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At least 1,693 records · Page 94

Predicting Damages to Remainder Parcels in Right-of-Way Acquisitions for Expanding Transportation Infrastructure: Using a Truncated Finite-Mixture Model

Right-of-way acquisition is a critical component of transportation infrastructure development. Transportation infrastructure projects cannot proceed without proper right-of-way acquisition or may face significant delays. State Departments of Transportation frequently acquire parcels of land for roadway expansion projects. A majority of these acquisitions can be partial takings, referring to a portion of a parcel that is acquired. The remainder of the property usually suffers economic changes due to the partial acquisition, which can be calculated as damage percentages. The damage percentage represents the extent to which the remaining land or property value has been diminished due to the acquisition. It reflects the remaining property value percentage that may have been lost or compromised due to the acquisition. Here, this study aims to provide a robust model to estimate damage percentages to the remainder parcels that may help state Departments of Transportation appraisers make early predictions about the damages in cases involving partial takings. The research uses 509 appraisal reports from the Tennessee Department of Transportation to identify the key parcel attributes that influence the percentage of damages. Three regression models are developed: a linear regression model, a finite-mixture model (FMM), and a truncated FMM with two latent classes. The modeling results show that the truncated FMM with two classes outperforms the other models. To validate the models, actual sales data is collected and analyzed for 59 properties, and the results suggest that the model predictions are fairly accurate. A predictive tool is developed based on the models to help appraisers anticipate right-of-way damages under different scenarios and can provide early predictions about the damages.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Multiaxial Plastic Deformation of Zircaloy-4 Nuclear Fuel Cladding Tubes

Here, this work is motivated by the desire to devise an internal pressure test that can mimic a displacement-controlled loading scenario and demonstrate how to apply the multiaxial stress and strain data from the test to develop an elastic/plastic constitutive model for a thin-walled tubular component. This is achieved by conducting simultaneous measurements of tangential and axial strain during the pressure test and integrating these strain measures into a feedback loop with the pressure controller. It is shown how data from such a test can be used to develop a large mechanical property data set relevant to biaxial loading conditions. The data obtained have high confidence evidenced by their low variability and alignment with other literature studies. Additionally, data from these internal pressure tests combined with full-tube axial tensile tests allow for the derivation of the Hill anisotropic yield function. The developed Hill yield function is validated by comparing the plastic strain ratios from the full-tube tension tests and by comparing the predicted yield stress in the tangential direction with measured values from ring tension tests in a previous study.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Successive common envelope events from multiple planets

ABSTRACT Many stars harbour multiplanet systems. As these stars expand late in their evolutions, the innermost planet may be engulfed, leading to a common envelope (CE) event. Even if this is insufficient to eject the envelope, it may expand the star further, causing additional CE events, with the last one unbinding what remains of the envelope. This multiplanet CE scenario may have broad implications for stellar and planetary evolution across a range of systems. We develop a simplified version and show that it may be able to explain the recently observed planet WD 1856 b.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Simulating the Autonomous Future: A Look at Virtual Vehicle Environments and How to Validate Simulation Using Public Data Sets

The rapid evolution of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has exposed the need for fast-paced development and testing processes of a variety of perception, planning, and control algorithms. To expedite development, the AV industry and researchers leverage virtual vehicle environments to simulate a range of test scenarios that may otherwise be costly or difficult to conduct on a real test track. However, the various virtual environments may have different results depending on the fidelity of various simulation features, such as vehicle dynamics, sensor simulation, and environment recreation. Herein, this tutorial article examines a proposed framework for constructing, parameterizing, and validating a virtual vehicle environment using an existing AV data set. First, an overview of several open source and commercially available simulation tools, including their associated workflows, for scene and scenario creation is presented. Next, various open AV data sets are examined to inform the data set selection for the validation framework. Then, an example workflow of recreating a real-world scene from the selected data set in a simulation tool with various emulated sensors parameterized to match the data set is demonstrated. Finally, an example AV-perception algorithm is subjected to data streams from virtual and real-world environments and suggested metrics for analyzing the results are discussed.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Quantum Networks for Resilient Power Grids: Theory and Simulated Evaluation

Quantum networks are considered the future of secure communication in the coming quantum era. Yet there lack significant efforts on developing practical quantum networks for power grids. Here, in this paper, we establish a quantum network-based power grid (QNetGrid) framework and develops a real-time, reliable, flexible, programmable, and cost-effective QNetGrid software testbed containing repeater-based quantum communication, quantum routing, real software-defined networking (SDN) switches, and real-time networked microgrids (NMs) operations. It makes the following contributions: 1) a repeater and routing based quantum network simulator (QNSim) is developed, 2) repeaters with and without quantum memories are respectively simulated in QNSim, 3) different routing scenarios in QNetGrid are investigated, 4) a real-time QNetGrid software testbed is built in RTDS incorporating QNSim and real SDN switches, and 5) various test cases are designed, and experimental results produced with the QNetGrid testbed provide valuable insights for building quantum networks in power grids.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

