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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 91 records · Page 5

Adaptive on-line classification of multi-spectral scanner data

A possible solution to the analysis of the massive amounts of multi-spectral scanner data from the Earth Resource Technical Satellite (ERTS) program is proposed. This solution is offered as an adaptive on-line classification scheme. The classifier is described as well as its controller which is based on ground truth data. Cluster analysis is presented as an alternative approach to the ground truth data. Adaptive feature selection is discussed and possible mini-computer implementations are offered.

Fromm, F. R.↗

Evolution of massive stars in very young clusters and associations

Statistics concerning the stellar content of young galactic clusters and associations which show well defined main sequence turnups have been analyzed in order to derive information about stellar evolution in high-mass galaxies. The analytical approach is semiempirical and uses natural spectroscopic groups of stars on the H-R diagram together with the stars' apparent magnitudes. The new approach does not depend on absolute luminosities and requires only the most basic elements of stellar evolution theory. The following conclusions are offered on the basis of the statistical analysis: (1) O-tupe main-sequence stars evolve to a spectral type of B1 during core hydrogen burning; (2) most O-type blue stragglers are newly formed massive stars burning core hydrogen; (3) supergiants lying redward of the main-sequence turnup are burning core helium; and most Wolf-Rayet stars are burning core helium and originally had masses greater than 30-40 solar mass. The statistics of the natural spectroscopic stars in young galactic clusters and associations are given in a table.

Stothers, R. B.↗

Equation of motion coupled-cluster cumulant approach for intrinsic losses in x-ray spectra

We present an equation of motion coupled cluster approach for calculating and understanding intrinsic inelastic losses in core level x-ray absorption spectra (XAS). The method is based on a factorization of the transition amplitude in the time-domain, which leads to a convolution of an effective one-body spectrum and the core-hole spectral function. The spectral function characterizes these losses in terms of shake-up excitations and satellites, and is calculated using a cumulant representation of the core-hole Green’s function that includes non-linear corrections. The one-body spectrum also includes orthogonality corrections that enhance the XAS at the edge.

Rehr, John J.↗

2p x-ray absorption spectroscopy of 3d transition metal systems

This review provides an overview of the different methods and computer codes that are used to interpret 2p x-ray absorption spectra of 3d transition metal ions. We first introduce the basic parameters and give an overview of the methods used. We start with the semi-empirical multiplet codes and compare the different codes that are available. A special chapter is devoted to the user friendly interfaces that have been written on the basis of these codes. Next we discuss the first principle codes based on band structure, including a chapter on Density Functional theory based approaches. We also give an overview of the first-principle multiplet codes that start from a cluster calculation and we discuss the wavefunction based methods, including multi-reference methods. We end the review with a discussion of the link between theory and experiment and discuss the open issues in the spectral analysis.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

An unsupervised classification approach for analysis of Landsat data to monitor land reclamation in Belmont county, Ohio

Two unsupervised classification procedures for analyzing Landsat data used to monitor land reclamation in a surface mining area in east central Ohio are compared for agreement with data collected from the corresponding locations on the ground. One procedure is based on a traditional unsupervised-clustering/maximum-likelihood algorithm sequence that assumes spectral groupings in the Landsat data in n-dimensional space; the other is based on a nontraditional unsupervised-clustering/canonical-transformation/clustering algorithm sequence that not only assumes spectral groupings in n-dimensional space but also includes an additional feature-extraction technique. It is found that the nontraditional procedure provides an appreciable improvement in spectral groupings and apparently increases the level of accuracy in the classification of land cover categories.

Brumfield, J. O.↗

Physics-based model of irradiation creep for ferritic materials under fusion energy operation conditions

Irradiation creep is known to be an important process for structural materials in nuclear environments, potentially leading to creep failure at temperatures where thermal creep is generally negligible. While there is a great deal of data for irradiation creep in steels and zirconium alloys in light water reactor conditions, much less is known for first wall materials under fusion energy conditions. Lacking suitable fusion neutron sources for detailed experimentation, modeling, and simulation can help bridge the dose-rate and spectral-effects gap and produce quantifiable expectations for creep deformation of first wall materials under standard fusion conditions. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive model for irradiation creep created from merging a crystal plasticity representation of the dislocation microstructure and a defect evolution simulator that accounts for the entire cluster dimensionality space. Both approaches are linked by way of a climb velocity that captures dislocation-biased defect absorption and a dislocation strengthening term that reflects the accumulation of defect clusters in the system. Here, we carry out our study in Fe under first wall fusion reactor conditions, characterized by a fusion neutron spectrum with average recoil energies of 20 keV and a damage dose rate of ≈3×10 –7 dpa/s at temperatures between 300 and 800 K.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Irradiation creep model for α-Fe: Dislocation climb in the presence of stress fields (Final Report)

