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At least 667 records · Page 37

Persistent memory as an effective alternative to random access memory in metagenome assembly

Abstract Background The assembly of metagenomes decomposes members of complex microbe communities and allows the characterization of these genomes without laborious cultivation or single-cell metagenomics. Metagenome assembly is a process that is memory intensive and time consuming. Multi-terabyte sequences can become too large to be assembled on a single computer node, and there is no reliable method to predict the memory requirement due to data-specific memory consumption pattern. Currently, out-of-memory (OOM) is one of the most prevalent factors that causes metagenome assembly failures. Results In this study, we explored the possibility of using Persistent Memory (PMem) as a less expensive substitute for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) to reduce OOM and increase the scalability of metagenome assemblers. We evaluated the execution time and memory usage of three popular metagenome assemblers (MetaSPAdes, MEGAHIT, and MetaHipMer2) in datasets up to one terabase. We found that PMem can enable metagenome assemblers on terabyte-sized datasets by partially or fully substituting DRAM. Depending on the configured DRAM/PMEM ratio, running metagenome assemblies with PMem can achieve a similar speed as DRAM, while in the worst case it showed a roughly two-fold slowdown. In addition, different assemblers displayed distinct memory/speed trade-offs in the same hardware/software environment. Conclusions We demonstrated that PMem is capable of expanding the capacity of DRAM to allow larger metagenome assembly with a potential tradeoff in speed. Because PMem can be used directly without any application-specific code modification, these findings are likely to be generalized to other memory-intensive bioinformatics applications.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

ROTOR: Research to Operations and Operations to Research

PNNL’s Research to Operations/Operations to Research (ROTOR) Program fosters a cybersecurity operations to researcher collaboration, identifying hard problems and challenges for cyber defenders and bringing researcher science disciplines to these challenges. ROTOR allows PNNL’s cyber defenders to better protect the laboratory but also fosters innovation and incubation of solutions for our sponsor missions across DOE, DOD, DHS and the intelligence community. Our sponsors and their missions are faced with many of the same cyber defense challenges that PNNL faces. By using our own laboratory security operations environment as an innovation generator and testing ground, allowing research to be tested and tried, our sponsors are directly benefitted. PNNL is in a unique position to combine our world class research organization with enterprise cybersecurity operations. ROTOR is taking advantage of this to bring PNNL cybersecurity research projects into an operational environment within PNNL’s Cyber Security Operations Center. With ROTOR, PNNL researchers gain the advantage of operational experience and expertise and have an avenue for showcasing research in an operational environment. This helps to advance PNNL research, prove operability of PNNL projects to its sponsors, and provide real-world insight to real-world problems for our cybersecurity research agenda. ROTOR is the conduit for PNNL cybersecurity research to find its way to operational use. PNNL researchers and engineers are informed by real-world operations and operations has access to current PNNL research and engineering capabilities. All of this leads to improved reputation for PNNL as a provider of national security solutions that are tried and tested. To date, ROTOR has collaborated with six projects, enabling each to conduct operational work within the CSOC.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Accurate real space iterative reconstruction (RESIRE) algorithm for tomography

Tomography has made a revolutionary impact on the physical, biological and medical sciences. The mathematical foundation of tomography is to reconstruct a three-dimensional (3D) object from a set of two-dimensional (2D) projections. As the number of projections that can be measured from a sample is usually limited by the tolerable radiation dose and/or the geometric constraint on the tilt range, a main challenge in tomography is to achieve the best possible 3D reconstruction from a limited number of projections with noise. Over the years, a number of tomographic reconstruction methods have been developed including direct inversion, real-space, and Fourier-based iterative algorithms. Here, we report the development of a real-space iterative reconstruction (RESIRE) algorithm for accurate tomographic reconstruction. RESIRE iterates between the update of a reconstructed 3D object and the measured projections using a forward and back projection step. The forward projection step is implemented by the Fourier slice theorem or the Radon transform, and the back projection step by a linear transformation. Our numerical and experimental results demonstrate that RESIRE performs more accurate 3D reconstructions than other existing tomographic algorithms, when there are a limited number of projections with noise. Furthermore, RESIRE can be used to reconstruct the 3D structure of extended objects as demonstrated by the determination of the 3D atomic structure of an amorphous Ta thin film. We expect that RESIRE can be widely employed in the tomography applications in different fields. Finally, to make the method accessible to the general user community, the MATLAB source code of RESIRE and all the simulated and experimental data are available at https://zenodo.org/record/7273314.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Metal additive manufacturing simulation across length, time, and computing scales

