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At least 1,063 records · Page 59

Development of Jet Noise Power Spectral Laws

High-quality jet noise spectral data measured at the Aero-Acoustic Propulsion Laboratory (AAPL) at NASA Glenn is used to develop jet noise scaling laws. A FORTRAN algorithm was written that provides detailed spectral prediction of component jet noise at user-specified conditions. The model generates quick estimates of the jet mixing noise and the broadband shock-associated noise (BBSN) in single-stream, axis-symmetric jets within a wide range of nozzle operating conditions. Shock noise is emitted when supersonic jets exit a nozzle at imperfectly expanded conditions. A successful scaling of the BBSN allows for this noise component to be predicted in both convergent and convergent-divergent nozzles. Configurations considered in this study consisted of convergent and convergent- divergent nozzles. Velocity exponents for the jet mixing noise were evaluated as a function of observer angle and jet temperature. Similar intensity laws were developed for the broadband shock-associated noise in supersonic jets. A computer program called sJet was developed that provides a quick estimate of component noise in single-stream jets at a wide range of operating conditions. A number of features have been incorporated into the data bank and subsequent scaling in order to improve jet noise predictions. Measurements have been converted to a lossless format. Set points have been carefully selected to minimize the instability-related noise at small aft angles. Regression parameters have been scrutinized for error bounds at each angle. Screech-related amplification noise has been kept to a minimum to ensure that the velocity exponents for the jet mixing noise remain free of amplifications. A shock-noise-intensity scaling has been developed independent of the nozzle design point. The computer program provides detailed narrow-band spectral predictions for component noise (mixing noise and shock associated noise), as well as the total noise. Although the methodology is confined to single streams, efforts are underway to generate a data bank and algorithm applicable to dual-stream jets. Shock-associated noise in high-powered jets such as military aircraft can benefit from these predictions.

Khavaran, Abbas↗

Smooth Pursuit Saccade Amplitude Modulation During Exposure to Microgravity

Russian investigators have reported changes in pursuit tracking of a vertically moving point stimulus during space flight. Early in microgravity, changes were manifested by decreased eye movement amplitude (undershooting) and the appearance of correction saccades. As the flight progressed, pursuit of the moving point stimulus deteriorated while associated saccadic movements were unchanged. Immediately postflight there was an improved execution of active head movements indicating that the deficiencies in pursuit function noted in microgravity may be of central origin. In contrast, tests of two cosmonauts showed that horizontal and vertical smooth pursuit were unchanged inflight. However, results of corresponding saccadic tasks showed a tendency toward the overshooting of a horizontal target early inflight with high accuracy developing later inflight, accompanied by an increased saccade velocity and a trend toward decreased saccade latency. Based on these equivocal results, we have further investigated the effects of space flight on the smooth pursuit mechanism during and after short duration flight, and postflight on returning MIR crewmembers. Sinusoidal target movement was presented horizontally at frequencies of 0.33 and 1.0 Hz. Subjects were asked to perform two trials for each stimulus combination: (1) moving eyes-only (EO) and (2) moving eyes and head (EH) with the target motion. Peak amplitude was 30 deg for 0.33 Hz trials and 15 deg for the 1.0 Hz trials. The relationship between saccade amplitude and peak velocity were plotted as a main sequence for each phase of flight, and linear regression analysis allowed us to determine the slope of each main sequence plot. The linear slopes were then combined for each flight phase for each individual subject. The main sequence for both EO and EH trials at both the 0.33 and 1.0 Hz frequencies during flight for the short duration flyers showed a reduction in saccade velocity and amplitude when compared to the preflight main sequence . This difference in the regression slopes between flight phase, head/eye condition (EO or EH), and pursuit target frequency was observed across all subjects (statistically significant at the p<0.02, df= 2). It is interesting to note that postflight for the short duration flyers there was an immediate recovery to the preflight main sequence across all trials. There were no significant differences observed between the preflight slopes for either head movement condition (EO vs. EH). When the immediate postflight (R+O) regression slopes were compared with the preflight slopes, there was a tendency (not significant) for both saccade amplitude and peak velocity to increase during the postflight testing. This tendency had vanished by R+ 1. Of particular interest was the redistribution of saccades during the latter stages of the flight and immediately postflight in the EO condition. At the 1.0 Hz frequency the saccades tended to be clustered near the lowest target velocity. It was also interesting to note that gaze performance (eye in skull + head in space) was consistently better during the EH condition; a finding also observed by our Russian colleagues. As the results of the long duration flight become available we expect that they will not only show that postflight effects will be similar to those observed during the short duration flights, but will also last for a greater period of time following flight. It is not clear what mechanism is responsible for the decreased peak saccadic velocity during flight unless the change is related to the control of retinal slip. For example, it is possible that saccades will tend to initially undershoot their targets by a small percentage and these saccades are then followed, if vision is available, by a small augmenting corrective saccade. It has been postulated that the functional significance of this undershooting tendency is to maintain the spatial representation of the target on the same side of the fovea (as opposedo racing across the fovea) and hence in the same cerebral hemisphere that initiated the primary saccade thus minimizing delays caused by an intra-hemispheric transfer of information . One could also speculate that with saccade velocities greater than normal, additional corrective saccades would be required to bring the target back on the fovea. A less plausible explanation of our findings could be fatigue. Yet it seems unlikely that our subjects would show lower velocities on all inflight test days while showing increased saccade velocities immediately following space flight where fatigue is usually the greatest. Finally, the redistribution effect noted late inflight is likely caused by adaptive changes. Overall, corrective saccades appeared to be used in maintaining gaze on target; reducing retinal slip and assisting space travelers in maintaining clear vision throughout the different phases of the space flight.

