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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2016

Robustness of Dynamical Cluster Analysis in a Glass-Forming Metallic Liquid using an Unsupervised Machine Learning Algorithm

We performed dynamical cluster analysis in a Cu-Zr-Al based glass-forming metallic liquid using an unsupervised machine learning algorithm. The size of the dynamical clusters is used to quantify the onset of cooperative dynamics as the underlying mechanism leading to the Arrhenius dynamic crossover in transport coefficients of the metallic liquid. This technique is useful to directly visualize dynamical clusters and quantify their sizes upon cooling. Here, we demonstrate the robustness of this algorithm by performing sensitivity analysis against two key parameters: number of mobility groups and inconsistency coefficient of the hierarchical cluster tree. The results elucidate the optimized range of values for both of these parameters that capture the underlying physical picture of increasing cooperative dynamics appropriately.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Machine Learning Algorithms for Automated NIF Capsule Mandrel Selection

Small shells, approximately 2 mm in diameter, made from Poly(α-methylstyrene) (PAMS) are used as mandrels in the production of glow discharge polymer capsules located at the center of inertial confinement fusion experiments. The visual inspection process of microscope images of these shell mandrels, including detection of micron-sized defects on the shell surface as well as the handling and sorting, is a very labor-intensive, repetitive, and highly subjective process that stands to benefit greatly from automation. As part of an effort to decrease the number of labor hours spent in capsule handling, inspection, and metrology, the development of robotic systems was presented in a paper by Carlson et al., “Automation in Target Fabrication” [Fusion Sci. Technol., Vol. 70, p. 274 (2016)]. The current work expands the automated image acquisition systems developed previously and adds the use of convolutional neural networks to select capsules best suited for use in the downstream production process. Through the use of these machine learning algorithms, the selection process becomes robust, repeatable, and operator independent. Finally, as an added benefit the system developed as part of this work is able to provide defect statistics on entire shell batches and feed this information upstream to the production team.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Improving the accessibility and transferability of machine learning algorithms for identification of animals in camera trap images: MLWIC2

Motion-activated wildlife cameras (or “camera traps”) are frequently used to remotely and noninvasively observe animals. The vast number of images collected from camera trap projects has prompted some biologists to employ machine learning algorithms to automatically recognize species in these images, or at least filter-out images that do not contain animals. These approaches are often limited by model transferability, as a model trained to recognize species from one location might not work as well for the same species in different locations. Furthermore, these methods often require advanced computational skills, making them inaccessible to many biologists. We used 3 million camera trap images from 18 studies in 10 states across the United States of America to train two deep neural networks, one that recognizes 58 species, the “species model,” and one that determines if an image is empty or if it contains an animal, the “empty-animal model.” Our species model and empty-animal model had accuracies of 96.8% and 97.3%, respectively. Furthermore, the models performed well on some out-of-sample datasets, as the species model had 91% accuracy on species from Canada (accuracy range 36%–91% across all out-of-sample datasets) and the empty-animal model achieved an accuracy of 91%–94% on out-of-sample datasets from different continents. Our software addresses some of the limitations of using machine learning to classify images from camera traps. By including many species from several locations, our species model is potentially applicable to many camera trap studies in North America. We also found that our empty-animal model can facilitate removal of images without animals globally. We provide the trained models in an R package (MLWIC2: Machine Learning for Wildlife Image Classification in R), which contains Shiny Applications that allow scientists with minimal programming experience to use trained models and train new models in six neural network architectures with varying depths.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

QTG-Finder2: A Generalized Machine-Learning Algorithm for Prioritizing QTL Causal Genes in Plants

