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At least 1,675 records · Page 93

Data mining and statistical inference in selective laser melting

Selective laser melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing process that builds a complex three-dimensional part, layer-by-layer, using a laser beam to fuse fine metal powder together. The design freedom afforded by SLM comes associated with complexity. As the physical phenomena occur over a broad range of length and time scales, the computational cost of modeling the process is high. At the same time, the large number of parameters that control the quality of a part make experiments expensive. In this paper, we describe ways in which we can use data mining and statistical inference techniques to intelligently combine simulations and experiments to build parts with desired properties. We start with a brief summary of prior work in finding process parameters for high-density parts. We then expand on this work to show how we can improve the approach by using feature selection techniques to identify important variables, data-driven surrogate models to reduce computational costs, improved sampling techniques to cover the design space adequately, and uncertainty analysis for statistical inference. Here, our results indicate that techniques from data mining and statistics can complement those from physical modeling to provide greater insight into complex processes such as selective laser melting.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Coupling Exascale Multiphysics Applications: Methods and Lessons Learned

With the growing computational complexity of science and the complexity of new and emerging hardware, it is time to re-evaluate the traditional monolithic design of computational codes. One new paradigm is constructing larger scientific computational experiments from the coupling of multiple individual scientific applications, each targeting their own physics, characteristic lengths, and/or scales. We present a framework constructed by leveraging capabilities such as in-memory communications, workflow scheduling on HPC resources, and continuous performance monitoring. This code coupling capability is demonstrated by a fusion science scenario, where differences between the plasma at the edges and at the core of a device have different physical descriptions. This infrastructure not only enables the coupling of the physics components, but it also connects in situ or online analysis, compression, and visualization that accelerate the time between a run and the analysis of the science content. Results from runs on Titan and Cori are presented as a demonstration.

Choi, Jong Youl↗

Atomic and Molecular Physics in Strong Fields

In this project, we have investigated a broad range of atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) processes of current significance in strong-field and ultrafast science and technology. The main goals are to develop new theoretical formalisms and accurate computational methods for ab initio and in-depth non-perturbative study of time-resolved multiphoton quantum dynamics and spectroscopy, very-high-order harmonic generation, optimal control of ultrafast attosecond pulse generation, and resonance-enhanced below threshold harmonics in intense ultrashort laser fields. We have worked on the following projects and we have published 20 top 15 % SCI journal articles during the last 3.5 years (Jan. 1, 2016 to June 30, 2019), including one article in top raking Physical Review Letters, and 3 articles in top ranking (Nature) Scientific Reports, and one Physical Review A article was chosen as Editors’ suggestion paper, etc. (a) Development of new time-dependent methods for accurate and efficient solution of multi-dimensional time-dependent Schrödinger equation and time-dependent density functional theory. (b) Non-perturbative treatment of very-high order (1000th – 5000th order) harmonic generation and broadband supercontinuum spectra from XUV to soft x-ray regime. (c) Development of synchrosqueezing transform (SST) for precision time-frequency analysis of electron multi-rescattering dynamics. (d) Exploration of the dynamical origin of resonance-enhanced near- and below-threshold harmonics. (e) Probing the high-order harmonics generation in disordered semiconductor. (f) Multiphoton ionization of one-electron relativistic diatomic quasi-molecules in strong laser fields. and, (g) New development of non-adiabatic density functional theory. The theoretical and simulation projects we have pursued are closely related to the ongoing experimental researches in several leading laboratories in the US and Europe, etc. It is expected that the outcome of this project will provide timely and significant new information and insight for the advancement of strong-field atomic and molecular physics and ultrafast science and technology.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Downfolding of many-body Hamiltonians using active-space models: Extension of the sub-system embedding sub-algebras approach to unitary coupled cluster formalisms

