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At least 253 records · Page 14

Correlated conformational dynamics of the human GluN1-GluN2A type N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor

N-Methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) are glutamate-gated ion channels found in the nerve cell membranes. As a result of overexcitation of NMDARs, neuronal death occurs and may lead to diseases such as epilepsy, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease. In this study, human GluN1- GluN2A type NMDAR structure is modeled based on the X-ray structure of the Xenopus laevis template and missing loops are added by ab-initio loop modeling. The final structure is chosen according to two different model assessment scores. To be able to observe the structural changes upon ligand binding, glycine and glutamate molecules are docked into the corresponding binding sites of the receptor. Subsequently, molecular dynamics simulations of 1.3 μs are performed for both apo and ligand-bound structures. Structural parameters, which have been considered to show functionally important changes in previous NMDAR studies, are monitored as conformational rulers to understand the dynamics of the conformational changes. Moreover, principal component analysis (PCA) is performed for the equilibrated part of the simulations. Additionally, from these analyses, the differences in between apo and ligand-bound simulations can be summarized as the following: The girdle right at the beginning of the pore loop, which connects M2 and M3 helices of the ion channel, partially opens. Ligands act like an adhesive for the ligand-binding domain (LBD) by keeping the bi-lobed structure together and consequently this is reflected to the overall dynamics of the protein as an increased correlation of the LBD with especially the amino-terminal domain (ATD) of the protein.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Deep Multimodal Networks for M-type Star Classification with Paired Spectrum and Photometric Image

Abstract Traditional stellar classification methods include spectral and photometric classification separately. Although satisfactory results can be achieved, the accuracy could be improved. In this paper, we pioneer a novel approach to deeply fuse the spectra and photometric images of the sources in an advanced multimodal network to enhance the model’s discriminatory ability. We use Transformer as the fusion module and apply a spectrum–image contrastive loss function to enhance the consistency of the spectrum and photometric image of the same source in two different feature spaces. We perform M-type stellar subtype classification on two data sets with high and low signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) spectra and corresponding photometric images, and the F1-score achieves 95.65% and 90.84%, respectively. In our experiments, we prove that our model effectively utilizes the information from photometric images and is more accurate than advanced spectrum and photometric image classifiers. Our contributions can be summarized as follows: (1) We propose an innovative idea for stellar classification that allows the model to simultaneously consider information from spectra and photometric images. (2) We discover the challenge of fusing low-S/N spectra and photometric images in the Transformer and provide a solution. (3) The effectiveness of Transformer for spectral classification is discussed for the first time and will inspire more Transformer-based spectral classification models.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗

Regional climate change predictions from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies high resolution GCM

Model simulations of global climate change are seen as an essential component of any program aimed at understanding human impact on the global environment. A major weakness of current general circulation models (GCMs), however, is their inability to predict reliably the regional consequences of a global scale change, and it is these regional scale predictions that are necessary for studies of human/environmental response. This research is directed toward the development of a methodology for the validation of the synoptic scale climatology of GCMs. This is developed with regard to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) GCM Model 2, with the specific objective of using the synoptic circulation form a doubles CO2 simulation to estimate regional climate change over North America, south of Hudson Bay. This progress report is specifically concerned with validating the synoptic climatology of the GISS GCM, and developing the transfer function to derive grid-point temperatures from the synoptic circulation. Principal Components Analysis is used to characterize the primary modes of the spatial and temporal variability in the observed and simulated climate, and the model validation is based on correlations between component loadings, and power spectral analysis of the component scores. The results show that the high resolution GISS model does an excellent job of simulating the synoptic circulation over the U.S., and that grid-point temperatures can be predicted with reasonable accuracy from the circulation patterns.

Crane, Robert G.↗

A common resequencing‐based genetic marker data set for global maize diversity

SUMMARY Maize ( Zea mays ssp. mays ) populations exhibit vast ranges of genetic and phenotypic diversity. As sequencing costs have declined, an increasing number of projects have sought to measure genetic differences between and within maize populations using whole‐genome resequencing strategies, identifying millions of segregating single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertions/deletions (InDels). Unlike older genotyping strategies like microarrays and genotyping by sequencing, resequencing should, in principle, frequently identify and score common genetic variants. However, in practice, different projects frequently employ different analytical pipelines, often employ different reference genome assemblies and consistently filter for minor allele frequency within the study population. This constrains the potential to reuse and remix data on genetic diversity generated from different projects to address new biological questions in new ways. Here, we employ resequencing data from 1276 previously published maize samples and 239 newly resequenced maize samples to generate a single unified marker set of approximately 366 million segregating variants and approximately 46 million high‐confidence variants scored across crop wild relatives, landraces as well as tropical and temperate lines from different breeding eras. We demonstrate that the new variant set provides increased power to identify known causal flowering‐time genes using previously published trait data sets, as well as the potential to track changes in the frequency of functionally distinct alleles across the global distribution of modern maize.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Reducing the Parameter Dependency of Phase-Picking Neural Networks with Dice Loss