Reschke, M. F.↗

Autonomous materials discovery driven by Gaussian process regression with inhomogeneous measurement noise and anisotropic kernels

Abstract A majority of experimental disciplines face the challenge of exploring large and high-dimensional parameter spaces in search of new scientific discoveries. Materials science is no exception; the wide variety of synthesis, processing, and environmental conditions that influence material properties gives rise to particularly vast parameter spaces. Recent advances have led to an increase in the efficiency of materials discovery by increasingly automating the exploration processes. Methods for autonomous experimentation have become more sophisticated recently, allowing for multi-dimensional parameter spaces to be explored efficiently and with minimal human intervention, thereby liberating the scientists to focus on interpretations and big-picture decisions. Gaussian process regression (GPR) techniques have emerged as the method of choice for steering many classes of experiments. We have recently demonstrated the positive impact of GPR-driven decision-making algorithms on autonomously-steered experiments at a synchrotron beamline. However, due to the complexity of the experiments, GPR often cannot be used in its most basic form, but rather has to be tuned to account for the special requirements of the experiments. Two requirements seem to be of particular importance, namely inhomogeneous measurement noise (input-dependent or non-i.i.d.) and anisotropic kernel functions, which are the two concepts that we tackle in this paper. Our synthetic and experimental tests demonstrate the importance of both concepts for experiments in materials science and the benefits that result from including them in the autonomous decision-making process.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Dependence of the Normalized Radar Cross Section of Water Waves on Bragg Wavelength-Wind Speed Sensitivity

