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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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Mortar: An Open Testbed for Portable Building Analytics

Access to large amounts of real-world data has long been a barrier to the development and evaluation of analytics applications for the built environment. Open datasets exist, but they are limited in their span (how much data is available) and context (what kind of data is available and how it is described). Evaluation of such analytics is also limited by how the analytics themselves are implemented, often using hard-coded names of building components, points and locations, or unique input data formats. To advance the methodology for how such analytics are implemented and evaluated, we present Mortar: an open testbed for portable building analytics, currently spanning 90 buildings and containing over 9.1 billion data points. All buildings in the testbed are described using Brick, a recently developed metadata schema, providing rich functional descriptions of building assets and subsystems. We also propose a simple architecture for writing portable analytics applications that are robust to the diversity of buildings and can configure themselves based on context. We demonstrate the utility of Mortar by implementing 11 applications from the literature.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Graphical Gaussian Process Regression Model for Aqueous Solvation Free Energy Prediction of Organic Molecules in Redox Flow Battery

The solvation free energy of organic molecules is a critical parameter in determining emergent properties such as solubility, liquid-phase equilibrium constants, and pKa and redox potentials in an organic redox flow battery. In this work, we present a machine learning (ML) model that can learn and predict the aqueous solvation free energy of an organic molecule using Gaussian process regression method based on a new molecular graph kernel. To investigate the performance of the ML model on electrostatic interaction, the nonpolar interaction contribution of solvent and the conformational entropy of solute in solvation free energy, three data sets with implicit or explicit water solvent models, and contribution of conformational entropy of solute are tested. We demonstrate that our ML model can predict the solvation free energy of molecules at chemical accuracy with a mean absolute error of less than 1 kcal/mol for subsets of the QM9 dataset and the Freesolv database. To solve the general data scarcity problem for a graph-based ML model, we propose a dimension reduction algorithm based on the distance between molecular graphs, which can be used to examine the diversity of the molecular data set. It provides a promising way to build a minimum training set to improve prediction for certain test sets where the space of molecular structures is predetermined.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

AI‐Driven Defect Engineering for Advanced Thermoelectric Materials

Thermoelectric materials offer a promising pathway to directly convert waste heat to electricity. However, achieving high performance remains challenging due to intrinsic trade-offs between electrical conductivity, the Seebeck coefficient, and thermal conductivity, which are further complicated by the presence of defects. This review explores how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are transforming thermoelectric materials design. Advanced ML approaches including deep neural networks, graph-based models, and transformer architectures, integrated with high-throughput simulations and growing databases, effectively capture structure-property relationships in a complex multiscale defect space and overcome the “curse of dimensionality”. This review discusses AI-enhanced defect engineering strategies such as composition optimization, entropy and dislocation engineering, and grain boundary design, along with emerging inverse design techniques for generating materials with targeted properties. Finally, it outlines future opportunities in novel physics mechanisms and sustainability, highlighting the critical role of AI in accelerating the discovery of thermoelectric materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Resilience Assessment Framework For Electric Distribution Systems Performance Under Extreme Conditions

The devastating impact of extreme weather-related events is increasingly evident on power grids, especially on distribution grids. The severity of their potential impact calls for 1) developing a suitable resilience assessment framework to capture the system performance and 2) assessing relevant mitigative strategies to lessen the impact of such events. This paper proposes a framework to identify grid vulnerabilities using the energy-at-risk concept to select, disconnect and isolate grid portions due to a resilience event. The proposed framework mainly consists of two steps; i) processing the utility's available infrastructure, i.e., a network model, possible switching combinations, and outage information for those combinations, as a graph-based database, and ii) implementing a novel optimal switching algorithm leveraging database and grid simulated metrics. These switching actions are generated to implement load curtailment in a rolling manner during anticipated grid scarcity conditions. In this study, a test case is created using two taxonomy feeders and is simulated against an extreme temperature event, e.g., a long, relatively cold, and prolonged freeze peak, thereby creating stress on the grid. It is demonstrated that the proposed framework allows utilities to predict the energy-at-risk during such resilience events and design suitable outage management strategies.