Training a neural network for picking seismic phase arrivals has been commonly posed as a segmentation problem. It is a highly imbalanced segmentation problem in the sense that the background vastly dominates the foreground because we are trying to pick the optimal single sample point that represents the arrival of a seismic phase in a many seconds long time window. Here, we test the Dice loss, which is a preferred loss function for highly imbalanced image segmentation problems. We show that phase-picking neural networks trained on the Dice loss behave in a binary fashion for which the prediction output is almost always either nearly 1 or nearly 0. This feature removes the strong dependence of data processing workflows on the prediction score threshold, which is an otherwise critical parameter to determine when using neural networks trained on the cross-entropy loss. When strategically used, models trained on the Dice loss can reduce the parameter dependency of machine learning-based seismic monitoring.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

An in silico method to assess antibody fragment polyreactivity

Antibodies are essential biological research tools and important therapeutic agents, but some exhibit non-specific binding to off-target proteins and other biomolecules. Such polyreactive antibodies compromise screening pipelines, lead to incorrect and irreproducible experimental results, and are generally intractable for clinical development. Here, we design a set of experiments using a diverse naïve synthetic camelid antibody fragment (nanobody) library to enable machine learning models to accurately assess polyreactivity from protein sequence (AUC > 0.8). Moreover, our models provide quantitative scoring metrics that predict the effect of amino acid substitutions on polyreactivity. We experimentally test our models’ performance on three independent nanobody scaffolds, where over 90% of predicted substitutions successfully reduced polyreactivity. Importantly, the models allow us to diminish the polyreactivity of an angiotensin II type I receptor antagonist nanobody, without compromising its functional properties. We provide a companion web-server that offers a straightforward means of predicting polyreactivity and polyreactivity-reducing mutations for any given nanobody sequence.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Next-generation yeast-two-hybrid analysis with Y2H-SCORES identifies novel interactors of the MLA immune receptor

Protein-protein interaction networks are one of the most effective representations of cellular behavior. In order to build these models, high-throughput techniques are required. Next-generation interaction screening (NGIS) protocols that combine yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) with deep sequencing are promising approaches to generate interactome networks in any organism. However, challenges remain to mining reliable information from these screens and thus, limit its broader implementation. Here, we present a computational framework, designated Y2H-SCORES, for analyzing high-throughput Y2H screens. Y2H-SCORES considers key aspects of NGIS experimental design and important characteristics of the resulting data that distinguish it from RNA-seq expression datasets. Three quantitative ranking scores were implemented to identify interacting partners, comprising: 1) significant enrichment under selection for positive interactions, 2) degree of interaction specificity among multi-bait comparisons, and 3) selection of in-frame interactors. Using simulation and an empirical dataset, we provide a quantitative assessment to predict interacting partners under a wide range of experimental scenarios, facilitating independent confirmation by one-to-one bait-prey tests. Simulation of Y2H-NGIS enabled us to identify conditions that maximize detection of true interactors, which can be achieved with protocols such as prey library normalization, maintenance of larger culture volumes and replication of experimental treatments. Y2H-SCORES can be implemented in different yeast-based interaction screenings, with an equivalent or superior performance than existing methods. Proof-of-concept was demonstrated by discovery and validation of novel interactions between the barley nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) immune receptor MLA6, and fourteen proteins, including those that function in signaling, transcriptional regulation, and intracellular trafficking.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Predicting the formation of fractionally doped perovskite oxides by a function-confined machine learning method

Abstract Fractionally doped perovskites oxides (FDPOs) have demonstrated ubiquitous applications such as energy conversion, storage and harvesting, catalysis, sensor, superconductor, ferroelectric, piezoelectric, magnetic, and luminescence. Hence, an accurate, cost-effective, and easy-to-use methodology to discover new compositions is much needed. Here, we developed a function-confined machine learning methodology to discover new FDPOs with high prediction accuracy from limited experimental data. By focusing on a specific application, namely solar thermochemical hydrogen production, we collected 632 training data and defined 21 desirable features. Our gradient boosting classifier model achieved a high prediction accuracy of 95.4% and a high F1 score of 0.921. Furthermore, when verified on additional 36 experimental data from existing literature, the model showed a prediction accuracy of 94.4%. With the help of this machine learning approach, we identified and synthesized 11 new FDPO compositions, 7 of which are relevant for solar thermochemical hydrogen production. We believe this confined machine learning methodology can be used to discover, from limited data, FDPOs with other specific application purposes.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Protein remote homology detection and structural alignment using deep learning

