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At least 73 records · Page 4

Machine learning-based discovery of molecular descriptors that control polymer gas permeation

While machine learning has found increasing use in predicting the properties of polymeric materials with only a knowledge of chain architecture, determining the molecular factors underpinning properties (“interpretable AI”) has remained less well explored. We show that encoding chain chemistry in commonly employed formats, e.g., binary-valued fingerprints, leads to uniqueness issues during the hashing process to save storage space. This is because the hashing algorithm can map several chemical moieties into the same bit. These issues carry over into the ML algorithms, especially for “inverse” design and interpretable AI, and cannot be avoided by changing the length of the fingerprint. Using MACCS key featurizations of monomer repeats resolves some of these issues, and we show that a few substructures consistently appear in top features for maximizing permeability across several gases and ML models. These are carbon–carbon double bonds (as in polyacetylenes) especially when they are associated with methyl groups (found in branching architectures). Here these results, derived from the limited data set of ~ 500 polymers with experimental gas permeation data, are in agreement with physical insight and thus provide a robust foundation which could further enable study of these material classes through detailed experiments and simulations.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Automated detector simulation and reconstruction parametrization using machine learning

Rapidly applying the effects of detector response to physics objects (e.g. electrons, muons, showers of particles) is essential in high energy physics. Presently available tools for the transformation from truth-level physics objects to reconstructed detector-level physics objects involve manually defining resolution functions. These resolution functions are typically derived in bins of variables that are correlated with the resolution (e.g. pseudorapidity and transverse momentum). This process is time consuming, requires manual updates when detector conditions change, and can miss important correlations. Machine learning offers a way to automate the process of building these truth-to-reconstructed object transformations and can capture complex correlation for any given set of input variables. Such machine learning algorithms, with sufficient optimization, could have a wide range of applications: improving phenomenological studies by using a better detector representation, allowing for more efficient production of Geant4 simulation by only simulating events within an interesting part of phase space, and studies on future experimental sensitivity to new physics.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

A Comprehensive Northern Hemisphere Particle Microphysics Data Set From the Precipitation Imaging Package

Microphysical observations of precipitating particles are critical data sources for numerical weather prediction models and remote sensing retrieval algorithms. However, obtaining coherent data sets of particle microphysics is challenging as they are often unindexed, distributed across disparate institutions, and have not undergone a uniform quality control process. This work introduces a unified, comprehensive Northern Hemisphere particle microphysical data set from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration precipitation imaging package (PIP), accessible in a standardized data format and stored in a centralized, public repository. Data is collected from 10 measurement sites spanning 34° latitude (37°N–71°N) over 10 years (2014–2023), which comprise a set of 1,070,000 precipitating minutes. The provided data set includes measurements of a suite of microphysical attributes for both rain and snow, including distributions of particle size, vertical velocity, and effective density, along with higher-order products including an approximation of volume-weighted equivalent particle densities, liquid equivalent snowfall, and rainfall rate estimates. The data underwent a rigorous standardization and quality assurance process to filter out erroneous observations to produce a self-describing, scalable, and achievable data set. Case study analyses demonstrate the capabilities of the data set in identifying physical processes like precipitation phase-changes at high temporal resolution. Bulk precipitation characteristics from a multi-site intercomparison also highlight distinct microphysical properties unique to each location. This curated PIP data set is a robust database of high-quality particle microphysical observations for constraining future precipitation retrieval algorithms, and offers new insights toward better understanding regional and seasonal differences in bulk precipitation characteristics.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Randomized Algorithms for Scientific Computing (RASC)