Poudel, Shiva↗

Predicting Energetics Materials’ Crystalline Density from Chemical Structure by Machine Learning

To expedite new molecular compound development, a long-sought goal within the chemistry community has been to predict molecules’ bulk properties of interest a priori to synthesis from a chemical structure alone. In this work, we demonstrate that machine learning methods can indeed be used to directly learn the relationship between chemical structures and bulk crystalline properties of molecules, even in the absence of any crystal structure information or quantum mechanical calculations. We focus specifically on a class of organic compounds categorized as energetic materials called high explosives (HE) and predicting their crystalline density. An ongoing challenge within the chemistry machine learning community is deciding how best to featurize molecules as inputs into machine learning models—whether expert handcrafted features or learned molecular representations via graph-based neural network models—yield better results and why. We evaluate both types of representations in combination with a number of machine learning models to predict the crystalline densities of HE-like molecules curated from the Cambridge Structural Database, and we report the performance and pros and cons of our methods. Our message passing neural network (MPNN) based models with learned molecular representations generally perform best, outperforming current state-of-the-art methods at predicting crystalline density and performing well even when testing on a data set not representative of the training data. However, these models are traditionally considered black boxes and less easily interpretable. Here, to address this common challenge, we also provide a comparison analysis between our MPNN-based model and models with fixed feature representations that provides insights as to what features are learned by the MPNN to accurately predict density.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

COVID19 Disease Map, a computational knowledge repository of virus–host interaction mechanisms

We need to effectively combine the knowledge from surging literature with complex datasets to propose mechanistic models of SARS-CoV-2 infection, improving data interpretation and predicting key targets of intervention. Here, we describe a large-scale community effort to build an open access, interoperable and computable repository of COVID-19 molecular mechanisms. The COVID-19 Disease Map (C19DMap) is a graphical, interactive representation of disease-relevant molecular mechanisms linking many knowledge sources. Notably, it is a computational resource for graph-based analyses and disease modelling. To this end, we established a framework of tools, platforms and guidelines necessary for a multifaceted community of biocurators, domain experts, bioinformaticians and computational biologists. The diagrams of the C19DMap, curated from the literature, are integrated with relevant interaction and text mining databases. We demonstrate the application of network analysis and modelling approaches by concrete examples to highlight new testable hypotheses. This framework helps to find signatures of SARS-CoV-2 predisposition, treatment response or prioritisation of drug candidates. Such an approach may help deal with new waves of COVID-19 or similar pandemics in the long-term perspective.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Flying Blind, or Just Flying Under the Radar? The Underappreciated Power of De Novo Methods of Mass Spectrometric Peptide Identification

Mass spectrometry-based proteomics is a popular and powerful method for precise and highly multiplexed protein identification. The most common method of analyzing untargeted proteomics data is called database searching, where the database is simply a collection of protein sequences from the target organism, derived from genome sequencing. Experimental peptide tandem mass spectra are compared to simplified models of theoretical spectra calculated from the translated genomic sequences. However, in several interesting application areas, such as forensics, archaeology, venomics and others, a genome sequence may not be available, or the correct genome sequence to use is not known. In these cases, de novo peptide identification can play an important role. De novo peptide identification infers peptide sequence directly from the tandem mass spectrum without reference to a sequence database, usually using graph-based or machine learning algorithms. In this review, we provide a basic overview of de novo peptide identification methods and applications, briefly covering de novo algorithms and tools, and focusing in more depth on recent applications from venomics, metaproteomics, forensics, and characterization of antibody drugs.

proteomics, mass spectrometry, forensics, de novo ↗

Machine learning for the redox potential prediction of molecules in organic redox flow battery