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) offers a unique opportunity for production of advanced materials and complex geometries. However, variability in microstructure and properties challenges conventional approaches to design, process optimization, qualification, and materials selection. Modeling and simulation can improve understanding of AM processing and materials, but also poses major challenges for existing computational methods. Simultaneously, modern scientific computing hardware has become increasingly complex, most notably with the adoption of hybrid architectures such as Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). If appropriately utilized, emerging computational capabilities provide an opportunity to reveal new insight into AM processing and the resulting material structure and properties. In this review we describe the computational AM landscape, identify critical gaps, and highlight opportunities to impact the development and application of AM. First, the requirements and challenges of representative AM problem statements will be defined. Here, these problems range from scientific studies to industrial applications and are designed to capture the breadth of challenges facing the AM community. Next, the current state of AM modeling and simulation is evaluated, broken down by enabling hardware and software, process simulation, microstructure simulation, and property simulation. Each section describes the diversity of simulation approaches and associated trade-offs in physical fidelity and computational expense. Each area is then assessed based on their suitability and readiness for current and developing computational architectures. Lastly, the greatest opportunities for future research and application are highlighted, including gaps in modeling capabilities, opportunities for near-term application, and key scientific challenges.

additive manufacturing↗

Closing the Gap between FAIR Data Repositories and Hierarchical Data Formats

Many in the scientific community, particularly in publicly funded research, are pushing to adhere to more accessible data standards to maximize the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR) of scientific data, especially with the growing prevalence of machine learning augmented research. Online FAIR data repositories, such as the Open Science Framework (OSF), help facilitate the adoption of these standards by providing frameworks for storage, access, search, APIs, and other features that create organized hubs of scientific data. However, the wider acceptance of such repositories is hindered by the lack of support of hierarchical data formats, such as Technical Data Management Streaming (TDMS) and Hierarchical Data Format 5 (HDF5), that many researchers rely on to organize their datasets. Various tools and strategies should be used to allow hierarchical data formats, FAIR data repositories, and scientific organizations to work more seamlessly together. A pilot project at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) addresses the disconnect between them by integrating the OSF FAIR data repository with hierarchical data renderers, extending support for additional file types in their framework. The multifaceted interactive renderer displays a tree of metadata alongside a table and plot of the data channels in the file. This allows users to quickly and efficiently load large and complex data files directly in the OSF webapp. Users who are browsing files can quickly and intuitively see the files in the way they or their colleagues structured the hierarchical form and immediately grasp their contents. This solution helps bridge the gap between hierarchical data storage techniques and FAIR data repositories, making both of them more viable options for scientific institutions like LANL which have been put off by the lack of integration between them.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

EC-Bench: A Benchmark for Enzyme Commission Number Prediction

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze specific biochemical reactions in cells. Enzyme Commission (EC) numbers are used to annotate enzymes in a four-level hierarchy that classifies enzymes based on the specific chemical reactions they catalyze. Accurate EC number prediction is essential for understanding enzyme functions. Despite the availability of numerous methods for predicting EC numbers from protein sequences, there is no unified framework for evaluating and studying such methods systematically. This gap limits the ability of the community to identify the most effective approaches for enzyme annotation. We introduce EC-Bench, a benchmark for EC number prediction, consisting of 1) an initial representative set of existing methods (including homology-based, deep learning, contrastive learning, and language model methods), 2) existing and novel accuracy and efficiency performance metrics, and 3) selected datasets to allow for comprehensive comparative study. EC-Bench is open-source and provides a framework for researchers to not only compare among existing methods objectively under uniform conditions, but also to introduce and effectively evaluate performance of new methods in a comparative framework. To demonstrate the utility of EC-Bench, we perform extensive experimentation to compare the existing EC number prediction methods and establish their advantages and disadvantages in a variety of prediction tasks, namely “exact EC number prediction”, “EC number completion” and (partial or additional) “EC number recommendation”. We find wide variation in the performance of different methods, but also subtle but potentially useful differences in the performance of different methods across tasks and for different parts of the EC hierarchy.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Data-Enabled Fusion Technology (Final Scientific/Technical Report)