Randomized algorithms have propelled advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and represent a foundational research area in advancing AI for Science. Future advancements in DOE Office of Science priority areas such as climate science, astrophysics, fusion, advanced materials, combustion, and quantum computing all require randomized algorithms for surmounting challenges of complexity, robustness, and scalability. Advances in data collection and numerical simulation have changed the dynamics of scientific research and motivate the need for randomized algorithms. For instance, advances in imaging technologies such as X-ray ptychography, electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, or adaptive optics lattice light-sheet microscopy collect hyperspectral imaging and scattering data in terabytes, at breakneck speed enabled by state-of-the-art detectors. The data collection is exceptionally fast compared with its analysis. Likewise, advances in high-performance architectures have made exascale computing a reality and changed the economies of scientific computing in the process. Floating-point operations that create data are essentially free in comparison with data movement. Thus far, most approaches have focused on creating faster hardware. Ironically, this faster hardware has exacerbated the problem by making data still easier to create. Under such an onslaught, scientists often resort to heuristic deterministic sampling schemes (e.g., low-precision arithmetic, sampling every nth element) and sacrifice potentially valuable accuracy. Dramatically better results can be achieved via randomized algorithms, reducing the data size as much as or more than naive deterministic subsampling can achieve, while retaining the high accuracy of computing on the full data set. By randomized algorithms we mean those algorithms that employ some form of randomness in internal algorithmic decisions to accelerate time to solution, increase scalability, or improve reliability. Examples include matrix sketching for solving large-scale least-squares problems (see Figure 1) and stochastic gradient descent for training machine learning models. We are not recommending heuristic methods but rather randomized algorithms that have certificates of correctness and probabilistic guarantees of optimality and near-optimality. Such approaches can be useful beyond acceleration, for example, in understanding how to avoid measure zero worst-case scenarios that plague methods such as QR matrix factorization.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Extending TOUGH + HYDRATE with a parallel particle transport simulator: numerical investigation of sand production during gas production from hydrate deposits

A new parallel code for simulating particle transport in porous media is integrated with the TOUGH + HYDRATE simulator to investigate sand production associated with gas production from unconsolidated gas hydrate-bearing sediments (HBS). Here, the parallel coupled simulator is named THMPT and uses the integral finite difference method to describe the Darcian and non-Darcian flow of fluids and heat transport, the finite element method to describe the associated geomechanical changes, and the discrete element method to track the trajectory of individual sand particles within the HBS. The THMPT simulator is written in Fortran, incorporates multiple optimized algorithms, and can comprehensively address the coupled flow, thermal, chemical, geomechanical, and particle transport processes that characterize the system behaviors during gas production from HBS. The simulator can capture all processes involved in sand particle transport in porous media, including sand detachment, collision, clogging (i.e., bridging), and migration. A benchmark case study of sand production in the course of depressurization-induced gas production from a representative HBS reveals various distinct microscopic particle migration mechanisms and the adverse impact of sand particle detachment, transport, and clogging. The numerical investigation also examines the effect of bottomhole pressure on mitigating sand production. The simulation results indicate that sand clogging near the wellbore significantly reduces permeability, decreasing gas production by at least 50%. Lastly, the efficiency of gravel packing in mitigating sand production is numerically evaluated, revealing that the structure of the porous media appears to profoundly influence the macroscopic motion behavior of sand particles and sand clogging characteristics.

discrete element method↗

Design of a supervisory control system for autonomous operation of advanced reactors

Advanced reactors to be deployed in the coming decades will face deregulated energy markets, and may adopt flexible operation to boost profitability. To aid in the transition from baseload to flexible operation paradigm, autonomous operation is sought. This work focuses on the control aspect of autonomous operation. Specifically, a hierarchical control system is designed to support constraint enforcement during routine operational transients. Within the system, data-driven modeling, physics-based state observation, and classical control algorithms are integrated to provide an adaptable and robust solution. A 320 MW Fluoride-cooled High-temperature Pebble-bed Reactor is the design basis for demonstrating the proposed control system. The hierarchical control system consists of a supervisory layer and low-level layer. The supervisory layer receives requests to change the system's operating conditions (e.g., the current reactor power to meet a load -follow), and accepts or rejects them based on constraints that have been assigned. Constraints are issued to keep the plant within an optimal operating region. The low-level layer interfaces with the actuators of the system to fulfill requested changes, while maintaining tracking and regulation duties. Further, to accept requests at the supervisory layer, the Reference Governor algorithm was adopted. To model the dynamics of the reactor, a system identification algorithm, Dynamic Mode Decomposition, was utilized. To estimate the evolution of process variables that cannot be directly measured (e.g., the propagation of delayed neutron precursors), the Unscented Kalman Filter, incorporating a nonlinear model of nuclear dynamics, was adopted. The composition of these algorithms led to a numerical demonstration of constraint enforcement during a 40% power drop transient (at a rate of 5 %/min). Uncontrolled secondary-side temperatures were successfully constrained. Adaptability of the proposed system was demonstrated by modifying the constraint values, and enforcing them during the transient. Robustness was also demonstrated by enforcing constraints under noisy environments.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Long–short-term memory encoder–decoder with regularized hidden dynamics for fault detection in industrial processes