Irradiation creep is known to be an important process for structural materials in nuclear environments, potentially leading to creep failure at temperatures where thermal creep is generally negligible. While there is a great deal of data for irradiation creep in steels and zirconium alloys in light water reactor conditions, much less is known for first wall materials under fusion energy conditions. Lacking suitable fusion neutron sources for detailed experimentation, modeling, and simulation can help bridge the dose-rate and spectral-effects gap and produce quantifiable expectations for creep deformation of first wall materials under standard fusion conditions. In this work, we present a comprehensive model for irradiation creep created from merging a crystal plasticity representation of the dislocation microstructure and a defect evolution simulator that accounts for the entire cluster dimensionality space. Both approaches are linked by way of a climb velocity that captures dislocation-biased defect absorption and a dislocation strengthening term that reflects the accumulation of defect clusters in the system. We carry out our study in Fe under first wall fusion reactor conditions, characterized by a fusion neutron spectrum at temperatures between 300 and 800°K.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Comparison of wheat classification accuracy using different classifiers of the image-100 system

Classification results using single-cell and multi-cell signature acquisition options, a point-by-point Gaussian maximum-likelihood classifier, and K-means clustering of the Image-100 system are presented. Conclusions reached are that: a better indication of correct classification can be provided by using a test area which contains various cover types of the study area; classification accuracy should be evaluated considering both the percentages of correct classification and error of commission; supervised classification approaches are better than K-means clustering; Gaussian distribution maximum likelihood classifier is better than Single-cell and Multi-cell Signature Acquisition Options of the Image-100 system; and in order to obtain a high classification accuracy in a large and heterogeneous crop area, using Gaussian maximum-likelihood classifier, homogeneous spectral subclasses of the study crop should be created to derive training statistics.

Dejesusparada, N.↗

Measuring Chemical Likeness of Stars with Relevant Scaled Component Analysis

Identification of chemically similar stars using elemental abundances is core to many pursuits within Galactic archeology. However, measuring the chemical likeness of stars using abundances directly is limited by systematic imprints of imperfect synthetic spectra in abundance derivation. We present a novel data-driven model that is capable of identifying chemically similar stars from spectra alone. We call this relevant scaled component analysis (RSCA). RSCA finds a mapping from stellar spectra to a representation that optimizes recovery of known open clusters. By design, RSCA amplifies factors of chemical abundance variation and minimizes those of nonchemical parameters, such as instrument systematics. The resultant representation of stellar spectra can therefore be used for precise measurements of chemical similarity between stars. We validate RSCA using 185 cluster stars in 22 open clusters in the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment survey. We quantify our performance in measuring chemical similarity using a reference set of 151,145 field stars. We find that our representation identifies known stellar siblings more effectively than stellar-abundance measurements. Using RSCA, 1.8% of pairs of field stars are as similar as birth siblings, compared to 2.3% when using stellar-abundance labels. We find that almost all of the information within spectra leveraged by RSCA fits into a two-dimensional basis, which we link to [Fe/H] and α-element abundances. We conclude that chemical tagging of stars to their birth clusters remains prohibitive. However, using the spectra has noticeable gain, and our approach is poised to benefit from larger data sets and improved algorithm designs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Episodes of terrestrial geologic activity during the past 260 million years - A quantitative approach

Records of major geologic events of the past about 260 Myr including: biologic extinction events, ocean-anoxic and black-shale events, major changes in sea level, major evaporite (salt) deposits, continental flood-basalt eruptions, first-order discontinuities in sea-floor spreading, and major mountain building events, have been aggregated and analyzed with moving-window and spectral techniques that facilitate recognition of clustering and possible cyclicity. Significant clustering of events suggests a model in which changes in rates and directions of sea-floor spreading ('ridge jumps') are associated with episodic rifting, volcanism, mountain building, global sea level and changes in the composition of the earth's atmosphere via the carbon cycle. The geologic data formally show a statistically significant underlying periodicity of 26.6 Myr for the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Phase information suggests that the most recent maximum of the cycle occurred with the last 9 Myr, and may be close to the present time.