Here, we discuss the extension of the recently introduced subsystem embedding subalgebra coupled cluster (SES-CC) formalism to unitary CC formalisms. In analogy to the standard single-reference SES-CC formalism, its unitary CC extension allows one to include the dynamical (outside the active space) correlation effects in an SES induced complete active space (CAS) effective Hamiltonian. In contrast to the standard single-reference SES-CC theory, the unitary CC approach results in a Hermitian form of the effective Hamiltonian. Additionally, for the double unitary CC (DUCC) formalism, the corresponding CAS eigenvalue problem provides a rigorous separation of external cluster amplitudes that describe dynamical correlation effects—used to define the effective Hamiltonian—from those corresponding to the internal (inside the active space) excitations that define the components of eigenvectors associated with the energy of the entire system. The proposed formalism can be viewed as an efficient way of downfolding many-electron Hamiltonian to the low-energy model represented by a particular choice of CAS. In principle, this technique can be extended to any type of CAS representing an arbitrary energy window of a quantum system. The Hermitian character of low-dimensional effective Hamiltonians makes them an ideal target for several types of full configuration interaction type eigensolvers. As an example, we also discuss the algebraic form of the perturbative expansions of the effective DUCC Hamiltonians corresponding to composite unitary CC theories and discuss possible algorithms for hybrid classical and quantum computing. Given growing interest in quantum computing, we provide energies for H 2 and Be systems obtained with the quantum phase estimator algorithm available in the Quantum Development Kit for the approximate DUCC Hamiltonians.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

The high explosives & affected targets (HEAT) dataset

Artificial Intelligence (AI) surrogate models offer a computationally efficient alternative to full-physics simulations, yet no existing datasets are publicly available for training, testing, and validation of machine learning models of the dynamics of high-explosive driven shocks through multiple materials. Shock propagation through materials is a computationally challenging problem because simulations must include material-specific equations of state (EOS) along with descriptions of other physical processes such as plastic deformation, phase change, damage processes, fluid instabilities, and multi-material interactions. Shocks are typically initiated by high-velocity impacts or explosive loading. The latter case necessitates the addition of models of reactive materials to represent high-explosive (HE) detonation. Here, to address the lack of an expansive dataset for multi-material shock propagation in the AI/ML community, we present the High-Explosives and Affected Targets (HEAT) Dataset. HEAT is a physics-rich collection of two-dimensional, cylindrically symmetric, simulations generated using an Eulerian, multi-material, shock-propagation code developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The dataset includes two partitions: (1) the expanding shock-cylinder (CYL) simulations, Figs. 1, and (2) the Perturbed Layered Interface (PLI) simulations, Fig. 2. Entries in both partitions consist of time series of arrays of thermodynamic fields (pressure, density, and temperature), kinematic fields (position and velocity), and additional fields that depend on thermodynamic and/or kinematic fields (e.g., material stress). Materials in the CYL partition include solids (aluminium, copper, depleted uranium, stainless steel, tantalum, and a generic polymer), a liquid (water), gases (air, nitrogen), and a generic detonating material (high explosive, HE). The PLI partition spans a highly varying geometry but consists of fixed materials across entries: Copper, aluminium, stainless steel, generic polymer, and generic HE. HEAT captures critical phenomena such as momentum transfer, shock propagation, plastic deformation, and thermal effects, making HEAT a valuable benchmark for development of AI/ML emulation of multi-material shock propagation.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Ionic ASi{sub 2}N{sub 3} (A=Li, Na, K and Rb) stabilized by the covalent Si–N bonding: First-principles calculations

