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At least 37 records · Page 2

Variational Monte Carlo Calculations of A ≤ 4 Nuclei with an Artificial Neural-Network Correlator Ansatz

Here, the complexity of many-body quantum wave functions is a central aspect of several fields of physics and chemistry where nonperturbative interactions are prominent. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have proven to be a flexible tool to approximate quantum many-body states in condensed matter and chemistry problems. In this work we introduce a neural-network quantum state ansatz to model the ground-state wave function of light nuclei, and approximately solve the nuclear many-body Schrodinger equation. Using efficient stochastic sampling and optimization schemes, our approach extends pioneering applications of ANNs in the field, which present exponentially scaling algorithmic complexity. We compute the binding energies and point-nucleon densities of A ≤ 4 nuclei as emerging from a leading-order pionless effective field theory Hamiltonian. We successfully benchmark the ANN wave function against more conventional parametrizations based on two- and three-body Jastrow functions, and virtually exact Green's function Monte Carlo results.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Induced and natural variation affect traits independently in hybrid Populus

Abstract The genetic control of many plant traits can be highly complex. Both allelic variation (sequence change) and dosage variation (copy number change) contribute to a plant's phenotype. While numerous studies have investigated the effect of allelic or dosage variation, very few have documented both within the same system, leaving their relative contribution to phenotypic effects unclear. The Populus genome is highly polymorphic, and poplars are fairly tolerant of gene dosage variation. Here, using a previously established Populus hybrid F1 population, we assessed and compared the effect of natural allelic variation and induced dosage variation on biomass, phenology, and leaf morphology traits. We identified QTLs for many of these traits, but our results indicate limited overlap between the QTLs associated with natural allelic variation and induced dosage variation. Additionally, the integration of data from both allelic and dosage variation identifies a larger set of QTLs that together explain a larger percentage of the phenotypic variance. Finally, our results suggest that the effect of the large indels might mask that of allelic QTLs. Our study helps clarify the relationship between allelic and dosage variation and their effects on quantitative traits.

Guo, Weier (ORCID:0000000251789334)↗

Daytime variation in the aerosol indirect effect for warm marine boundary layer clouds in the eastern North Atlantic

Abstract. Warm boundary layer clouds in the eastern North Atlantic region exhibit significant diurnal variations in cloud properties. However, the diurnal cycle of the aerosol indirect effect (AIE) for these clouds remains poorly understood. This study takes advantage of recent advancements in the spatial resolution of geostationary satellites to explore the daytime variation in the AIE by estimating the cloud susceptibilities to changes in cloud droplet number concentration (Nd). Cloud retrievals for the month of July over 4 years (2018–2021) from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) on Meteosat-11 over this region are analyzed. Our results reveal a significant “U-shaped” daytime cycle in susceptibilities of the cloud liquid water path (LWP), cloud albedo, and cloud fraction. Clouds are found to be more susceptible to Nd perturbations at noon and less susceptible in the morning and evening. The magnitude and sign of cloud susceptibilities depend heavily on the cloud state defined by cloud LWP and precipitation conditions. Non-precipitating thin clouds account for 44 % of all warm boundary layer clouds in July, and they contribute the most to the observed daytime variation. Non-precipitating thick clouds are the least frequent cloud state (10 %), and they exhibit more negative LWP and albedo susceptibilities compared to thin clouds. Precipitating clouds are the dominant cloud state (46 %), but their cloud susceptibilities show minimal variation throughout the day. We find evidence that the daytime variation in LWP and albedo susceptibilities for non-precipitating clouds is influenced by a combination of the diurnal transition between non-precipitating thick and thin clouds and the “lagged” cloud responses to Nd perturbations. The daytime variation in cloud fraction susceptibility for non-precipitating thick clouds can be attributed to the daytime variation in cloud morphology (e.g., overcast or broken). The dissipation and development of clouds do not adequately explain the observed variation in cloud susceptibilities. Additionally, daytime variation in cloud susceptibility is primarily driven by variation in the intensity of cloud response rather than the frequency of occurrence of cloud states. Our results imply that polar-orbiting satellites with an overpass time at 13:30 LT underestimate daytime mean values of cloud susceptibility, as they observe susceptibility daily minima in the study region.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Variation-Resilient FeFET-Based In-Memory Computing Leveraging Probabilistic Deep Learning

