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At least 793 records · Page 44

Measuring impacts of California agri-environmental programs using field-scale satellite data

In the past decade, California has invested over $\$$200 million in direct grants to growers to support the adoption of agricultural practices that save water and/or improve soil health while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Ex-post evaluation of agri-environmental outcomes of these grant programs, however, is limited. We use satellite data to monitor changes in field-level consumptive water use and greenness (i.e. normalized difference vegetation index), a proxy for agricultural productivity, for the most frequently funded crop-types (almonds, grapes, and walnuts) in two California Department of Food and Agriculture programs. Nearly 600 fields receiving funding during the 2014–2022 period were analyzed using two causal inference methods. Fields that received grants to both upgrade irrigation systems and install irrigation water management sensors showed reduced consumptive water use and greenness by an average of 3.5% and 4.2%, respectively (significant at the 10% level). In contrast, we find that the adoption of only irrigation water management sensors, which are designed to inform irrigation scheduling and management, resulted in an average increase of 4.1% and 4.8% in consumptive water use and greenness respectively (significant at the 5% level). We find negligible effects for either consumptive water use or greenness when both pump efficiency upgrades and sensors were implemented. We further find that grants for compost addition and cover cropping led to small greenness increases of 1.7% and 2.8% respectively (significant at the 10% level) and had insignificant effects on consumptive water use. Our analysis of five agri-environmental program interventions reveals that several practice outcomes may be at odds with stated program goals of reducing water use while maintaining or improving agricultural productivity.

agriculture↗

Status of LBNF/DUNE near site liquid argon proximity and external cryogenics systems development.

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) near site located at Fermilab will host the neutrino beam complex. It includes a high voltage liquid argon time projection chamber located 60-meter underground used as beamline instrumentation. The LAr cryogenic system provided by the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) regulates thermohydraulic conditions of the membrane cryostat hosting the detector with 285 Ton purified LAr. The purification system uses molecular sieve and copper oxide pellets to manage the argon contamination below 100 ppt (parts per trillion) oxygen equivalent. The detector and its cryogenics are capable to move a stroke of 30 meters on/off beam. The cryogenic system modes of operation include the cryostat pressure test, purge in open loop, detector cooldown, cryostat fill, closed loop purification, liquid empty, and purification system activation/regeneration process. The system design status and schedule, and technical details such as operating modes and interfaces are reported in this paper.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

LCLS-II Helium Refrigeration System : A comprehensive overview of the project

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has upgraded to LCLS-II, featuring a 4 GeV superconducting accelerator composed of 37 cryomodules and two large helium refrigeration systems with a total cooling capacity of 8 kW at 2.0 K. The cryogenic system at SLAC is the successful outcome of a nine-year partnership between SLAC, Fermilab, and Jefferson Lab. This paper highlights the joint efforts between Jefferson Lab and SLAC in the development and implementation of the LCLS-II Cryogenic Plants. It details the project organization, schedule, budget, staffing profile and procurement strategy.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Implementation of a practical Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling algorithm in PyBioNetFit

Abstract Summary Bayesian inference in biological modeling commonly relies on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling of a multidimensional and non-Gaussian posterior distribution that is not analytically tractable. Here, we present the implementation of a practical MCMC method in the open-source software package PyBioNetFit (PyBNF), which is designed to support parameterization of mathematical models for biological systems. The new MCMC method, am, incorporates an adaptive move proposal distribution. For warm starts, sampling can be initiated at a specified location in parameter space and with a multivariate Gaussian proposal distribution defined initially by a specified covariance matrix. Multiple chains can be generated in parallel using a computer cluster. We demonstrate that am can be used to successfully solve real-world Bayesian inference problems, including forecasting of new Coronavirus Disease 2019 case detection with Bayesian quantification of forecast uncertainty. Availability and implementation PyBNF version 1.1.9, the first stable release with am, is available at PyPI and can be installed using the pip package-management system on platforms that have a working installation of Python 3. PyBNF relies on libRoadRunner and BioNetGen for simulations (e.g. numerical integration of ordinary differential equations defined in SBML or BNGL files) and Dask.Distributed for task scheduling on Linux computer clusters. The Python source code can be freely downloaded/cloned from GitHub and used and modified under terms of the BSD-3 license (https://github.com/lanl/pybnf). Online documentation covering installation/usage is available (https://pybnf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/). A tutorial video is available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aRqpqFOiS4&t=63s). Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

