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480 records · Page 14

Identification of potent inhibitors of JUN N-terminal kinases for treatment of endometriosis and associated pain

Endometriosis, defined as the ectopic growth of endometrial tissue outside of the uterine cavity, is an inflammatory and hormone-dependent disease that causes excruciating pelvic pain, infertility, and significantly decreases quality of life in affected patients. The JUN N-terminal kinases (JNKs) are a leading class of nonhormonal therapeutic targets that have been validated in preclinical models of endometriosis and in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial. Despite their therapeutic potential, JNK inhibitors with increased potency and specificity are needed to address the inflammatory pathology of endometriosis and to prevent disease progression. Leveraging a DNA-encoded chemical library collection of ~4 billion compounds, we identified lead inhibitor CDD-2428 and optimized derivatives, CDD-2728 and CDD-3013, with excellent binding affinity to JNK1-3 (K d = 0.12 to 3.7 nM), enhanced selectivity, metabolic stability, and cellular permeability. Crystallographic and biochemical studies confirmed that CDD-3013 exhibited superior kinase selectivity with improved efficacy compared to existing JNK inhibitors. In primary endometriosis cell models, CDD-2728 and CDD-3013 suppressed JNK-dependent inflammatory signaling, dampening pathways linked to pain, invasion, angiogenesis, and macrophage recruitment. In an endometriosis mouse model, both CDD-2728 and CDD-3013 reduced endometriotic lesion size, macrophage infiltration, and cellular proliferation, showing in vivo efficacy. When tested in a lipopolysaccharide-induced hyperalgesia model, CDD-2728 and CDD-3013 decreased markers of induced pain, as measured by changes in a dynamic weight bearing test and Grimace scores. These findings nominate CDD-2728 and CDD-3013 as potent, nonhormonal therapeutic candidates for endometriosis with broad anti-inflammatory and analgesic activity, addressing a critical unmet clinical need.

Madasu, Chandrashekhar [Department of Pathology an

The DESI Single Fiber Lens Search. I. Four Thousand Spectroscopically Selected Galaxy–Galaxy Gravitational Lens Candidates

We present 4110 strong gravitational lens candidates, 3887 of which are new discoveries, selected from a sample of 5,837,154 luminous red galaxies (LRGs) observed with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Candidates are identified via the presence of background ionized oxygen [O II ] nebular emission lines in the foreground LRG spectra, which may originate from the lensing of higher-redshift star-forming galaxies. Using the measured foreground redshift, background redshift, and integrated flux of the background [O II ] doublet, we integrate over impact parameters to compute the probability that each candidate is a lens. We expect 53% of candidates to be true lenses with Einstein radii ranging from 0$^{''}_.$1–4", which can be confirmed with high-resolution imaging. Confirmed strong lenses from this sample will form a valuable cosmological data set, as strong gravitational lensing is the only method to directly measure dark matter halo substructure at cosmological distances. We independently recover the host of the multiply imaged gravitationally lensed type Ia supernova iPTF16geu. Monitoring these lenses for future multiply lensed transients will enable (a) H 0 measurements via time-delay cosmography and (b) substructure measurements via flux ratios.

Karp, Juliana S. M. [Univ. of Washington, Seattle,

STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIAL CHARPY TESTING FROM HIGH FLUENCE SURVEILLANCE CAPSULE

The Palisades Nuclear Generating Station included in its original surveillance program a surveillance capsule, designated A-60. The capsule was removed from its surveillance position in early 1995 and has been resident in the spent fuel pool since that time. It was harvested to perform characterization of surveillance specimens in this capsule in 2023. This capsule was irradiated to a fluence of 1.96x1020 n/cm2 (E> 1MeV) that is equivalent for more than 150 effective full power years for the current US reactor pressure vessel (RPV) fleet. This capsule contained several materials, including Charpy specimens of standard reference material (SRM) from Heavy-Section Steel Technology (HSST) A533-B Plate 01. To perform Charpy testing of this highly irradiated material, the new Charpy specimen transfer system was designed and implemented on Charpy impact testing machine in the hot cell to accommodate remote testing of these specimens. This new transfer system includes integrated environmental chamber to cool or heat Charpy specimens to the desired temperature. Testing of this highly irradiated material revealed very large shift of Charpy transition temperature, 188oC.