A Comprehensive Review of Working Fluids for High-Temperature Heat Pumps: History, Selection, and Evaluation

High-temperature heat pumps (HTHPs) are essential for enhancing energy efficiency across various industrial applications, especially in terms of integrating with renewable energy sources and recovering waste heat. This article thoroughly investigates suitable working fluids for HTHPs, highlighting the evolution from traditional refrigerants to contemporary alternatives with low global warming potential (GWP). It proposes comprehensive selection criteria for these working fluids, pre-selects low-GWP working fluids, and outlines a screening methodology. The pre-selected low-GWP working fluids are evaluated for applications in three typical industrial scenarios involving HTHPs. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that regulatory compliance and environmental impacts significantly influence the development of next-generation refrigerants. The choice of working fluids is closely linked to the types of vapor compression cycles, tailored to the specific industrial applications for HTHPs. This study emphasizes areas for future research, including the development of innovative working fluids; integrated strategies that account for performance, safety, and regulatory standards; alignment of HTHP components; exploration of natural working fluids; and broadening the applications of existing working fluids.

Compression↗

Evaluating HPC Scheduling Strategies for Urgent Workloads

Scientific computing centers increasingly face workloads with diverse urgency requirements, driven by applications that demand rapid or even immediate execution. Appropriately configured scheduling policies can significantly improve both user satisfaction and overall cluster utilization. In this work, we present a systematic analysis of scheduler configurations under scenarios where a fraction of jobs have urgent computing needs. We evaluate multiple job scheduling simulators, develop a lightweight job-submission emulation framework, and create tools to analyze and visualize the resulting scheduling data. Our study identifies key trade-offs between responsiveness, fairness, and efficiency, and offers a set of practical scheduling configurations (particularly for Slurm) that can be tailored to HPC environments supporting mixed-urgency workloads.

Maheshwari, Ketan [ORNL] (ORCID:000000033800662X)↗

A Melanoma Brain Metastasis CTC Signature and CTC:B-cell Clusters Associate with Secondary Liver Metastasis: A Melanoma Brain–Liver Metastasis Axis

Melanoma brain metastasis is linked to dismal prognosis and low overall survival and is detected in up to 80% of patients at autopsy. Circulating tumor cells (CTC) are the smallest functional units of cancer and precursors of fatal metastasis. We previously used an unbiased multilevel approach to discover a unique ribosomal protein large/small subunit (RPL/RPS) CTC gene signature associated with melanoma brain metastasis. In this study, we hypothesized that CTC-driven melanoma brain metastasis secondary metastasis (“metastasis of metastasis” per clinical scenarios) has targeted organ specificity for the liver. We injected parallel cohorts of immunodeficient and newly developed humanized NBSGW (huNBSGW) mice with cells from CTC-derived melanoma brain metastasis to identify secondary metastatic patterns. We found the presence of a melanoma brain–liver metastasis axis in huNBSGW mice. Furthermore, RNA sequencing analysis of tissues showed a significant upregulation of the RPL/RPS CTC gene signature linked to metastatic spread to the liver. Additional RNA sequencing of CTCs from huNBSGW blood revealed extensive CTC clustering with human B cells in these mice. CTC:B-cell clusters were also upregulated in the blood of patients with primary melanoma and maintained either in CTC-driven melanoma brain metastasis or melanoma brain metastasis CTC–derived cells promoting liver metastasis. CTC-generated tumor tissues were interrogated at single-cell gene and protein expression levels (10x Genomics Xenium and HALO spatial biology platforms, respectively). Collectively, our findings suggest that heterotypic CTC:B-cell interactions can be critical at multiple stages of metastasis.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Strategies for Achieving the DOE Hydrogen Shot Goal: Thermal Conversion Approaches