Advancing Scientific Understanding in Fusion Energy and Machine Learning This research represented a significant step forward in machine learning (ML) applications for fusion energy experiments. The project integrated advanced data-driven modeling, optimization techniques, and artificial intelligence to enhance the predictive capabilities and operational efficiency of plasma-based fusion systems. Specifically, tasks focused on ML-enhanced diagnostics, operator guidance tools, and predictive modeling helped improve the ability to interpret complex fusion experiments. Key areas of advancement included: 1) data-driven plasma control, i.e., using ML algorithms to optimize experimental conditions and classify plasma behaviors based on historical data; 2) spectroscopy and diagnostics, i.e., applying AI models to extract previously inaccessible insights from experimental spectroscopy data; and 3) configuration mapping and operator guidance, i.e., developing a predictive framework to assist scientists in identifying the most effective experimental parameters, reducing reliance on manual adjustments. By refining these ML-driven techniques, the project contributed to the broader scientific community’s understanding of plasma dynamics and fusion energy viability. Technical Effectiveness and Economic Feasibility The methods investigated demonstrated high technical effectiveness, as reflected in milestones assessing the predictive accuracy, performance, and optimization of fusion configurations. The development of an Operator Guidance Tool (OGT), for example, led to more precise control of plasma conditions by learning from experimental data and offering real-time adjustments. From an economic standpoint, DeFT provided: 1) the ability to reduce trial-and-error experimentation, which lowered operational costs; 2) improved data interpretation methods, which enabled more efficient resource allocation in large-scale fusion research projects; and 3) the automation of key diagnostic tasks, which reduced manual labor and human error, increasing overall efficiency. 13 The final assessments of predictive models and optimization strategies demonstrated that these approaches were scalable and could be implemented across multiple fusion energy research programs. Public Benefit and Societal Impact This project contributed directly to the broader goal of achieving sustainable and commercially viable fusion energy, which had profound implications for clean energy production and climate change mitigation. The integration of AI-driven solutions into fusion research: 1) sped up scientific discovery, accelerating progress towards achieving energy breakthroughs; 2) reduced the cost of experimentation, making fusion research more accessible; and 3) provided a framework for future AI applications in high-energy physics, benefiting adjacent fields like space exploration, material science, and renewable energy. Additionally, by fostering collaborations between AI researchers and plasma physicists, this project promoted interdisciplinary innovation that could lead to broader applications beyond fusion research.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Polychlorinated biphenyls, polychlorinated dibenzo- p -dioxins, polychlorinated dibenzofurans, pesticides, and diabetes in the Anniston Community Health Survey follow-up (ACHS II): single exposure and mixture analysis approaches

Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds measurements were added to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organochlorine pesticides to expand the exposure profile in a follow-up to the Anniston Community Health Survey (ACHS II, 2014) and to study diabetes associations. Participants of ACHS I (2005–2007) still living within the study area were eligible to participate in ACHS II. Diabetes status (type-2) was determined by a doctor's diagnosis, fasting glucose ≥125 mg/dL, or being on any glycemic control medication. Incident diabetes cases were identified in ACHS II among those who did not have diabetes in ACHS I, using the same criteria. Thirty-five ortho-substituted PCBs, 6 pesticides, 7 polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDD), 10 furans (PCDF), and 3 non-ortho PCBs were measured in 338 ACHS II participants. Dioxin toxic equivalents (TEQs) were calculated for all dioxin-like compounds. Main analyses used logistic regression models to calculate odds ratios (OR) and 95 % confidence intervals (CI). In models adjusted for age, race, sex, BMI, total lipids, family history of diabetes, and taking lipid lowering medication, the highest ORs for diabetes were observed for PCDD TEQ: 3.61 (95 % CI: 1.04, 12.46), dichloro-diphenyl dichloroethylene (p,p’-DDE): 2.07 (95 % CI 1.08, 3.97), and trans-Nonachlor: 2.55 (95 % CI 0.93, 7.02). The OR for sum 35 PCBs was 1.22 (95 % CI: 0.58–2.57). To complement the main analyses, we used BKMR and g-computation models to evaluate 12 mixture components including 4 TEQs, 2 PCB subsets and 6 pesticides; suggestive positive associations for the joint effect of the mixture analyses resulted in ORs of 1.40 (95% CI: -1.13, 3.93) for BKMR and 1.32 (95% CI: -1.12, 3.76) for g-computation. Furthermore, the mixture analyses provide further support to previously observed associations of trans-Nonachlor, p,p’- DDE, PCDD TEQ and some PCB groups with diabetes.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Progress Report on Model Development for the Transport of Aerosol through Microchannels

This report summarizes the current progress in the development of a phenomenological model of aerosol transport, deposition, and plugging through microchannels. The purpose is to introduce a generic, reliable numerical model for the prediction of aerosol transport, deposition, and plugging in leak paths while accounting for potential plugging formation, to a user community involving researchers, regulators, and industry. In that regard, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) was generated by integrating the individual MATLAB scripts that make up the model and adding additional features to aid the general understanding of the problem to a user. This report focuses on the model development and features included. Further, predictions from the GUI are compared with experimental data for validation. The strength of the GUI is the ability of a user to plug in basic parameters such as the initial pressure conditions and canister model specifications in order to obtain a first principal approximation of vital information such as the blowdown pressure differential, aerosol penetration, and deposition as a function of time. The user can obtain this without the know-how of the underlying MATLAB scripts and thus enables the model to be readily applied by regulators, industry, and shareholders to reduce the uncertainty in the off-site radiological consequences. The report also lists future tasks under this work scope. This includes ongoing efforts to include additional crack geometries (divergent and divergent-convergent slots) to the model; GUI development and improvement based on feedback from users, and integration of aerosol source term data from Sibling Pin tests into the model as we approach realistic canister stress corrosion cracking–induced aerosol release scenarios.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Oxidation Behavior and Property Degradation of Nuclear Graphites