Measurements of the normalized radar cross section (sigma(sup o)) made by the YSCAT ultrawideband scatterometer during an extended deployment on the Canada Centre for Inland Waters(CCIW) Research Tower located at Lake Ontario are analyzed and compared with anemometer wind measurements to study the sensitivity of (sigma(sup o)) to the wind speed as a function of the Bragg wavelength. This paper concentrates on upwind and downwind azimuth angles in the wind speed range of 4.5-12 m/s. While YSCAT collected measurements of sigma(sup o) at a variety of frequencies and incidence angles, this paper focuses on frequencies of 2.0, 3.05, 5.30, 10.02, and 14.0 GHz and incidence angles within the Bragg regime, 30-50 deg. Adopting a power law model to describe the relationship between sigma(sup o) and wind speed, both wind speed exponents and upwind/downwind (u/d) ratios of sigma(sup o) are found using least squares linear regression. The analysis of the wind speed exponents and u/d ratios show that shorter Bragg wavelengths (Lambda less than 4 cm) are the most sensitive to wind speed and direction. Additionally, vertical polarization (V-pol) sigma(sup o) is shown to be more sensitive to wind speed than horizontal polarization (H-pol) sigma(sup o), while the H-pol u/d ratio is larger than the V-pol u/d ratio.

Long, David G.↗

Cross Inference of Throughput Profiles Using Micro Kernel Network Method

Dedicated network connections are being increasingly deployed in cloud, centralized and edge computing and data infrastructures, whose throughput profiles are critical indicators of the underlying data transfer performance. Due to the cost and disruptions to physical infrastructures, network emulators, such as Mininet, are often used to generate measurements needed to estimate throughput profiles, typically expressed as a function of the connection round trip time. The profiles estimated using measurements from such emulated networks are usually inaccurate for high bandwidth and high latency connections, since they do not accurately reflect the critical network transport dynamics mainly due to computing and memory constraints of the host. We present a machine learning (ML) method to estimate the throughput profiles using emulation measurements to closely match the testbed and production network profiles. In particular, we propose a micro Kernel Network (mKN) that provides baseline throughput measurements on the host running Mininet emulations, which are used to learn a regression map that converts them to the corresponding testbed measurement estimates. Once initially learned, this map is applied to measurements from subsequent network emulations on the same host. We present experimental measurements to illustrate this approach, and derive generalization equations for the proposed mKN-ML method. Using a four-site scenario emulation, we show the effectiveness of this method in providing accurate concave throughput profiles from inaccurate convex or non-smooth ones indicated by Mininet emulation.

Rao, Nageswara↗

Spectroscopic Probe Molecule Selection Using Quantum Theory, First-Principles Calculations, and Machine Learning

Probe molecule vibrational spectra have a long history of being used to characterize materials including metals, oxides, metal-organic frameworks, and even human proteins. Furthermore, recent advances in machine learning have enabled computationally generated spectra to aid in detailed characterization of complex surfaces with probe molecules. Despite widespread use of probe molecules, the science of probe molecule selection is underdeveloped. Here, we develop physical concepts, including orbital interaction energy and the energy overlap integral, to explain and predict the ability of probe molecules to discriminate structural descriptors. We resolve the crystal orbital overlap population (COOP) to specific molecular orbitals and quantify their bonding character, which directly influences vibrational frequencies. Using only a single adsorbate calculation from density function theory (DFT), we compute the interaction energy of individual adsorbate molecular orbitals with adsorption site atomic orbitals across many different sites. Combining the molecular orbital resolved COOP and changes in orbital interaction energy enables probe molecule selection for improved discrimination of various sites. We demonstrate these concepts by comparing the predicted effectiveness of carbon monoxide (CO), nitric oxide (NO), and ethylene (C 2 H 4 ) to probe Pt adsorption sites. Finally, using a previously developed machine learning framework, we show that models trained on hundreds of thousand C 2 H 4 spectra, computed from DFT, which regress surface binding-type and generalized coordination number (GCN), outperform those trained using CO and NO spectra. Lastly, a python package, pDOS_overlap, for implementing the electron density based analysis on any combination of adsorbates and materials, is also made available.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗

