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54 records · Page 3

System design, modelling, and tracking filter for bearings only analog camera

In this paper, each subsystem of the Celestial Sensor is discussed with emphasis given to the filtering algorithms. The celestial sensor software processes sequential frame based bearing measurements on a peripheral CPY specifically designed for this application. A frame preprocessor is used to normalize each bearing measurement and apply a number of accept/reject rules. The accepted set of measurements is then passed to an Extended Kalman Filter (EKP) that is tuned to track the motion of the robot within the room.

Ahmed, Asif↗

Extending quantum key distribution through proxy re-encryption

Modern quantum key distribution (QKD) network designs are based on sending photons from one node to another and require free-space or dedicated fiber optic cables between nodes. The purpose of this is to co-generate secret key material on both sides of the quantum channel. In addition to this quantum link, there are several insecure classical channels that allow QKD algorithms to exchange book-keeping information and send symmetrically encrypted data. The attenuation of photons transmitted through fiber becomes too high to practically generate key material over fiber at distances of more than 100 km. Free-space transmission through the atmosphere or the vacuum of space can reduce attenuation, but at the cost of system complexity and sensitivity to other impairments, such as weather. To extend the effective range of QKD networks, we present a method that combines QKD algorithms with post-quantum, homomorphic key-switching to allow multiple parties to effectively share secret key material over longer distances through semi-trusted relay nodes. We define how such a system should work for arbitrary network topologies and provide proofs that our scheme is both correct and secure. We assess the feasibility of this solution by building and evaluating two implementations based on lattice-based cryptography: learning with errors.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Evaluation of the Monotonic Lagrangian Grid and Lat-Long Grid for Air Traffic Management

The Air Traffic Monotonic Lagrangian Grid (ATMLG) is used to simulate a 24 hour period of air traffic flow in the National Airspace System (NAS). During this time period, there are 41,594 flights over the United States, and the flight plan information (departure and arrival airports and times, and waypoints along the way) are obtained from an Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS) dataset. Two simulation procedures are tested and compared: one based on the Monotonic Lagrangian Grid (MLG), and the other based on the stationary Latitude-Longitude (Lat- Long) grid. Simulating one full day of air traffic over the United States required the following amounts of CPU time on a single processor of an SGI Altix: 88 s for the MLG method, and 163 s for the Lat-Long grid method. We present a discussion of the amount of CPU time required for each of the simulation processes (updating aircraft trajectories, sorting, conflict detection and resolution, etc.), and show that the main advantage of the MLG method is that it is a general sorting algorithm that can sort on multiple properties. We discuss how many MLG neighbors must be considered in the separation assurance procedure in order to ensure a five-mile separation buffer between aircraft, and we investigate the effect of removing waypoints from aircraft trajectories. When aircraft choose their own trajectory, there are more flights with shorter duration times and fewer CD&R maneuvers, resulting in significant fuel savings.

Kaplan, Carolyn↗

The Monotonic Lagrangian Grid for Fast Air-Traffic Evaluation

This paper describes the continued development of a dynamic air-traffic model, ATMLG, intended for rapid evaluation of rules and methods to control and optimize transport systems. The underlying data structure is based on the Monotonic Lagrangian Grid (MLG), which is used for sorting and ordering positions and other data needed to describe N moving bodies, and their interactions. In ATMLG, the MLG is combined with algorithms for collision avoidance and updating aircraft trajectories. Aircraft that are close to each other in physical space are always near neighbors in the MLG data arrays, resulting in a fast nearest-neighbor interaction algorithm that scales as N. In this paper, we use ATMLG to examine how the ability to maintain a required separation between aircraft decreases as the number of aircraft in the volume increases. This requires keeping track of the primary and subsequent collision avoidance maneuvers necessary to maintain a five mile separation distance between all aircraft. Simulation results show that the number of collision avoidance moves increases exponentially with the number of aircraft in the volume.