The ability of recurrent neural networks (RNN) to model nonlinear dynamics of high dimensional process data has enabled data-driven RNN-based fault detection algorithms. Previous studies have focused on detecting faults by identifying the discrepancies in data distribution between the faulty and normal data, as reflected in prediction errors generated by RNN models. However, in industrial processes, variations in data distribution can also result from changes in normal control setpoints and compensatory control adjustments in response to disturbances, making it hard to differentiate between normal and faulty conditions. This paper proposes a fault detection method utilizing a long short-term memory (LSTM) encoder–decoder structure with regularized hidden dynamics and reversible instance normalization (RevIN) to compactly represent high-dimensional measurements for effective monitoring. During training, the hidden states of the model are regularized to form a low-dimensional latent space representation of the original multivariate time series data. As a result, the prediction errors of the latent states can be used to monitor the abnormal dynamic variations, while the reconstruction errors of the measured variables are used to monitor the abnormal static variations. Furthermore, the proposed indices can reflect operating conditions, even when the distribution of test data changes, which helps distinguish faults from normal adjustments and disturbances that controllers can settle. Here, data from numerical simulation and the Tennessee Eastman process are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed fault detection method.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Disjunctive linear separation conditions and mixed-integer formulations for aircraft conflict resolution

In this paper, we address the aircraft conflict resolution problem in air traffic control. We introduce new mixed-integer programming formulations for aircraft conflict resolution with speed, heading and altitude control which are based on disjunctive linear separation conditions. We first examine the two-dimensional aircraft conflict resolution problem with speed and heading control represented as continuous decision variables. We show that the proposed disjunctive linear separation conditions are equivalent to the classical nonlinear conditions for aircraft separation. Further, we characterise conflict-free trajectories based on aircraft velocity bounds and propose a simple pre-processing algorithm to identify aircraft pairs which are either always conflict-free, or which cannot be separated using speed and heading control only. We then incorporate altitude control and propose a lexicographic optimisation formulation that aims to minimise the number of flight level changes before resolving outstanding conflicts via two-dimensional velocity control. The proposed mixed-integer programming formulations are nonconvex, and we propose convex relaxations, decomposition methods and constraint generation algorithms to solve the two-dimensional and lexicographic optimisation formulations to guaranteed optimality. Numerical experiments on four types of conflict resolution benchmarking instances are conducted to test the performance of the proposed mixed-integer formulations. Further, the proposed method is compared against two benchmarks based on state-of-the-art approaches for the aircraft conflict resolution problem. Our numerical results show that the proposed method largely outperforms both benchmarks in terms of runtime and is able to solve significantly more instances to global optimality.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A globally sampled high-resolution hand-labeled validation dataset for evaluating surface water extent maps

Effective monitoring of global water resources is increasingly critical due to climate change and population growth. Advancements in remote sensing technology, specifically in spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions, are revolutionizing water resource monitoring, leading to more frequent and high-quality surface water extent maps using various techniques such as traditional image processing and machine learning algorithms. However, satellite imagery datasets contain trade-offs that result in inconsistencies in performance, such as disparities in measurement principles between optical (e.g., Sentinel-2) and radar (e.g., Sentinel-1) sensors and differences in spatial and spectral resolutions among optical sensors. Therefore, developing accurate and robust surface water mapping solutions requires independent validations from multiple datasets to identify potential biases within the imagery and algorithms. However, high-quality validation datasets are expensive to build, and few contain information on water resources. For this purpose, we introduce a globally sampled, high-spatial-resolution dataset labeled using 3 m PlanetScope imagery. Our surface water extent dataset comprises 100 images, each with a size of 1024×1024 pixels, which were sampled using a stratified random sampling strategy covering all 14 biomes. We highlighted urban and rural regions, lakes, and rivers, including braided rivers and coastal regions. We evaluated two surface water extent mapping methods using our dataset – Dynamic World, based on Sentinel-2, and the NASA IMPACT model, based on Sentinel-1. Dynamic World achieved a mean intersection over union (IoU) of 72.16 % and F1 score of 79.70 %, while the NASA IMPACT model had a mean IoU of 57.61 % and F1 score of 65.79 %. Performance varied substantially across biomes, highlighting the importance of evaluating models on diverse landscapes to assess their generalizability and robustness. Our dataset can be used to analyze satellite products and methods, providing insights into their advantages and drawbacks. Our dataset offers a unique tool for analyzing satellite products, aiding the development of more accurate and robust surface water monitoring solutions. The dataset can be accessed via https://doi.org/10.25739/03nt-4f29.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Understanding and Leveraging the I/O Patterns of Emerging Machine Learning Analytics

