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At least 379 records · Page 21

Extremely rapid, Lagrangian modeling of 2D flooding: A rivulet-based approach

Estimates of potential flood inundation areas and depths are critical to informing the preparedness, response, and investment decisions of many government agencies and private sector organizations, especially under a changing climate. The standard modeling approaches, however, are often either computationally intensive or constrained in their accuracy or applicability. A novel, rivulet-based, 2D model of pluvial flooding is described in this article that is 10,000 to 10 million times less computationally complex than the full solution of the shallow water equations, yet achieves inundation area hit rates of between 0.8 and 0.9 and relative absolute mean errors of 10%-20% across a wide range of flow depths. This combination of accuracy and efficiency will enable real-time depth estimates during flood events, detailed sensitivity analyses, and the generation of large ensembles to support broad uncertainty analyses.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Electronic Rearrangement in Steps of Reductive Elimination of Polar Electrophiles Leads to Refinement of Redox Events

The oxidative addition/reductive elimination of polar molecules such as methyl iodide at late metal centers has a strongly supported $S_{N^2}$ mechanism for many key organometallic complexes, including important industrial catalysts. In the reductive elimination direction, it is proposed that a ligand initially dissociates, typically a halide, followed by subsequent nucleophilic attack at the ligand trans to the now vacant site. The prevailing view is the metal reduction occurs upon transferring the electrophile in the $S_{N^2}$ step. Herein, we report the use of an ensemble of computational techniques to characterize the electronic structure of the reactants and intermediates along this reductive elimination pathway. These calculations demonstrate, unexpectedly, that the initiating loss of an anionic ligand from the octahedral highly oxidized structure leads to an electronic rearrangement that shifts electron density from the apical ligand back toward the metal resulting in an inversion of the electron flow between the metal and apical ligand. The anisotropic shift in electron density to the metal disproportionately affects the apical position, which is best described as a Pt → Me dative bond. With this Pt → Me bonding description, our interpretation of the IUPAC oxidation state formalism would assign the intermediate as Pt ΙΙ . Although counterintuitive, the formal and functional reduction of the metal thus occurs upon halide dissociation.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

CoSim: A Simulator for Co-Scheduling of Batch and On-Demand Jobs in HPC Datacenters

The increasing scale and complexity of scientific applications are rapidly transforming the ecosystem of tools, methods, and workflows adopted by the high-performance computing (HPC) community. Big data analytics and deep learning are gaining traction as essential components in this ecosystem in a variety of scenarios, such as, steering of experimental instruments , acceleration of high-fidelity simulations through surrogate computations, and guided ensemble searches. In this context, the batch job model traditionally adopted by the supercomputing in-frastructures needs to be complemented with support to schedule opportunistic on-demand analytics jobs, leading to the problem of efficient preemption of batch jobs with minimum loss of progress. In this paper, we design and implement a simulator, CoSim, that enables on-the-fly analysis of the trade-offs arising between delaying the start of opportunistic on-demand jobs, which leads to longer analytics latency, and loss of progress due to preemption of batch jobs, which is necessary to make room for on-demand jobs. To this end, we propose an algorithm based on dynamic programming with predictable performance and scalability that enables supercomputing infrastructure schedulers to analyze the aforementioned trade-off and take decisions in near real-time. Compared with other state-of-art approaches using traces of the Theta pre-Exascale machine, our approach is capable of finding the optimal solution, while achieving high performance and scalability.

batch job preemption↗

The Dark Side of Pluto

During its departure from Pluto, New Horizons used its LORRI camera to image a portion of Pluto's southern hemisphere that was in a decades-long seasonal winter darkness, but still very faintly illuminated by sunlight reflected by Charon. Recovery of this faint signal was technically challenging. The bright ring of sunlight forward-scattered by haze in the Plutonian atmosphere encircling the nightside hemisphere was severely overexposed, defeating the standard smeared-charge removal required for LORRI images. Reconstruction of the overexposed portions of the raw images, however, allowed adequate corrections to be accomplished. The small solar elongation of Pluto during the departure phase also generated a complex scattered-sunlight background in the images that was three orders of magnitude stronger than the estimated Charon-light flux (the Charon-light flux is similar to the flux of moonlight on Earth a few days before first quarter). A model background image was constructed for each Pluto image based on principal component analysis applied to an ensemble of scattered-sunlight images taken at identical Sun−spacecraft geometry to the Pluto images. The recovered Charon-light image revealed a high-albedo region in the southern hemisphere. We argue that this may be a regional deposit of N2 or CH4 ice. The Charon-light image also shows that the south polar region currently has markedly lower albedo than the north polar region of Pluto, which may reflect the sublimation of N2 ice or the deposition of haze particulates during the recent southern summer.