Alexandrov, Natalia↗

Pulsed Thermal Tomography Nondestructive Examination of Additively Manufactured Reactor Materials (Second Annual Progress Report)

Additive manufacturing (AM) is an emerging method for cost-efficient fabrication of nuclear reactor parts. AM of metallic structures for nuclear energy applications is currently based on laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process, which can introduce internal material flaws, such as pores and anisotropy. Integrity of AM structures needs to be evaluated nondestructively because material flaws could lead to premature failures due to exposure to high temperature, radiation and corrosive environment in a nuclear reactor. Thermal tomography (TT) provides a capability for non-destructive evaluation of sub-surface defects in arbitrary size structures. Thermal tomography is a computational method for heat diffusion-based imaging of solids, which provides 3D visualization of data from flash thermography measurements. We investigate thermal tomography imaging and nondestructive evaluation of stainless steel and nickel super alloy metallic structures produced with laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing (AM) process. Metallic structures produced with LPBF contain defects, and there are limited capabilities to evaluate these structures non-destructively. Thermal tomography reconstruction of 3D apparent spatial effusivity provides information about AM structure geometry and internal material flaws. We study performance of thermal tomography in imaging of metallic structures through COMSOL computer simulations of transient heat transfer, and through reconstruction of data obtained from experimental measurements. Reconstruction of internal defects is investigated using a stainless steel 316L specimen with flat bottom hole (FBH) indentations, and Inconel 718 plate produced with laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) method, which contains imprinted hemispherical shape low density regions containing non-sintered metallic powder. The FBH’s have the same sizes as the imprinted defects in the LPBF specimens, but offer better imaging contrast. Thermal tomography reconstructions provide visualizations of internal defects, and allow for estimation of their sizes and locations. Detection sensitivity of TT is limited by noises. We investigate separation of signal from noise in thermography images using several machine learning (ML) methods, including new spatio-temporal blind source separation (STBSS) and spatio-temporal sparse dictionary learning (STSDL) methods. Performance of the ML methods is benchmarked using thermography data obtained from imaging stainless steel 316L and Inconel 718 specimens produced LPBF method with imprinted calibrated porosity defects. The ML methods are ranked by F-score and execution runtime. Finally, we investigate TT of AM stainless steel 316L specimen with imprinted internal porosity defects using relatively low-cost, small form factor infrared (IR) camera based on uncooled micro bolometer detector. Sparse coding related K-means singular value decomposition (SVD) machine learning, image processing algorithms are developed to improve quality of TT images through removal of Additive white Gaussian noise without blurring the images. Following initial qualification of an AM component for deployment in a nuclear reactor, a compact TT can also be used for in-service nondestructive evaluation (NDE). With capability to perform in-service NDE of the AM component lifecycle, TT data can be used for development of a component digital twin.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Photon Reconstruction in the Belle II Calorimeter Using Graph Neural Networks

We present the study of a fuzzy clustering algorithm for the Belle II electromagnetic calorimeter using Graph Neural Networks. We use a realistic detector simulation including simulated beam backgrounds and focus on the reconstruction of both isolated and overlapping photons. We find significant improvements of the energy resolution compared to the currently used reconstruction algorithm for both isolated and overlapping photons of more than 30% for photons with energies E γ < 0.5 GeV and high levels of beam backgrounds. Overall, the GNN reconstruction improves the resolution and reduces the tails of the reconstructed energy distribution and therefore is a promising option for the upcoming high luminosity running of Belle II.

Calorimeter↗

Implementation of Nonlinear Control Laws for an Optical Delay Line

This paper discusses the implementation of a globally stable nonlinear controller algorithm for the Real-Time Interferometer Control System Testbed (RICST) brassboard optical delay line (ODL) developed for the Interferometry Technology Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The control methodology essentially employs loop shaping to implement linear control laws. while utilizing nonlinear elements as means of ameliorating the effects of actuator saturation in its coarse, main, and vernier stages. The linear controllers were implemented as high-order digital filters and were designed using Bode integral techniques to determine the loop shape. The nonlinear techniques encompass the areas of exact linearization, anti-windup control, nonlinear rate limiting and modal control. Details of the design procedure are given as well as data from the actual mechanism.