The scientific community is currently experiencing unprecedented amounts of data generated by cutting-edge science facilities. Soon facilities will be producing up to 1 PB/s which will force scientist to use more autonomous techniques to learn from the data. The adoption of machine learning methods, like deep learning techniques, in large-scale workflows comes with a shift in the workflow’s computational and I/O patterns. These changes often include iterative processes and model architecture searches, in which datasets are analyzed multiple times in different formats with different model configurations in order to find accurate, reliable and efficient learning models. This shift in behavior brings changes in I/O patterns at the application level as well at the system level. These changes also bring new challenges for the HPC I/O teams, since these patterns contain more complex I/O workloads. In this paper we discuss the I/O patterns experienced by emerging analytical codes that rely on machine learning algorithms and highlight the challenges in designing efficient I/O transfers for such workflows. We comment on how to leverage the data access patterns in order to fetch in a more efficient way the required input data in the format and order given by the needs of the application and how to optimize the data path between collaborative processes. We will motivate our work and show performance gains with a study case of medical applications.

Gainaru, Ana↗

Optimization of a cyclone using MFIX and Nodeworks

Video depicting the optimization process of a cyclone on NETL's chemical looping reactor (CLR) using MFIX and Nodeworks. MFIX is used to model the cyclone using PIC. Nodeworks is then used to generate proposed geometry changes using a Latin hypercube. Each design is simulated, with an objective value being computed based on the cyclone efficiency and pressure drop. A Gaussian Process surrogate model is then constructed from the objective values. This surrogate model is then used by a differential evolution optimization algorithm to identify the optimal cyclone design. Details published here: Weber, J., Fullmer, W., Gel, A., and Musser, J. (February 4, 2020). "Optimization of a Cyclone Using Multiphase Flow Computational Fluid Dynamics." ASME. J. Fluids Eng. March 2020; 142(3): 031111. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4045952 OSTI: https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1763893

cyclone↗

A new track finding algorithm based on a multi-dimensional extension of the Hough Transform

We introduce a new pattern recognition algorithm for track finding in High Energy Physics Experiments based on an extension of the Hough Transform to multiple dimensions. A remarkable property of this algorithm is that the execution time is simply proportional to the total number of the hits to be processed, making it particularly attractive for high occupancy situations. The algorithm needs to be trained using a sufficiently large set of simulated tracks. The same track finding algorithm can be used for very different detector geometries and only the set of simulated tracks used for training needs to be changed. The particular structure of the algorithm also lends itself naturally to parallel hardware implementations which, combined with its intrinsic flexibility, should provide a most powerful tool for triggering at future colliders.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

New technologies as decision aids for the advancement of ecological risk assessment

Moore's law states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every two years (Moore, 1975). This has led to a steady increase in the processing power of computers over time, and technology is now enhancing and advancing software and scientific applications, which has enabled computationally intensive methods such as machine learning, data science, modeling, and simulation. The advancement of computers and data-driven algorithms is profoundly impacting people's lives. It is changing the way we work, the way we learn, and the way we interact with the world around us. Here, this editorial will discuss how scientists can benefit from the latest technology advancements and related tools by incorporating them into the ecological risk assessment (ERA) to study ecosystems as a way to create refined assessments and accelerate the turnaround times.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Climate-invariant machine learning

Projecting climate change is a generalization problem: We extrapolate the recent past using physical models across past, present, and future climates. Current climate models require representations of processes that occur at scales smaller than model grid size, which have been the main source of model projection uncertainty. Recent machine learning (ML) algorithms hold promise to improve such process representations but tend to extrapolate poorly to climate regimes that they were not trained on. To get the best of the physical and statistical worlds, we propose a framework, termed “climate-invariant” ML, incorporating knowledge of climate processes into ML algorithms, and show that it can maintain high offline accuracy across a wide range of climate conditions and configurations in three distinct atmospheric models. Our results suggest that explicitly incorporating physical knowledge into data-driven models of Earth system processes can improve their consistency, data efficiency, and generalizability across climate regimes.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Enabling cooperative adaptive cruise control on strings of vehicles with heterogeneous dynamics and powertrains