During its multidecade operation in the core of nuclear reactors, graphite components are subjected to aggressive and continuous exposure to a high field of ionizing and neutron irradiation, high temperature, and various types of present and postulated chemical attacks. High density, high crystallinity polygranular synthetic graphite is unique among other materials for its extraordinary capacity of resisting and adapting to the aggression inflicted by high temperature, high energy neutron bombardment and ionizing gamma radiation. But, as a carbonaceous material, even though of very high purity, graphite is reactive towards common oxidizing agents: oxygen, carbon dioxide, water. Safe operation of HTGRs relies, among other aspects, on engineered safeguard systems for efficient and continuous protection of graphite components against oxidation. Graphite oxidation behavior was, and continues to be, an important direction of theoretical and experimental research, engineering analyses, models and simulations, and design and safety regulations. The avalanche of publications, reports, experimental data, computer codes, and regulatory documents related to oxidation behavior of nuclear graphite is now accelerating to new levels, prompted by the increased interest for nuclear energy as a clean, carbon-free energy source. Even though public’s perception of nuclear energy advantages may still be influenced by the memories of past accidents of nuclear reactors from generations II and III, the community of informed scientists and engineers, regulators and statemen knows that generation IV of nuclear reactors is designed at very high safety standards, doubled by great advances of scientific knowledge and technological progress. One of routes of these recent advances is directed at better understanding of graphite oxidation behavior, its relationship with graphite manufacturing and microstructural properties, along with the effects of various environmental factors and process variables. Together, the recent progress in manufacturing, properties characterization, and modeling of intricated physical and chemical processes that concur to the oxidation behavior led to development of powerful simulation codes able to analyze various scenarios of normal operation and hypothetical off-normal events, and thus to clearly specify the allowable parameters envelopes for the designers, constructors, and operators of current and future modular HTGRs. This review begins with an introduction on manufacturing methods, structure, and properties of nuclear graphite, including basic requirements that this specialty graphite type must satisfy for nuclear use. It continues with a chapter on environmental effects on nuclear graphite, where emphasis is placed less on irradiation and much more on oxidation phenomena, their safety implications, and the basic traits of chronic and acute oxidation by air (oxygen) and water (humidity, steam). Particular attention is placed on the three graphite grades of interest for this document (IG-110, NBG-18, PCEA). A chapter on properties degradation induced by oxidation follows, with focus on density, dimensional, and mechanical properties changes. The next chapter is intended as a brief review of various approaches used for modeling of graphite oxidation behavior. It summarizes the progress of oxidation models, from the early attempts to complex computational approaches interfaced with specialized computer codes designed for nuclear reactor simulations. Last, a list is presented of knowledge gaps where more research is needed. A short summary concludes the review.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Novel usage of deep learning and high-performance computing in long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorDeep-learning methods are playing a crucial role in numerous scientific and industrialapplications. Over the past two decades, these techniques have helped in the collection,reconstruction, and analysis of large data samples in particle physics experiments. Themain topic of this PhD research is the study of deep-learning techniques in long-baselineneutrino oscillation experiments. Neutrinos are mysterious light elementary particles,and their investigation is essential to shed light on some of the remaining open questionsin physics. The work presented here describes an algorithm based on a convolutionalneural network developed to provide highly accurate and efficient selections of electronneutrino and muon neutrino interactions in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment(DUNE). With this algorithm, the electron neutrino (antineutrino) selection efficiencypeaks at 90% (94%) and exceeds 85% (90%) for reconstructed neutrino energies between2-5 GeV. The selection efficiency for muon neutrino (antineutrino) interactions is foundto have a maximum of 96% (97%) and exceeds 90% (95%) efficiency for reconstructedneutrino energies above 2 GeV. When considering all electron neutrino and antineutrinointeractions as signal (both those appearing from oscillations and those intrinsic tothe beam), a selection purity of 90% is achieved. These event selections are criticalto maximise the sensitivity of the experiment to CP-violating effects, key to furtherunderstand the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe.In high-energy physics experiments, deep learning has also been explored for producingfast simulations and physically-motivated manipulations of simulated images. Some ofthose simulations, such as the light production and detection, are very computationallyexpensive and require novel methods to produce the necessary samples while controllingthe varied underlying physics model parameters. To do so, we invented the model-assistedgenerative adversarial network (MAGAN), first validated on simple generic case studiesand then successfully applied to the DUNE photon-detector simulation.Moreover, we also developed graph neural networks for 3D-voxel classification ofambiguities and optical crosstalk for a different particle physics experiment, most preciselyfor the proposed SuperFGD. This novel 3D-granular plastic-scintillator neutrino detectorwill be used to upgrade the near detector of the T2K neutrino oscillation experiment, and our method reports efficiencies and purities of 94-96% per event in the classificationof particle track voxels.Due to the growth and complexity of deep neural networks, researchers have beeninvestigating techniques to train those networks in a more computationally-efficient way.Many efforts have been made by the community to optimise deep-learning models byparallelising or distributing their training computation across multiple devices. In thisthesis, we study an approach based on data locality for those neural networks that cannotbenefit from scaling their computation due to a significant bottleneck in the data I/O.The research also includes a detailed study on the performance of deep neural networkson hardware accelerator boards.Los métodos de aprendizaje profundo son cada vez más utilizados en numerosas aplicacionescientíficas e industriales hoy en día. Durante las dos últimas décadas, estastécnicas se han empleado en la recolección, reconstrucción y análisis de la gran cantidadde datos generados por experimentos de física de partículas. El tema principal de estatesis doctoral es el uso de estos modelos de aprendizaje profundo en experimentos defísica de neutrinos, en concreto en los experimentos de larga distancia DUNE y T2K. Losneutrinos, partículas fundamentales neutras, de las más ligeras del Universo, pueden serclave para explicar algunas de las cuestiones todavía sin resolver en física fundamental.Entre las diferentes contribuciones que esta tesis ha hecho a su estudio, cabe destacar eldesarrollo de un algoritmo basado en una red de neuronas convolucional para seleccionarcon gran eficiencia y precisión las interacciones de neutrinos electrónicos y muónicos enel Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). La eficiencia de selección obtenidapara neutrinos (antineutrinos) electrónicos alcanza un máximo del 90% (94%) y supera el85% (90%) para neutrinos con energías reconstruidas en el rango 2-5 GeV. La selección deneutrinos (antineutrinos) muónicos tiene una eficiencia máxima del 96% (97%) y excedeel 90% (95%) para neutrinos con energías reconstruidas de más de 2 GeV. Considerandocomo señal todas las interacciones de neutrinos y antineutrinos electrónicos (procedentestanto de oscilaciones como intrínsecos en el haz inicial), se logra una pureza en la seleccióndel 90%. Dichas selecciones de eventos son fundamentales para maximizar la sensibilidaddel experimento a los efectos de violació...