The structural, elastic and electronic properties of LiSi{sub 2}N{sub 3} and its substitutions by Na, K and Rb were investigated through first-principles computations. The expansion of lattice parameters of ASi{sub 2}N{sub 3} from Li, Na, K to Rb is found to be determined by the bond angle of Si–N1–Si, which suggests a possible way to improve the lithium ionic conductivity by substitutions. ASi{sub 2}N{sub 3} (A=Li, Na, K and Rb) shows the similar elastic behaviors, while the electronic band gap gradually decreases from 5.1 to 3.4 eV from LiSi{sub 2}N{sub 3} to RbSi{sub 2}N{sub 3}. Interestingly, the analysis of electronic structure, crystal orbital Hamiltonian populations and Bader charges shows that the covalence of Si–N bonding is critical for the stability of ASi{sub 2}N{sub 3} phase. Among ASi{sub 2}N{sub 3} phases, there is a relatively high ionicity in NaSi{sub 2}N{sub 3}; the Si–N bond strength in [Si{sub 2}N{sub 3}]{sup −} net for KSi{sub 2}N{sub 3} and RbSi{sub 2}N{sub 3} is comparable to LiSi{sub 2}N{sub 3}, but stronger than NaSi{sub 2}N{sub 3}. - Graphic abstract: Universal trend of structural and electronic properties in alkaline metal silicon nitrides, ASi{sub 2}N{sub 3}, A=Li, Na, K and Rb. - Highlights: • Trend in structure, electronic and mechanical properties of ASi{sub 2}N{sub 3} (A=Li-Rb) were predicted. • Lattice expansion of ASi{sub 2}N{sub 3} induced by the bond angle of Si–N1–Si was found. • Calculated band gap decreases from 5.1 to 3.4 eV from LiSi{sub 2}N{sub 3} to RbSi{sub 2}N{sub 3}. • Covalent Si–N bonding is critical for the stability of ASi{sub 2}N{sub 3}.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

A Roadmap for Quantum Interconnects

Created by Q-NEXT, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Quantum Information Science Research Center, this document is a roadmap for quantum interconnects research and its impact for quantum information science and technology. It is the outcome of the collective work of a large team of Q-NEXT members and participants from academia, industry and DOE national laboratories. The roadmap addresses the role of quantum interconnects in three emerging areas of quantum information: computing, communication and sensing. It reviews the materials, components and systems used for these purposes; summarizes relevant scientific questions and issues; and addresses the most pressing research needs. The document then distills these considerations into recommendations for strategic science and technology research imperatives for the next decade. In addition to informing Q-NEXT’s internal activities, the roadmap has also been created with a broader objective of developing a guide for key issues and research needed over the next decade for the worldwide scientific and engineering community interested in quantum information.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Unsupervised discovery of extreme weather events using universal representations of emergent organization

Spontaneous self-organization is ubiquitous in systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. While organized structures that emerge dominate transport properties, universal representations that identify and describe these key objects remain elusive. Here, we introduce a theoretically grounded framework for describing emergent organization that, via data-driven algorithms, is constructive in practice. Its building blocks are spacetime lightcones that embody how information propagates across a system through local interactions. We show that predictive equivalence classes of lightcones—local causal states—capture organized behaviors in complex spatiotemporal systems. Employing an unsupervised physics-informed machine learning algorithm and a high-performance computing implementation, we demonstrate automatically discovering organized structures in two real-world domain science problems. We show that local causal states identify vortices and track their power-law decay behavior in two-dimensional fluid turbulence. We then show how to detect and track familiar extreme weather events—hurricanes and atmospheric rivers—and discover other novel structures associated with precipitation extremes in high-resolution climate data at the grid-cell level.

Rupe, Adam [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ↗

INTEGRATED WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT FOR PARTICLE ACCELERATOR SIMULATION

Supercomputing systems are used for a wide range of computationally demanding tasks in many fields of science and engineering. They play a key role in numerical simulation, in which mathematical models are computed in order to simulate the behavior of physical systems. Scientists and engineers that use supercomputers for numerical simulation often have their productivity limited by the need to manually organize and manage extremely large amounts of data that are often produced and consumed by the software programs run on these systems. Recognizing these limitations, Kitware Inc. (Clifton Park, NY) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (Menlo Park, CA) are developing an advanced software platform that can reduce the cognitive overhead required by knowledge workers when using supercomputers for numerical simulation. Phase I of the project is complete and includes the development of new capabilities for organizing simulation project files, improvements to the user interface and overall usability, and deployment of a “middle tier” server to sit between user desktop machines and supercomputers to offload much of the data management workload. The project also developed prototype software for executing sequences of numerical simulations, and a prototype for migrating supercomputing software to cloud-based computing systems to provide a potential alternative to supercomputers with different logistical and price-to-performance tradeoffs.