Linkage mapping has been widely used to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) in many plants and usually requires a time-consuming and labor-intensive fine mapping process to find the causal gene underlying the QTL. Previously, we described QTG-Finder, a machine-learning algorithm to rationally prioritize candidate causal genes in QTLs. Although it showed good performance, QTG-Finder could only be used in Arabidopsis and rice because of the limited number of known causal genes in other species. Here we tested the feasibility of enabling QTG-Finder to work on species that have few or no known causal genes by using orthologs of known causal genes as training set. The model trained with orthologs could recall about 64% of Arabidopsis and 83% of rice causal genes when the top 20% ranked genes were considered, which is similar to the performance of models trained with known causal genes. The average precision was 0.027 for Arabidopsis and 0.029 for rice. We further extended the algorithm to include polymorphisms in conserved non-coding sequences and gene presence/absence variation as additional features. Using this algorithm, QTG-Finder2, we trained and cross-validated Sorghum bicolor and Setaria viridis models. The S. bicolor model was validated by causal genes curated from the literature and could recall 70% of causal genes when the top 20% ranked genes were considered. Furthermore, we applied the S. viridis model and public transcriptome data to prioritize a plant height QTL and identified 13 candidate genes. QTL-Finder2 can accelerate the discovery of causal genes in any plant species and facilitate agricultural trait improvement.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Prediction of electric and magnetic fields from spectral data using machine learning algorithms for Doppler-free saturation spectroscopy diagnostics

The prediction of electric and magnetic field amplitudes from atomic spectral data is critical for plasma control in fusion devices such as tokamaks. Conventional approaches that rely on physics-based models are computationally expensive and unsuitable for real-time applications. In this work, we develop and benchmark three machine learning algorithms—simulation-based inference (SBI), fully connected neural networks (FCNN), and histogram-based gradient boosting regression (GBR-Hist)—to infer field intensities directly from Doppler-free saturation spectroscopy (DFSS) spectra. Synthetic datasets of spectra were generated using the EZSSS code and evaluated both with and without added Poisson noise to mimic experimental conditions. We find that SBI achieves the highest accuracy and robustness, FCNN provides a strong balance of accuracy and computational efficiency for real-time applications, and GBR-Hist offers the fastest inference but is more sensitive to noise. Furthermore, these results demonstrate the potential of machine learning to accelerate DFSS analysis and enhance its utility for plasma diagnostics and control.

Doppler-free saturation spectroscopy↗
DOE OSTI2022

Construction of Women’s All-Around Speed Skating Event Performance Prediction Model and Competition Strategy Analysis Based on Machine Learning Algorithms

Introduction Accurately predicting the competitive performance of elite athletes is an essential prerequisite for formulating competitive strategies. Women’s all-around speed skating event consists of four individual subevents, and the competition system is complex and challenging to make accurate predictions on their performance. Objective The present study aims to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of machine learning algorithms for predicting the performance of women’s all-around speed skating event and provide effective training and competition strategies. Methods The data, consisting of 16 seasons of world-class women’s all-around speed skating competition results, used in the present study came from the International Skating Union (ISU). According to the competition rules, distinct features are filtered using lasso regression, and a 5,000 m race model and a medal model are built using a fivefold cross-validation method. Results The results showed that the support vector machine model was the most stable among the 5,000 m race and the medal models, with the highest AUC (0.86, 0.81, respectively). Furthermore, 3,000 m points are the main characteristic factors that decide whether an athlete can qualify for the final. The 11th lap of the 5,000 m, the second lap of the 500 m, and the fourth lap of the 1,500 m are the main characteristic factors that affect the athlete’s ability to win medals. Conclusion Compared with logistic regression, random forest, K-nearest neighbor, naive Bayes, neural network, support vector machine is a more viable algorithm to establish the performance prediction model of women’s all-around speed skating event; excellent performance in the 3,000 m event can facilitate athletes to advance to the final, and athletes with outstanding performance in the 500 m event are more likely competitive for medals.