Exploiting sequence–structure–function relationships in biotechnology requires improved methods for aligning proteins that have low sequence similarity to previously annotated proteins. We develop two deep learning methods to address this gap, TM-Vec and DeepBLAST. TM-Vec allows searching for structure–structure similarities in large sequence databases. It is trained to accurately predict TM-scores as a metric of structural similarity directly from sequence pairs without the need for intermediate computation or solution of structures. Once structurally similar proteins have been identified, DeepBLAST can structurally align proteins using only sequence information by identifying structurally homologous regions between proteins. It outperforms traditional sequence alignment methods and performs similarly to structure-based alignment methods. We show the merits of TM-Vec and DeepBLAST on a variety of datasets, including better identification of remotely homologous proteins compared with state-of-the-art sequence alignment and structure prediction methods.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Peptides from human BNIP5 and PXT1 and non-native binders of pro-apoptotic BAK can directly activate or inhibit BAK-mediated membrane permeabilization

Apoptosis is important for development and tissue homeostasis, and its dysregulation can lead to diseases, including cancer. As an apoptotic effector, BAK undergoes conformational changes that promote mitochondrial outer membrane disruption, leading to cell death. This is termed “activation” and can be induced by peptides from the human proteins BID, BIM, and PUMA. To identify additional peptides that can regulate BAK, we used computational protein design, yeast surface display screening, and structure-based energy scoring to identify 10 diverse new binders. We discovered peptides from the human proteins BNIP5 and PXT1 and three non-native peptides that activate BAK in liposome assays and induce cytochrome c release from mitochondria. Crystal structures and binding studies reveal a high degree of similarity among peptide activators and inhibitors, ruling out a simple function-determining property. Our results shed light on the vast peptide sequence space that can regulate BAK function and will guide the design of BAK-modulating tools and therapeutics.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Optimization of Geometric Perturbations on a Rod Moving Through a High Explosive Target

After completing a study to ensure the simulation results were converged, several high resolution 3D Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic (SPH) simulations of copper rods impacting a high explosive (LX14) target were performed. This was then formulated into an optimization problem: I wanted to find the optimum shape and location of a perturbation on the rod that would maximize its erosion after it left the target. The shape of the perturbation was modeled as a 2D Gaussian bump and parameterized by its location along the rod axis (z 0 ) and amplitude (A). The final mass of the coherent part of the rod as it leaves the target was used as a metric to represent the erosion of the rod, and the optimization was formulated to maximize this metric with respect to the aforementioned design variables. Due to the expensive nature of the high-fidelity 3D SPH simulations, a surrogate model needed to be chosen so that many function calls to the optimizer would be feasible. Thus, a strategic full factorial sampling plan was chosen to build a dataset, which consisted of 24 high-fidelity simulations. Two surrogate models, a third order polynomial regression model and a Gaussian Process Model, were analyzed using a 14%/86% test/train holdout technique. The root mean square and R2 score of the test set was used to determine the best model, and the third order polynomial regression model was chosen as the surrogate model. Finally, the Nelder-Mead Simplex and Basin-hopping optimization algorithms were implemented, and it was found that the two algorithms gave slightly different optimum values. Nelder-Mead gave an optimum point of [z* 0 ;A*] = [9:9;0:4] and Basin-Hopping gave an optimum value of x* = [z* 0 ;A*] = [9:2;0:1].

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

CFM-ID 4.0 – a web server for accurate MS-based metabolite identification

The CFM-ID 4.0 web server (https://cfmid.wishartlab.com) is an online tool for predicting, annotating and interpreting tandem mass (MS/MS) spectra of small molecules. It is specifically designed to assist researchers pursuing studies in metabolomics, exposomics and analytical chemistry. More specifically, CFM-ID 4.0 supports the: 1) prediction of electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectra (ESI-QTOF-MS/MS) for small molecules over multiple collision energies (10 eV, 20 eV, and 40 eV); 2) annotation of ESI-QTOF-MS/MS spectra given the structure of the compound; and 3) identification of a small molecule that generated a given ESI-QTOF-MS/MS spectrum at one or more collision energies. The CFM-ID 4.0 web server makes use of a substantially improved MS fragmentation algorithm, a much larger database of experimental and in silico predicted MS/MS spectra and improved scoring methods to offer more accurate MS/MS spectral prediction and MS/MS-based compound identification. Compared to earlier versions of CFM-ID, this new version has an MS/MS spectral prediction performance that is ~22% better and a compound identification accuracy that is ~35% better on a standard (CASMI 2016) testing dataset. CFM-ID 4.0 also features a neutral loss function that allows users to identify similar or substituent compounds where no match can be found using CFM-ID’s regular MS/MS-to-compound identification utility. Finally, the CFM-ID 4.0 web server now offers a much more refined user interface that is easier to use, supports molecular formula identification (from MS/MS data), provides more interactively viewable data (including proposed fragment ion structures) and displays MS mirror plots for comparing predicted with observed MS/MS spectra. These improvements should make CFM-ID 4.0 much more useful to the community and should make small molecule identification much easier, faster, and more accurate.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Short latency vestibular evoked potentials in the chicken embryo