Tourtellott, John↗

Alquimia v1.0: a generic interface to biogeochemical codes – a tool for interoperable development, prototyping and benchmarking for multiphysics simulators

Alquimia v1.0 is a generic interface to geochemical solvers that facilitates development of multiphysics simulators by enabling code coupling, prototyping and benchmarking. The interface enforces the function arguments and their types for setting up, solving, serving up output data and carrying out other common auxiliary tasks while providing a set of structures for data transfer between the multiphysics code driving the simulation and the geochemical solver. Alquimia relies on a single-cell approach that permits operator splitting coupling and parallel computation. We describe the implementation in Alquimia of two widely used open-source codes that perform geochemical calculations: PFLOTRAN and CrunchFlow. We then exemplify its use for the implementation and simulation of reactive transport in porous media by two open-source flow and transport simulators: Amanzi and ParFlow. We also demonstrate its use for the simulation of coupled processes in novel multiphysics applications including the effect of multiphase flow on reaction rates at the pore scale with OpenFOAM, the role of complex biogeochemical processes in land surface models such as the E3SM Land Model (ELM) and the impact of surface–subsurface hydrological interactions on hydrogeochemical export from watersheds with the Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS). These applications make it apparent that the availability of a well-defined yet flexible interface has the potential to improve the software development workflow, freeing up resources to focus on advances in process models and mechanistic understanding of coupled problems.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Off-the-shelf deep learning is not enough, and requires parsimony, Bayesianity, and causality

Abstract Deep neural networks (‘deep learning’) have emerged as a technology of choice to tackle problems in speech recognition, computer vision, finance, etc. However, adoption of deep learning in physical domains brings substantial challenges stemming from the correlative nature of deep learning methods compared to the causal, hypothesis driven nature of modern science. We argue that the broad adoption of Bayesian methods incorporating prior knowledge, development of solutions with incorporated physical constraints and parsimonious structural descriptors and generative models, and ultimately adoption of causal models, offers a path forward for fundamental and applied research.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

"Forward" Projects Boost U.S. Leadership in Advanced Computing and Artificial Intelligence

High-performance computing (HPC) has been an indispensable research tool for accessing physical realms difficult, or impossible, achieve with experiment alone. For several decades, the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science has deployed sophisticated HPC systems for solving the nation’s most pressing grand challenge problems in energy, climate change, and human health. In addition, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has adeptly applied HPC in support of key national security objectives, such as nuclear science and stockpile modernization and stewardship. Over time, HPC systems have become increasingly more complex and capable, and as each new machine has come online, scientists and engineers have taken advantage of vast increases in compute power to accelerate scientific discoveries and engineering innovation.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Towards a Scalable and Adaptive Application Support Platform for Large-Scale Distributed E-Sciences in High-Performance Network Environments

