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At least 1,081 records · Page 60

Measurements of multiplicity fluctuations of identified hadrons in inelastic proton–proton interactions at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron

Measurements of multiplicity fluctuations of identified hadrons produced in inelastic p+p interactions at 31, 40, 80, and 158 $\text {Ge}\text {V}/c$ beam momentum are presented. Three different measures of multiplicity fluctuations are used: the scaled variance $\omega $ and strongly intensive measures $\Sigma $ and $\Delta $. These fluctuation measures involve second and first moments of joint multiplicity distributions. Data analysis is preformed using the Identity method which corrects for incomplete particle identification. Strongly intensive quantities are calculated in order to allow for a direct comparison to corresponding results on nucleus–nucleus collisions. The results for different hadron types are shown as a function of collision energy. A comparison with predictions of string-resonance Monte-Carlo models: Epos, Smash and Venus, is also presented.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

RAPID

Parallel computer code for the simulator for dynamics of power systems which has the capability to initiate the system and create different faults for the dynamic analysis. The code is based on time-parallel method (Parareal) with Adaptive Method Reduction (AMR). The coarse solvers for the Parareal algorithm include several Semi Analytical Solution methods. Also, Integrated simulation of coupled transmission and distribution systems can be studied.

Simunovic, Srdjan [Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL),↗

A Bayesian Calibration Framework with Embedded Model Error for Model Diagnostics

We study the utility and performance of a Bayesian model error embedding construction in the context of molecular dynamics modeling of metallic alloys, where we embed model error terms in existing interatomic potential model parameters. To alleviate the computational burden of this approach, we propose a framework combining likelihood approximation and Gaussian process surrogates. Here we leverage sparse Gaussian process techniques to construct a hierarchy of increasingly accurate but more expensive surrogate models. This hierarchy is then exploited by multilevel Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to efficiently sample from the target posterior distribution. We illustrate the utility of this approach by calibrating an interatomic potential model for a family of gold-copper alloys. In particular, this case study highlights effective means for dealing with computational challenges with Bayesian model error embedding in large-scale physical models, and the utility of embedded model error for model diagnostics.

Bayesian inference↗

Application of Liquid Metals in Nano Particles and Vitrimers (Summer Quarter Report)

The melting points of pure elemental metals can be decreased by forming liquid metal alloys at the eutectic point composition. Utilizing this unique characteristic, the desirable properties of electron rich metals can be incorporated into new materials and applications. Liquid metals can be made into nanoparticles (LMNP), allowing for increased surface areas of a highly tunable and functional metal oxide skins. Careful characterization is important for understanding LMNP with many methods available to not only investigate size and distribution, but also surface chemistries. This is a review article written to fulfill the UO KCGIP Masters Program requirements.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Compressed Natural Gas Component Leak Frequency Estimation

The frequency of unintended releases in a compressed natural gas system is an important aspect of the system quantitative risk assessment. The frequencies for possible release scenarios, along with engineering models, are utilized to quantify the risks for compressed natural gas facilities. This report documents component leakage frequencies representative of compressed natural gas components that were estimated as a function of the normalized leak size. A Bayesian statistical method was used which results in leak frequency distributions for each component which represent variation and uncertainty in the leak frequency. The analysis shows that there is high uncertainty in the estimated leak frequencies due to sparsity in compressed natural gas data. These leak frequencies may still be useful in compressed natural gas system risk assessments, as long as this high uncertainty is acknowledged and considered appropriately.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

Towards Realistic and High Fidelity Models for Nuclear Reactor Power Synthesis Simulation with Self-Powered Neutron Detectors