LSBGnet: an improved detection model for low-surface brightness galaxies

ABSTRACT The Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) is scheduled to launch soon, which is expected to provide a vast amount of image potentially containing low-surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs). However, detecting and characterizing LSBGs is known to be challenging due to their faint surface brightness, posing a significant hurdle for traditional detection methods. In this paper, we propose LSBGnet, a deep neural network specifically designed for automatic detection of LSBGs. We established LSBGnet-SDSS model using data set from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The results demonstrate a significant improvement compared to our previous work, achieving a recall of 97.22 per cent and a precision of 97.27 per cent on the SDSS test set. Furthermore, we use the LSBGnet-SDSS model as a pre-training model, employing transfer learning to retrain the model with LSBGs from Dark Energy Survey (DES), and establish the LSBGnet-DES model. Remarkably, after retraining the model on a small DES sample, it achieves over 90 per cent precision and recall. To validate the model’s capabilities, we utilize the trained LSBGnet-DES model to detect LSBG candidates within a selected 5 sq. deg area in the DES footprint. Our analysis reveals the detection of 204 LSBG candidates, characterized by a mean surface brightness range of $23.5\ \mathrm{ mag}\ \mathrm{ arcsec}^{-2}\le \bar{\mu }_{\text{eff}}(g)\le 26.8\ \mathrm{ mag}\ \mathrm{ arcsec}^{-2}$ and a half-light radius range of 1.4 arcsec ≤ r1/2 ≤ 8.3 arcsec. Notably, 116 LSBG candidates exhibit a half-light radius ≥2.5 arcsec. These results affirm the remarkable performance of our model in detecting LSBGs, making it a promising tool for the upcoming CSST.

Su, Hao (ORCID:0009000778888301)↗

The Galaxy platform for accessible, reproducible, and collaborative data analyses: 2024 update

Galaxy (https://galaxyproject.org) is deployed globally, predominantly through free-to-use services, supporting user-driven research that broadens in scope each year. Users are attracted to public Galaxy services by platform stability, tool and reference dataset diversity, training, support and integration, which enables complex, reproducible, shareable data analysis. Applying the principles of user experience design (UXD), has driven improvements in accessibility, tool discoverability through Galaxy Labs/subdomains, and a redesigned Galaxy ToolShed. Galaxy tool capabilities are progressing in two strategic directions: integrating general purpose graphical processing units (GPGPU) access for cutting-edge methods, and licensed tool support. Engagement with global research consortia is being increased by developing more workflows in Galaxy and by resourcing the public Galaxy services to run them. The Galaxy Training Network (GTN) portfolio has grown in both size, and accessibility, through learning paths and direct integration with Galaxy tools that feature in training courses. Code development continues in line with the Galaxy Project roadmap, with improvements to job scheduling and the user interface. Environmental impact assessment is also helping engage users and developers, reminding them of their role in sustainability, by displaying estimated CO 2 emissions generated by each Galaxy job.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Multitarget Rydberg gates via spatial blockade engineering

Multi-target gates offer the potential to reduce gate depth in syndrome extraction for quantum error correction. Although neutral-atom quantum computers have demonstrated native multi-qubit gates, existing approaches that avoid additional control or multiple atomic species have been limited to single-target gates. We propose single-control-multi-target CZ^n gates on a single-species neutral-atom platform that require no extra control and have gate durations comparable to standard CZ gates. Our approach leverages tailored interatomic distances to create an asymmetric blockade between the control and target atoms. Using a GPU-accelerated pulse synthesis protocol, we design smooth control pulses for CZZ and CZZZ gates, achieving fidelities of up to 99.55% and $99.24\%$, respectively, even in the presence of simulated atom placement errors and Rydberg-state decay. Our approach is most effective for N=2 (CZZ) and N=3 targets (CZZZ); for larger N, increasing spatial crowding of the targets introduces significant challenges for maintaining the required blockade asymmetry. This work presents a practical path to implementing low-overhead multi-target gates in single-species neutral-atom systems, significantly reducing the resource overhead for syndrome extraction. To motivate the impact of these gates, we apply a greedy scheduling algorithm and we demonstrate that our proposed gates can reduce the number of atom reconfiguration costs by up to 50% for color code syndrome extraction of code distances greater than 5.