The advent of large-scale collaborative scientific applications has demonstrated the potential for broad scientific communities to pool globally distributed resources to produce unprecedented data acquisition, movement, and analysis. System resources including supercomputers, data repositories, computing facilities, network infrastructures, storage systems, and display devices have been increasingly deployed at national laboratories and academic institutes. These resources are typically shared by large communities of users over Internet or dedicated networks and hence exhibit an inherent dynamic nature in their availability, accessibility, capacity, and stability. Scientific applications using either experimental facilities or computation-based simulations with various physical, chemical, climatic, and biological models feature diverse scientific workflows as simple as linear pipelines or as complex as a directed acyclic graphs, which must be executed and supported over wide-area networks with massively distributed resources. Application users oftentimes need to manually configure their computing tasks over networks in an ad hoc manner, hence significantly limiting the productivity of scientists and constraining the utilization of resources. The success of these large-scale distributed applications requires a highly adaptive and massively scalable workflow platform that provides automated and optimized computing and networking services. This project is to design and develop a generic Scientific Workflow Automation and Management Platform (SWAMP), which contains a web-based user interface specially tailored for a target application, a set of user libraries, and several easy-to-use computing and networking toolkits for application scientists to conveniently assemble, execute, monitor, and control complex computing workflows in heterogeneous high-performance network environments. SWAMP will enable the automation and management of the entire process of scientific workflows with the convenience of a few mouse clicks while hiding the implementation and technical details from end users. Particularly, we will consider two types of applications with distinct performance requirements: data-centric and service-centric applications. For data-centric applications, the main workflow task involves large-volume data generation, catalog, storage, and movement typically from supercomputers or experimental facilities to a team of geographically distributed users; while for service-centric applications, the main focus of workflow is on data archiving, preprocessing, filtering, synthesis, visualization, and other application-specific analysis. We will conduct a comprehensive comparison of existing workflow systems and choose the best suited one with open-source code, a flexible system structure, and a large user base as the starting point for our development. Based on the chosen system, we will develop and integrate new components including a black box design of computing modules, performance monitoring and prediction, and workflow optimization and reconfiguration, which are missing from existing workflow systems. A modular design for separating specification, execution, and monitoring aspects will be adopted to establish a common generic infrastructure suited for a wide spectrum of science applications. We will further design and develop efficient workflow mapping and scheduling algorithms to optimize the workflow performance in terms of minimum end-to-end delay, maximum frame rate, and highest reliability. We will develop and demonstrate the SWAMP system in a local environment, the grid network, and the 100Gpbs Advanced Network Initiative (ANI) testbed. The demonstration will target scientific applications in climate modeling and high energy physics and the functions to be demonstrated include workflow deployment, execution, steering, and reconfiguration. Throughout the project period, we will work closely with the science communities in the fields of climate modeling and high energy physics including Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) projects to mature the system for production use.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Robust In-Situ Strain Measurements to Monitor CO 2 Storage