Electrophysiological responses to pulsed linear acceleration stimuli were recorded in chicken embryos incubated for 19 or 20 days (E19/E20). Responses occurred within the first 16 ms following the stimulus onset. The evoked potentials disappeared following bilateral labyrinthectomy, but persisted following cochlear destruction alone, thus demonstrating that the responses were vestibular. Approximately 8 to 10 response peaks could be identified. The first 4 positive and corresponding negative components (early peaks with latencies < 6.0 ms) were scored and latencies and amplitudes quantified. Vestibular response latencies were significantly longer (P < 0.01) and amplitudes significantly smaller (P < 0.001) than those observed in 2-week-old birds. Mean response threshold for anesthetized embryos was -15.9dBre 1.0 g/ms, which was significantly higher (P < 0.03) than those observed in 2-week-old birds (-23.0dBre 1.0 g/ms). Latency/intensity functions (that is, slopes) were not significantly different between embryos and 2-week-old animals, but amplitude/intensity functions for embryos were significantly shallower than those for 2-week-old birds (P < 0.001). We presume that these differences reflect the refinement of sensory function that occurs following 19 to 20 days of incubation. The recording of vestibular evoked potentials provides an objective, direct and noninvasive measure of peripheral vestibular function in the embryo and, as such, the method shows promise as an investigative tool. The results of the present study form the definitive basis for using vestibular evoked potentials in the detailed study of avian vestibular ontogeny and factors that may influence it.

Non-NASA Center↗

SIGNAL Game Manual

SIGNAL is a first of its kind experimental wargame developed as part of the Project on Nuclear Gaming (PoNG). In this document we describe the rules and game mechanics associated with the online version of SIGNAL created by team members from the University of California, Berkeley, Sandia National Laboratories, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The game was developed as part of a larger research project to develop the experimental wargaming methodology and explore its use on a model scenario: the impact of various military capabilities on conflict escalation dynamics. We discuss the results of this research in a forthcoming paper that will include this manual as an appendix. It is our hope that this manual will both contribute to our players' understanding of the game prior to play and that it will allow for replication of the SIGNAL game environment for future research purposes. The manual begins by introducing the terminology used throughout the document. It then outlines the technical requirements required to run SIGNAL. The following section provides a description of the map, resources, infrastructure, tokens, and action cards used in the game environment. The manual then describes the user interface including the chat functions, trade mechanism, currency and population counts necessary for players to plan their actions. It then turns to the sequence of player actions in the game describing the signaling, action, and upkeep phases that comprise each round of play. It then outlines the use of diplomacy including alliances with minor states and trade between players. The manual also describes the process for scoring the game and determining the winner. The manual concludes with tips for players to remember as they embark upon playing the game.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

TPSAS-NF1676L-18357-DND

High-spectral resolution measurements (in the IR region) from space born infrared sensors can provide sufficient spectral information about cloud properties like cloud top pressure, cloud particle size and cloud optical thickness. Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) based regression scheme was used to retrieve cloud properties along with atmospheric state profiles. A channel based physical inversion scheme was also tried on cloud-contaminated radiances to improve retrieval accuracy achieved by regression scheme. Recently developed principle component (PC) based physical retrieval algorithm utilized the EOF transformation to compress both hyperspectral radiance spectra and atmospherical profiles into PC scores to greatly boost the computational speed while maintaining the information content. The accuracy of the (PC) based radiation transfer model (PCRTM) to simulate top-of the atmosphere(TOA) high-spectral resolution radiance spectra for both clear and cloudy sky conditions has been well tested by comparing with the other line-by-line radiation transfer model and using the observation data. The application of the PCRTM based physical inversion method on simulated IASI radiance under 'cloudy' conditions will be a good integrity test for the new algorithm.