Rampino, Michael R.↗

Anion Photoelectron Spectroscopy and Ab Initio Studies of the UF – Anion

A synergistic anion photoelectron spectroscopic and ab initio computational study of photodetachment of UF – is reported. The measurement determined a vertical detachment energy of 0.63(03) eV, which is consistent with a spinor-based relativistic coupled-cluster CCSD(T) value of 0.61 eV. The complex spectral features due to excited electronic states and vibrational progressions of UF are analyzed and assigned with the help of spin–orbit-coupled multireference perturbation theory and spinor-based relativistic coupled-cluster calculations. UF and UF – are confirmed to be dominated by ionic bonding. Furthermore, the usefulness of the spinor CCSD(T) approach is demonstrated.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Causal interaction in high frequency turbulence at the biosphere–atmosphere interface: Structural behavior

High-frequency (e.g., 10 Hz) eddy covariance measurements are typically used to estimate fluxes at the land–atmosphere interface at timescales of 15–60 min. These multivariate data contain information about the interdependency at high frequency between the interacting variables such as wind, humidity, temperature, and CO 2⁠ . We use data at 10 Hz from an eddy covariance instrument located at 25 m above agricultural land in the Midwestern US, which offers an opportunity to move beyond the traditional spectral analyses to explore causal dependency among variables. In this study, we quantify the structure of inter-dependencies of interacting variables at high frequency represented by a directed acyclic graph (DAG). We compare DAGs to investigate changes in structural differences in causal interactions. We then apply a distance-based classification and -means clustering approach to identify the evolution of the causal structure represented by a DAG. Our method selects an unbiased number of clusters of similar structures and characterizes the similarities and differences between them. We explore a range of dynamic behavior using data from a clear sky day and during a solar eclipse in 2017. Our results show well-defined clusters of similar causal dependencies as the system evolves. Furthermore, our approach provides a methodological framework to understand how causal dependence in turbulence manifests in high-frequency data when represented through a DAG.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Randomized Cholesky Preconditioning for Graph Partitioning Applications

A graph is a mathematical representation of a network; we say it consists of a set of vertices, which are connected by edges. Graphs have numerous applications in various fields, as they can model all sorts of connections, processes, or relations. For example, graphs can model intricate transit systems or the human nervous system. However, graphs that are large or complicated become difficult to analyze. This is why there is an increased interest in the area of graph partitioning, reducing the size of the graph into multiple partitions. For example, partitions of a graph representing a social network might help identify clusters of friends or colleagues. Graph partitioning is also a widely used approach to load balancing in parallel computing. The partitioning of a graph is extremely useful to decompose the graph into smaller parts and allow for easier analysis. There are different ways to solve graph partitioning problems. For this work, we focus on a spectral partitioning method which forms a partition based upon the eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian (details presented in Acer, et. al.). This method uses the LOBPCG algorithm to compute these eigenvectors. LOBPCG can be accelerated by an operator called a preconditioner. For this internship, we evaluate a randomized Cholesky (rchol) preconditioner for its effectiveness on graph partitioning problems with LOBPCG. We compare it with two standard preconditioners: Jacobi and Incomplete Cholesky (ichol). This research was conducted from August to December 2021 in conjunction with Sandia National Laboratories.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantum Filtering and Analysis of Multiplicities in Eigenvalue Spectra

Fine-grained spectral properties of quantum Hamiltonians, including both eigenvalues and their multiplicities, provide useful information for characterizing many-body quantum systems as well as for understanding phenomena such as topological order. Extracting such information with small additive error is #BQP-complete in the worst case. In this work, we introduce QFAMES (quantum filtering and analysis of multiplicities in eigenvalue spectra), a quantum algorithm that efficiently identifies clusters of closely spaced dominant eigenvalues and determines their multiplicities under physically motivated assumptions, which allows us to bypass worst-case complexity barriers. QFAMES also enables the estimation of observable expectation values within targeted energy clusters, providing a powerful tool for studying quantum phase transitions and other physical properties. We validate the effectiveness of QFAMES through numerical demonstrations, including its applications to characterizing quantum phases in the transverse-field Ising model and estimating the ground-state degeneracy of a topologically ordered phase in the two-dimensional toric code model. We also generalize QFAMES to the setting of mixed initial states. Our approach offers rigorous theoretical guarantees and significant advantages over existing subspace-based quantum spectral analysis methods, particularly in terms of the sample complexity and the ability to resolve degeneracies.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Automated Classification of Thermal Infrared Spectra Using Self-organizing Maps

Existing and planned space missions to a variety of planetary and satellite surfaces produce an ever increasing volume of spectral data. Understanding the scientific informational content in this large data volume is a daunting task. Fortunately various statistical approaches are available to assess such data sets. Here we discuss an automated classification scheme based on Kohonen Self-organizing maps (SOM) we have developed. The SUM process produces an output layer were spectra having similar properties lie in close proximity to each other. One major effort is partitioning this output layer into appropriate regions. This is prefonned by defining dosed regions based upon the strength of the boundaries between adjacent cells in the SOM output layer. We use the Davies-Bouldin index as a measure of the inter-class similarities and intra-class dissimilarities that determines the optimum partition of the output layer, and hence number of SOM clusters. This allows us to identify the natural number of clusters formed from the spectral data. Mineral spectral libraries prepared at Arizona State University (ASU) and John Hopkins University (JHU) are used to test and evaluate the classification scheme. We label the library sample spectra in a hierarchical scheme with class, subclass, and mineral group names. We use a portion of the spectra to train the SOM, i.e. produce the output layer, while the remaining spectra are used to test the SOM. The test spectra are presented to the SOM output layer and assigned membership to the appropriate cluster. We then evaluate these assignments to assess the scientific meaning and accuracy of the derived SOM classes as they relate to the labels. We demonstrate that unsupervised classification by SOMs can be a useful component in autonomous systems designed to identify mineral species from reflectance and emissivity spectra in the therrnal IR.