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS): Bringing Open-Source Software Practices to the Scholarly Publishing Community for Authors, Reviewers, Editors, and Publishers

Open-source software (OSS) is a critical component of open science, but contributions to the OSS ecosystem are systematically undervalued in the current academic system. The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) contributes to addressing this by providing a venue (that is itself free, diamond open access, and all open-source, built in a layered structure using widely available elements/services of the scholarly publishing ecosystem) for publishing OSS, run in the style of OSS itself. A particularly distinctive element of JOSS is that it uses open peer review in a collaborative, iterative format, unlike most publishers. Additionally, all the components of the process—from the reviews to the papers to the software that is the subject of the papers to the software that the journal runs—are open. We describe JOSS’s history and its peer review process using an editorial bot, and we present statistics gathered from JOSS’s public review history on GitHub showing an increasing number of peer reviewed papers each year. We discuss the new JOSSCast and use it as a data source to understand reasons why interviewed authors decided to publish in JOSS. JOSS’s process differs significantly from traditional journals, which has impeded JOSS’s inclusion in indexing services such as Web of Science. In turn, this discourages researchers within certain academic systems, such as Italy’s, which emphasize the importance of Web of Science and/or Scopus indexing for grant applications and promotions. JOSS is a fully diamond open-access journal with a cost of around US$\$$5 per paper for the 401 papers published in 2023. The scalability of running JOSS with volunteers and financing JOSS with grants and donations is discussed.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

CMaize: Simplifying inter-package modularity from the build up

There is a growing desire for inter-package modularity within the chemistry software community to reuse encapsulated code units across a variety of software packages. Most comprehensive efforts at achieving inter-package modularity will quickly run afoul of a very practical problem, being able to cohesively build the modules. Writing and maintaining build systems has long been an issue for many scientific software packages that rely on compiled languages such as C/C++. The push for inter-package modularity compounds this issue by additionally requiring binary artifacts from disparate developers to interoperate at a binary level. Thankfully, the de facto build tool for C/C++, CMake, is more than capable of supporting the myriad of edge cases that complicate writing robust build systems. Unfortunately, writing and maintaining a robust CMake build system can be a laborious endeavor because CMake provides few abstractions to aid the developer. Further, the need to significantly simplify the process of writing robust CMake-based build systems, especially in inter-package builds, motivated us to write CMaize. In addition to describing the architecture and design of CMaize, the article also demonstrates how CMaize is used in production-level software.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Hydrological analysis in watersheds with a variable-resolution global climate model (VR-CESM)