Here, organic redox flow batteries (ORFB) are recognized as an innovative technology for the large-scale storage of renewable energy. The redox potential of organic redox-active molecules plays a vital role in their performance. Advanced screening techniques like high-throughput experiment and machine learning (ML) have significantly enhanced organic material performance and transformed the field of ORFB. However, the scarcity of experimental data poses a considerable challenge for ML model development in this domain. In our study, we developed lightweight graph-based Gaussian process regression (GPR) models with GPU-accelerated marginalized graph kernel and hybrid kernel to predict the redox potentials of organic redox-active molecules for ORFBs, specifically focusing on small datasets. To evaluate model accuracy, we created a new experimental database of organic redox-active molecules by the data from hundreds of published papers and assembled previous computational datasets. We also considered some key parameters, such as pH conditions and solvent type, to assess their impact on redox potential prediction. Our GPR model predicted redox potentials with high accuracy across all datasets using minimal training data. The study provides powerful tools for molecule screening and design and delivers valuable guidance on designing training datasets for costly experiments.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Graph-Based Approaches for Predicting Solvation Energy in Multiple Solvents: Open Datasets and Machine Learning Models

The solvation properties of molecules, often estimated using quantum chemical simulations, are important in the synthesis of energy storage materials, drugs, and industrial chemicals. Here, we develop machine learning models of solvation energies to replace expensive quantum chemistry calculations with inexpensive-to-compute message-passing neural network models that require only the molecular graph as inputs. Our models are trained on a new database of solvation energies for 130,258 molecules taken from the QM9 dataset computed in five solvents (acetone, ethanol, acetonitrile, dimethyl sulfoxide, and water) via an implicit solvent model. Our best model achieves a mean absolute error of 0.5 kcal/mol for molecules with nine or fewer non-hydrogen atoms and 1 kcal/mol for molecules with between 10 and 14 non-hydrogen atoms. We make the entire dataset of 651,290 computed entries openly available and provide simple web and programmatic interfaces to enable others to run our solvation energy model on new molecules. This model calculates the solvation energies for molecules using only the SMILES string and also provides an estimate of whether each molecule is within the domain of applicability of our model. We envision that the dataset and models will provide the functionality needed for the rapid screening of large chemical spaces to discover improved molecules for many applications.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Advancing energy storage through solubility prediction: leveraging the potential of deep learning

Solubility prediction plays a crucial role in energy storage applications, such as redox flow batteries, because it directly affects the efficiency and reliability. Researchers have developed various methods that utilize quantum calculations and descriptors to predict the aqueous solubilities of organic molecules. Notably, machine learning models based on descriptors have shown promise for solubility prediction. As deep learning tools, graph neural networks (GNNs) have emerged to capture complex structure–property relationships for material property prediction. Specifically, MolGAT, a type of GNN model, was designed to incorporate n-dimensional edge attributes, enabling the modeling of intricacies in molecular graphs and enhancing the prediction capabilities. In a previous study, MolGAT successfully screened 23 467 promising redox-active molecules from a database of over 500 000 compounds, based on redox potential predictions. This study focused on applying the MolGAT model to predict the aqueous solubility (log S) of a broad range of organic compounds, including those previously screened for redox activity. The model was trained on a diverse sample of 8494 organic molecules from AqSolDB and benchmarked against literature data, demonstrating superior accuracy compared with other state of the art graph-based and descriptor-based models. Subsequently, the trained MolGAT model was employed to screen redox-active organic compounds identified in the first phase of high-throughput virtual screening, targeting favorable solubility in energy storage applications. The second round of screening, which considered solubility, yielded 12 332 promising redox-active and soluble organic molecules suitable for use in aqueous redox flow batteries. Thus, the two-phase high-throughput virtual screening approach utilizing MolGAT, specifically trained for redox potential and solubility, is an effective strategy for selecting suitable intrinsically soluble redox-active molecules from extensive databases, potentially advancing energy storage through reliable material development. This indicates that the model is reliable for predicting the solubility of various molecules and provides valuable insights for energy storage, pharmaceutical, environmental, and chemical applications.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Graph-Based Prediction of Spatio-Temporal Vaccine Hesitancy From Insurance Claims Data