Roush, Ted L.↗

FY 2026 Midyear Report: Seismic Monitoring of Underground Vibration Sources Using Distributed Acoustic Sensing and Seismometers

Safeguards-relevant temporal changes in underground facilities can be observed using geophysical monitoring techniques. Seismic waves, in particular, provide valuable insights into subsurface activities and can serve as an important tool for detecting anomalous events that may indicate containment breaches at geological repositories. This midyear report summarizes ongoing efforts to automatically and rapidly detect and locate anomalous vibration signals that could be indicative of potential containment breaches. Previous work during FY25 focused on compiling continuous seismic datasets from two underground sites and developing a database of continuous waveforms and ground-truth event data derived from multiple sensing modalities. Building on this foundation, we are adapting anomaly detection and geolocation algorithms to explore methods for monitoring underground activities using two relatively low-maintenance sensing technologies: a dense surface geophone array deployed at the Pleasant Gap mine in Pennsylvania, and a three-dimensional fiber-optic cable array for distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) installed in the subsurface at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota. This report summarizes work conducted during the first two quarters of FY26, during which we refined a dynamic power spectral density (PSD)-based detector, applied it independently to each geophone station, and then combined the per‑station detections with density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) to cluster events and produce spatial maps over a nine‑day interval. In addition, we outline plans for a field trial at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico to compare traditional seismic monitoring approaches with DAS techniques and to evaluate the benefits of combined data analysis. Activities during the past two quarters have included the preparation and submission of a Field Test Plan to WIPP for approval, as well as submission to headquarters for review and feedback.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Revealing the Chemical Bonding in Adatom Arrays via Machine Learning of Hyperspectral Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy Data

The adatom arrays on surfaces offer an ideal playground to explore the mechanisms of chemical bonding via changes in the local electronic tunneling spectra. While this information is readily available in hyperspectral scanning tunneling spectroscopy data, its analysis has been considerably impeded by a lack of suitable analytical tools. Here we develop a machine learning based workflow combining supervised feature identification in the spatial domain and unsupervised clustering in the energy domain to reveal the details of structure-dependent changes of the electronic structure in adatom arrays on the Co 3 Sn 2 S 2 cleaved surface. This approach, in combination with first-principles calculations, provides insight for using artificial neural networks to detect adatoms and classifies each based on their local neighborhood comprised of other adatoms. These structurally classified adatoms are further spectrally deconvolved. The unexpected inhomogeneity of electronic structures among adatoms in similar configurations is unveiled using this method, suggesting there is not a single atomic species of adatoms, but rather multiple types of adatoms on the Co 3 Sn 2 S 2 surface. This is further supported by a slight contrast difference in the images (or slight size variation) of the topography of the adatoms.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Gas-rich dwarf galaxies in dense and sparse environments

Dwarf irregular galaxies (generically labelled Im for the present purposes) pose an enigma to students of galaxy evolution. In nearby groups and the Virgo cluster, Im galaxies are at least as abundant as spiral galaxies, and their low surface brightnesses and high gas-to-stars ratios suggest that (at least in the stochastic self-propagating star formation scenario) there should be significant numbers of HI clouds with masses approaching 10(exp 8) solar mass which have undergone very little or no star formation. To date, however, no clouds with so little star formation that they would not be recognized as Im galaxies on high-quality photographic plates have been identified. There have been suggestions that such dwarfs may be tidally disrupted in regions of high galactic density, but may be prevalent in low density regions. We offer data from three parallel programs relevant to this issue. (1) A large number of Im galaxies throughout the Local Supercluster have been mapped in the HI spectral line using the Arecibo Radiotelescope, and we can establish the frequency with which HI disks much more extended than their optically visible portions are found. (2) Our extensive mapping of spiral and dwarf galaxies in the Virgo cluster allows us to set stringent limits on the density of star-free Hi clouds in that cluster. (3) We have conducted a sampling of the void in the distribution of galaxies toward the super galactic pole, optimized for finding low-mass HI clouds at redshifts out to approximately 2000 km/s.

Hoffman, G. Lyle↗