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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 1,369 records · Page 76
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Life cycle inventory and mass-balance of municipal food waste management systems: Decision support methods beyond the waste hierarchy

Highlights: • Life cycle inventory of 7 food waste management and treatment systems considered. • Energy balance notably different to a systems energy generation. • Food in-sink maceration shown to have volatiles reduced by 31% before digestion. • Mass-balance identifies recycling efficiency and product utility. • Increased landfill diversion confirmed to be critical for a lower emissions profile. - Abstract: When assessing the environmental and human health impact of a municipal food waste (FW) management system waste managers typically rely on the principles of the waste hierarchy; using metrics such as the mass or rate of waste that is ‘prepared for recycling,’ ‘recovered for energy,’ or ‘sent to landfill.’ These metrics measure the collection and sorting efficiency of a waste system but are incapable of determining the efficiency of a system to turn waste into a valuable resource. In this study a life cycle approach was employed using a system boundary that includes the entire waste service provision from collection to safe end-use or disposal. A life cycle inventory of seven waste management systems was calculated, including the first service wide inventory of FW management through kitchen in-sink disposal (food waste disposer). Results describe the mass, energy and water balance of each system along with key emissions profile. It was demonstrated that the energy balance can differ significantly from its’ energy generation, exemplified by mechanical biological treatment, which was the best system for generating energy from waste but only 5{sup th} best for net-energy generation. Furthermore, the energy balance of kitchen in-sink disposal was shown to be reduced because 31% of volatile solids were lost in pre-treatment. The study also confirmed that higher FW landfill diversion rates were critical for reducing many harmful emissions to air and water. Although, mass-balance analysis showed that the alternative end-use of the FW material may still contain high impact pollutants.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2019

Deep Learning Models Augment Analyst Decisions for Event Discrimination

Long-term seismic monitoring networks are well positioned to leverage advances in machine learning because of the abundance of labeled training data that curated event catalogs provide. In this study, we explore the use of Convolutional and Recurrent Neural Networks to accomplish discrimination of explosive and tectonic sources for local distances. Using a 5-year event catalog generated by the University of Utah Seismograph Stations we train models to produce automated event labels using 90 s event spectrograms from 3-component and single-channel sensors. Both network architectures are able to replicate analyst labels above 98%. Most commonly, model error is the result of label error (70% of cases). Accounting for mislabeled events (~1% of the catalog) model accuracy for both models increases to above 99%. Finally, classification accuracy remains above 98% for shallow tectonic events, indicating that spectral characteristics controlled by event depth do not play a dominant role in event discrimination.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Systematic benchmarking demonstrates large language models have not reached the diagnostic accuracy of traditional rare-disease decision support tools

Large language models (LLMs) show promise in supporting differential diagnosis, but their performance is challenging to evaluate due to the unstructured nature of their responses, and their accuracy compared to existing diagnostic tools is not well characterized. To assess the current capabilities of LLMs to diagnose genetic diseases, we benchmarked these models on 5213 previously published case reports using the Phenopacket Schema, the Human Phenotype Ontology and Mondo disease ontology. Prompts generated from each phenopacket were sent to seven LLMs, including four generalist models and three LLMs specialized for medical applications. The same phenopackets were used as input to a widely used diagnostic tool, Exomiser, in phenotype-only mode. The best LLM ranked the correct diagnosis first in 23.6% of cases, whereas Exomiser did so in 35.5% of cases. While the performance of LLMs for supporting differential diagnosis has been improving, it has not reached the level of commonly used traditional bioinformatics tools. Future research is needed to determine the best approach to incorporate LLMs into diagnostic pipelines.

Reese, Justin T. [Lawrence Berkeley National Labor↗
DOE OSTI2019

Societal decisions about climate mitigation will have dramatic impacts on eutrophication in the 21st century

Excessive nitrogen loading leads to degraded water quality that harms human and ecosystem health. Here, we examine the impact of changes in land use and land management for six combinations of socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and climate outcomes and find that future societal choices will substantially impact riverine nitrogen loading (+54% to -7%) for the continental United States by the end-of-the-century. Regional impacts will be even larger. The increase in nitrogen loading is projected both for high emission pathways with increased food demand and for societal pathways that achieve high climate mitigation through increased biofuel production. Conversely, projected decreases in nitrogen loading are associated with future pathways with low food demand and no climate mitigation efforts. Thus, climate mitigation may have unintended consequences in the form of increased eutrophication, although some pathways suggests that limiting climate change and eutrophication need not be mutually exclusive. We find that changes in cropland, developed land, and fertilizer application rates are all important drivers in explaining the projected changes in nitrogen loading. Climate change–induced precipitation changes will further amplify the projected increase in nitrogen loading or offset the improvement in loading resulting in a net change of +1% to +68% by the end-of-the-century. Globally, vast portions of South, East, and Southeast Asia will also likely experience increased eutrophication by the end-of-the-century due to increased cropland area and agricultural intensification. These findings highlight the need to account for the impact of both societal and climate trends in designing strategies for managing inland and coastal water quality.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Decision making for implementing non-traditional water sources: a review of challenges and potential solutions

Abstract The effects of climate change, population growth, and future hydrologic uncertainties necessitate increased water conservation, new water resources, and a shift towards sustainable urban water supply portfolios. Diversifying water portfolios with non-traditional water sources can play a key role. Rooftop harvested rainwater (RHRW), atmospheric and condensate harvesting, stormwater, recycled wastewater and greywater, and desalinated seawater and brackish water are all currently utilized and rapidly emerging non-traditional water sources. This review explores the status and trends around these non-traditional water sources, and reviews approaches and models for prioritizing, predicting, and quantifying metrics of concern. The analysis presented here suggests that understanding the challenges of location specific scenarios, socioeconomic knowledge gaps, water supply technologies, and/or water management structure is the crucial first step in establishing a model or framework approach to provide a strategy for improvement going forward. The findings of this study also suggest that clear policy guidance and onsite maintenance is necessary for variable water quality concerns of non-traditional sources like harvested rainwater and greywater. In addition, use of stormwater or reuse of wastewater raises public health concerns due to unknown risks and pathogen levels, thus rapid monitoring technologies and transparent reporting systems can facilitate their adoption. Finally, cost structure of desalination varies significantly around the world, largely due to regulatory requirements and local policies. Further reduction of its capital cost and energy consumption is identified as a hurdle for implementation. Overall, models and process analyses highlight the strength of comparative assessments across scenarios and water supply options.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

Quantum protocol for decision making and verifying truthfulness among N ‐quantum parties: Solution and extension of the quantum coin flipping game

Abstract The authors devised a protocol that allows two parties, who may malfunction or intentionally convey incorrect information in communication through a quantum channel, to verify each other's measurements and agree on each other's results. This has particular relevance in a modified version of the quantum coin flipping game. The key innovation of the authors’ work includes the new design of a quantum coin that excludes any advantage of cheating, by which the long‐standing problem of the fair design of the game is, affirmatively, solved. Furthermore, the analysis is extended to N ‐parties communicating with each other, where multiple solutions for the verification of each player's measurement is proposed. The results in the N ‐party scenario could have particular relevance for the implementation of future quantum networks, where verification of quantum information is a necessity.

Ikeda, Kazuki↗