Hench, John J.↗

Development of Thermal Tomography Imaging System for In-Service Nondestructive Evaluation of Additively Manufactured Components

Additive manufacturing (AM) is an emerging method for cost-efficient fabrication of nuclear reactor parts. AM of metallic structures for nuclear energy applications is currently based on laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process, which can introduce internal material flaws, such as pores and anisotropy. Integrity of AM structures needs to be evaluated nondestructively because material flaws could lead to premature failures due to exposure to high temperature, radiation and corrosive environment in a nuclear reactor. Thermal tomography (TT) provides a capability for non-destructive evaluation of sub-surface defects in arbitrary size structures. We investigate TT of AM stainless steel 316L specimen with imprinted internal porosity defects using relatively low-cost, small form factor infrared (IR) camera based on uncooled micro bolometer detector. Sparse coding related K-means singular value decomposition (SVD) machine learning, image processing algorithms are developed to improve quality of TT images through removal of Additive white Gaussian noise without blurring the images. Following initial qualification of an AM component for deployment in a nuclear reactor, a compact TT can also be used for in-service nondestructive evaluation (NDE). With capability to perform in-service NDE of the AM component lifecycle, TT data can be used for development of a component digital twin. MIT research reactor (MITR) has been identified as a representative environment to perform investigation of feasibility of in-service NDE during shutdown. Preliminary study of radiation level in the MITR viewport, with geometric parameters potentially compatible with compact TT system, has been conducted.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Scripts and raw/processed precipitation NRCS network data, Upper Colorado, 2008-2017

This data package consists of scripts and data that were used to generate all the results and figures for Mital et al., 2020 (https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2020.00020). The purpose of the study was to develop a new algorithm to impute (or gap-fill) missing daily precipitation data. Study area was the Upper Colorado Water Resources Region (UCWRR), over a time period of 2008-2017. In terms of data, the package consists of raw precipitation measurements from Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) network. These raw measurements are compiled into a single csv file (NRCS_dates_2008_2017.csv). The corresponding metadata are compiled in Metadata_processed.csv. The package also consists of outputs generated during Baseline and Sequential imputation runs as documented in Mital et al., 2020. Scripts used to generate all the results and figures for Mital et al., 2020 are also uploaded. A readme file documenting the layout of the data archive is also uploaded, and a KML file shows the geographic range for the data.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Characterizing and Mitigating Intraday Variability: Reconstructing Source Structure in Accreting Black Holes with mm-VLBI

The extraordinary physical resolution afforded by the Event Horizon Telescope has opened a window onto the astrophysical phenomena unfolding on horizon scales in two known black holes, M87* and Sgr A*. However, with this leap in resolution has come a new set of practical complications. Sgr A* exhibits intraday variability that violates the assumptions underlying Earth aperture synthesis, limiting traditional image reconstruction methods to short timescales and data sets with very sparse (u, v) coverage. We present a new set of tools to detect and mitigate this variability. We develop a data-driven, model-agnostic procedure to detect and characterize the spatial structure of intraday variability. This method is calibrated against a large set of mock data sets, producing an empirical estimator of the spatial power spectrum of the brightness fluctuations. We present a novel Bayesian noise modeling algorithm that simultaneously reconstructs an average image and statistical measure of the fluctuations about it using a parameterized form for the excess variance in the complex visibilities not otherwise explained by the statistical errors. These methods are validated using a variety of simulated data, including general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations appropriate for Sgr A* and M87*. We find that the reconstructed source structure and variability are robust to changes in the underlying image model. We apply these methods to the 2017 EHT observations of M87*, finding evidence for variability across the EHT observing campaign. The variability mitigation strategies presented are widely applicable to very long baseline interferometry observations of variable sources generally, for which they provide a data-informed averaging procedure and natural characterization of inter-epoch image consistency.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Long-term missing value imputation for time series data using deep neural networks

We present an approach that uses a deep learning model, in particular, a MultiLayer Perceptron, for estimating the missing values of a variable in multivariate time series data. We focus on filling a long continuous gap (e.g., multiple months of missing daily observations) rather than on individual randomly missing observations. Our proposed gap filling algorithm uses an automated method for determining the optimal MLP model architecture, thus allowing for optimal prediction performance for the given time series. We tested our approach by filling gaps of various lengths (three months to three years) in three environmental datasets with different time series characteristics, namely daily groundwater levels, daily soil moisture, and hourly Net Ecosystem Exchange. We compared the accuracy of the gap-filled values obtained with our approach to the widely used R-based time series gap filling methods ImputeTS and mtsdi. The results indicate that using an MLP for filling a large gap leads to better results, especially when the data behave nonlinearly. Thus, our approach enables the use of datasets that have a large gap in one variable, which is common in many long-term environmental monitoring observations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Public Health Response and Medical Management of Internal Contamination in Past Radiological or Nuclear Incidents: A Review