Growing vaccine hesitancy is contributing to the decline in immunization rates for highly contagious, vaccine-preventable childhood diseases. Therefore, there has been a significant interest in understanding how hesitancy is spreading at higher spatio-temporal resolutions, enabling more targeted interventions. Motivated by this, we study the problem of prediction of vaccine hesitancy at the ZIP Code level, referred to as the VaxHesitancy problem. A significant challenge for this problem is the lack of high-resolution data that indicates hesitancy. Here, we develop a hybrid VaxHesSTL framework that combines a Graph Neural Network (GNN) and a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) to address the VaxHesitancy problem. The GNN uses a ZIP Code-level network to capture spatial signals from neighboring areas, while the RNN models the temporal dynamics present in the data. We train and evaluate VaxHesSTL using a large dataset, namely the All-Payer Claims Databases (APCD), for Virginia, consisting of insurance claims from over five million individuals for six years. We find that an aggregated contact network or graph, developed from a detailed activity-based population network, plays an important role in the performance of VaxHesSTL, compared to graph models based solely on spatial proximity. Experiments demonstrate that VaxHesSTL outperforms a range of state-of-the-art baselines, which rely solely on historical time series data without accounting for spatial relationships. Since hesitancy data at higher spatial resolution is often unavailable or hard to get, we incorporate an active learning approach with our VaxHesSTL framework to optimize the training set without compromising the prediction performance. We find that hesitancy data for only 18% of ZIP Codes selected by active learning allows us to forecast hesitancy for all the ZIP Codes in the Virginia.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

QLiG: Query Like a Graph For Subgraph Matching

A graph is a natural and flexible modeling approach to represent entities and relationships between them in real-world. A Knowledge Graphs (KG) is a specialized graph with formal and structured representation of facts, relationships, annotated with semantic descriptions. Subgraph matching is one of the fundamental graph problems to identify relationships, interactions and activities of interest within a large graph. A query specification is a collection of abstract components, operations, and constraints to express a pattern. The specification can be implemented in different ways based on underlying data model. Various graph query specifications have been developed over the years and have led to the development of different open-sourced and vendor-specific query languages. Such specification are modeled as an extension of relational algebra used to develop relational query languages such as SQL. Such relational concepts do not inherently support graph queries. There is a need to represent graph queries in terms on graph-based components to expedite query construction by non-database experts. We present a graph-based query approach QLiG (pronounced cleeg), to perform subgraph matching in Labeled Property Graph. We present the query specifications, salient features, and a use case to show functional examples.

Purohit, Sumit↗

Retrieval Augmented Generation for Robust Cyber Defense

In cybersecurity, the ability to efficiently analyze and respond to vulnerabilities, weaknesses, attack patterns, and threat tactics is critical for effective defense strategies. With the increasing complexity and volume of cybersecurity data, traditional methods of querying and retrieving information are often inadequate. To address this challenge, we implemented Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems—CyRAG and GraphCyRAG—that integrate large language models (LLMs) with both structured data from relational databases and knowledge graphs such as Neo4j. CyRAG is designed to handle structured data, focusing on CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) and CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration) entities to generate accurate and context-rich responses. In contrast, GraphCyRAG leverages Neo4j knowledge graphs to retrieve interconnected information from CVE, CWE, CAPEC (Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification), and ATT&CK (Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge) datasets. By utilizing Neo4j’s graph-based framework, GraphCyRAG enables deeper traversal of relationships between vulnerabilities and attack patterns, providing cybersecurity analysts with more comprehensive insights into potential attack vectors and mitigation strategies. Our preliminary results demonstrate that integrating knowledge graphs with RAG significantly enhances both the accuracy and depth of threat analysis, allowing for the retrieval of dynamic, real-time data and the generation of contextually aware responses. This approach helps analysts uncover hidden relationships between cyber entities, predict exploit paths, and prioritize mitigation efforts effectively. The integration of RAG with cybersecurity knowledge graphs represents a significant advancement in cybersecurity threat intelligence, enabling more informed decision-making and stronger defense strategies.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Graph-based featurization methods for classifying small molecule compounds

