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At least 1,513 records · Page 84

A panel analysis of groundwater use in California

We report groundwater is a relevant source of drinking and agricultural water in many regions of the world, but many aquifers have been unsustainably over-drafted and polluted. This has significant environmental, health, and economic implications. We rely on panel analysis, with small-sample corrections for cluster-robust variance estimation and hypothesis testing, to investigate the dynamics of groundwater extraction. We focus on California, yet our approach could be helpful to analyze the dynamics of groundwater extraction in other groundwater-reliant regions of the world. In California, over-reliance on groundwater has led to significant overdraft, affecting long-term water supply reliability and groundwater pumping costs. It further caused subsidence and infrastructure damage, harmed groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and threatened the sustainability of groundwater resources in the state. We use panel data of the 56 California Water Plan planning areas over the 1998–2015 period. We concentrate on agricultural and urban water use and the major water projects in the state, to provide a better understanding of the relationships between groundwater extraction and water use and supply. Results suggest that reducing agricultural water in Central California and urban water in Southern California could reduce groundwater extraction in these regions by approximately the same amount of the reduced water. Other opportunities to reduce the stress on the groundwater resources in the state are available for other regions, yet with lower benefits. Results also suggest that a decrease in deliveries from the Central Valley Project to the southern part of the Central Valley would increase groundwater extraction by approximately the same proportion. Changes in deliveries from the major water projects in the state, as well as from other sources of surface water, would also have some, yet lower impacts on groundwater extraction in the Central and Southern California.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Salk Institute for Biological Studies Requirements (Analysis Report)

EPOC uses the Deep Dive process to discuss and analyze current and planned science, research, or education activities and the anticipated data output of a particular use case, site, or project to help inform the strategic planning of a campus or regional networking environment. This includes understanding future needs related to network operations, network capacity upgrades, and other technological service investments. A Deep Dive comprehensively surveys major research stakeholders’ plans and processes in order to investigate data management requirements over the next 5–10 years. Between February and March 2024, staff members from the Engagement and Performance Operations Center (EPOC) met with researchers and staff from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (Salk) for the purpose of a Deep Dive into scientific and research drivers. The goal of this activity was to help characterize the requirements for a number of campus use cases, and to enable cyberinfrastructure support staff better to understand the needs of the researchers within the community. Material for this event included the written documentation from each of the profiled research areas, documentation about the current state of technology support, and a write-up of the discussion that took place via e-mail and video conferencing. The case studies highlighted the ongoing challenges and opportunities that Salk Institute for Biological Studies have in supporting a cross-section of established and emerging research use cases. Each case study mentioned unique challenges which were summarized into common needs.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Inverse size-dependent Stokes shift in strongly quantum confined CsPbBr 3 perovskite nanoplates

Colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) are used as bright chromatic fluorophores for energy-efficient displays. Here we focus here on the size-dependent Stokes shift for CsPbBr 3 nanocrystals. The Stokes shift, i.e., the difference between the wavelengths of absorption and emission maxima, is crucial for display application, as it controls the degree to which light is reabsorbed by the emitting material reducing the energetic efficiency. One major impediment to the industrial adoption of NCs is that slight deviations in manufacturing conditions may result in a wide dispersion of the product's properties. A data-driven analysis of over 2000 reactions comparing two data sets, one produced via standard colloidal synthesis and the other via high-throughput automated synthesis is discussed. We show that differences in the reaction conditions of colloidal CsPbBr 3 nanocrystals yield nanocrystals with opposite Stokes shift size-dependent trends. These match the morphologies of two-dimensional nanoplatelets (NPLs) and nanocrystal cubes. The Stokes shift size dependence trend of NPLs and nanocubes is non-monotonic indicating different physics is at play for the two nanocrystal morphologies. For nanocrystals with cubic shape, with the increase of edge length, there is a significant decrease in Stokes shift values. However, for NPLs with the increase of thickness (1–4 ML), Stokes shift values will increase. The study emphasizes the transition from a spectroscopic point of view and relates the two Stokes shift trends to 2D and 0D exciton dimensionalities for the two morphologies. Our findings highlight the importance of CsPbBr 3 nanocrystal morphology for Stokes shift prediction.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Hands-On Computer Science: The Array of Things Experimental Urban Instrument