Reliability issues stemming from device level nonidealities of nonvolatile emerging technologies like ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs), especially at scaled dimensions, cause substantial degradation in the accuracy of in-memory crossbar-based AI systems. Here, in this work, we present a variation-aware design technique to characterize the device level variations and to mitigate their impact on hardware accuracy employing a Bayesian neural network (BNN) approach. An effective conductance variation model is derived from the experimental measurements of cycle-to-cycle (C2C) and device-to-device (D2D) variations performed on FeFET devices fabricated using 28 nm high-k metal gate technology. The variations were found to be a function of different conductance states within the given programming range, which sharply contrasts earlier efforts where a fixed variation dispersion was considered for all conductance values. Such variation characteristics formulated for three different device sizes at different read voltages were provided as prior variation information to the BNN to yield a more exact and reliable inference. Near-ideal accuracy for shallow networks (MLP5 and LeNet models) on the MNIST dataset and limited accuracy decline by ~3.8%–16.1% for deeper AlexNet models on CIFAR10 dataset under a wide range of variations corresponding to different device sizes and read voltages, demonstrates the efficacy of our proposed device-algorithm co-design technique.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Rubidium and potassium isotopic variations in chondrites and Mars: Accretion signatures and planetary overprints

As moderately volatile elements, isotopes of Rb and K can trace volatilization processes in planetary bodies. Rubidium isotopic data are however very scarce, especially for non-carbonaceous meteorites. Here, in this study, we report combined Rb and K isotopic data (δ 87/85 Rb and δ 41/39 Κ) for 7 ordinary, 6 enstatite, and 4 Martian meteorite falls to understand the causes for the variations in volatile abundances and isotopic compositions. Bulk Rb and K isotopic compositions of planetary bodies are estimated to be (Table 1): Mars +0.10 ± 0.03 ‰ for Rb and -0.26 ± 0.05 ‰ for K, bulk OCs $-0.12^{+0.15}_{-0.24}$ ‰ for Rb and $-0.72^{+0.28}_{-0.41}$ ‰ for K, bulk ECs $-0.02^{+0.29}_{-0.26}$ ‰ for Rb and $-0.33^{+0.37}_{-0.23}$ ‰ for K. The bulk K isotopic compositions of subgroup OCs are estimated to be $-0.72^{+0.26}_{-0.55}$ ‰ for H chondrites, $-0.71^{+0.23}_{-0.39}$ ‰ for L chondrites, and $-0.77^{+0.63}_{-0.30}$ ‰ for LL chondrites. A broad correlation between the Rb and K isotopic compositions of planetary bodies is observed. The correlation follows a slope that is consistent with kinetic evaporation and condensation processes, suggesting volatility-controlled mass-dependent isotope fractionation (as opposed to nucleosynthetic anomalies). Individual ordinary and enstatite chondrites show large Rb and K isotopic variations (-1.02 to +0.29 ‰ for Rb and -0.91 to -0.15 ‰ for K). Samples of lower metamorphic grades display correlated elemental and isotopic fractionations between Rb and K, while samples of higher metamorphic grades show great scatter, suggesting that chondrite parent-body processes have decoupled the two elements and their isotopes at the sample scale. Several processes could have contributed to the observed isotopic variations of Rb and K, including (i) chondrule “nugget effect”, (ii) volatilization during parent-body thermal metamorphism (heat-induced vaporization and gas transport within parent bodies), (iii) thermal diffusion during parent-body metamorphism, and (iv) impact/shock heating. Quantitative modeling of the first two processes suggests that neither of them could produce isotopic variations large enough to explain the observed isotopic variations. Volatilization during parent-body thermal metamorphism [the scenario (ii)], which has been commonly invoked to explain the isotopic variations of volatile elements, is gas transport-limited and its effect on isotopic fractionations of moderately volatile elements should be negligible. Modeling of diffusion processes suggests that (iii) could produce K isotopic variation comparable to the observed variation. The large isotopic variations in non-carbonaceous meteorites are thus most likely due to diffusive redistribution of K and Rb during metamorphism and/or shock-induced heating and vaporization.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Genomic variation across Chinook salmon populations reveals effects of a duplication on migration alleles and supports fine scale structure