Sokolov, Mikhail [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000256373346)

Emissivity measurements of CuCrZr alloy

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) heavy-ion accelerator, in user operation since 2022, produces rare isotope beams via interactions of high-intensity stable ion beams with a graphite production target. Approximately 20–40% of the primary beam power is deposited in the target, while the remaining 60–80% is absorbed by the beam dump. The minichannel beam dump (MCBD), currently operated at 20 kW and designed for operation up to 50 kW, uses CuCrZr alloy absorber plates. Thermal validation and thermal cycling tests of the MCBD were conducted at the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) at Pennsylvania State University. Temperature measurements were obtained from an infrared (IR) camera. Since accurate temperature determination requires reliable emissivity values, the emissivity of CuCrZr was measured using the IR camera validated against thermocouple reference temperatures up to approximately 650 °C. The measurements were conducted under a vacuum level of approximately 10 -5 torr to minimize emissivity variations due to surface oxidation. The emissivity of CuCrZr was determined to be 0.057 ± 0.009 using a constant fit to the measured data over the surface temperature range from 100–650 °C.

Accelerator Subsystems and Technologies

CRADA 2022-03 Final Report: Advanced Bearing Materials for Harsh Service Conditions

Develop advanced bearing materials for hydrogen gas turbines and wind turbines. Two candidate materials have been selected based on Ames lab’s recent work on high entropy alloys and shape memory alloys. These materials are designed to exhibit a balance of hardness, strength, toughness, and corrosion resistance. The hydrogen diffusion coefficient in the NiTi based shape memory alloy is two order of magnitude lower than that of the conventional case hardened bearing steel. We plan to atomize these materials into powders, additive manufacture cylindrical bearings, then test these bearing for rolling-contact fatigue, corrosion properties, and hydrogen embrittlement. We are a vertically integrated team comprises of national labs, bearing manufacturers, raw material powders makers, and aircraft gas turbine manufacturer.

Argibay, Nicolas [Ames Laboratory (AMES), Ames, IA

Multifunctional electrochemical memory stabilized by phase coexistence

Our growing computing needs, especially in applications that heavily rely on artificial intelligence (AI), motivate a search for new components that could substantially augment the performance of general-purpose digital computers. Beyond ON/OFF switching, new components with linear multistate analog resistive tuning, nonlinear volatile switching, spiking, oscillatory, stochastic and other complex functionalities could enable highly efficient neuromorphic computing schemes for AI information processing. Compared to the extreme multifunctionality of biological neurons, realizing all the above characteristics in a single, scalable analog component remains a grand challenge. Here we investigate electrochemical gating combined with localized thermal activation to program and switch a single, vertically integrated and dimensionally scaled electrothermal chemical random access memory (ETCRAM) with a channel and reservoir composed of phase-separated vanadium oxide. Closely related to electrochemical RAM (ECRAM), ETCRAM uses an integrated gate-heater electrode to overcome kinetic barriers that help retain states at ambient temperatures. In addition to synapse-like stable and programmable analog resistance states arising from redox-tunable phase coexistence, a single component exhibits neuron-like nonlinear conductance switching with a tunable threshold and self-driven dynamics owing to the thermally driven metal-insulator phase transition in vanadium dioxide. More broadly, we demonstrate that electrochemically stabilized phase coexistence could unlock analog electronics with novel functionality, stability, reconfigurability, and scalability.

Oh, Sangheon [Sandia National Lab. (SNL-CA), Liver

Bypass heat exchanger configuration to reroute core flow

A turbine engine assembly includes a heat exchanger that is in thermal communication with an exhaust gas flow. A bypass passage is provided that is configured to selectively route at least a portion of the exhaust gas flow around the heat exchanger in response to a predefined engine operating condition.

Terwilliger, Neil

CO2 Handling & Electrolyzer Efficiency Scaling Evaluator

CHEESE is an interactive dashboard tool for estimating the performance and material requirements of carbon dioxide electrolysis systems. It helps users evaluate how electrode area, current density, product selectivity, gas flow, cell voltage, and the number of cells in a stack affect system operation. The dashboard provides simple and advanced modes so it can be used for both quick estimates and more detailed engineering analysis. Users can estimate product output, carbon dioxide use, electrical power, electrode area, gas and liquid flow rates, energy efficiency, material cost per test, and the effect of scaling from a single cell to a multi cell stack. It also includes tools for examining carbon balance, equipment durability, component replacement, and changes in performance over time. This is intended to help both academia and industry researchers who are either getting into CO2 electrolysis on lab-scale or are trying to establish a larger footprint. CHEESE presents results through tables, charts, and simplified cell and stack diagrams. It is intended to support research planning, experimental design, comparison of operating conditions, and early stage scale up studies.