Chicago's Array of Things (AoT) project is aptly described as a technology experiment or a "smart city" prototype. The concept of such an extensible "instrument" arose within a larger translational research vision applying computer science and engineering research for the multidimensional benefit of people and communities in cities. The AoT project hypothesized that wireless intelligent sensor networks could enable both quantitative social science and urban monitoring while also stimulating youth interest in science and technology. Successful deployment of such sensor networks could provide open data from urban measurements not only in support of diverse research questions-in environmental dynamics, urban architecture, engineering, and social sciences-but also informing community groups and city planners. Further, the AoT project and its successor SAGE project are a computer science and engineering experiment, but its success is inextricably tied to community engagement and experiential education. Simply put, community acceptance is a prerequisite to installing and testing the instrument.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

New York-Presbyterian and Columbia University Irving Medical Center Requirements (Analysis Report)

EPOC uses the Deep Dive process to discuss and analyze current and planned science, research, or education activities and the anticipated data output of a particular use case, site, or project to help inform the strategic planning of a campus or regional networking environment. This includes understanding future needs related to network operations, network capacity upgrades, and other technological service investments. A Deep Dive comprehensively surveys major research stakeholders’ plans and processes in order to investigate data management requirements over the next 5–10 years. Between February and June 2024, staff members from the Engagement and Performance Operations Center (EPOC) met with researchers and staff from New York-Presbyterian (NYP), Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), and NYSERNet for the purpose of a Deep Dive into scientific and research drivers. The goal of this activity was to help characterize the requirements for a number of campus use cases, and to enable cyberinfrastructure support staff to better understand the needs of the researchers within the community. Material for this event included the written documentation from each of the profiled research areas, documentation about the current state of technology support, and a write-up of the discussion that took place via e-mail and video conferencing. The case studies highlighted the ongoing challenges and opportunities that NYP and CUIMC have in supporting a cross-section of established and emerging research use cases. Each case study mentioned unique challenges which were summarized into common needs.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

4D-STEM of Beam-Sensitive Materials

We report that a scanning electron nanobeam diffraction, or 4D-STEM (four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy), is a flexible and powerful approach to elucidate structure from "soft" materials that are challenging to image in the transmission electron microscope because their structure is easily damaged by the electron beam. In a 4D-STEM experiment, a converged electron beam is scanned across the sample, and a pixelated camera records a diffraction pattern at each scan position. This four-dimensional data set can be mined for various analyses, producing maps of local crystal orientation, structural distortions, crystallinity, or different structural classes. Holding the sample at cryogenic temperatures minimizes diffusion of radicals and the resulting damage and disorder caused by the electron beam. The total fluence of incident electrons can easily be controlled during 4D-STEM experiments by careful use of the beam blanker, steering of the localized electron dose, and by minimizing the fluence in the convergent beam thus minimizing beam damage. This technique can be applied to both organic and inorganic materials that are known to be beam-sensitive; they can be highly crystalline, semicrystalline, mixed phase, or amorphous. One common example is the case for many organic materials that have a π-π stacking of polymer chains or rings on the order of 3.4-4.2 Å separation. If these chains or rings are aligned in some regions, they will produce distinct diffraction spots (as would other crystalline spacings in this range), though they may be weak or diffuse for disordered or weakly scattering materials. We can reconstruct the orientation of the π-π stacking, the degree of π-π stacking in the sample, and the domain size of the aligned regions. This Account summarizes illumination conditions and experimental parameters for 4D-STEM experiments with the goal of producing images of structural features for materials that are beam-sensitive. We will discuss experimental parameters including sample cooling, probe size and shape, fluence, and cameras. 4D-STEM has been applied to a variety of materials, not only as an advanced technique for model systems, but as a technique for the beginning microscopist to answer materials science questions. It is noteworthy that the experimental data acquisition does not require an aberration-corrected TEM but can be produced on a variety of instruments with the right attention to experimental parameters.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Uncertainty about the Uncertainty [Slides]

A golden standard in science is to repeat an experiment a statistically significant number of times, recording data using the same set of detectors and the same data analysis methodology. In such case experimental error includes both the range of true values generated by repetitions of the experiment, and measurement uncertainty caused by the detector. They are independent. It is a huge and too frequently used simplification, to assume that one can measure multiple repetitions of an identical experiment, resulting in identical true experimental value. Repetitions, as similar is it is experimentally achievable result in a range of the true values rather than in a single value. When modern, very sensitive and well calibrated measurement systems are used, this range is not negligible, and sometimes dominates, in comparison to the measurement uncertainty. Range of true values depends on the physics of the experiment, while measurement uncertainty depends on the measurement method (properties of the detector not of the experiment). When data from one–of–a kind experiment are analyzed, only the measurement uncertainty is reported. It gives no information about the range, in which the true values of experiment would spread if the experiment was repeated. A frequently used approximation, that if a physical quantity is measured as a function of time, only measurement of this quantity, produces uncertainty is also in some real experiments fare to strong. Example: In reaction history time measurement uncertainty propagated to alpha dominated under certain conditions over the flux measurement uncertainty propagated to alpha. Reliability of a data point is in general independent from its measurement uncertainty. However, in practice reliable measurement methods frequently have high measurement uncertainty, while low reliability methods are applied to limit measurement uncertainty. Comparison of reliable data with high measurement uncertainty to not so reliable data measured with low uncertainty is discussed – in different scenarios different data analysis methods are applicable.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Probing jet base emission of M87* with the 2021 Event Horizon Telescope observations