Abstract The distribution of ecotypic variation in natural populations is influenced by neutral and adaptive evolutionary forces that are challenging to disentangle. This study provides a high‐resolution portrait of genomic variation in Chinook salmon ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ) with emphasis on a region of major effect for ecotypic variation in migration timing. With a filtered data set of ~13 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from low‐coverage whole genome resequencing of 53 populations (3566 barcoded individuals), we contrasted patterns of genomic structure within and among major lineages and examined the extent of a selective sweep at a major effect region underlying migration timing (GREB1L/ROCK1). Neutral variation provided support for fine‐scale structure of populations, while allele frequency variation in GREB1L/ROCK1 was highly correlated with mean return timing for early and late migrating populations within each of the lineages ( r 2 = .58–.95; p < .001). However, the extent of selection within the genomic region controlling migration timing was much narrower in one lineage (interior stream‐type) compared to the other two major lineages, which corresponded to the breadth of phenotypic variation in migration timing observed among lineages. Evidence of a duplicated block within GREB1L/ROCK1 may be responsible for reduced recombination in this portion of the genome and contributes to phenotypic variation within and across lineages. Lastly, SNP positions across GREB1L/ROCK1 were assessed for their utility in discriminating migration timing among lineages, and we recommend multiple markers nearest the duplication to provide highest accuracy in conservation applications such as those that aim to protect early migrating Chinook salmon. These results highlight the need to investigate variation throughout the genome and the effects of structural variants on ecologically relevant phenotypic variation in natural species.

Horn, Rebekah L.↗

Variation in supercurrent connectivity and vortex pinning of state-of-the-art pulsed laser deposited RE Ba 2 Cu 3 O 7- x coated conductors

REBa 2 Cu 3 O 7-x (REBCO, RE: rare earth) coated conductors (CCs) suffer from great critical current I c differences between different manufacturers, I c variations within individual manufacturers, and often significant lengthwise fluctuations. The understanding of such variations is complicated by the lack of a direct correlation between I c and the critical current density J c . In fact, although J c is the fundamental property determined by the local vortex pinning landscape, I c is often limited by variable current blocking mechanisms. An important practical complexity is commercial practices of performing J c and I c evaluations based on I c at 77 K and self-field (sf), where connectivity variation dominates over vortex pinning variations. However, at higher fields and lower temperatures, vortex pinning becomes more complex and highly variable, making predictions of I c and J c at arbitrary temperature T, magnetic field H, and field orientation θ, quite uncertain. To address some aspects of this problem, we conducted detailed spool-to-spool performance characterization on recently manufactured REBCO CCs. Despite J c (77 K, sf) varies by only ∼11%, J c (77 K, 1 T) of its minimum and maximum (for H//ab-plane) show variations of ∼21% and ∼32%, respectively. This emphasizes the shortcoming in using J c (77 K, sf) as parameter for evaluating even the low field performance. An even more remarkable spool-to-spool J c variation of ∼68% was observed at 20 K and 15 T for H//ab-plane. To identify the origin of such lack of reproducibility we performed microstructural characterizations, which revealed, within the REBCO layer, large variation in the density of copper oxide (CuO x ) particles ranging from 0.1 to 2 μm in size. We believe that they play a decisive role in reducing the effective cross-section of the REBCO layer by not simply blocking current themselves, but also by nucleating off-axis REBCO grains, whose misoriented grain boundaries adversely impact REBCO grain-to-grain connectivity. The REBCO growth associated with high density CuO x particles also leads to the more disordered spatial arrangement of BaHfO 3 precipitate arrays, which, when self-aligning along the ab-planes, generate stronger pinning enhancing J c (H//ab) at all temperatures. In this way, we established that variations of both connectivity and vortex pinning are thus directly coupled. Our results also explain why the so-called ‘lift-factor’, typically defined by the ratio between I c (T, H) and I c (77 K, sf), frequently turns out to be unreliable.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Incorporating Diurnal and Meter-Scale Variations of Ambient CO 2 Concentrations in Development of Direct Air Capture Technologies