Prajapati, Aditya [Lawrence Livermore National Lab

Design of monolithic piezoelectric bimorph mirrors made from lithium niobate

Recent advances in deformable mirrors based on monolithic piezoelectric substrates, such as lithium niobate, have the potential to improve the image quality of X-ray optical systems on synchrotron and free-electron laser beamlines and microscopes. However, the quantitative relationship between design parameters and the deformed shape has not been readily available in the literature. We present an analytical model, validated through finite element analysis, enabling calculation of tangential and sagittal curvatures based on mirror dimensions, crystallographic orientation, and applied voltage. We demonstrate that through the selection of material orientation, it is possible to achieve different deformed shapes (sphere, cylinder, or hyperbolic paraboloid). This methodology can be generalized to other piezoelectric materials and substrate-integrated actuator systems.

Marzari, Francesco [University of Trento (Italy);

System for controller area network payload decoding

A system for decoding an unknown automotive controller area network (“CAN”) message definitions. CAN data vehicle signal mappings are typically held in secret and varied by automotive model and year. Without knowledge of the mappings, the wealth of real-time vehicle data hidden in the automotive CAN packets is uninterpretable—impeding research, after-market tuning, efficiency and performance monitoring, fault diagnosis, and privacy-related technologies. This system can ascertain the CAN signals' boundaries (start bit and length), endianness (byte ordering), signedness (binary-to-integer encoding) from raw CAN data. This allows conversion of CAN data to time series. Interpreting the translated CAN data's physical meaning and finding a linear mapping to standard units (e.g., knowing the signal is speed and scaling values to represent units of miles per hour) can be achieved for many signals by leveraging diagnostic standards to obtain real-time measurements of in-vehicle systems. The system can be integrated into lightweight hardware enabling an OBD-II plugin for real-time in-vehicle CAN decoding or run on standard computers. The system can output a standard DBC file with the signal definition information.

Verma, Kiren E.

Reflection and refraction of directrons at the interface

Reflection and refraction are ubiquitous phenomena with extensive applications, yet minimizing energy loss and information distortion during these processes remains a significant challenge. This study examines the behavior of structurally stable solitons, known as directrons, in nematic liquid crystals interacting with an interface where the director field orientation changes, despite identical physical properties, external potentials, and boundary anchoring in the two regions. During reflection and refraction, the directrons maintain nearly constant structure and velocity, ensuring energy conservation and information integrity. Microscopic analyses of the director field and macroscopic evaluations of effective potential are employed to elucidate the dependence of reflection and refraction probabilities on the directron’s incident angle and the orientation difference across the interface. The findings provide valuable insights into the dynamics of solitary waves in structured liquid crystal systems, offering significant implications for the development of tunable photonic devices, reconfigurable optical systems, and nanoscale material engineering.

Science & Technology - Other Topics

Are CO2 batteries ready for the grid? A cross-cutting deployment checklist

Metal-CO2 batteries have attracted considerable research interest in the past decade due to the utilization of the greenhouse CO2 gas. The low cost and abundance of CO2 feedstocks, together with high specific capacity metal anodes, make this technology a promising candidate for electricity-demanding data centers and grids. However, nonstandard data reporting, ambiguous hardware designs, and questionable cycling parameters have emerged as the field has grown. A clear checklist and standardized reporting format for research and development are urgently needed. Here, after carefully re-analyzing 15 Na-CO2 and 9 Li-CO2 studies, we propose a general checklist and a flowchart for CO2 batteries and related gas conversion systems. Specific performance values from a deployment-oriented perspective, based on commercial lithium iron phosphate batteries, are integrated into the list. We frame research and development efforts around grid-relevant outputs, including areal rate and capacity, cyclability, gas utilization, and safety. While illustrated for Na- and Li-CO2 cells, this framework is directly transferable to other CO2 batteries and air/oxygen batteries, helping align benchtop demonstrations with systematic metrics that ultimately govern future deployment.