As presented in this report, a weighting function–based inferencing method is being applied to synthesize the power distribution in next-generation and university research reactors based on simulated self power neutron detector (SPND) responses. The overall goal is to assess the impacts of sensor uncertainty and true power distribution perturbations on the error in the synthesized power distribution. Regarding sensor uncertainty, the NuScale Small Modular Reactor (SMR) and the Westinghouse AP1000 serve as testbeds for analyzing the impact of varying the sensor uncertainty, as well as varying the number of sensors per sensor string in the reactor core. The reactor models are informed by Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) neutron flux tallies. For the NuScale SMR and Westinghouse AP1000, the SPND response functions (i.e., the response of the SPNDs to individual segments of fuel) were determined homogeneously. Regarding an analysis of power distribution perturbation detection, the Texas A&M Testing, Research, Isotopes, General Atomics Reactor (TAMU TRIGA) reactor was used as a demonstration case with one particular arrangement of SPNDs; the response functions for this reactor model were determined heterogeneously, making this a uniquely high-fidelity demonstration of perturbation detection. Finally, SPND models generated in the Geometry and Tracking 4 (Geant4) code have been generated and tested for comparison with traditionally implemented analytical SPND models, with the intent for Geant4 integration with the full methodological framework. SPND current outputs as a function of distance from some fuel assembly segment in the NuScale SMR are compared with the analytically determined currents. Results from the sensor uncertainty simulations for the NuScale SMR and AP1000 indicate that the average error in the inferred power distribution on the fuel assembly segment level is reasonably low, being slightly less than the random uncertainty applied to all respective SPNDs in both cores. For example, if all SPNDs in the core have a random uncertainty of 5%, then the corresponding fuel assembly segment level error (i.e. difference between the true and inferred local power) is ~2–3%. However, the maximum error in the inferred power distribution on the fuel assembly segment level can be considerably high (>15%) when SPND random uncertainties start to exceed ~3%. In general, the average and maximum errors in the inferred power distribution were slightly higher in the AP1000 as opposed to the NuScale SMR for the sensor string configurations considered herein. Another result determined from analysis of the sensor uncertainty simulations was that increasing the number of SPNDs per string does not clearly reduce inferred power distribution error and can in fact make the error large in some cases; however, this assessment may skewed due to imposed iteration limits. Results from the perturbation detection demonstration using the high-fidelity TAMU TRIGA model indicate that, given the arrangement of 17 SPND strings and 4 SPNDs per string considered herein, there is a clear, provable ability to infer a localized Gaussian-type peak perturbation in the 3D power distribution. Such a perturbation was detected with an average fuel assembly segment level error of 0.19%, and the general visualization of the detected perturbation clearly indicates that the magnitude and shape were appropriately resolved. Finally, the electrical current output generated by the Geant4 modeled SPND indicates significant magnitude differences than the analytically modeled SPND, demonstrating the need for accurate SPND models which account for finite sensor geometry effects to inform the power synthesis work described herein.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Waves of Electric Charge Generated by Pulse Corona of Alternating Polarity

The project contributes to DoE Office of Science program “Opportunities in Frontier Plasma Science” by providing plasma science experiments at the Princeton Collaborative Research Facility (PCRF) – the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The research consisted of - extensive experimental/simulation studies of a pulse corona discharge pattern and dynamics performed at the University of Notre Dame; - non-intrusive measurements of electric field distribution and dynamics performed at PCRF by the method employing Electric Field-Induced Second Harmonic Generation (EFISH); and - analysis of the data acquired.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

LandScan Mosaic

The LandScan program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), in collaboration with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), continues to deliver the most accurate and up to date global, high resolution gridded population data. Additionally, the latest advancements in the LandScan HD methodology led to reduced latency in development of rapid updates for geopolitical events. With momentum towards reporting more up to date population estimates, feedback from the user community expressed interest in reporting population estimates in ranges - whether to express a level of uncertainty or confirm to leadership and stakeholders the modeled data are estimates. Building upon the need to understand uncertainty or confidence in the modeled data and report ranges at the global scale, LandScan Mosaic was developed. LandScan Mosaic represents the next generation of high-resolution population modeling, building upon the established success of previous LandScan HD iterations. While LandScan HD employed a deterministic big data fusion approach, LandScan Mosaic enhances this methodology by integrating advanced machine learning techniques to impute missing, yet crucial, population model parameters. This advancement allows for probabilistic modeling of building occupancy and population distribution, incorporating uncertainty quantification through Monte Carlo sampling methods. By combining big data fusion with machine learning-driven imputation and stochastic modeling, LandScan Mosaic provides a more comprehensive and robust representation of population dynamics. LandScan Mosaic will be following the in the footsteps of its longstanding counterpart LandScan Global and releasing a global gridded population raster, at the 3-arcsecond resolution. This technical report documents the current stage of development of LandScan Mosaic, detailing the methodologies and data sources behind the modeling. Stakeholders are encouraged to use this document as an authoritative reference for insight into Mosaic’s data development processes. However, readers should note that LandScan Mosaic remains in a late-stage research and development phase, and methodologies and data presented here are subject to refinements ahead of the anticipated global release in Summer 2025. Feedback and inquiries from users and stakeholders are welcomed as we continue to refine and enhance this important population resource.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Subcellular Feature-Based Classification of α and β Cells Using Soft X-ray Tomography

The dysfunction of α and β cells in pancreatic islets can lead to diabetes. Many questions remain on the subcellular organization of islet cells during the progression of disease. Existing three-dimensional cellular mapping approaches face challenges such as time-intensive sample sectioning and subjective cellular identification. To address these challenges, we have developed a subcellular feature-based classification approach, which allows us to identify α and β cells and quantify their subcellular structural characteristics using soft X-ray tomography (SXT). We observed significant differences in whole-cell morphological and organelle statistics between the two cell types. Additionally, we characterize subtle biophysical differences between individual insulin and glucagon vesicles by analyzing vesicle size and molecular density distributions, which were not previously possible using other methods. These sub-vesicular parameters enable us to predict cell types systematically using supervised machine learning. We also visualize distinct vesicle and cell subtypes using Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP) embeddings, which provides us with an innovative approach to explore structural heterogeneity in islet cells. This methodology presents an innovative approach for tracking biologically meaningful heterogeneity in cells that can be applied to any cellular system.