Liu, Meng↗
NASA NTRS2022

Landslide Likelihood Prediction using Machine Learning Algorithms

The supply of electricity via power plants is criticalto the operation of many critical infrastructure systems in mod-ern society. Natural hazards can disrupt the power supply, causepower outages that can halt economic growth, and impede emer-gency response until power is restored. The proposed work aimsto predict the landslides likelihood in these critical infrastructurelocations in the Northeastern USA using integrated databases ofexplanatory variables and machine learning algorithms. First,data related to landslides are obtained and merged, includingtopographic, soil moisture, and precipitation-related data. Fiveregression algorithms, namely: Random Forest, Extreme Gradi-ent Boosting (XGBoost), K-Nearest Neighbor regression (KNN),Linear Support Vector Regressor (SVR), and Linear regression,are utilized to predict the landslide probability and evaluatedon the dataset. The accuracy of the models is assessed by usingstatistical metrics such as mean absolute error (MAE), meansquared error (MSE), and root mean squared error (RMSE).The study results show that Random Forest outperformed othermodels with the mutual information feature selection method.It achieved an MSE of 0.0011 with mutual information-basedfeature selection and an MSE of 0.00157 without feature selection.KNN regressor outperformed the other models with an MSEof 0.00139 with correlation-based information selection. Theproposed landslide identification model with Random Forestalgorithm shows outstanding robustness and great potential intackling the landslide likelihood prediction by employing MLalgorithms.

Vasundhara Acharya↗
DOE OSTI2022

Application of a Machine Learning Algorithm in Generating an Evapotranspiration Data Product From Coupled Thermal Infrared and Microwave Satellite Observations

Land surface evapotranspiration (ET) is one of the main energy sources for atmospheric dynamics and a critical component of the local, regional, and global water cycles. Consequently, accurate measurement or estimation of ET is one of the most active topics in hydro-climatology research. With massive and spatially distributed observational data sets of land surface properties and environmental conditions being collected from the ground, airborne or space-borne platforms daily over the past few decades, many research teams have started to use big data science to advance the ET estimation methods. The Geostationary satellite Evapotranspiration and Drought (GET-D) product system was developed at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2016 to generate daily ET and drought maps operationally. The primary inputs of the current GET-D system are the thermal infrared (TIR) observations from NOAA GOES satellite series. Because of the cloud contamination to the TIR observations, the spatial coverage of the daily GET-D ET product has been severely impacted. Based on the most recent advances, we have tested a machine learning algorithm to estimate all-weather land surface temperature (LST) from TIR and microwave (MW) combined satellite observations. With the regression tree machine learning approach, we can combine the high accuracy and high spatial resolution of GOES TIR data with the better spatial coverage of passive microwave observations and LST simulations from a land surface model (LSM). The regression tree model combines the three LST data sources for both clear and cloudy days, which enables the GET-D system to derive an all-weather ET product. This paper reports how the all-weather LST and ET are generated in the upgraded GET-D system and provides an evaluation of these LST and ET estimates with ground measurements. The results demonstrate that the regression tree machine learning method is feasible and effective for generating daily ET under all weather conditions with satisfactory accuracy from the big volume of satellite observations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Sensitivity Analysis of Fluid–Fluid Interfacial Area, Phase Saturation and Phase Connectivity on Relative Permeability Estimation Using Machine Learning Algorithms

Recent studies have shown that relative permeability can be modeled as a state function which is independent of flow direction and dependent upon phase saturation (S), phase connectivity (X), and fluid–fluid interfacial area (A). This study evaluates the impact of each of the three state parameters (S, X, and A) in the estimation of relative permeability. The relative importance of the three state parameters in four separate quadrants of S-X-A space was evaluated using a machine learning algorithm (out-of-bag predictor importance method). The results show that relative permeability is sensitive to all the three parameters, S, X, and A, with varying magnitudes in each of the four quadrants at a constant value of wettability. We observe that the wetting-phase relative permeability is most sensitive to saturation, while the non-wetting phase is most sensitive to phase connectivity. Although the least important, fluid–fluid interfacial area is still important to make the relative permeability a more exact state function.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
NASA NTRS2014

Application of Machine Learning Algorithms to the Study of Noise Artifacts in Gravitational-Wave Data