Recent studies have shown that positive impact of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) can only be guaranteed as market penetration rate increases. Removing the string homogeneity constraint is essential to encourage widespread adoption. In this work, a hierarchical architecture is proposed to enable CACC on vehicles with not only mixed dynamics but also different powertrain types. A low-level layer deals with the vehicle and powertrain dynamics to provide accurate and consistent reference speed tracking response. The high-level layer uses: (1) a Linear Parameter Varying feedback system to provide loop stability, robustness and enforce a variable time gap policy and (2) a feedforward system that processes Vehicle-to-Vehicle information to enhance string stability and response bandwidth, by dealing with the string heterogeneity. A gap management strategy is built on top of the CACC architecture to handle gap setting changes or cut-in/out situations, via a dynamics constrained time gap trajectory planning algorithm. We report the proposed work has been designed, developed and validated on three different real passenger vehicles on public highways and test tracks, showing the potential of the proposed algorithm to enable robust string stable CACC, despite the different dynamics and powertrains considered.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Environmentally Adaptive, Multiband Software-Defined-Radar for Monitoring of Item of Interest in a Dynamically Cluttered Room

High-resolution multi-frequency radars when networked together, form a robust and seamless monitoring system for high-valued items. The multi-look-direction radar network investigated by LLNL and DSI, operates at 77 GHz and 5.8GHz, and is capable of detection at centimeter resolution movement of objects of interest. This dual frequency radar (unlike optical methods) can operate under various environments with conditions such a smoke, dust, and other natural or manmade obscurations. In addition, the multiband network radar is based on low-cost FCC approved EM specifications and can be scaled with the dimensions of the room and objects under consideration by user-defined inputs. Furthermore, the underlying radar signal processing based on software-defined radar engine is adaptive to its operational environment, where operators can input the size of the facility and object of interest and the distance between the object and radar. Finally, this multi-frequency radar employs a host of change detection and machine learning algorithms to reach performance levels in terms of high probability of detection and low false alarm rates while the monitoring state of the object can be reported remotely.

42 ENGINEERING↗

GMFOLD: Subgraph matching for high-throughput DNA-aptamer secondary structure classification and machine learning interpretability

Aptamers are oligonucleotide receptors that bind to their targets with high affinity. Here, we consider aptamers comprised of single-stranded DNA that undergo target-binding-induced conformational changes, giving rise to unique secondary and tertiary structures. Given a specific aptamer primary sequence, there are well-established computational tools (notably mfold) to predict the secondary structure via free energy minimization algorithms. While mfold generates secondary structures for individual sequences, there is a need for a high-throughput process whereby thousands of DNA structures can be predicted in real-time for use in an interactive setting, when combined with aptamer selections that generate candidate pools that are too large to be experimentally interrogated. We developed a new Python code for high-throughput aptamer secondary structure determination (GMfold). GMfold uses subgraph matching methods to group aptamer candidates by secondary structure similarities. We also improve an open-source code, SeqFold, to incorporate subgraph matching concepts. We represent each secondary structure as a lowest-energy bipartite subgraph matching of the DNA graph to itself. These new tools enable thousands of DNA sequences to be compared based on their secondary structures, using machine-learning algorithms. This process is advantageous when analyzing sequences that arise from aptamer selections via systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX). This work is a building block for future machine-learning-informed DNA-aptamer selection processes to identify aptamers with improved target affinity and selectivity and advance aptamer biosensors and therapeutics.

Aptamer↗

Implicit–explicit multirate infinitesimal stage-restart methods

Implicit–Explicit (IMEX) methods are flexible numerical time integration methods which solve an initial-value problem (IVP) that is split into stiff and nonstiff processes with the goal of lower computational costs than a purely implicit or explicit approach. A complementary form of flexible IVP solvers are multirate infinitesimal methods for problems split into fast- and slow-changing dynamics, that solve a multirate IVP by evolving a sequence of “fast” IVPs using any suitably accurate algorithm. This article introduces a new class of high-order implicit–explicit multirate methods that are designed for multirate IVPs in which the slow-changing dynamics are further split in an IMEX fashion. This new class, which we call implicit–explicit multirate infinitesimal stage-restart (IMEX-MRI-SR), both improves upon the previous implicit–explicit multirate infinitesimal generalized-structure additive Runge Kutta (IMEX-MRI-GARK) methods by allowing for far easier creation of new embedded methods, and extends multirate exponential Runge Kutta (MERK) methods by allowing the fast-changing dynamics to be nonlinear and the methods to be implicit. We leverage GARK theory to derive conditions for orders of accuracy up to four, and we provide second- and third-order accurate example methods, which are the first known embedded MRI methods with IMEX structure. We then perform numerical simulations demonstrating convergence rates and computational performance in both fixed-step and adaptive-step settings.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