3D cell mapping↗

Rheological Properties of Small-Molecular Liquids at High Shear Strain Rates

Molecular-scale understanding of rheological properties of small-molecular liquids and polymers is critical to optimizing their performance in practical applications such as lubrication and hydraulic fracking. We combine nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations with two unsupervised machine learning methods: principal component analysis (PCA) and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE), to extract the correlation between the rheological properties and molecular structure of squalane sheared at high strain rates (10 6 –10 10 s -1 ) for which substantial shear thinning is observed under pressures P ϵ 0.1–955 MPa at 293 K. Intramolecular atom pair orientation tensors of 435 × 6 dimensions and the intermolecular atom pair orientation tensors of 61 × 6 dimensions are reduced and visualized using PCA and t-SNE to assess the changes in the orientation order during the shear thinning of squalane. Dimension reduction of intramolecular orientation tensors at low pressures P = 0.1,100 MPa reveals a strong correlation between changes in strain rate and the orientation of the side-backbone atom pairs, end-backbone atom pairs, short backbone-backbone atom pairs, and long backbone-backbone atom pairs associated with a squalane molecule. At high pressures P ≥ 400 MPa, the orientation tensors are better classified by these different pair types rather than strain rate, signaling an overall limited evolution of intramolecular orientation with changes in strain rate. Dimension reduction also finds no clear evidence of the link between shear thinning at high pressures and changes in the intermolecular orientation. The alignment of squalane molecules is found to be saturated over the entire range of rates during which squalane exhibits substantial shear thinning at high pressures.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Star–Galaxy Image Separation with Computationally Efficient Gaussian Process Classification

Abstract We introduce a novel method for discerning optical telescope images of stars from those of galaxies using Gaussian processes (GPs). Although applications of GPs often struggle in high-dimensional data modalities such as optical image classification, we show that a low-dimensional embedding of images into a metric space defined by the principal components of the data suffices to produce high-quality predictions from real large-scale survey data. We develop a novel method of GP classification hyperparameter training that scales approximately linearly in the number of image observations, which allows for application of GP models to large-size Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program data. In our experiments, we evaluate the performance of a principal component analysis embedded GP predictive model against other machine-learning algorithms, including a convolutional neural network and an image photometric morphology discriminator. Our analysis shows that our methods compare favorably with current methods in optical image classification while producing posterior distributions from the GP regression that can be used to quantify object classification uncertainty. We further describe how classification uncertainty can be used to efficiently parse large-scale survey imaging data to produce high-confidence object catalogs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Type Ia Supernova Growth-rate Measurement with LSST Simulations: Intrinsic Scatter Systematics

Measurement of the growth rate of structures (fσ 8 ) with Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) will improve our understanding of the nature of dark energy and enable tests of general relativity. In this paper, we generate simulations of the 10 yr SN Ia data set of the Rubin-LSST survey, including a correlated velocity field from an N-body simulation and realistic models of SNe Ia properties and their correlations with host-galaxy properties. We find, similar to SN Ia analyses that constrain the dark energy equation-of-state parameters w 0 w a , that constraints on fσ 8 can be biased depending on the intrinsic scatter of SNe Ia. While for the majority of intrinsic scatter models we recover fσ 8 with a precision of ∼13%–14%, for the most realistic dust-based model, we find that the presence of non-Gaussianities in Hubble diagram residuals leads to a bias on fσ 8 of ∼ −20%. When trying to correct for the dust-based intrinsic scatter, we find that the propagation of the uncertainty on the model parameters does not significantly increase the error on fσ 8 . We also find that while the main component of the error budget of fσ 8 is the statistical uncertainty (>75% of the total error budget), the systematic error budget is dominated by the uncertainty on the damping parameter, σ u , that gives an empirical description of the effect of redshift space distortions on the velocity power spectrum. Our results motivate a search for new methods to correct for the non-Gaussian distribution of the Hubble diagram residuals, as well as an improved modeling of the damping parameter.