Stein, Samuel A.↗

Detecting anomalous SRF cavity behavior with unsupervised learning

We present an unsupervised learning framework for detecting anomalous superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavity behavior at the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), emphasizing its initial performance and effectiveness. Key to the system’s success was the development of data acquisition systems (DAQs) that capture fast-sampled, information-rich signals, essential for detecting transient effects. The approach involves creating daily cavity-specific models using principal component analysis to handle variations in rf signal behavior and mitigate performance degradation from data drift. This unsupervised method eliminates the need for expensive labeling by continuously updating models with recent data. Deployed and operational for 3 months before a scheduled shutdown, the system successfully identified several issues with DAQ signals, confirming its effectiveness. Despite access to only a fraction of CEBAF’s SRF cavity signals, the framework efficiently detected several instances requiring intervention, demonstrating a significant improvement over traditional, labor-intensive methods of manual plot inspection. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Topology, criticality, and dynamically generated qubits in a stochastic measurement-only Kitaev model

Here we consider a paradigmatic solvable model of topological order in two dimensions, Kitaev's honeycomb Hamiltonian, and turn it into a measurement-only dynamics consisting of stochastic measurements of two-qubit bond operators. We find an entanglement phase diagram that resembles that of the Hamiltonian problem in some ways, while being qualitatively different in others. When one type of bond is dominantly measured, we find area-law entangled phases that protect two topological qubits (on a torus) for a time exponential in system size. This generalizes the recently proposed idea of Floquet codes, where logical qubits are dynamically generated by a time-periodic measurement schedule, to a stochastic setting. When all types of bonds are measured with comparable frequency, we find a critical phase with a logarithmic violation of the area law, which sharply distinguishes it from its Hamiltonian counterpart. The critical phase has the same set of topological qubits, as diagnosed by the tripartite mutual information, but protects them only for a time polynomial in system size. Furthermore, we observe an unusual behavior for the dynamical purification of mixed states, characterized at late times by the dynamical exponent z = $\frac{1}{2}$ a superballistic dynamics made possible by measurements.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Cosmogenic production of 37 Ar in the context of the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment

We estimate the amount of 37 Ar produced in natural xenon via cosmic-ray-induced spallation, an inevitable consequence of the transportation and storage of xenon on the Earth’s surface. We then calculate the resulting 37 Ar concentration in a 10-tonne payload (similar to that of the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment) assuming a representative schedule of xenon purification, storage, and delivery to the underground facility. Using the spallation model by Silberberg and Tsao, the sea-level production rate of 37 Ar in natural xenon is estimated to be 0.024 atoms/kg/day. Assuming the xenon is successively purified to remove radioactive contaminants in 1-tonne batches at a rate of 1 tonne/month, the average 37 Ar activity after 10 tons are purified and transported underground is 0.058 − 0.090 𝜇⁢Bq/kg, depending on the degree of argon removal during above-ground purification. Such cosmogenic 37 Ar will appear as a noticeable background in the early science data, while decaying with a 35-day half-life. This newly noticed production mechanism of 37 Ar should be considered when planning for future liquid-xenon-based experiments.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

ac susceptibility studies of intra- and intergrain properties of high-$J_c$ Bi-2212 wires

Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O x (Bi-2212) is the only high-$T_c$ superconductor (HTS) available as a multifilamentary round wire with multiple architectures and it is a very promising conductor for the realization of high-field applications. Despite their relatively simple wire fabrication by the powder-in-tube technique, Bi-2212 wires require a tightly controlled overpressure heat treatment (HT) with a multi-parameter time-temperature schedule to achieve high critical current density, $J_c$. Further, the variation of these HT parameters, changes in the wire design, wire diameter and powder quality can lead to variations in both the microstructure and the superconducting performance. Particularly noticeable are variations in $J_c$ performance and degree of filament bridging. In this work, we focus on the use of different magnetic characterization techniques to estimate the bridging level and assess the balance of INTER-grain and intra-grain superconducting properties including the irreversibility field ($H_{\text{irr}}$) and the pinning energy ($U_0$) in differently processed wires. Regardless of the actual bridging level, we find that the supercurrent flows at the filament bundle level, not just at the individual filament level. Moreover, using AC susceptibility we identify two distinct supercurrent contributions, one related to the intra-grain and one to the INTER-grain properties, whose irreversibility fields are different but without large sample-to-sample variation. Moreover, an additional component of intra-grain pinning mechanism becomes effective at low temperatures with positive effects also on the INTER-grain performance. The work clearly shows that detailed magnetic characterizations can become valuable tools to investigate the performance of differently processed Bi-2212 wires, correlating their microstructure and overall transport $J_c$, to obtain a deeper understanding of the causes of performance variation and paths to achieve further improvement.