To be implemented on climate-relevant scales, direct air capture of CO 2 (DAC) will require large capital-intensive facilities and careful attention to cost minimization. In making decisions among potential sites for DAC facilities, all of the factors that will impact process cost and efficiency should be considered. In this paper we focus on a factor that has previously received little attention in the DAC community, namely variations in atmospheric conditions on hourly time scales and length scales of meters. We present data curated from extensive previous studies of biosphere-atmosphere fluxes with observations of CO 2 concentration, temperature, and relative humidity (RH) with hourly resolution from many sites in North America. These include locations where typical diurnal variations in CO 2 concentration during summer months exceeds 150 ppm. These variations are larger than the seasonal variations that exist between averaged CO 2 concentrations in winter and summer, and they are highly correlated with diurnal variations in temperature and RH. Diurnal variations are dependent on the height above ground at which CO 2 concentrations are measured, with smaller variations existing at heights of 10 m or more than at ground level. We illustrate the potential implications of these short-term variations for the operation and optimization of a DAC process with process-level calculations for a specific adsorption-based process using amine-rich adsorbents.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Genetic variation associated with adult migration timing in lineages of Steelhead and Chinook Salmon in the Columbia River

Abstract With the discovery of a major effect region (GREB1L, ROCK1) for adult migration timing in genomes of both Chinook Salmon and Steelhead, several subsequent studies have investigated the effect size and distribution of early and late migration alleles among populations in the Columbia River. Here, we synthesize the results of these studies for the major lineages of Chinook Salmon and Steelhead that include highly distinct groups in the interior Columbia River that exhibit atypical life histories from most coastal lineage populations of these two species. Whole‐genome studies with high marker density have provided extensive insight into SNPs most associated with adult migration timing, and suites of markers for each species have been genotyped in large numbers of individuals to further validate phenotypic effects. For Steelhead, the largest phenotypic effect sizes have been observed in the coastal lineage (36% of variation for passage timing at Bonneville Dam; 43% of variation for tributary arrival timing) compared to the inland lineage (7.5% of variation for passage timing at Bonneville Dam; 8.4% of variation for tributary arrival timing) that overwinter in freshwater prior to spawning. For Chinook Salmon, large effect sizes have been observed in all three lineages for multiple adult migration phenotypes (Coastal lineage: percentage of variation of 27.9% for passage timing at Bonneville Dam, 28.7% for arrival timing for spawning; Interior ocean type: percentage of variation of 47.6% for passage timing at Bonneville Dam, 39.6% for tributary arrival timing, 77.9% for arrival timing for spawning; Interior stream type: percentage of variation of 35.3% for passage at Bonneville Dam, 9.8% for tributary arrival timing, 4.7% for arrival timing for spawning). Together, these results have extended our understanding of genetic variation associated with life history diversity in distinct populations of the Columbia River, however, much research remains necessary to determine the causal mechanism for this major effect region on migration timing in these species.