X Liu↗

The Cognition and Fine Motor Skills Test Batteries: Normative Data and Interdependencies

Space mission success and safety relies upon astronaut functional state. Since spaceflight stressors affect cognitive processing and fine motor skills, NASA requires that measures of performance of these things remain within clinically accepted values (NASA STD 3001). NASA is in the process of developing two test batteries for the assessment of crew cognitive and fine motor skills before, during and after spaceflight. Toward that goal, the current project collected normative scores in 91 “astronaut-like” military and civilian pilots. The Cognition Test Battery (CTB) contains ten sub-tests that measure a range of cognitive abilities. For five of the ten CTB sub-tests, we propose scores to improve the battery’s sensitivity. Among the ten sub-tests, response times were more highly correlated than accuracy scores. Principle component analysis of the correlations revealed that the first response time factor could explain over 40% of the total variance and appeared to represent the tendency of observers to try to respond more quickly. The first accuracy factor (explaining only 20%) gave a high weight to the higher level cognitive sub-tests and a negative weight to tasks associated with motor and lower level cognitive processing. The Fine Motor Skills (FMS) test battery contains four sub-tests (Tracking, Pointing, Tracing, Rotating) performed on an Apple iPad tablet computer. Principle component analysis on the sub-test response time correlations revealed that the first two factors accounted for ~80% of the variance in performance. The first component captured overall speed on all four of the sub-tests. The second factor separated the sub-tasks into two groups (Drag-Point vs Trace-Rotate). Previous work found the first group response times correlated with that of a standard peg board task, while those of the other group did not. Correlations were computed between the first FMS factor and the response time and accuracy scores from each CTB sub-task. Performing fine motor behaviors rapidly was significantly correlated with the ability to perform many of the CTB sub-tests rapidly. This ability cannot be simple motor speed since scores on the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) subtask did not correlate with the ability to perform the other tasks rapidly. Speed on fine motor skills correlated significantly with accuracy on the short-term-memory sub-test. We hypothesize that eye movements, which can be regarded as a fine motor skill, may explain this relationship.

cognition↗

Mitigating Algorithmic Bias in Cancer Site Classification Models

Purpose Integrating artificial intelligence in cancer diagnostics has improved tumor classification beyond rule-based systems. Despite these advancements, these models may still encode demographic biases. We conducted a large-scale, applied bias-probing study of a deep learning–based cancer site classifier to quantify race information encoded in document embeddings. We then evaluated how performance changes when race-correlated embedding dimensions are removed in a post-training sensitivity analysis. Methods The cancer site classifier was trained using 3.5 million electronic cancer pathology reports from six of the National Cancer Institute's SEER registries. We trained a hierarchical self-attention network to generate 400-dimensional document embeddings. These embeddings were used to train two downstream, gradient-boosted decision tree classifiers: one to classify the cancer sites and another to predict racial categories. We identified overlapping features by intersecting the top 50 feature-importance rankings from the site and race models and computed their cumulative feature importance in each model. As a post hoc sensitivity analysis, we progressively pruned these overlapping dimensions, retrained the site model, and compared overall macro-F1 and accuracy, race-stratified macro-F1, and group fairness metrics on the basis of demographic parity and equalized odds before and after pruning. Results The analysis revealed minimal feature overlap between the cancer site and race prediction models, and the cumulative importance scores indicated a negligible influence of racial information on clinical predictions. Post-training pruning of overlapping features did not compromise the models' diagnostic accuracy, with a 0.07% loss in accuracy. Conclusion Our findings demonstrate that HiSAN-generated embeddings from SEER data can be used effectively in cancer site classification without significant demographic bias influencing the outcomes. Post-training pruning therefore functions as a practical audit and sensitivity check.

Shivanna, Abhishek [ORNL] (ORCID:0009000665228593)↗

Quality of Candidate Flights and Submission Prediction in Collaborative Digital Departure Reroute

Collaborative Digital Departure Reroute (CDDR) enables the reroute of flights using a flight operator proposed set of alternative route options, referred to as Trajectory Option Set (TOS), in order to reduce delay on the airport's surface and in the Metroplex environment. The reroute functionality is enabled through NASA's Digital Information Platform (DIP). TOS candidate flights are defined as flights with an alternative route with delay savings greater than the flight operator defined relative trajectory cost. This paper analyzes the TOS candidate flights at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (KDFW) in the North Texas Metroplex to gain insight into which candidate flights are higher quality through a scoring method. This insight will inform refinements to help CDDR focus on high quality reroute opportunities. Binary classification models for predicting the flight operator's submission of candidate flights are also explored in this paper.

Machine Learning↗