For over a decade, drug-induced liver injury (DILI) has posed significant drawbacks in the synthesis and development of drugs and remains a consequential concern. With finite success within the existing preclinical models, DILI is one of the main causes of drug withdrawal or termination from the market. Particularly, this withdrawal occurs during the late stages of drug development (Kullak-Ublick, 2017). Since DILI is difficult to diagnose and treat, it has become an obstacle in the drug production market that in turn affects clinicians, pharmaceutical companies, and consumers. We propose a method for learning features of DILI-positive drugs based on the graphical relationships and patterns they possess within a network of biological databases. We also train various statistical and machine learning models on these learned features in order to classify the drugs as DILI-positive or negative. Our methods include Random Forest, Neural networks, and logistic regression classification. We utilize labeled DILI-positive and DILI-negative datasets, which were developed by the FDA and the National center for toxicological research, as well as additional literature datasets (Thakkar, 2020) in order to validate our results and assess our featurization and model accuracy.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

From Data to Knowledge: A Graph-Based Reliability Approach to Assess System Health

With the goal of maximizing plant reliability and availability, complex systems such as nuclear power plants continuously monitor and record the performance and the health status of many components, assets, and systems. Such data may take the form of online monitoring data, condition reports, and maintenance reports and it carries the potential to provide system engineers with insights into anomalous behaviors or degradation trends as well as the possible causes behind them and to predict their direct consequences. The analysis of such data poses however few challenges. While some of these challenges are technical in nature (i.e., data are often distributed over several physical servers or databases), others are conceptual in nature (i.e., data elements come in different formats, numeric or textual), and measured values have different scales (e.g., vibration spectra and oil temperature). This paper directly tackles these challenges, and it focuses on the integration of all these data elements in order to assist plant system engineers in analyzing component, assets, and systems performances and optimize maintenance activities. This is performed by 1) extracting knowledge from textual data via technical language processing methods, and 2) quantifying system, asset, and component health from numeric condition-based data. We rely on model-based system engineering (MBSE) models of systems and assets to identify their architecture and functional (i.e., cause and effect) relations. Numeric and textual data elements are then associated with an MBSE graph element, based on their nature. This bonding of MBSE models and data elements constitutes a first-of-its-kind knowledge graph of a nuclear power plants system, with data elements being organized in a structured manner that enables system engineers to identify cause-effect trends in data elements and carry out appropriate actions in response.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Capturing Historic Reliability Performance Through Graph Databases: A Model Based System Engineering Approach

With the goal of improving the performance and reliability of high dependable technological systems such as nuclear power plants, advanced monitoring and health management systems are employed to inform system engineers on observed degradation processes and anomalous behaviors of assets and components. This information is captured in the form of large amount of data which can be heterogenous in nature (e.g., numeric, textual). Such large data availability poses challenges when system engineers are required to parse and analyze them in order to track historic reliability performance of assets and components. This paper tackles directly this challenge by providing means to organize data in the form of a graph: a knowledge graph. The presented approach distinguish itself from current knowledge graph-based methods by the fact that model-based system engineering (MBSE) models are used to “put data into context”. In particular, MBSE models are used as skeleton of a knowledge graph; numeric and textual data elements, once processed, are associated to MBSE model elements. Thus, a knowledge graph captures both system architecture (though MBSE models) and health/performance data. Such feature opens the door to new data analytics methods designed to identify causal relations between observed phenomena.

97 - MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