Narum, Shawn R.↗

Transcripts and genomic intervals associated with variation in metabolite abundance in maize leaves under field conditions

Abstract Plants exhibit extensive environment-dependent intraspecific metabolic variation, which likely plays a role in determining variation in whole plant phenotypes. However, much of the work seeking to use natural variation to link genes and transcript’s impacts on plant metabolism has employed data from controlled environments. Here, we generated and analyzed data on the variation in the abundance of 26 metabolites across 660 maize inbred lines under field conditions. We employ these data and previously published transcript and whole plant phenotype data reported for the same field experiment to identify both genomic intervals (through genome-wide association studies (GWAS)) and transcripts (using both transcriptome-wide association studies (TWAS) and an explainable artificial intelligence (AI) approach based on random forest (RF)) associated with variation in metabolite abundance. Both genome-wide association and random forest-based methods identified substantial numbers of significant associations including genes with plausible links to the metabolites they are associated with. In contrast, the transcriptome-wide association identified only six significant associations. In three cases, genetic markers associated with metabolic variation in our study colocalized with markers linked to variation in non-metabolic traits scored in the same experiment. We speculate that the poor performance of transcriptome-wide association studies in identifying transcript-metabolite associations may reflect a high prevalence of non-linear interactions between transcripts and metabolites and/or a bias towards rare transcripts playing a large role in determining intraspecific metabolic variation.

Mathivanan, Ramesh Kanna↗

Identifying intragenic functional modules of genomic variations associated with cancer phenotypes by learning representation of association networks

Background Genome-wide Association Studies (GWAS) aims to uncover the link between genomic variation and phenotype. They have been actively applied in cancer biology to investigate associations between variations and cancer phenotypes, such as susceptibility to certain types of cancer and predisposed responsiveness to specific treatments. Since GWAS primarily focuses on finding associations between individual genomic variations and cancer phenotypes, there are limitations in understanding the mechanisms by which cancer phenotypes are cooperatively affected by more than one genomic variation. Results This paper proposes a network representation learning approach to learn associations among genomic variations using a prostate cancer cohort. The learned associations are encoded into representations that can be used to identify functional modules of genomic variations within genes associated with early- and late-onset prostate cancer. The proposed method was applied to a prostate cancer cohort provided by the Veterans Administration’s Million Veteran Program to identify candidates for functional modules associated with early-onset prostate cancer. The cohort included 33,159 prostate cancer patients, 3181 early-onset patients, and 29,978 late-onset patients. The reproducibility of the proposed approach clearly showed that the proposed approach can improve the model performance in terms of robustness. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to use a network representation learning approach to learn associations among genomic variations within genes. Associations learned in this way can lead to an understanding of the underlying mechanisms of how genomic variations cooperatively affect each cancer phenotype. This method can reveal unknown knowledge in the field of cancer biology and can be utilized to design more advanced cancer-targeted therapies.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Weak phylogenetic and habitat effects on root trait variation of 218 Neotropical tree species

Tropical forests harbor a large diversity of closely related tree species that can thrive across habitats. This biodiversity has been found to correspond to large functional diversity in aboveground traits, and likely also relates to belowground trait variation. Globally, root trait (co-)variation is driven by different belowground resource strategies of species, environmental variation, and phylogeny; however, these patterns mostly reflect observations from temperate biomes and remain unconfirmed in tropical trees. We examine phylogenetic and environmental effects on root trait (co-)variation of trees across habitats in an Amazonian rainforest. Roots of 218 tree species from ten dominant families were sampled across three major habitats near Manaus, Brazil. We quantified five morphological and architectural root traits to (i) investigate how they reflected different resource strategies across species, (ii) compare them between families and superorders to test phylogenetic effects, and (iii) compare them between habitats to determine environmental effects on root trait expressions and variability. Root traits discriminated species along a tradeoff between root diameter and root branching and, secondly, due to variation in root tissue density. Our results further show weak phylogenetic effects on tropical tree root variation, for example, families from the same superorder showed large divergence in their root traits, while those from different superorders often overlapped in their root morphology and architecture. Root traits differed significantly between habitats but habitat type had only little effect on overall root trait variation. Our work suggests that the dimensions and drivers that underlie (co-)variation in tropical root traits may differ from global patterns defined by mostly temperate datasets. Due to (a)biotic environmental differences, different root trait dimensions may underlie the belowground functional diversity in (Neo)tropical forests, and we found little evidence for the strong phylogenetic conservatism observed in root traits in temperate biomes. We highlight important avenues for future research on tropical roots in order to determine the degree of, and shifts in functional diversity belowground as communities and environments change in tropical forests.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Robust scalable initialization for Bayesian variational inference with multi-modal Laplace approximations