The goal of this project was to develop and demonstrate robust instrumentation to monitor the in-situ strain tensor in order to improve the reliability and security of CO 2 storage in geologic formations. We met the original goals of the project and the major overarching accomplishment is the advancement of strain tensor monitoring from an intriguing concept to a commercially available technology with a solid foundation of novel instruments supported by theoretical analyses and validation experiments. The main accomplishments of the project are summarized below. We designed, built and evaluated nine new optical fiber strainmeters and tiltmeters using Michelson interferometers to measure deformation with ultra-high resolution at both shallow and deep point locations in the subsurface. These are the robust strainmeters that motivated the title of the project. We designed, built and evaluated a novel method of measuring distributed strain in optical fibers with nanostrain resolution, and cm-scale location, and sampling into the seismic band. The new method is called Coherence-length-gated Microwave Photonics Interfereometry (CMPI). CMPI technology has advantages over existing commercial DAS and DSS methods. We developed and demonstrated capabilities to deploy instruments in the field and used them to measure strain caused by ambient signals like barometric pressure and tides, as well as induced signals like surface loading and pore pressure changes from pumping tests. We deployed a working strainmeter at 1,700 ft depth, slightly above an active reservoir. This is to our knowledge the greatest depth a strainmeter has been deployed and the techniques we used can readily be extended to greater depths. Optical fiber borehole tensor strainmeter techology was advanced from a TRL 4 at the start, to a TRL of 7 at the conclusion of the project. The project included advances in simulations and theoretical analyses. We developed and demonstrated a computational workflow that uses machine learning to reduce the computational requirements and make it practical to use Bayesian inversion to solve large numerical poroelastic analyses needed to interpret strain tensor field data. We evaluated the strain tensor fields and time series that would be caused by leaks of CO 2 or other fluids from reservoirs. These simulations demonstrated that signals from leaks could be measured with instruments developed for the project, opening a potentially new method for ensuring storage security. We showed that strains in caprock can be used to estimate pressure in a reservoir. This avoids the need to drill monitoring wells into the reservoir, and it expands the capabilities of monitoring in the caprock. The project includes a derivation and application of a novel analytical solution to the strains in the vicinity of a pressurized poroelastic inclusion. This solution explains field data measured during injeciton tests at the North Avant Field, and it will simplify future interpretation of strain tensor data. The project included a broad range of experiments, and of the most significant is the characterization of the strain tensor at an array three strainmeters during six injection tests at the North Avant Field, Oklahoma. This demonstrated repeatability of the strain signal measured by the new instruments developed for the project, and it showed similarities between the strain signal at shallow depths and pressure in the underlying reservoir. We also demonstrated that useful strain data can be measured at reservoir depths. This confirms that strain tensor data can be measured throughout the caprock over a reservoir. The project demonstrated the feasibility of using the strain tensor and distributed strain measured in caprock during a variety of different well tests where the pumping rate was constant, sinusoidal and positive, or a periodic square wave with zero net rate. This further strengthens the validity of using strain data to characterize reservoirs and aquifers. We also demonstrated that strain caused be fluctuations of air pressure and water pressure in the vadose zone can be measured and interpreted, suggesting that high resolution distributed strain measurements hold promise for monitoring the vadose zone. The project partially supported nine graduate students in the Environmental Engineering, Hydrogeology, Electrical Engineering programs at Clemson University. The research was described in nine journal papers, 23 talks and conference abstracts. Additional journal papers are in preparation. A new company called Tensora was started to provide strainmeter technology for commercial applications.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

Improving the Field Portability of Neutron and Gamma Counting Techniques

Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) puts science to work by developing techniques that better meet customers needs for in-situ measurements. There is high demand for laboratory quality measurements in field situations, improving the cost and speed for first responders and environmental monitoring. This work focused on two improvements (1) reading a signal from a neutron detector using a Raspberry Pi (2) testing the Peak-to-Valley method for determining the depth of a source in soil contamination measurements. A Raspberry Pi is a cheap, compact computer. This affordable, compact computer is able to do simple tasks that a desktop computer is able to do, like spreadsheets, browse the internet, play games and even program a simple robot. Additionally, a Raspberry Pi can run off of a battery, so it could be deployed for long term measurements in adverse conditions like neutron monitors deployed in a shipping port. Using the Raspberry Pi and libraries easily accessible on the internet, a code was written in Python that allows the Pi to keep track of how many times a button is pushed. This work will be used with the future goal of creating low power-budget neutron detectors. 1) Make sure Python was correctly installed on the Raspberry Pi. 2) Write a code that will keep track of how many times a button connected to the Pi is pressed. A code was written to use the Raspberry Pi to count the number of times the button was pushed. Moving forward the Raspberry Pi will be tested with a neutron counter. Ideally, each signal from the neutron pulse will be equivalent of 'push the button' and be counted. In the characterization of a soil contamination area both the location and the depth of the source is important. Attenuation of the source by the soil can make determining its depth challenging, particularly for monoenergetic radionuclides like Cs-137. To address this issue, a method of calculating the 'peak-to-valley' ratio of the gamma count spectra is implemented to help calculate the known depth of the source. 1) Determine the 'peak-to-valley' ratio of a Cs-137 source at different depths. 2) Find an appropriate function to serve as a model for the peak-to-valley ratio as a function of depth. Several Petri dishes, filled with sand, were stacked with one containing a Cs-137 source. The individual Petri dishes allowed for the source to be placed at different depths. A bucket was placed over the sand and source, to keep the detector at a consistent height. A Petri dish containing a Eu-155 source, which acted as an internal calibration standard, was placed on top of the bucket. A NaI detector was place on top of the Eu-155 source and the assembly was surrounded by a tungsten shield. Count times were 20 minutes and the data was analyzed using PeakEasy. Data was recorded for Cs-137 at a series of depths in sand. Both exponential and logarithmic functions provided a reasonable fit to the data. The experimental data showed a decreasing 'peak-to-valley' ratio as the depth was increased. The next steps for this project involves determining the optimum fit function and combining the results from sand to different soil types to get a better representation of the soil found at SRS. Eventually, the peak-to-valley ratio will be used to estimate the depth of contamination in field measurements.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Diagnosing heterogeneous dynamics in single-molecule/particle trajectories with multiscale wavelets