Pluto↗

Advanced Polymer Characterization: Modular Operations for Spectral Alignment by Iterative Compression (MOSAIC)

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry encodes structural information across diverse homo- and copolymer ensembles, yet decrypting these spectra requires a systematic analytical approach. We introduce Modular Operations for Spectral Alignment by Iterative Compression (MOSAIC)─a general cipher algorithm that applies modular arithmetic to filter monomer-derived mass contributions and cluster MALDI peaks by nonconstitutional repeating units (non-CRUs). MOSAIC performs sequential modular operations using monomer mass differences as base units to compress complex spectral data, revealing end-group distributions and comonomer incorporation. As a demonstration, we applied MOSAIC to five copolymers formed by two different polymerization mechanisms. Furthermore, the resulting remainder–mass plots clearly resolve polymer homologs with distinct non-CRUs into visually apparent clusters, enabling intuitive assignment of mass spectral features.

Wang, Hanlin M. [University of Illinois at Urbana−↗

Continuation of tailored composite structures of ordered staple thermoplastic material

The search for the cost effective composite structure has motivated the investigation of several approaches to develop composite structure from innovative material forms. Among the promising approaches is the conversion of a planar sheet to components of complex curvature through sheet forming or stretch forming. In both cases, the potential for material stretch in the fiber direction appears to offer a clear advantage in formability over continuous fiber systems. A framework was established which allows the simulation of the anisotropic mechanisms of deformation of long discontinuous fiber laminates wherein the matrix phase is a viscous fluid. Predictions for the effective viscosities of a hyper-anisotropic medium consisting of collimated, discontinuous fibers suspended in viscous matrix were extended to capture the characteristics of typical polymers including non-Newtonian behavior and temperature dependence. In addition, the influence of fiber misorientation was also modeled by compliance averaging to determine ensemble properties for a given orientation distribution. A design tool is presented for predicting the effect of material heterogeneity on the performance of curved composite beams such as those used in aircraft fuselage structures. Material heterogeneity can be induced during manufacturing processes such as sheet forming and stretch forming of thermoplastic composites. This heterogeneity can be introduced in the form of fiber realignment and spreading during the manufacturing process causing radial and tangential gradients in material properties. Two analysis procedures are used to solve the beam problems. The first method uses separate two-dimensional elasticity solutions for the stresses in the flange and web sections of the beam. The separate solutions are coupled by requiring that forces and displacements match section boundaries. The second method uses an approximate Rayleigh-Ritz technique to find the solutions for more complex beams. Analyses are performed for curved beams of various cross-sections loaded in pure bending and with a uniform distributed load. Preliminary results show that the geometry of the beam dictates the effect of heterogeneity on performance. The role of heterogeneity is larger in beams with a small average radius-to-depth ration, R/t, where R is the average radius of the beam and t is the difference between the inside and outside radii. Results of the anlysis are in the form of stresses and displacements and are compared to both mechanics of materials and numerical solutions obtained using finite element analysis.

Santare, Michael H.↗

Characterizing the acceleration time of laser-driven ion acceleration with data-informed neural networks

Peak ion energy is an important figure-of-merit in short-pulse, laser-driven ion acceleration and is dependent on an associated acceleration time. Standard metrics for these quantities depend on analytical results such as the self-similar fluid model or empirical models based on relatively small experimental and simulation datasets. In this work we attempt to use a data-informed neural network (NN) as a surrogate model for a large ensemble of PIC simulations to investigate an effective acceleration time. We explore the application of a stacked convolutional and recurrent NN architecture for improved regression by incorporating the time dependencies of the data into the training process. Of particular note is how pretraining a network on lower fidelity data, e.g. 1D analytical results, greatly improves the network's ability to learn more complex, higher fidelity data. Finally, the dependency of the acceleration time on various laser and plasma parameters is explored.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Sensitivity of organized convective storms to model grid spacing in current and future climates

Mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) are complexes of thunderstorms that become organized and cover hundreds of kilometres over several hours. MCSs are prolific rain producers in the tropics and mid-latitudes and are the major cause of warm-season flooding. Traditionally, climate models have difficulties in simulating MCSs partly due to the misrepresentation of complex process interactions that operate across a large range of scales. Significant improvements in simulating MCSs have been found in kilometre-scale models that explicitly simulate deep convection. However, these models operate in the grey zone of turbulent motion and have known deficiencies in simulating small-scale processes (e.g. entrainment, vertical mass transport). Here, we perform mid-latitude idealized ensemble MCS simulations under current and future climate conditions in three atmospheric regimes: hydrostatic (12 km horizontal grid spacing; Δx), non-hydrostatic (Δx = 4, 2 and 1 km) and large eddy scale (Δx = 500 m and 250 m). Our results show a dramatic improvement in simulating MCS precipitation, movement, cold pools, and cloud properties when transitioning from 12 km to 4 km Δx. Decreasing Δx beyond 4 km results in modest improvements except for up- and downdraft sizes, average vertical mass fluxes, and cloud top height and temperature, which continue to change. Most important for climate modelling is that Δx = 4 km simulations reliably capture most MCS climate change signals compared to those of the Δx = 250 m runs. Significantly different climate change signals are found in Δx = 12 km runs that overestimate extreme precipitation changes by up to 100%.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