Predictive modeling typically relies on Bayesian model calibration to provide uncertainty quantification. Variational inference utilizing fully independent (“mean-field”) Gaussian distributions are often used as approximate probability density functions. This simplification is attractive since the number of variational parameters grows only linearly with the number of unknown model parameters. However, the resulting diagonal covariance structure and unimodal behavior can be too restrictive to provide useful approximations of intractable Bayesian posteriors that exhibit highly non-Gaussian behavior, including multimodality. High-fidelity surrogate posteriors for these problems can be obtained by considering the family of Gaussian mixtures. Gaussian mixtures are capable of capturing multiple modes and approximating any distribution to an arbitrary degree of accuracy, while maintaining some analytical tractability. Unfortunately, variational inference using Gaussian mixtures with full-covariance structures suffers from a quadratic growth in variational parameters with the number of model parameters. The existence of multiple local minima due to strong nonconvex trends in the loss functions often associated with variational inference present additional complications, These challenges motivate the need for robust initialization procedures to improve the performance and computational scalability of variational inference with mixture models. In this work, we propose a method for constructing an initial Gaussian mixture model approximation that can be used to warm-start the iterative solvers for variational inference. The procedure begins with a global optimization stage in model parameter space. In this step, local gradient-based optimization, globalized through multistart, is used to determine a set of local maxima, which we take to approximate the mixture component centers. Around each mode, a local Gaussian approximation is constructed via the Laplace approximation. Finally, the mixture weights are determined through constrained least squares regression. The robustness and scalability of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through application to an ensemble of synthetic tests using high-dimensional, multimodal probability density functions. Here, the practical aspects of the approach are demonstrated with inversion problems in structural dynamics.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Gene-by-environment interactions influence the fitness cost of gene copy-number variation in yeast

Abstract Variation in gene copy number can alter gene expression and influence downstream phenotypes; thus copy-number variation provides a route for rapid evolution if the benefits outweigh the cost. We recently showed that genetic background significantly influences how yeast cells respond to gene overexpression, revealing that the fitness costs of copy-number variation can vary substantially with genetic background in a common-garden environment. But the interplay between copy-number variation tolerance and environment remains unexplored on a genomic scale. Here, we measured the tolerance to gene overexpression in four genetically distinct Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains grown under sodium chloride stress. Overexpressed genes that are commonly deleterious during sodium chloride stress recapitulated those commonly deleterious under standard conditions. However, sodium chloride stress uncovered novel differences in strain responses to gene overexpression. West African strain NCYC3290 and North American oak isolate YPS128 are more sensitive to sodium chloride stress than vineyard BC187 and laboratory strain BY4743. Consistently, NCYC3290 and YPS128 showed the greatest sensitivities to overexpression of specific genes. Although most genes were deleterious, hundreds were beneficial when overexpressed—remarkably, most of these effects were strain specific. Few beneficial genes were shared between the sodium chloride-sensitive isolates, implicating mechanistic differences behind their sodium chloride sensitivity. Transcriptomic analysis suggested underlying vulnerabilities and tolerances across strains, and pointed to natural copy-number variation of a sodium export pump that likely contributes to strain-specific responses to overexpression of other genes. Our results reveal extensive strain-by-environment interactions in the response to gene copy-number variation, raising important implications for the accessibility of copy-number variation-dependent evolutionary routes under times of stress.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Adaptive Variational Quantum Imaginary Time Evolution Approach for Ground State Preparation