A Conditional Autoencoder for Galaxy Photometric Parameter Estimation

Astronomical photometric surveys routinely image billions of galaxies, and traditionally infer the parameters of a parametric model for each galaxy. This approach has served us well, but the computational expense of deriving a full posterior probability distribution function is a challenge for increasingly ambitious surveys. In this paper, we use deep learning methods to characterize galaxy images, training a conditional autoencoder on mock data. The autoencoder can reconstruct and denoise galaxy images via a latent space engineered to include semantically meaningful parameters, such as brightness, location, size, and shape. Our model recovers galaxy fluxes and shapes on mock data with a lower variance than the Hyper Suprime-Cam photometry pipeline, and returns reasonable answers even for inputs outside the range of its training data. When applied to data in the training range, the regression errors on all extracted parameters are nearly unbiased with a variance near the Cramr-Rao bound.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Targeted curation of the gut microbial gene content modulating human cardiovascular disease

Despite the promise of the gut microbiome to predict human health, few studies expose the molecular-scale processes underpinning such forecasts. We mined over 200,000 gut-derived genomes from cultivated and uncultivated microbial lineages to inventory the gut microorganisms and their gene content that control trimethylamine-induced cardiovascular disease. We assigned an atherosclerotic profile to the 6,341 microbial genomes that encoded metabolisms associated with heart disease, creating the Methylated Amine Gene Inventory of Catabolism database (MAGICdb). From microbiome gene expression data sets, we demonstrate that MAGICdb enhanced the recovery of disease-relevant genes and identified the most active microorganisms, unveiling future therapeutic targets. From the feces of healthy and diseased subjects, we show that MAGICdb predicted cardiovascular disease status as effectively as traditional lipid blood tests. This functional microbiome catalog is a public, exploitable resource, designed to enable a new era of microbiota-based therapeutics and diagnostics

metatranscriptomics↗

Integrating Reservoirs into the Dissolved Organic Matter Versus Primary Production Paradigm: How Does Chlorophyll-$a$ Change Across Dissolved Organic Carbon Concentrations in Reservoirs?

Primary production in freshwater ecosystems is largely a function of light and nutrient availability, both of which have been changing in many lakes and reservoirs in response to anthropogenic pressures. Recent studies focusing on natural lakes have found a hump-shaped response of primary production (sometimes measured as chlorophyll-$a$) to dissolved organic matter (DOM, measured as dissolved organic carbon, DOC), which has both light-absorbing chromophoric properties and DOM-bound nutrients. We used the United States National Lakes Assessment dataset to integrate reservoirs into this paradigm in comparison with natural lakes and assessed the relative differences in the predicted response’s model structure, regression parameter values, and drivers of the chlorophyll-$a$ residuals. We found that chlorophyll-$a$ in reservoirs exhibited a hump-shaped response to DOC, while natural lakes from this dataset were better fit with a linear response, differing from previous studies focused on boreal lakes. Despite this, reservoirs had a greater maximum chlorophyll-a response compared to natural lakes in this study (45.5 versus 33.8 μg L -1 ), which occurred at a lower DOC concentration threshold (18.3 versus 26.4 mg L -1 ) when compared using quadratic models. Reservoirs had lower median light:nutrient values compared to natural lakes, and greater median surface area and total phosphorus (TP), that can all influence the light environment and the peak chlorophyll-a responses. In both reservoirs and natural lakes, chlorophyll-$a$ residuals were most strongly influenced by TP, where TP < 25-30 µg L -1 suppressed chlorophyll-a residuals and higher TP amplified them. Light:nutrient values were somewhat important predictors, and patterns with chlorophyll-$a$ residuals supported previous work showing low light:nutrient values amplified chlorophyll-$a$ responses and higher values suppressed them. In conclusion, quantifying the shape of the response of primary production to DOM quantity and quality as well as the drivers of the residuals, namely TP for lakes and reservoirs in this dataset, will be important for understanding the effects that changes in water quality may have on primary production and freshwater ecosystem processes.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Pressure effects on the relaxation of an excited nitromethane molecule in an argon bath