Following a radiological or nuclear emergency, workers, responders and the public may be internally contaminated with radionuclides. Screening, monitoring and assessing any internal contamination and providing necessary medical treatment, especially when a large number of individuals are involved, is challenging. Experience gained and lessons learned from the management of previous incidents would help to identify gaps in knowledge and capabilities on preparedness for and response to radiation emergencies. In this paper, eight largescale and five workplace radiological and nuclear incidents are reviewed cross 14 technical areas, under the broader topics of emergency preparedness, emergency response and recovery processes. The review findings suggest that 1) new strategies, algorithms and technologies are explored for rapid screening of large populations; 2) exposure assessment and dose estimation in emergency response and dose reconstruction in recovery process are supported by complementary sources of information, including ‘citizen science’; 3) surge capacity for monitoring and dose assessment is coordinated through national and international laboratory networks; 4) evidence-based guidelines for medical management and follow-up of internal contamination are urgently needed; 5) mechanisms for international and regional access to medical countermeasures are investigated and implemented; 6) long-term health and medical follow up programs are designed and justified; and 7) capabilities and capacity developed for emergency response are sustained through adequate resource allocation, routine nonemergency use of technical skills in regular exercises, training, and continuous improvement.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗

Adaptive mesh refinement in binary black holes simulations

Abstract We discuss refinement criteria for the Berger–Rigoutsos (block-based) refinement algorithm in our numerical relativity code GR-Athena++ in the context of binary black hole (BBH) merger simulations. We compare three different strategies: the ‘box-in-box’ approach, the ‘sphere-in-sphere’ approach and a local criterion for refinement based on the estimation of truncation error of the finite difference scheme. We extract and compare gravitational waveforms using the three different mesh refinement methods and compare their accuracy against a calibration waveform and demonstrate that the sphere-in-sphere approach provides the best strategy overall when considering computational cost and the waveform accuracy. Ultimately, we demonstrate the capability of each mesh refinement method in accurately simulating gravitational waves from BBH systems—a crucial aspect for their application in next-generation detectors. We quantify the mismatch achievable with the different strategies by extrapolating the gravitational wave mismatch to higher resolution.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗

Multitask Machine Learning of Collective Variables for Enhanced Sampling of Rare Events

Computing accurate reaction rates is a central challenge in computational chemistry and biology because of the high cost of free energy estimation with unbiased molecular dynamics. In this work, a data-driven machine learning algorithm is devised to learn collective variables with a multitask neural network, where a common upstream part reduces the high dimensionality of atomic configurations to a low dimensional latent space and separate downstream parts map the latent space to predictions of basin class labels and potential energies. Here, the resulting latent space is shown to be an effective low-dimensional representation, capturing the reaction progress and guiding effective umbrella sampling to obtain accurate free energy landscapes. This approach is successfully applied to model systems including a 5D Müller Brown model, a 5D three-well model, the alanine dipeptide in vacuum, and an Au(110) surface reconstruction unit reaction. It enables automated dimensionality reduction for energy controlled reactions in complex systems, offers a unified and data-efficient framework that can be trained with limited data, and outperforms single-task learning approaches, including autoencoders.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Stress-dominated growth of two-dimensional materials on nonplanar substrates

Curved features are ubiquitous on solid surfaces, but the effect of surface curvatures on growth of two-dimensional (2D) materials has not yet been established. Using a newly developed method based on the Metropolis algorithm and taking graphene as a prototype, we find that a curved feature on substrates can result in a variety of topological defects in 2D materials. As the feature's size increases by just nanometers, the defects can vary from adatoms, dislocation pairs, and grain boundary scars to long-range grain boundaries, in contrast to previously reported defect-free modes of rigid colloidal crystals growing on spheres. We identify an important role of curvature-induced lattice stress in lowering the growth rate over the curved features and driving a plastic instability in the materials. When the feature's size increases to several nanometers, the stress effect is compromised by an enhanced effect of geodesic curvature, yielding long-range grain boundaries as a result of increased local growth rate on the feature with respect to that on flat regions. Here we further provide a ‘phase diagram’ of defects that helps to guide a rational choice of geometrical parameters of features towards the growth of high-quality 2D materials as well as controllable creation of topological defects.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Efficient massively parallel simulation of dynamic channel assignment schemes for wireless cellular communications