Abstract An adaptive variational quantum imaginary time evolution (AVQITE) approach is introduced that yields efficient representations of ground states for interacting Hamiltonians on near‐term quantum computers. It is based on McLachlan's variational principle applied to imaginary time evolution of variational wave functions. The variational parameters evolve deterministically according to equations of motions that minimize the difference to the exact imaginary time evolution, which is quantified by the McLachlan distance. Rather than working with a fixed variational ansatz, where the McLachlan distance is constrained by the quality of the ansatz, the AVQITE method iteratively expands the ansatz along the dynamical path to keep the McLachlan distance below a chosen threshold. This ensures the state is able to follow the quantum imaginary time evolution path in the system Hilbert space rather than in a restricted variational manifold set by a predefined fixed ansatz. AVQITE is used to prepare ground states of H 4 , H 2 O, and BeH 2 molecules, where it yields compact variational ansätze and ground state energies within chemical accuracy. Polynomial scaling of circuit depth with system size is shown through a set of AVQITE calculations of quantum spin models. Finally, quantum Lanczos calculations are demonstrated alongside AVQITE without additional quantum resource costs.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

The impact of mineral reactive surface area variation on simulated mineral reactions and reaction rates

Reactive transport modeling is an essential tool to simulate complex geochemical reactions in porous media that can impact formation properties including porosity and permeability. However, simulating these reactions is challenging due to uncertainties in model parameters, particularly mineral surface areas. Imaging has emerged as a powerful means of estimating model parameters including porosity and mineral abundance, accessibility and accessible surface area. However, these parameters, particularly mineral accessible surface area, vary with image resolution. This work aims to enhance understanding of the impact of image resolution and other means of estimating mineral reactive surface area on simulated mineral reactions and reaction rates. Mineral surface areas calculated from images with resolutions of 0.34 μm and 5.71 μm were used to simulate mineral reactions in the context of geologic CO 2 sequestration in the Paluxy formation at the continuum scale. Additional simulations were carried out using BET surface areas collected from the literature and geometric surface areas. Simulations were run for 7300 days and mineral volume fractions and effluent ion concentrations tracked and compared. Variations in mineral surface areas measured from images are within 1 order of magnitude and yield similar simulation results, indicating the impact of image resolution on simulated reactions and reaction rates is minimum for the resolutions and sample considered. In comparison, surface areas obtained from BET and geometric approaches are 1–4 orders of magnitude higher than image-obtained surface areas and result in greater simulated reaction rates and extents. Minerals with high reaction rates (calcite and siderite) are most impacted by surface area values at short times where simulated mineral volume fractions at longer times agree relatively well, even for simulations with several orders of magnitude variation in surface area. Phases with lower reaction rates, such as K-feldspar and muscovite, are predominantly impacted over longer times where variations in surface areas impact reaction extents and porosity evolution. Overall, variations in surface areas due to image resolution are small and result in little variation in simulated reactions and reaction rates while there are significant variations in simulation results when other surface area estimates are used. These variations, however, depend on the reactivity of the mineral phase where surface areas of fast-reacting phases largely impact simulations at short (hours to days) timescales and surface areas of slower-reactive phases impact longer term simulations (years).

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

A systems genetics approach to deciphering the effect of dosage variation on leaf morphology in Populus

Abstract Gene copy number variation is frequent in plant genomes of various species, but the impact of such gene dosage variation on morphological traits is poorly understood. We used a large population of Populus carrying genomically characterized insertions and deletions across the genome to systematically assay the effect of gene dosage variation on a suite of leaf morphology traits. A systems genetics approach was used to integrate insertion and deletion locations, leaf morphology phenotypes, gene expression, and transcriptional network data, to provide an overview of how gene dosage influences morphology. Dosage-sensitive genomic regions were identified that influenced individual or pleiotropic morphological traits. We also identified cis-expression quantitative trait loci (QTL) within these dosage QTL regions, a subset of which modulated trans-expression QTL as well. Integration of data types within a gene co-expression framework identified co-expressed gene modules that are dosage sensitive, enriched for dosage expression QTL, and associated with morphological traits. Functional description of these modules linked dosage-sensitive morphological variation to specific cellular processes, as well as candidate regulatory genes. Together, these results show that gene dosage variation can influence morphological variation through complex changes in gene expression, and suggest that frequently occurring gene dosage variation has the potential to likewise influence quantitative traits in nature.

Biochemistry & Molecular Biology↗