We investigate the presence and spatial characteristics of the jet base emission in M87* at 230 GHz, enabled by the significantly enhanced (u,v) coverage in the 2021 Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations. The integration of the 12−m Kitt Peak Telescope (USA) and NOEMA (France) stations into the array introduces two critical intermediate-length baselines to SMT (USA) and IRAM 30−m (Spain), providing sensitivity to emission structures at spatial scales of ∼250 μas and ∼2500 μas (∼ 0.02 pc and ∼ 0.02 pc). Without these new baselines, previous EHT observations of the source in 2017 and 2018 lacked the capability to constrain emission on large scales, where a “missing flux” of order ∼1 Jy is expected to reside. To probe these scales, we analyzed closure phases–robust against station-based gain calibration errors–and model the jet base emission using a simple Gaussian component offset from the compact ring emission at spatial separations > 100 μas. Our analysis revealed a Gaussian feature centered at (ΔRA ≈ 320 μ as, ΔDec. ≈ 60 μ as), projected separation of ≈ 5500 AU, with an estimated flux density of only ∼60 mJy, implying that most of the missing flux identified in previous EHT studies had to originate from different, larger scales. Brighter emission at the relevant spatial scales is firmly ruled out, and the data do not favor more complex models. This component aligns with the inferred position of the large-scale jet and is therefore physically consistent with the emission of the jet base. While our findings point to detectable jet base emission at 230 GHz, the limited coverage provided by only two intermediate baselines limits our ability to robustly reconstruct its morphology. Consequently, we treated the recovered Gaussian as an upper limit on the jet base flux density. Future EHT observations with expanded intermediate baseline coverage will be essential to constrain the structure and nature of this component with higher precision.

accretion, accretion disks↗

Scattering Signatures of Bond-Dependent Magnetic Interactions

Bond-dependent magnetic interactions can generate exotic phases such as Kitaev spin-liquid states. Experimentally determining the values of bond-dependent interactions is a challenging but crucial problem. In this paper, I show that each symmetry-allowed nearest-neighbor interaction on triangular and honeycomb lattices has a distinct signature in paramagnetic neutron-diffraction data, and that such data contain sufficient information to determine the spin Hamiltonian unambiguously via unconstrained fits. Moreover, I show that bond-dependent interactions can often be extracted from powder-averaged data. These results facilitate experimental determination of spin Hamiltonians for materials that do not show conventional magnetic ordering.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

ARM Aerosol Measurement Science Group 2019 Strategic Planning Workshop Report

This report summarizes the results of a U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility workshop held in November 2019 to advance a science-based strategy for ARM’s aerosol measurement program. This was the second such workshop since the Aerosol Measurement Science Group (AMSG) was chartered in 2015 to enhance coordination of ARM observations of aerosols and atmospheric trace gases with the needs of ARM users. The results presented here reflect the AMSG’s focus in recent years on science-based strategies that will contribute to the increased use of ARM data to fulfill its mission of improving process representations and predictability in climate models. Sessions held during the workshop range from interfacing with models through aerosol sampling strategies to calibration protocols and data products. The strategies set forth here were also developed to be directly relevant to ARM’s updated Decadal Vision. The AMSG workshops have been designed to recommend actions that will enable ARM to evolve and continue to meet its mission. To that end, the AMSG will develop an actionable plan from the recommendations outlined here. Some are well defined and can reasonably be accomplished in the short term. Others are less definite or of a larger scope that calls for a longer-term implementation. Further discussion will be required to develop and prioritize actionable items related to such areas. Task teams comprising the appropriate expertise and perspective from the AMSG and other members of the community will be formed to achieve this outcome. Some particular topics are recognized as high priority, so plans are underway to develop task teams and to hold follow-on discussions to address them. Four areas currently being considered for short, focused discussion are 1) aerosol measurements on the North Slope of Alaska, 2) improving data usability for modeling, 3) strategies for advancing remote sensing, vertical profiling, and distributed measurements of aerosols, and 4) aerosol sampling strategies at existing ARM sites to provide intensive modes of operation to promote data usage for process and modeling studies.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