In July 2021 the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) launched the first of a series of Department-wide Energy Earthshot goals designed to accelerate breakthroughs of more abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy solutions within the decade. The Hydrogen Shot goal seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen to $\$$1 per 1 kilogram in 1 decade ("1 1 1"). Today, thermal conversion of fossil fuels represents the predominant, lowest cost method of hydrogen production. In 2020 approximately 75 percent of global, dedicated hydrogen production was produced via fossil fuels using thermal conversion approaches such as steam reforming and gasification. However, carbon management techniques such as CO 2 capture and sequestration (CCS) and pyrolysis are not widely represented in the current fossil-based hydrogen production fleet. Lowering the cost of clean hydrogen production from commercial and advanced thermal conversion-based technologies is critical for successfully achieving the Hydrogen Shot goal. This report presents the findings from an initial screening analysis of several scenarios that explore cost drivers related to clean hydrogen production. The screening encompasses commercially available and developing thermal conversion technology alternatives as well as factors exogenous to the plant such as feedstock/byproduct pricing, CO 2 pipeline and storage infrastructure costs, and scale to assess potential pathways towards meeting the Hydrogen Shot goal. Additionally, this report presents initial Research and Development (R&D) strategies to advance thermal conversion technology towards meeting the Hydrogen Shot goal.

08 HYDROGEN↗

PR100 One-Year Progress Summary Report: Preliminary Modeling Results and High-Resolution Solar and Wind Data Sets

The Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy Study (PR100) is a 2-year study by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Grid Deployment Office and six national laboratories to comprehensively analyze stakeholder-driven pathways to Puerto Rico's clean energy future. In Year 1 of the study, the PR100 team rigorously modeled and analyzed scenarios that meet Puerto Rico's renewable energy targets and achieve short-term recovery goals and long-term energy resilience. This report, which summarizes PR100 progress in Year 1, provides considerations that can inform potential funding and implementation decisions by key federal and local agencies and stakeholders. The summary report follows the publication in July 2022 of a PR100 Six-Month Progress Update (in English and Spanish), as well as public webinars in February 2022 to kick off the study and in July 2022 to present the 6-month update. A final written report and web-based visuals will be published in late 2023. All publications and public events associated with the study will be available in Spanish and English. This report is also available in Spanish https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85144.pdf.

100%↗

Optimal and Nominal Nuclear Testing Programs

The intent of this paper is to encourage thought on what the Test Site Verification Team (TSVT) might encounter primarily in terms of observable infrastructure when deployed to assess and verify an explosion, and/or a nuclear-testing program, site, or facility. A primary objective is to present the concept of a continuum of nuclear-testing programs between optimal and nominal end members as defined primarily by their observable infrastructure. Key objectives are: 1. Define optimal and nominal nuclear testing programs; 2. Discuss underground development for nuclear operations; 3. Discuss underground nuclear operations, safety, and health; 4. Compare drift complexes of optimal and nominal testing programs; 5. Compare drift complexes for nuclear testing and commercial production; 6. Discuss a potential future look of underground development and operations. A secondary objective is to interpret the intent of the three TSVT verification scenarios, primarily by defining “consistent with” nuclear or non-nuclear or listing criteria that “verify” nuclear or non-nuclear. Before discussing optimal and nominal nuclear testing programs, an understanding of the three verification scenarios is deemed beneficial.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Hydrogen Shot Technology Assessment: Thermal Conversion Approaches

In July 2021 the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) launched the first of a series of Department-wide Energy Earthshot™ goals designed to accelerate breakthroughs of more abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy solutions within the decade. The Hydrogen Shot goal seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen to $\$$1 per 1 kilogram in 1 decade ("1 1 1"). Today, thermal conversion of fossil fuels represents the predominant, lowest cost method of hydrogen production. In 2020 approximately 75 percent of global, dedicated hydrogen production was produced via fossil fuels using thermal conversion approaches such as steam reforming and gasification. However, carbon management techniques such as CO 2 capture and sequestration (CCS) and pyrolysis are not widely represented in the current fossil-based hydrogen production fleet. Lowering the cost of clean hydrogen production from commercial and advanced thermal conversion-based technologies is critical for successfully achieving the Hydrogen Shot goal. This report presents the findings from an initial screening analysis of several scenarios that explore cost drivers related to clean hydrogen production. The screening encompasses commercially available and developing thermal conversion technology alternatives as well as factors exogenous to the plant such as feedstock/byproduct pricing, CO 2 pipeline and storage infrastructure costs, and scale to assess potential pathways towards meeting the Hydrogen Shot goal. Additionally, this report presents initial Research and Development (R&D) strategies to advance thermal conversion technology towards meeting the Hydrogen Shot™ goal.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Game-Theoretic Approach for Grace-Period Policy in Supercomputers