Classical molecular dynamics simulations were performed to study the relaxation of nitromethane in an Ar bath (of 1000 atoms) at 300 K and pressures 10, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 300, and 400 atm. The molecule was instantaneously excited by statistically distributing 50 kcal/mol among the internal degrees of freedom. At each pressure, 1000 trajectories were integrated for 1000 ps, except for 10 atm, for which the integration time was 5000 ps. The computed ensemble-averaged rotational energy decay is ∼100 times faster than the vibrational energy decay. Both rotational and vibrational decay curves can be satisfactorily fit with the Lendvay-Schatz function, which involves two parameters: one for the initial rate and one for the curvature of the decay curve. The decay curves for all pressures exhibit positive curvature implying the rate slows as the molecule loses energy. The initial rotational relaxation rate is directly proportional to density over the interval of simulated densities, but the initial vibrational relaxation rate decreases with increasing density relative to the extrapolation of the limiting low-pressure proportionality to density. The initial vibrational relaxation rate and curvature are fit as functions of density. For the initial vibrational relaxation rate, the functional form of the fit arises from a combinatorial model for the frequency of nitromethane “simultaneously” colliding with multiple Ar atoms. Roll-off of the initial rate from its low-density extrapolation occurs because the cross section for collision events with L Ar atoms increases with L more slowly than L times the cross section for collision events with one Ar atom. The resulting density-dependent functions of the initial rate and curvature represent, reasonably well, all the vibrational decay curves except at the lowest density for which the functions overestimate the rate of decay. The decay over all gas phase densities is predicted by extrapolating the fits to condensed-phase densities.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

In-Situ Measurement of Hall Thruster Erosion Using a Fiber Optic Regression Probe

One potential life-limiting mechanism in a Hall thruster is the erosion of the ceramic material comprising the discharge channel. This is especially true for missions that require long thrusting periods and can be problematic for lifetime qualification, especially when attempting to qualify a thruster by analysis rather than a test lasting the full duration of the mission. In addition to lifetime, several analytical and numerical models include electrode erosion as a mechanism contributing to enhanced transport properties. However, there is still a great deal of dispute over the importance of erosion to transport in Hall thrusters. The capability to perform an in-situ measurement of discharge channel erosion is useful in addressing both the lifetime and transport concerns. An in-situ measurement would allow for real-time data regarding the erosion rates at different operating points, providing a quick method for empirically anchoring any analysis geared towards lifetime qualification. Erosion rate data over a thruster's operating envelope would also be useful in the modeling of the detailed physics inside the discharge chamber. A recent fundamental sensor development effort has led to a novel regression, erosion, and ablation sensor technology (REAST). The REAST sensor allows for measurement of real-time surface erosion rates at a discrete surface location. The sensor was tested using a linear Hall thruster geometry, which served as a means of producing plasma erosion of a ceramic discharge chamber. The mass flow rate, discharge voltage, and applied magnetic field strength could be varied, allowing for erosion measurements over a broad thruster operating envelope. Results are presented demonstrating the ability of the REAST sensor to capture not only the insulator erosion rates but also changes in these rates as a function of the discharge parameters.

Polzink, Kurt A.↗

Deep learning the properties of inorganic perovskites

We report the ability to accurately and quickly predict the stability of materials and their structural and electronic properties remains a grand challenge in materials science. Density functional theory is widely used as a means of predicting these material properties, but is known to be computationally expensive and scales as the cube of the number of electrons in the material’s unit cell. In this article, for a previously published dataset of inorganic perovskites, we show that a single neural network model using only the elemental properties of the compounds’ constituents can predict lattice constants to within 0.1 Å, heat of formation to within 0.2 eV, and band gaps to within 0.7 eV RMSE. We also compare the performance of the trained network to two widely used regression techniques, namely random forest and Kernel ridge regression, and find that the neural network’s predictions are more accurate for each of the properties. The simultaneous accurate prediction of multiple key properties of technologically relevant materials is promising for rational design and optimization in known and novel chemical spaces.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Characterizing Canopy Openness in Open Forests: Spherical Densiometer and Canopy Photography Are Equivalent but Less Sensitive than Direct Measurements of Solar Radiation