2212↗

Distributed ADMM Using Private Blockchain for Power Flow Optimization in Distribution Network With Coupled and Mixed-Integer Constraints

The optimization problem for scheduling distributed energy resources (DERs) and battery energy storage systems (BESS) integrated with the power grid is important to minimize energy consumption from conventional sources in response to demand. Conventionally this optimization problem is solved in a centralized manner, limiting the size of the problem that can be solved and creating a high communication overhead because all the data is transferred to the central controller. These limitations are addressed by the proposed distributed consensus-based alternating direction method of multiplier (DC-ADMM) optimization algorithm, which decomposes the optimization problem into subproblems with private cost function and constraints. The distribution feeder is partitioned into low coupling subnetworks/regions, which solves the private subproblem locally and exchanges information with the neighboring regions to reach consensus. The relaxation strategy is employed for mixed-integer and coupled constraints introduced in the optimal power flow (OPF) problem by stationary and transportable BESS because DC-ADMM convergence is only guaranteed for strict convex problems. The information exchange and synchronization between subnetworks/regions are vital for distributed optimization. In this work, both of these aspects are addressed by the blockchain. The smart contract deployed on the blockchain network acts as a mediator for secure data exchange and synchronization in distributed computation. The blockchain-based distributed optimization problem’s effectiveness is tested for a 0.5-MW laboratory microgrid for one hour ahead and day-ahead for the IEEE 123-bus and EPRI J1 test feeders, and results are compared with a centralized solution.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Kensor: Coordinated Intelligence from Co-Located Sensors

Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming more pervasive in many installations, including homes, manufacturing plants, and industrial facilities of all kinds. The data that IoT produces is a reflection of usual behavior such as daily routines and scheduled tasks, but also from unexpected behavior due to unintentional or undesirable abnormalities. Here, we focus on achieving coordinated intelligence about normal and abnormal phenomena from multiple sensors that are geographically colocated in close proximity, monitoring and controlling a set of co-located devices. Given a set of co-located sensors, we seek an intelligent approach that would automatically determine the “normal” patterns of behaviors among the correlated sensors. After normal behavior is extracted, later monitoring should detect any deviant variations over time. An example application is an entry monitoring and alert system for facilities such as nuclear reactors, where badge readers, door locks, lights, weight trackers and other co-located sensors at the entry point are collectively tracked. To address this problem, we identify the possible solution approach that can be used to solve its different variants. The implemented model is developed as a combination of rules and Markov Chain methods.

Kotevska, Olivera↗

Enabling discovery data science through cross-facility workflows

Experimental and observational instruments for scientific research (such as light sources, genome sequencers, accelerators, telescopes and electron microscopes) increasingly require High Performance Computing (HPC) scale capabilities for data analysis and workflow processing. Next-generation instruments are being deployed with higher resolutions and faster data capture rates, creating a big data crunch that cannot be handled by modest institutional computing resources. Often these big data analysis pipelines also require near real-time computing and have higher resilience requirements than the simulation and modeling workloads more traditionally seen at HPC centers. While some facilities have enabled workflows to run at a single HPC facility, there is a growing need to integrate capabilities across HPC facilities to enable cross-facility workflows, either to provide resilience to an experiment, increase analysis throughput capabilities, or to better match a workflow to a particular architecture. In this paper we describe the barriers to executing complex data analysis workflows across HPC facilities and propose an architectural design pattern for enabling scientific discovery using cross-facility workflows that includes orchestration services, application programming interfaces (APIs), data access and co-scheduling.