Traditionally, watershed-scale hydrology is simulated by distributed hydrological models with offline meteorological forcing data, or by regional regional climate models that link atmospheric and land hydrology interactions. Global climate models (GCMs) are rarely used to study watershed-scale hydrology due to the relatively coarse grid resolution, computationally expensive downscaling, and simplified physical processes. Recently, however, watershed-scale hydrology analysis has become possible in GCMs due to the development of variable-resolution GCMs that dynamically couple the hydrological processes between atmosphere and land systems at fine resolutions in selected regions and coarse resolution elsewhere. In this study, we used the variable-resolution Community Earth System Model (VR-CESM) with refined-resolution (14 km) in the western U.S. and eastern China to evaluate watershed-scale hydrology. Furthermore, we compared the historical VR-CESM outputs with gauge measurements and other hydrological models (e.g., National Water Model in the U.S.) and calibrated the subsurface runoff capacities in four mountainous watersheds. An RCP8.5 projection from 2007 to 2050 is used to estimate the impact of changing precipitation and snow climatology on watershed hydrology. We also analyzed the long-term runoff variability and the possibility of extreme runoff events as simulated by the VR-CESM. Although calibration is not possible in larger-scale watersheds, VR-CESM simulates the long-term annual variability of watersheds and provides insights on climate change impacts on hydrology. We conclude that refined-resolution VR-CESM can be used for watershed-scale hydrology analysis to understand water resources and water balance, in addition to traditional watershed-scale hydrological models. It enables hydrological analysis at multiple watersheds in one simulation and can help understand the two-way dynamics between land surface hydrology and atmospheric processes, and is especially practical for projecting climate change impacts. However, it is challenging to apply VR-CESM for hydrologic analysis in regulated watersheds as human factors (e.g., pumping, irrigation, water diversion) have not been fully addressed in VR-CESM.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

FLAG review 2024

We review lattice results related to pion, kaon, 𝐷-meson, 𝐵-meson, and nucleon physics with the aim of making them easily accessible to the nuclear and particle physics communities. More specifically, we report on the determination of the light-quark masses, the form factor 𝑓+⁡(0) arising in the semileptonic 𝐾 → 𝜋 transition at zero momentum transfer, as well as the decay-constant ratio 𝑓 𝐾 ⁡/𝑓 𝜋 and its consequences for the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements 𝑉 𝑢⁢𝑠 and 𝑉 𝑢⁢𝑑 . We review the determination of the 𝐵 𝐾 parameter of neutral kaon mixing as well as the additional four 𝐵 parameters that arise in theories of physics beyond the Standard Model. For the heavy-quark sector, we provide results for 𝑚 𝑐 and 𝑚 𝑏 as well as those for the decay constants, form factors, and mixing parameters of charmed and bottom mesons and baryons. These are the heavy-quark quantities most relevant for the determination of CKM matrix elements and the global CKM unitarity-triangle fit. We review the status of lattice determinations of the strong coupling constant 𝛼 𝑠 . We review the determinations of nucleon charges from the matrix elements of both isovector and flavor-diagonal axial, scalar and tensor local quark bilinears, and momentum fraction, helicity moment and the transversity moment from one-link quark bilinears. We also review determinations of scale-setting quantities. Finally, in this review we have added a new section on the general definition of the low-energy limit of the Standard Model.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Debunking common myths in coastal circulation modeling