In forest ecosystems, canopy openness affects understory light availability, plant growth, and tree species recruitment, thus shaping future forest composition, structure, and functional diversity. Foresters must correctly and quickly measure canopy openness to meet their management objectives. To help guide the selection of an appropriate method for measuring canopy openness, we compared three common techniques that vary in cost, complexity, and time required for measurements and data processing: smartphone-based hemispherical photography, spherical densiometer measurements, and direct measurements of solar radiation (using AccuPAR ceptometer). We measured canopy openness using these three methods on 28 permanent forest health monitoring plots in pine-oak forests of the Central Pine Barrens of Long Island in New York State. By analysis of variance and regression analyses, we found the three methods (particularly densiometer and hemispherical photographs) yielded broadly equivalent and strongly positively correlated descriptions of canopy openness. The direct measurements of solar radiation seemed to have a greater potential to detect subtle variation in forest understory light. Forest managers may sufficiently characterize canopy openness using quick and cheap methods (e.g., spherical densiometers) and avoid larger costs of devices for direct light measurements (e.g., ceptometers) and the larger data processing times of hemispherical photography.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Classification of bacterial plasmid and chromosome derived sequences using machine learning

Plasmids are important genetic elements that facilitate horizonal gene transfer between bacteria and contribute to the spread of virulence and antimicrobial resistance. Most bacterial genome sequences in the public archives exist in draft form with many contigs, making it difficult to determine if a contig is of chromosomal or plasmid origin. Using a training set of contigs comprising 10,584 chromosomes and 10,654 plasmids from the PATRIC database, we evaluated several machine learning models including random forest, logistic regression, XGBoost, and a neural network for their ability to classify chromosomal and plasmid sequences using nucleotide k-mers as features. Based on the methods tested, a neural network model that used nucleotide 6-mers as features that was trained on randomly selected chromosomal and plasmid subsequences 5kb in length achieved the best performance, outperforming existing out-of-the-box methods, with an average accuracy of 89.38% ± 2.16% over a 10-fold cross validation. The model accuracy can be improved to 92.08% by using a voting strategy when classifying holdout sequences. In both plasmids and chromosomes, subsequences encoding functions involved in horizontal gene transfer—including hypothetical proteins, transporters, phage, mobile elements, and CRISPR elements—were most likely to be misclassified by the model. This study provides a straightforward approach for identifying plasmid-encoding sequences in short read assemblies without the need for sequence alignment-based tools.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

SU-E-J-122: Detecting Treatment-Induced Metabolic Abnormalities in Craniopharyngioma Patients Undergoing Surgery and Proton Therapy

Purpose: To identify treatment-induced defects in the brain of children with craniopharyngioma receiving surgery and proton therapy using fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET). Methods: Forty seven patients were enrolled on a clinical trial for craniopharyngioma with serial imaging and functional evaluations. Proton therapy was delivered using the double-scattered beams with a prescribed dose of 54 Cobalt Gray Equivalent. FDG tracer uptake in each of 63 anatomical regions was computed after warping PET images to a 3D reference template in Talairach coordinates. Regional uptake was deemed significantly low or high if exceeding two standard deviations of normal population from the mean. For establishing the normal ranges, 132 children aged 1–20 years with noncentral nervous system related diseases and normal-appearing cerebral PET scans were analyzed. Age- and gender-dependent regional uptake models were developed by linear regression and confidence intervals were calculated. Results: Most common PET abnormality before proton therapy was significantly low uptake in the frontal lobe, the occipital lobe (particularly in cuneus), the medial and ventral temporal lobe, cingulate gyrus, caudate nuclei, and thalamus. They were related to injury from surgical corridors, tumor mass effect, insertion of a ventricular catheter, and the placement of an Ommaya reservoir. Surprisingly a significantly high uptake was observed in temporal gyri and the parietal lobe. In 13 patients who already completed 18-month PET scans, metabolic abnormalities improved in 11 patients from baseline. One patient had persistent abnormalities. Only one revealed new uptake abnormalities in thalamus, brainstem, cerebellum, and insula. Conclusion: Postoperative FDG PET of craniopharyngioma patients revealed metabolic abnormalities in specific regions of the brain. Proton therapy did not appear to exacerbate these surgery- and tumor-induced defects. In patients with persistent and new abnormalities, continued investigation on clinical symptoms and cognitive outcomes is ongoing to establish the association and predictive values of metabolic imaging.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Using mid-infrared spectroscopy to estimate soil microbial properties at the continental scale