The sensitivity of searches for astrophysical transients in data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitationalwave Observatory (LIGO) is generally limited by the presence of transient, non-Gaussian noise artifacts, which occur at a high-enough rate such that accidental coincidence across multiple detectors is non-negligible. Furthermore, non-Gaussian noise artifacts typically dominate over the background contributed from stationary noise. These "glitches" can easily be confused for transient gravitational-wave signals, and their robust identification and removal will help any search for astrophysical gravitational-waves. We apply Machine Learning Algorithms (MLAs) to the problem, using data from auxiliary channels within the LIGO detectors that monitor degrees of freedom unaffected by astrophysical signals. Terrestrial noise sources may manifest characteristic disturbances in these auxiliary channels, inducing non-trivial correlations with glitches in the gravitational-wave data. The number of auxiliary-channel parameters describing these disturbances may also be extremely large; high dimensionality is an area where MLAs are particularly well-suited. We demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of three very different MLAs: Artificial Neural Networks, Support Vector Machines, and Random Forests. These classifiers identify and remove a substantial fraction of the glitches present in two very different data sets: four weeks of LIGO's fourth science run and one week of LIGO's sixth science run. We observe that all three algorithms agree on which events are glitches to within 10% for the sixth science run data, and support this by showing that the different optimization criteria used by each classifier generate the same decision surface, based on a likelihood-ratio statistic. Furthermore, we find that all classifiers obtain similar limiting performance, suggesting that most of the useful information currently contained in the auxiliary channel parameters we extract is already being used. Future performance gains are thus likely to involve additional sources of information, rather than improvements in the MLAs themselves.

gravitational-wave data↗
DOE OSTI2017

Evaluation of a Machine-Learning Algorithm for Treatment Planning in Prostate Low-Dose-Rate Brachytherapy

Purpose: This work presents the application of a machine learning (ML) algorithm to automatically generate high-quality, prostate low-dose-rate (LDR) brachytherapy treatment plans. The ML algorithm can mimic characteristics of preoperative treatment plans deemed clinically acceptable by brachytherapists. The planning efficiency, dosimetry, and quality (as assessed by experts) of preoperative plans generated with an ML planning approach was retrospectively evaluated in this study. Methods and Materials: Preimplantation and postimplantation treatment plans were extracted from 100 high-quality LDR treatments and stored within a training database. The ML training algorithm matches similar features from a new LDR case to those within the training database to rapidly obtain an initial seed distribution; plans were then further fine-tuned using stochastic optimization. Preimplantation treatment plans generated by the ML algorithm were compared with brachytherapist (BT) treatment plans in terms of planning time (Wilcoxon rank sum, α = 0.05) and dosimetry (1-way analysis of variance, α = 0.05). Qualitative preimplantation plan quality was evaluated by expert LDR radiation oncologists using a Likert scale questionnaire. Results: The average planning time for the ML approach was 0.84 ± 0.57 minutes, compared with 17.88 ± 8.76 minutes for the expert planner (P=.020). Preimplantation plans were dosimetrically equivalent to the BT plans; the average prostate V150% was 4% lower for ML plans (P=.002), although the difference was not clinically significant. Respondents ranked the ML-generated plans as equivalent to expert BT treatment plans in terms of target coverage, normal tissue avoidance, implant confidence, and the need for plan modifications. Respondents had difficulty differentiating between plans generated by a human or those generated by the ML algorithm. Conclusions: Prostate LDR preimplantation treatment plans that have equivalent quality to plans created by brachytherapists can be rapidly generated using ML. The adoption of ML in the brachytherapy workflow is expected to improve LDR treatment plan uniformity while reducing planning time and resources.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
NASA NTRS2019

Evaluating Combinations of Sentinel-2 Data and Machine-Learning Algorithms for Mangrove Mapping in West Africa

Creating a national baseline for natural resources, such as mangrove forests, and monitoring them regularly often requires a consistent and robust methodology. With freely available satellite data archives and cloud computing resources, it is now more accessible to conduct such large-scale monitoring and assessment. Yet, few studies examine the reproducibility of such mangrove monitoring frameworks, especially in terms of generating consistent spatial extent. Our objective was to evaluate a combination of image processing approaches to classify mangrove forests along the coast of Senegal and The Gambia. We used freely available global satellite data (Sentinel-2), and cloud computing platform (Google Earth Engine) to run two machine learning algorithms, random forest (RF), and classification and regression trees (CART). We calibrated and validated the algorithms using 800 reference points collected using high-resolution images. We further re-ran 10 iterations for each algorithm, utilizing unique subsets of the initial training data. While all iterations resulted in thematic mangrove maps with over 90% accuracy, the mangrove extent ranges between 827-2807 km2 for Senegal and 245-1271 km2 for The Gambia with one outlier for each country. We further report "Places of Agreement" (PoA) to identify areas where all iterations for both methods agree (506.6 km2 and 129.6 km2 for Senegal and The Gambia, respectively), thus have a high confidence in predicting mangrove extent. While we acknowledge the time- and cost-effectiveness of such methods for the landscape managers, we recommend utilizing them with utmost caution, as well as post-classification on-the-ground checks, especially for decision making.