Despite tremendous progress in algorithm development, computational efficiency and transition into operations over the past two decades, coastal modeling still lacks scientific rigor due to proliferation of many ‘gray’ areas related to various modeling choices made by modelers. Here, in this paper, we propose some guiding principles for the modeling community to improve performance, and we also debunk commonly held myths that make the coastal modeling lack rigor. Using our own experience in developing seamless cross-scale unstructured-grid based models for the past two decades, we describe in unprecedented detail the end-to-end modeling process (i.e., from digital elevation models (DEMs) to mesh generation to post analysis), and demonstrate that defensible modeling is within reach for any end user by following three guiding principles: (1) Bathymetry is a first order forcing in coastal domains and thus should be respected in all aspects of modeling; (2) Oceanographic processes are driven across multiple spatial scales and so models should enable appropriate resolution as needed; and (3) Model assessment should focus on physical processes. Through qualitative and quantitative model assessments, we demonstrate the fundamental role played by bathymetry/topography as embedded in DEMs in making the results defensible, which is unfortunately glossed over in many modeling studies. Focusing on process-based assessment simplifies the calibration process. A major conclusion of this work is that model developers and operators should maximize the scientific rigor for in silico oceanography by avoiding some common pitfalls that rely on error compensation at the expense of representation of physical system processes. We present some best practice procedures for defensive and trustworthy numerical modeling.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Evaluation of distributed process-based hydrologic model performance using only a priori information to define model inputs

Fully distributed, integrated surface–subsurface hydrological models (ISSHMs) have seen renewed interest due to availability of better software, high performance computing facilities, and high-resolution, spatially extensive data products. ISSHMs are valuable as tools for advancing system understanding as they can resolve multiple processes defined on the plot scale including three-dimensional interaction of surface water and groundwater. Here, we evaluated the performance of an ISSHM, the Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS), on seven diverse catchments across the continental US using widely available data products to define model inputs without calibration. We compare the ATS-simulated streamflow and evapotranspiration with gauge observations and MODIS-derived evapotranspiration, respectively. Using the Kling-Gupta Efficiency (KGE) as metric, ATS with default data products performed reasonably well at 6 of 7 catchments for streamflow. However, in one of those 6 catchments ATS had poor performance on baseflow and ATS’s overall performance was thus judged to be inadequate despite the acceptable KGE. ATS performance for evapotranspiration was good in all 7 catchments using default data products. In the two catchments where ATS streamflow performance using default data products was not acceptable, the performance was significantly improved by using local information on subsurface properties below the soil. We also compare the model-simulated streamflow and evapotranspiration with the Sacramento soil moisture accounting (SAC-SMA) model, a semi-distributed model that was calibrated on a catchment-by-catchment basis. Uncalibrated ATS performance is comparable to the calibrated SAC-SMA model in terms of streamflow while ATS performance is similar to or better (much better in certain catchments) in reproducing MODIS-derived evapotranspiration. Reasonably good performance of ATS without catchment-specific calibration provides new confidence in the ISSHM class of models and community data products as tools for advancing understanding of watershed function in a changing environment.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Average Incremental Cost Pricing for the AC Unit Commitment Problem [Rev. 1]

Unit Commitment (UC) problems that consider the Alternating Current (AC) model of the transmission network have long been considered intractable to solve at scale by the power system community. Recently, the Grid-Optimization (GO) Competition held by the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has facilitated the development of the first algorithms to solve large-scale ACUC problems. This new capability opens a path towards the explicit consideration of the AC transmission network model in UC problems used to clear day-ahead electricity markets. This calls for the analysis of electricity market structures that accommodate both the continuous non-linearity of the AC transmission network and the discrete non-linearity of the UC problem simultaneously. This paper serves as an initial effort to do so by proposing an Average Incremental Cost (AIC) pricing structure that is designed around the ACUC problem. In particular, an AIC one-pass pricing problem is proposed that represents a continuously constrained variant of the ACUC problem and allows for the computation of Locational Incremental Prices (LIPs) for both real and reactive power as the local optimal Lagrange multipliers of the power balance constraints. To avoid degeneracy, the pricing problem includes a small parameter ϵ > 0. Under certain assumptions market participants are shown to realize profit that converges to a non-negative value as ϵ approaches zero, practically ensuring profitability for small values of ϵ. We additionally provide many simple and important examples that provide intuition and insights into the proposed prices. Examples illustrate the basic concept of AIC pricing, the derived profitability results, the existence of multiple LIPs, the importance of including reactive power in the dispatch and pricing problems, the need for reactive power prices, and the improved incentives exhibited by LIPs as compared to traditional Locational Marginal Prices (LMPs). We additionally indicate many directions for future work including analysis of larger test cases.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