Wu, Wenda [ORNL] (ORCID:000900033307687X)

A physics informed bayesian optimization approach for material design: application to NiTi shape memory alloys

Abstract The design of materials and identification of optimal processing parameters constitute a complex and challenging task, necessitating efficient utilization of available data. Bayesian Optimization (BO) has gained popularity in materials design due to its ability to work with minimal data. However, many BO-based frameworks predominantly rely on statistical information, in the form of input-output data, and assume black-box objective functions. In practice, designers often possess knowledge of the underlying physical laws governing a material system, rendering the objective function not entirely black-box, as some information is partially observable. In this study, we propose a physics-informed BO approach that integrates physics-infused kernels to effectively leverage both statistical and physical information in the decision-making process. We demonstrate that this method significantly improves decision-making efficiency and enables more data-efficient BO. The applicability of this approach is showcased through the design of NiTi shape memory alloys, where the optimal processing parameters are identified to maximize the transformation temperature.

Chemistry

Atomistic Simulation of Glasses and Amorphous Materials: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Decade

Atomistic simulations have become indispensable tools for understanding glass structure, dynamics, and properties, yet persistent challenges limit their predictive power. This perspective examines three interconnected issues, namely glass formation procedures, interatomic potential development, and machine learning applications, which emerged from the 5th International Workshop on Challenges of Atomistic Simulations of Glasses and Amorphous Materials. We identify convergent community priorities for (i) standardized validation protocols, (ii) curated benchmark datasets with complete metadata, and (iii) open repositories for glasses. A systematic was forward is provided by a hierarchical validation framework for assessing the structural fidelity, property prediction, and behavioral realism of simulation techniques. Looking ahead, transformative advances are promised by the fusion of classical techniques with machine learning based approaches, for instance, by integrating swap Monte Carlo with machine-learning (ML) potentials, leveraging foundation models through transfer learning, and finetuning ML potentials with experimental data. Progress depends on the community committing to validated models, reproducible protocols, and sustained data sharing.

Krishnan, N. M. Anoop

The Hawaii Meteorology, Energy and Transmission (MET) Toolkit

Reliable long-term resource adequacy and grid planning in Hawaii require precise, multi-decadal meteorological records. This paper introduces the Hawaii Meteorology, Energy and Transmission (MET) Toolkit, a 26-year (2000-2025) high-fidelity atmospheric dataset developed by the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR). We present a validation study of the underlying WRF model configurations, comparing the legacy MYNN PBL scheme against an alternative YSU formulation. Using vertical lidar profiles and surface buoy data, our analysis identified a foundational geometric distortion in the legacy NOW-23 Hawaii dataset caused by an incorrect grid projection. When evaluated on a corrected, zero-distortion grid, the YSU scheme demonstrated superior performance in bias and cRMSE compared to the legacy setup. To address these findings, the MET Toolkit has been re-produced as a unified 26-year record using the optimized YSU setup and corrected geometry. This dataset offers the Hawaii power sector a robust, validated, and homogenous reference for future grid resilience and energy integration.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION

Commutative Algebra Modeling in Materials Science – A Case Study on Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs)

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of important crystalline and highly porous materials whose hierarchical geometry and chemistry hinder interpretable predictions in materials properties. Commutative algebra is a branch of abstract algebra that has been rarely applied in data and material sciences. We introduce the first ever commutative algebra modeling and prediction in materials science. Specifically, category-specific commutative algebra (CSCA) is proposed as a new framework for MOF representation and learning. It integrates element-based categorization with multiscale algebraic invariants to encode both local coordination motifs and global network organization of MOFs. These algebraically consistent, chemically aware representations enable compact, interpretable, and data efficient modeling of MOF properties such as Henry’s constants and uptake capacities for common gases. Compared to traditional geometric and graph-based approaches, CSCA achieves comparable or superior predictive accuracy while substantially improving interpretability and stability across data sets. By aligning commutative algebra with the chemical hierarchy, the CSCA establishes a rigorous and generalizable paradigm for understanding structure and property relationships in porous materials and provides a nonlinear algebra-based framework for data-driven material discovery.

Khaemba, Caleb S.