Fast, efficient parallel algorithms are presented for discrete event simulations of dynamic channel assignment schemes for wireless cellular communication networks. The driving events are call arrivals and departures, in continuous time, to cells geographically distributed across the service area. A dynamic channel assignment scheme decides which call arrivals to accept, and which channels to allocate to the accepted calls, attempting to minimize call blocking while ensuring co-channel interference is tolerably low. Specifically, the scheme ensures that the same channel is used concurrently at different cells only if the pairwise distances between those cells are sufficiently large. Much of the complexity of the system comes from ensuring this separation. The network is modeled as a system of interacting continuous time automata, each corresponding to a cell. To simulate the model, conservative methods are used; i.e., methods in which no errors occur in the course of the simulation and so no rollback or relaxation is needed. Implemented on a 16K processor MasPar MP-1, an elegant and simple technique provides speedups of about 15 times over an optimized serial simulation running on a high speed workstation. A drawback of this technique, typical of conservative methods, is that processor utilization is rather low. To overcome this, new methods were developed that exploit slackness in event dependencies over short intervals of time, thereby raising the utilization to above 50 percent and the speedup over the optimized serial code to about 120 times.

Greenberg, Albert G.↗

THEMIS: A Parameter Estimation Framework for the Event Horizon Telescope

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) provides the unprecedented ability to directly resolve the structure and dynamics of black hole emission regions on scales smaller than their horizons. This has the potential to critically probe the mechanisms by which black holes accrete and launch outflows, and the structure of supermassive black hole spacetimes. However, accessing this information is a formidable analysis challenge for two reasons. First, the EHT natively produces a variety of data types that encode information about the image structure in nontrivial ways; these are subject to a variety of systematic effects associated with very long baseline interferometry and are supplemented by a wide variety of auxiliary data on the primary EHT targets from decades of other observations. Second, models of the emission regions and their interaction with the black hole are complex, highly uncertain, and computationally expensive to construct. As a result, the scientific utilization of EHT observations requires a flexible, extensible, and powerful analysis framework. We present such a framework, Themis, which defines a set of interfaces between models, data, and sampling algorithms that facilitates future development. We describe the design and currently existing components of Themis, how Themis has been validated thus far, and present additional analyses made possible by Themis that illustrate its capabilities. Importantly, we demonstrate that Themis is able to reproduce prior EHT analyses, extend these, and do so in a computationally efficient manner that can efficiently exploit modern high-performance computing facilities. Themis has already been used extensively in the scientific analysis and interpretation of the first EHT observations of M87.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. III. Imaging of the Galactic Center Supermassive Black Hole

We present the first event-horizon-scale images and spatiotemporal analysis of Sgr A* taken with the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017 April at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. Imaging of Sgr A* has been conducted through surveys over a wide range of imaging assumptions using the classical CLEAN algorithm, regularized maximum likelihood methods, and a Bayesian posterior sampling method. Different prescriptions have been used to account for scattering effects by the interstellar medium toward the Galactic center. Mitigation of the rapid intraday variability that characterizes Sgr A* has been carried out through the addition of a “variability noise budget” in the observed visibilities, facilitating the reconstruction of static full-track images. Our static reconstructions of Sgr A* can be clustered into four representative morphologies that correspond to ring images with three different azimuthal brightness distributions and a small cluster that contains diverse nonring morphologies. Based on our extensive analysis of the effects of sparse (u,v)-coverage, source variability, and interstellar scattering, as well as studies of simulated visibility data, we conclude that the Event Horizon Telescope Sgr A* data show compelling evidence for an image that is dominated by a bright ring of emission with a ring diameter of ∼50 μas, consistent with the expected “shadow” of a 4 × 10$^{6}$ M $_{⊙}$ black hole in the Galactic center located at a distance of 8 kpc.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