Understanding microbial community properties is critical to improving the predictions of biogeochemical processes for enhancing soil carbon sequestration. Here, in this observational study, mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy and partial least squares regression was used to predict soil microbial and chemical properties from diverse ecosystems across the continental USA. Random calibration and validation demonstrated the prediction potential for soil properties using MIR spectra, with the strongest predictions for microbial respiration, followed by microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen, ß-glucosidase activity, as well as soil chemical properties including organic carbon and total nitrogen. Microbial properties were mainly positively correlated to spectral regions associated with aliphatic C-H groups and C=O stretches of polysaccharides and negatively correlated to quartz and silicate-associated regions. We conclude that MIR spectroscopy can characterize soil microbial functions and be useful for the improvement of continental-scale soil carbon modeling and prediction programs.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Invariant surface elastic properties in FCC metals and their correlation to bulk properties revealed by machine learning methods

In this work, we present a combination of machine-learned models that predicts the surface elastic properties of general free surfaces in face-centered cubic (FCC) metals. These models are built by combining a semi-analytical method based on atomistic simulations to calculate surface properties with the artificial neural network (ANN) method or the boosted regression tree (BRT) method. The latter is also used to link bulk properties and surface orientation to surface properties. The surface elastic properties are represented by their invariants considering plane elasticity within a polar method. The resulting models are shown to accurately predict the surface elastic properties of seven pure FCC metals (Cu, Ni, Ag, Au, Al, Pd, Pt). The BRT model reveals the correlations between bulk and corresponding surface properties in terms of invariants, which can be used to guide the design of complex nano-sized particles, wires and films. Finally, by expressing the surface excess energy density as a function of surface elastic invariants, fast predictions of surface energy as a function of in-plane deformations can be made from these model constructs.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DETECTING ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI USING MULTI-FILTER IMAGING DATA. II. INCORPORATING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

This is the second paper of the series Detecting Active Galactic Nuclei Using Multi-filter Imaging Data. In this paper we review shapelets, an image manipulation algorithm, which we employ to adjust the point-spread function (PSF) of galaxy images. This technique is used to ensure the image in each filter has the same and sharpest PSF, which is the preferred condition for detecting AGNs using multi-filter imaging data as we demonstrated in Paper I of this series. We apply shapelets on Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Wide Survey ugriz images. Photometric parameters such as effective radii, integrated fluxes within certain radii, and color gradients are measured on the shapelets-reconstructed images. These parameters are used by artificial neural networks (ANNs) which yield: photometric redshift with an rms of 0.026 and a regression R-value of 0.92; galaxy morphological types with an uncertainty less than 2 T types for z ≤ 0.1; and identification of galaxies as AGNs with 70% confidence, star-forming/starburst (SF/SB) galaxies with 90% confidence, and passive galaxies with 70% confidence for z ≤ 0.1. The incorporation of ANNs provides a more reliable technique for identifying AGN or SF/SB candidates, which could be very useful for large-scale multi-filter optical surveys that also include a modest set of spectroscopic data sufficient to train neural networks.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