ARM Aerosol Measurement Science Group 2019 Strategic Planning Workshop Report

This report summarizes the results of a U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility workshop held in November 2019 to advance a science-based strategy for ARM’s aerosol measurement program. This was the second such workshop since the Aerosol Measurement Science Group (AMSG) was chartered in 2015 to enhance coordination of ARM observations of aerosols and atmospheric trace gases with the needs of ARM users. The results presented here reflect the AMSG’s focus in recent years on science-based strategies that will contribute to the increased use of ARM data to fulfill its mission of improving process representations and predictability in climate models. Sessions held during the workshop range from interfacing with models through aerosol sampling strategies to calibration protocols and data products. The AMSG workshops have been designed to recommend actions that will enable ARM to evolve and continue to meet its mission. To that end, the AMSG will develop an actionable plan from the recommendations outlined here. Some are well defined and can reasonably be accomplished in the short term. Others are less definite or of a larger scope that calls for a longer-term implementation. Further discussion will be required to develop and prioritize actionable items related to such areas. Task teams comprising the appropriate expertise and perspective from the AMSG and other members of the community will be formed to achieve this outcome. Some particular topics are recognized as high priority, so plans are underway to develop task teams and to hold follow-on discussions to address them. Four areas currently being considered for short, focused discussion are 1) aerosol measurements on the North Slope of Alaska, 2) improving data usability for modeling, 3) strategies for advancing remote sensing, vertical profiling, and distributed measurements of aerosols, and 4) aerosol sampling strategies at existing ARM sites to provide intensive modes of operation to promote data usage for process and modeling studies.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Chlorine Nuclear Data Evaluation Aided Through New LANSCE Measurements

The collaboration between the Los Alamos National Laboratory Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) and TerraPower LLC enables the enhanced understanding of fast spectrum critical systems consisting of chlorine. Specifically, TerraPower is interested in updating the nuclear data for the stable isotopes of chlorine, 35 Cl and 37 Cl, because these nuclides are the primary constituents of the chloride fuel salt in the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE), for which TerraPower is leading the design. The Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between the parties is funded by DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative to provide the nuclear community with access to the technical, regulatory, and financial support necessary to motivate innovative nuclear reactor technologies toward commercialization. New measurements of 35 Cl(n,p total ) and 35 Cl(n,α total ) were completed at LANSCE to constrain the reaction theory models that are used to generate the updated evaluations. The updated evaluations were then tested across the sensitivities of the MCRE by TerraPower to provide direct feedback to the evaluation for application specific sensitivities.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗

Toward the Neutrino Discovery Platform: An Auditable, Uncertainty-Bearing Toolchain for MINERvA Open-Data Cross-Section Analysis

The Neutrino Discovery Platform (NDP) aims to accelerate DUNE-era science by making the neutrino program's existing datasets analyzable through fast, reproducible, and auditable workflows. We report a working version of two of its layers, data curation and agentic orchestration, built and tested end to end on MINERvA open data. The guiding lesson throughout is that a cross section is a measurement, and not just a plotted shape, only if it carries a defensible systematic-uncertainty budget, a trustworthy unfolding, and a reproducible record. Using a single medium-energy playlist pair from the MINERvA open-data release (about $2.05\times10^{17}$ protons on target of data), we first reproduced the shapes of two published charged-current inclusive $\nu_\mu$ measurements through a complete extraction ladder: selection, background subtraction, D'Agostini unfolding, efficiency correction, and flux normalization. These shape-level reproductions ran and tracked the published results, but they lacked the systematic-uncertainty machinery that defines a MINERvA cross section. To supply it, we vendored and built the MINERvA Analysis Toolkit and developed a many-universe systematic-uncertainty tool that produces a portable covariance artifact, a parallel event-loop runner, and a per-run auditability harness. Validated against a published covariance release, the toolchain reproduces the released statistical, flux, and muon-energy-scale terms and shows that they account for roughly 63\% of the total variance, with the remainder unreleased. Using this same infrastructure, we then performed a measurement of our own design, the hadronic recoil-energy distribution of low-energy ($E_\nu<2.5$~GeV) charged-current inclusive events, and found data/simulation shape agreement of $\chi^2/\mathrm{ndf}=1.26$. Together these results show that the platform supports original physics and not only reproductions.