In this study, we describe a simple automated method to extract and quantify transient heterogeneous dynamical changes from large data sets generated in single-molecule/particle tracking experiments. Based on wavelet transform, the method transforms raw data to locally match dynamics of interest. This is accomplished using statistically adaptive universal thresholding, whose advantage is to avoid a single arbitrary threshold that might conceal individual variability across populations. How to implement this multiscale method is described, focusing on local confined diffusion separated by transient transport periods or hopping events, with three specific examples: in cell biology, biotechnology, and glassy colloid dynamics. The discussion is generalized within the framework of continuous time random walk. This computationally efficient method can run routinely on hundreds of millions of data points analyzed within an hour on a desktop personal computer.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Unified many-worlds browsing of arbitrary physics-based animations

Manually tuning physics-based animation parameters to explore a simulation outcome space or achieve desired motion outcomes can be notoriously tedious. This problem has motivated many sophisticated and specialized optimization-based methods for fine-grained (keyframe) control, each of which are typically limited to specific animation phenomena, usually complicated, and, unfortunately, not widely used. In this paper, we propose Unified Many-Worlds Browsing (UMWB), a practical method for sample-level control and exploration of physics-based animations. Our approach supports browsing of large simulation ensembles of arbitrary animation phenomena by using a unified volumetric WORLDPACK representation based on spatiotemporally compressed voxel data associated with geometric occupancy and other low-fidelity animation state. Beyond memory reduction, the WORLDPACK representation also enables unified query support for interactive browsing: it provides fast evaluation of approximate spatiotemporal queries, such as occupancy tests that find ensemble samples ("worlds") where material is either IN or NOT IN a user-specified spacetime region. WORLDPACKS also support real-time hardware-accelerated voxel rendering by exploiting the spatially hierarchical and temporal RLE raster data structure. Our UMWB implementation supports interactive browsing (and offline refinement) of ensembles containing thousands of simulation samples, and fast spatiotemporal queries and ranking. We show UMWB results using a wide variety of physics-based animation phenomena---not just JELL-O ® .

Computer Science↗

AI for Science: Report on the Department of Energy (DOE) Town Halls on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Science

The report documents the DOE Town Halls held during 2019 at Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and in Washington, DC. From July to October 2019, the Argonne, Oak Ridge, and Berkeley National Laboratories hosted a series of four town hall meetings attended by more than 1,000 U.S. scientists and engineers. The goal of the town hall series was to examine scientific opportunities in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data, and high-performance computing (HPC) in the next decade, and to capture the big ideas, grand challenges, and next steps to realizing these opportunities. In this report and in the Department of Energy (DOE) laboratory community, we use the term “AI for Science” to broadly represent the next generation of methods and scientific opportunities in computing, including the development and application of AI methods (e.g., machine learning, deep learning, statistical methods, data analytics, automated control, and related areas) to build models from data and to use these models alone or in conjunction with simulation and scalable computing to advance scientific research. The AI for Science town hall discussions focused on capturing the transformational uses of AI that employ HPC and/or data analysis, leveraging data sets from HPC simulations or instruments and user facilities, and addressing scientific challenges unique to DOE user facilities and the agency’s wide-ranging fundamental and applied science enterprise.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