Antypas, Katerina B.↗

BBOS: Efficient HPC Storage Management via Burst Buffer Over-Subscription

To avoid access to PFS, dedicated BB allocation is preferred despite of severe BB underutilization. Recently, new all-flash HPC storage systems with integrated BB and PFS are proposed, which speed up access to PFS. For this reason, we adopt BB over-subscription allocation method by allowing HPC applications to use BB only for I/O phase for improving BB utilization. Unfortunately, BB over-subscription aggravates I/O interference and demotion overhead from BB to PFS, resulting in degraded performance. To minimize the performance degradation, we develop an I/O scheduler to prevent I/O congestion and a new transparent data management system based on checkpoint/restart characteristics of HPC applications. With the proposed approach, not only the BB utilization can be improved, but also high performance of applications is achieved. In our experiments, we find that BB utilization is improved at least 2.2x, and more stable and higher checkpoint performance is guaranteed compared to other approaches. Besides, we achieve up to 96.4% hit ratio of restart requests on BB and up to 3.1x higher restart performance than others.

Sung, H↗

Predictive Model for Starlink Maritime Performance Using Multi-Horizon RandomForest

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite systems have become a crucial enabler of broadband access for maritime industries, where traditional networks are unavailable. However, the high mobility of LEO constellations and constantly changing weather conditions result in unpredictable link fluctuations, limiting the ability of maritime platforms to plan bandwidth usage proactively. To the best of our knowledge, no prior work has developed a short-term predictive model for maritime LEO connectivity using real experimental field measurements. This paper proposes a data-driven forecasting model that predicts future downlink throughput using multi-horizon RandomForest regression. The model is trained using real experimental coastal measurement data incorporating recent throughput history, network-layer indicators, and environmental variables. The proposed approach reduces mean absolute error by approximately 31% compared to a persistence baseline for 15-minute horizons. It maintains a measurable improvement at 30 minutes, despite increased stochasticity. These findings confirm that proactive bandwidth awareness is feasible on maritime platforms and can effectively support operational decisions such as adaptive streaming, routing, and resource scheduling. The performance gap between forecasting horizons also highlights the need for expanded offshore datasets to improve prediction robustness under harsher maritime environments.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Distributionally Robust Decision Making Leveraging Conditional Distributions

Distributionally robust optimization (DRO) is a powerful tool for decision making under uncertainty. It is particularly appealing because of its ability to leverage existing data. However, many practical problems call for decision-making with some auxiliary information, and DRO in the context of conditional distributions is not straightforward. We propose a conditional kernel distributionally robust optimization (CKDRO) method that enables robust decision making under conditional distributions through kernel DRO and the conditional mean operator in the reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). In particular, we consider problems where there is a correlation between the unknown variable y and an auxiliary observable variable x. Given past data of the two variables and a queried auxiliary variable, CKDRO represents the conditional distribution P(y|x) as the conditional mean operator in the RKHS space and quantifies the ambiguity set in the RKHS as well, which depends on the size of the dataset as well as the query point. To justify the use of RKHS, we demonstrate that the ambiguity set defined in RKHS can be viewed as a ball under a metric that is similar to the Wasserstein metric. The DRO is then dualized and solved via a finite dimensional convex program. The proposed CKDRO approach is applied to a generation scheduling problem and shows that the result of CKDRO is superior to common benchmarks in terms of quality and robustness.

Chen, Yuxiao↗

RISE: Reducing I/O Contention in Staging-based Extreme-Scale In-situ Workflows

While in-situ workflow formulations have addressed some of the data-related challenges associated with extreme-scale scientific workflows, these workflows involve complex interactions and different modes of data exchange. In the context of increasing system complexity, such workflows present significant resource management challenges, requiring complex cost-performance tradeoffs. This paper presents RISE, an intelligent staging-based data management middleware, which builds on the DataSpaces framework and performs intelligent scheduling of data management operations to reduce I/O contention. In RISE, data are always written immediately to local buffers to reduce the effect of the transfer impact upon application performance. RISE identifies applications’ data access patterns and moves data towards data consumers only when the network is expected to be idle, reducing the impact of asynchronous background data movement upon critical data read/write requests. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that RISE can take advantage of staging nodes to offload data during writes without degrading application data movement performance.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