Mondal, Pinki↗
DOE OSTI2021

Application of a machine learning algorithm (XGBoost) to offline RHIC luminosity optimization

The operation parameter optimization in 2020 RHIC low energy run is difficult. First, the RHIC luminosity is affected by many RHIC operation parameters, as well as affected by many Low Energy RHIC electron Cooling (LEReC) operation parameters. Second, the luminosity signal in this run is noisy and not sensitive to these parameter changes, especially when these parameters are very close to their optimized values. It is not easy to distinguish the effects of one parameter from all other operation parameters separately. Therefore, it is difficult to optimize the luminosity by varying these parameters one by one. To find a way for luminosity optimization, we analyze some operation parameters via a machine learning algorithm - XGBoost. After constructing a black-box surrogate model from XGBoost and plotting their partial dependency plots (PDF) and SHAP value plots for different operation parameters, we can find the effects of an individual parameter on the RHIC luminosity and optimize it accordingly.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Comparative Study of Machine Learning Algorithms for Industry-Specific Freight Generation Model

According to Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the U.S. transportation system handled 14,329 million ton-miles of freight per day in 2020. Understanding the generation of these freight shipments is crucial for transportation researchers, planners, and policymakers to design and plan for a more efficient and connected freight transportation system. Traditionally, the freight generation modeling has been based on Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression, although more advanced Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have been evaluated and proven to have excellent performance in various transportation applications in recent years. Furthermore, one modeling approach applied for one industry might not always be applicable for another as their freight generation logics can be quite different. The objective of this study is to apply and evaluate alternative ML algorithms in the estimation of freight generation for each of 45 industry types. Seven alternative ML algorithms, along with the base OLS regression, were evaluated and compared. In addition, the study considered different combinations of variables in both the original and logarithmic form as well as hyperparameters of those ML algorithms in the model selection for each industry type. The results showed statistically significant improvements in the root mean square error reduction by the alternative ML algorithms over the OLS for over 80% of cases. The study suggests utilizing the alternative ML algorithms can reduce the root mean square error by about 30%, depending on industry types.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Improved machine learning algorithm for predicting ground state properties

Finding the ground state of a quantum many-body system is a fundamental problem in quantum physics. In this work, we give a classical machine learning (ML) algorithm for predicting ground state properties with an inductive bias encoding geometric locality. The proposed ML model can efficiently predict ground state properties of an n-qubit gapped local Hamiltonian after learning from only $\mathcal{O}$(log(n)) data about other Hamiltonians in the same quantum phase of matter. This improves substantially upon previous results that require $\mathcal{O}$(n c ) data for a large constant c. Furthermore, the training and prediction time of the proposed ML model scale as $\mathcal{O}$(n log n) in the number of qubits n. Numerical experiments on physical systems with up to 45 qubits confirm the favorable scaling in predicting ground state properties using a small training dataset.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2025

Development of Machine Learning Algorithm for Pebble Bed Modular Reactor Misuse Detection

The objective of this work was to develop a machine learning ensemble that could assist pebble bed reactor verification by evaluating whether a given pebble circulating through a PBR was normal or anomalous using gamma spectroscopy measurements from a notional PBR burnup measurement system. Using a PBR reference design, data sets of synthetic gamma spectra representative of BUMS measurements of normal and anomalous pebbles that may be used to produce special fissile material were generated to train and test an ML anomaly detection ensemble on two reference scenarios – substitution of normal pebbles with target pebbles for production of Pu or 233 U. The ML ensemble correctly identified all anomalous pebbles in the testing data set, and while perfect ensemble performance is normally indicative of overfitting, it was concluded that significantly lower photon intensity of target pebbles produced distinctly less intense photon spectra to where perfect ensemble performance was expected.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