Job scheduling at supercomputing facilities is important for achieving high utilization of these valuable resources while ensuring effective execution of jobs submitted by users. The jobs are scheduled according to their specified resource demands such as expected job completion times, and the available resources based on allocations. Jobs that overrun their allocated times are terminated, for example, after a grace-period. It is non-trivial and often very complex for users to accurately estimate the completion times of their jobs, and consequently they face a dilemma: underestimate the job time to have a higher priority and risk job termination due to overrun, or overestimate it to ensure its completion and risk its delayed execution. In this paper, we investigate whether providing grace-period can benefit facility performance by developing a game- theoretic model between a facility provider and multiple users for a simplified scheduling scenario based on job execution times. We present closed-form expressions for the provider’s and user’s best-response strategies to maximize their respective utility functions. We describe conditions under which offering a grace-period is advantageous to both facility provider and users by deriving the Nash equilibrium of the game.

He, Fei↗

A Time-Varying Model for Predicting Formaldehyde Emission Rates in Homes

Recent studies have succeeded in relating emissions of various volatile organic compounds to material mass diffusion transfer using detailed empirical characteristics of each of the individual emitting materials. While significant, the resulting models are often scenario specific and/or require a host of individual component parameters to estimate emission rates. This study developed an approach to estimate aggregated emissions rates based on a wide number of field measurements. We used a multi-parameter regression model based on previous mass transfer models to predict formaldehyde emission rate for a whole dwelling using field-measured, time-resolved formaldehyde concentrations, air exchange rates, and indoor environmental parameters in 63 California single-family houses built between 2011 and 2017. The resulting model provides time-varying formaldehyde emission rates, normalized by floor area, for each study home, assuming a well-mixed mass balance transport model of the home, and a well-mixed layer transport model of indoor surfaces. The surface layer model asserts an equilibrium concentration within the surface layer of the emitted materials that is a function of temperature and RH; the dwelling ventilation rate serves as a surrogate for indoor concentration. We also developed a more generic emission model that is suitable for broad prediction of emission for a population of buildings. This model is also based on measurements aggregated from 27 homes from the same study. We showed that errors in predicting household formaldehyde concentrations using this approach were substantially less than those using a traditional constant emission rate model, despite requiring less unique building information.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Aircraft motion analysis using limited flight and radar data

The development and application of methods for reconstructing, from a limited set of recorded data, a comprehensive scenario of aircraft motions before and during an accident are described. The accuracy of these analytical methods is investigated using data recorded onboard the Ames CV-990 research aircraft. In these experiments, the expanded set of data, derived from either foil or ATC records, is compared with corresponding values measured by the research instrumentation system onboard the aircraft. The results indicate that many of the derived quantities are in good agreement with the corresponding onboard measurements. A recent application of this procedure using actual accident records is presented and potential applications are briefly reviewed.

Wingrove, R. C.↗

Potential benefits from a successful solar thermal program

Solar energy systems were investigated which complement nuclear and coal technologies as a means of reducing the U.S. dependence on imported petroleum. Solar Thermal Energy Systems (STES) represents an important category of solar energy technologies. STES can be utilized in a broad range of applications servicing a variety of economic sectors, and they can be deployed in both near-term and long-term markets. The net present value of the energy cost savings attributable to electric utility and IPH applications of STES were estimated for a variety of future energy cost scenarios and levels of R&D success. This analysis indicated that the expected net benefits of developing an STES option are significantly greater than the expected costs of completing the required R&D. In addition, transportable fuels and chemical feedstocks represent a substantial future potential market for STES. Due to the basic nature of this R&D activity, however, it is currently impossible to estimate the value of STES in these markets. Despite this fact, private investment in STES R&D is not anticipated due to the high level of uncertainty characterizing the expected payoffs.

Terasawa, K. L.↗

Solar thermal technologies - Potential benefits to U.S. utilities and industry

Solar energy systems were investigated which complement nuclear and coal technologies as a means of reducing the U.S. dependence on imported petroleum. Solar Thermal Energy Systems (STES) represents an important category of solar energy technologies. STES can be utilized in a broad range of applications servicing a variety of economic sectors, and they can be deployed in both near-term and long-term markets. The net present value of the energy cost savings attributable to electric utility and IPH applications of STES were estimated for a variety of future energy cost scenarios and levels of R&D success. This analysis indicated that the expected net benefits of developing an STES option are significantly greater than the expected costs of completing the required R&D. In addition, transportable fuels and chemical feedstocks represent a substantial future potential market for STES. Due to the basic nature of this R&D activity, however, it is currently impossible to estimate the value of STES in these markets. Despite this fact, private investment in STES R&D is not anticipated due to the high level of uncertainty characterizing the expected payoffs. Previously announced in STAR as N83-10547

Terasawa, K. L.↗