Breaux, Auto [Tulane U. (main)]↗

Waveform Data Quality Assessment

Healthy seismoacoustic sensors and accurate metadata are critical to all the science objectives of both the Source Physics Experiment (SPE) Rock Valley Direct Comparison (RV/DC) and LowYield Physics Experiment-1 (LYNM PE-1). Both projects share similar seismoacoustic stations. We provide a plan on how to move forward with waveform data quality assessments (QA) to the working groups. The identification of stations with instrument response errors will be useful to researchers using amplitudes to study source effects and Earth attenuation. The data QA can also be useful for field technicians to help identify and correct problem sites.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

ESS-DIVE Reporting Format for Comma-separated Values (CSV) File Structure

The ESS-DIVE reporting format for Comma-separated Values (CSV) file structure is based on a combination of existing guidelines and recommendations including some found within the Earth Science Community with valuable input from the Environmental Systems Science (ESS) Community. The CSV reporting format is designed to promote interoperability and machine-readability of CSV data files while also facilitating the collection of some file-level metadata content. Tabular data in the form of rows and columns should be archived in its simplest form, and we recommend submitting these tabular data following the ESS-DIVE reporting format for generic comma-separated values (CSV) text format files. In general, the CSV file format is more likely accessible by future systems when compared to a proprietary format and CSV files are preferred because this format is easier to exchange between different programs increasing the interoperability of a data file. By defining the reporting format and providing guidelines for how to structure CSV files and some field content within, this can increase the machine-readability of the data file for extracting, compiling, and comparing the data across files and systems.Data package files are in .csv, .png, and .md. Open the .csv with e.g. Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice, or Google Sheets. Open the .md files by downloading and using a text editor (e.g., notepad or TextEdit). Open the .png in e.g. a web browser, photo viewer/editor, or Google Drive.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Machine Learning in Infectious Disease for Risk Factor Identification and Hypothesis Generation: Proof of Concept Using Invasive Candidiasis

Machine learning (ML) models can handle large data sets without assuming underlying relationships and can be useful for evaluating disease characteristics, yet they are more commonly used for predicting individual disease risk than for identifying factors at the population level. We offer a proof of concept applying random forest (RF) algorithms to Candida-positive hospital encounters in an electronic health record database of patients in the United States. Candida-positive encounters were extracted from the Cerner HealthFacts database; invasive infections were laboratory-positive sterile site Candida infections. Features included demographics, admission source, care setting, physician specialty, diagnostic and procedure codes, and medications received before the first positive Candida culture. We used RF to assess risk factors for 3 outcomes: any invasive candidiasis (IC) vs non-IC, within-species IC vs non-IC (eg, invasive C. glabrata vs noninvasive C. glabrata), and between-species IC (eg, invasive C. glabrata vs all other IC). Fourteen of 169 (8%) variables were consistently identified as important features in the ML models. When evaluating within-species IC, for example, invasive C. glabrata vs non-invasive C. glabrata, we identified known features like central venous catheters, intensive care unit stay, and gastrointestinal operations. In contrast, important variables for invasive C. glabrata vs all other IC included renal disease and medications like diabetes therapeutics, cholesterol medications, and antiarrhythmics. Known and novel risk factors for IC were identified using ML, demonstrating the hypothesis-generating utility of this approach for infectious disease conditions about which less is known, specifically at the species level or for rarer diseases.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Warming of the Willamette River, 1850–present: the effects of climate change and river system alterations

Abstract. Using archival research methods, we recovered and combined data from multiple sources to produce a unique, 140-year record of daily water temperature (Tw) in the lower Willamette River, Oregon (1881–1890, 1941–present). Additional daily weather and river flow records from the 1850s onwards are used to develop and validate a statistical regression model of Tw for 1850–2020. The model simulates the time-lagged response of Tw to air temperature and river flow and is calibrated for three distinct time periods: the late 19th, mid-20th, and early 21st centuries. Results show that Tw has trended upwards at 1.1 ∘C per century since the mid-19th century, with the largest shift in January and February (1.3 ∘C per century) and the smallest in May and June (∼ 0.8 ∘C per century). The duration that the river exceeds the ecologically important threshold of 20 ∘C has increased by about 20 d since the 1800s, to about 60 d yr−1. Moreover, cold-water days below 2 ∘C have virtually disappeared, and the river no longer freezes. Since 1900, changes are primarily correlated with increases in air temperature (Tw increase of 0.81 ± 0.25 ∘C) but also occur due to alterations in the river system such as depth increases from reservoirs (0.34 ± 0.12 ∘C). Managed release of water affects Tw seasonally, with an average reduction of up to 0.56 ∘C estimated for September. River system changes have decreased variability (σ) in daily minimum Tw by 0.44 ∘C, increased thermal memory, reduced interannual variability, and reduced the response to short-term meteorological forcing (e.g., heat waves). These changes fundamentally alter the response of Tw to climate change, posing additional stressors on fauna.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