic no-hair, complementarity, and complexity

Here, we investigate the proposed connection between de Sitter spacetime and the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA) tensor network, and ask what can be learned via such a construction. We show that the quantum state obeys a cosmic no-hair theorem: the reduced density operator describing a causal patch of the MERA asymptotes to a fixed point of a quantum channel, just as spacetimes with a positive cosmological constant asymptote to de Sitter space. The MERA is potentially compatible with a weak form of complementarity (local physics only describes single patches at a time, but the overall Hilbert space is infinite dimensional) or, with certain specific modifications to the tensor structure, a strong form (the entire theory describes only a single patch plus its horizon, in a finite-dimensional Hilbert space). Furthermore, we suggest that de Sitter evolution has an interpretation in terms of circuit complexity, as has been conjectured for anti–de Sitter space.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Mr. Scan: extreme scale density-based clustering using a tree-based network of GPGPU nodes, In: SC '13 Proceedings of the International Conference on High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis

Density-based clustering algorithms are a widely-used class of data mining techniques that can find irregularly shaped clusters and cluster data without prior knowledge of the number of clusters it contains. DBSCAN is the most well-known density-based clustering algorithm. We introduce our version of DBSCAN, called Mr. Scan, which uses a hybrid parallel implementation that combines the MRNet tree-based distribution network with GPGPU-equipped nodes. Mr. Scan avoids the problems of existing implementations by effectively partitioning the point space and by optimizing DBSCAN's computation over dense data regions. We tested Mr. Scan on both a geolocated Twitter dataset and image data obtained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. At its largest scale, Mr. Scan clustered 6.5 billion points from the Twitter dataset on 8,192 GPU nodes on Cray Titan in 17.3 minutes. All other parallel DBSCAN implementations have only demonstrated the ability to cluster up to 100 million points.

Computer Science↗

network-pruner (Neural network pruning analysis) [SWR-25-113]

This repository implements an iterative magnitude pruning algorithm for pruning neural networks in PyTorch. The pruning method involves gradually removing less significant weights from the model to achieve a specified sparsity, followed by fine-tuning the pruned model to recover performance.

Griffin, Kevin [National Renewable Energy Laborato↗

Precipitation Estimation from the ARM Distributed Radar Network during the MC3E Campaign

This study presents radar-based precipitation estimates collected during the two-month DOE ARM - NASA Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E). Emphasis is on the usefulness of radar observations from the C-band and X-band scanning ARM precipitation radars (CSAPR, XSAPR) for rainfall estimation products to distances within 100 km of the Oklahoma SGP facility. A dense collection of collocated ARM, NASA GPM and nearby surface Oklahoma Mesonet gauge records are consulted to evaluate potential ARM radar-based hourly rainfall products and campaign optimized methods over individual gauge and areal characterizations. Rainfall products are evaluated against the performance of the regional operational NWS NEXRAD S-band radar polarimetric product. Results indicate that the ARM C-band system may achieve similar point and areal-gauge bias and root mean square (rms) error performance to the NEXRAD standard for the variety of MC3E deep convective events sampled when capitalizing on differential phase measurements. The best campaign rainfall performance was achieved when applying radar relations capitalizing on estimates of the specific attenuation from the CSAPR system. The ARM X-band systems only demonstrate solid capabilities as compared to NEXRAD standards for hourly point and areal rainfall accumulations under 10 mm. Here, all methods exhibit a factor of 1.5 to 2.5 reduction in rms errors for areal accumulations over a 15 km2 NASA dense network housing 16 sites having collocated bucket gauges, with the higher error reductions best associated with polarimetric methods.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