Carreres, Bastien [Duke Univ., Durham, NC (United ↗

A Biochar Classification System and Associated Test Methods

In this chapter, a biochar classification system related to its use as soil amendment is proposed. This document builds upon previous work: “Standardized product definition and product testing guidelines for biochar that is used in soil” (IBI, 2015) (aka IBI Biochar Standards) and “Guidelines for biochar production for a sustainable production of biochar: European Biochar Certificate” (EBC, 2012-2022) (aka EBC Biochar Standards). It should be noted that the EBC guidelines constitute the basis for biochar certification through the independent government accredited inspection agency, Bio.Inspecta AG. The present document constrains its scope to materials with properties that satisfy the criteria for biochar as defined by either the IBI Biochar Standards or the EBC Standards (Annex I), as required by the current methodologies developed for accounting carbon credits associated with the biochar use in the voluntary market (e.g., Verra, Puro.Earth). The classification system envisions enabling stakeholders and commercial entities to (i) identify the most suitable biochar to fulfil the requirements for a particular soil and/or land-use, (ii) distinguish the application of biochar for specific niches (e.g., soilless agriculture), and (iii) assess the climate-impact value based on biochar properties, production efficiency, and alternative feedstock uses. It is based on the best current knowledge and will need to be improved as new data and knowledge become available in the scientific literature.

biochar, climate change impacts, soil amendment, c↗

Comparison of Electromagnetic Transient and Phasor-based Simulation for the Stability of Grid-Forming-Inverter-based Microgrids

The increasing interest in studying feeder-level, inverter-based microgrids requires appropriate simulation methods that can effectively simulate the dynamics of distribution feeders that typically have thousands of nodes. To examine the accuracy of phasor-based simulation for the stability of feeder-level, inverter-based microgrids, a comparative study between electromagnetic transient (EMT) and phasor-based simulation was conducted. Case studies of a two-inverter small microgrid and a modified version of the IEEE 34-Node Test System that has seven grid-forming inverters show that phasor-based simulation agrees well with EMT simulation when the P-f droop gains of grid-forming inverter controllers are within normal ranges. However, under extremely high P-f droop gains, phasor-based simulation can result in over-optimistic stability results. This study provides insight into the applicability of phasor-based simulation for the stability of feeder-level, inverter-based microgrids.

Du, Wei↗

Modeling and Simulation of Inrush Currents in Harmonic Domain

Modeling and simulation capabilities are critical to the stability analysis and evaluation of power distribution systems, with respect to the emphasis on resiliency, microgrids, and distributed energy resources. In this paper, a computational method in the harmonic domain is proposed for the periodic steady-state analysis of the nonlinear inrush current phenomenon. The efficient inrush calculation facilitates the predictions of current amplitudes for the power system operation and control. To demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency, simulation results in the harmonic domain are compared with results from PSCAD in an electromagnetic timescale, as well as the authors’ previous works in the frequency-domain. Impacts of the settings of both offset flux and interested harmonic order are discussed. In addition, within the proposed harmonic-domain method, a general approach that utilizes the discrete Fourier transform to obtain the response of a nonlinear device from a stimulus represented in the frequency-domain is utilized. This method can also be extended to perform the transient analysis in future, using trapezoidal rule for the integration.

Xie, Jing↗

Thermal feedback coupling in a transient Monte Carlo high-order/low-order scheme

Transient simulations of nuclear systems face the computational challenge of resolving both space and time during reactivity changes. A common strategy for tackling this issue is to split the neutron flux into shape and amplitude functions. This split can be solved with high- order/low-order methods. While this multi-fidelity approach has traditionally been reserved for deterministic methods, it is also possible to implement in Monte Carlo as an efficient alternative to Dynamic Monte Carlo. This work implements the frequency transform method with thermal feedback in high-order/low-order Monte Carlo by blending static coupling methods such as single-batch Monte Carlo, with a simple thermal-fluids calculation. While previous work focused solely on prescribed transients, the addition of time-dependent thermal-fluids allows transients to be self-propagating. Tests were run in a fluids-initiated transient to showcase the basic functionalities of this methodology. Preliminary results behave as expected, paving the way for studying more sophisticated thermal-fluids coupling methods. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Physics-Based Machine Learning Methods for U-235 Forensics Signatures

Signatures of low-intensity U-235 sources have been recently studied by utilizing a variety of machine learning (ML) classifiers using features derived from gamma spectral measurements collected under structured campaigns. Several ML classifiers, such as ensemble of tress and classification trees, revealed misleadingly-optimistic training error due to over-fitting, and furthermore, their performance is not directly relatable to the physical properties due to their data-driven, opaque designs. We present a regression-based ML method that first estimates the inverse distance to the source and then utilizes a threshold to infer its presence, by representing the background as a source located at an infinite distance. For the inverse distance estimation, we study the ensemble of trees and Gaussian process regression methods, and a hyper parameter auto-tuning and selection method that employs five regression estimators. These methods avoid the over-fitting observed in several ML classifiers, while providing the classification error nearly comparable to them based on independent test data. Their error is directly related to estimates of the inverse physical distance to source, and the precision of error determines the seperability property that determines the false alarm and missed detection rates. The property of monotonic decrease of the source strength with increasing detector distance combined with Poisson distribution of measurements is utilized to analytically validate these methods by deriving the generalization equations of underlying regression methods.

Rao, Nageswara↗