African Easterly Jet: Structure and Maintenance

This article investigates the African Easterly Jet (AEJ), its structure and the forcings contributing to its maintenance, critically revisiting previous work which attributed the maintenance of the jet to soil moisture gradients over tropical Africa. A state-of-the-art global model in a high-end computer framework is used to produce a 3-member 73-year ensemble run forced by observed SST to represent the Control run. The AEJ as produced by the Control is compared with the representation of the AEJ in the European Center for Medium Range Forecast Reanalyses (ERA-40) and other observational data sets and found very realistic. Five Experiments are then performed, each represented by sets of 3-member 22 year long (1980-2001) ensemble runs. The goal of the Experiments is to investigate the role of meridional soil moisture gradients, different land surface properties and orography. Unlike previous studies, which have suppressed soil moisture gradients within a highly idealized framework (i.e., the so-called bucket model), terrestrial evaporation control is here achieved with a highly sophisticated landsurface treatment and with an extensively tested and complex methodology. The results show that the AEJ is suppressed by a combination of absence of meridional evaporation gradients over Africa and constant vegetation, even if the individual forcings taken separately do not lead to the AEJ disappearance, but only its modification. Moreover, the suppression of orography also leads to a different circulation in which there is no AEJ. This work suggests that it is not just soil moisture gradients, but a unique combination of geographical features present only in northern tropical Africa, which causes and maintains the jet.

Wu, Man-Li C.↗

Correlating 3D Surface Atomic Structure and Catalytic Activities of Pt Nanocrystals

Active sites and catalytic activity of heterogeneous catalysts is determined by their surface atomic structures. However, probing the surface structure at an atomic resolution is difficult, especially for solution ensembles of catalytic nanocrystals, which consist of heterogeneous particles with irregular shapes and surfaces. In this study, we constructed 3D maps of the coordination number (CN) and generalized CN ($\bar{C}\bar{N}$) for individual surface atoms of sub-3 nm Pt nanocrystals. Our results reveal that the synthesized Pt nanocrystals are enclosed by islands of atoms with nonuniform shapes that lead to complex surface structures, including a high ratio of low-coordination surface atoms, reduced domain size of low-index facets, and various types of exposed high-index facets. 3D maps of $\bar{C}\bar{N}$ are directly correlated to catalytic activities assigned to individual surface atoms with distinct local coordination structures, which explains the origin of high catalytic performance of small Pt nanocrystals in important reactions such as oxygen reduction reactions and CO electro-oxidation.

3D atomic structure↗

A Task Based Approach for Co-Scheduling Ensemble Workloads on Heterogeneous Nodes

Scientific workflows consist of multiple, connected applications, with data and results flowing from one to another in a pipeline. Traditionally, such workflows are executed in sequential order, storing intermediate data in storage disks. Co-scheduling application workflows concurrently on the same compute nodes would greatly reduce the cost of moving data to/from storage and allow real-time analysis of intermediate results. Nevertheless, most parallel programming runtimes do not allow seamless integration of various applications in a scientific workflow, in part due to the complexity of managing data and resources. The situation is even more complicated for heterogeneous systems. In this work we extend the Minos Computing Library (MCL) runtime to accelerate pipe-lined and parallel workloads where multiple applications are running in the same system. MCL’s asynchronous task library and runtime dynamically manages resources to allow co-scheduling of multiple processes sharing heterogeneous resources. In addition, we design a custom ex- tension of the Open Compute Language (OpenCL) to enable multiple processes to share device memory. We enable MCL to coordinate these shared buffers to allow for easy, fast data sharing between applications. Using malleable micro-benchmarks and two application workflows that combine scientific simulation and AI-based analysis, we show that our method outperforms traditional approaches.

Index Terms—Parallel systems, Scheduling and Task ↗

Large Ensemble Diagnostic Evaluation of Hydrologic Parameter Uncertainty in the Community Land Model Version 5 (CLM5)

Abstract Land surface models such as the Community Land Model version 5 (CLM5) seek to enhance understanding of terrestrial hydrology and aid in the evaluation of anthropogenic and climate change impacts. However, the effects of parametric uncertainty on CLM5 hydrologic predictions across regions, timescales, and flow regimes have yet to be explored in detail. The common use of the default hydrologic model parameters in CLM5 risks generating streamflow predictions that may lead to incorrect inferences for important dynamics and/or extremes. In this study, we benchmark CLM5 streamflow predictions relative to the commonly employed default hydrologic parameters for 464 headwater basins over the conterminous United States (CONUS). We evaluate baseline CLM5 default parameter performance relative to a large (1,307) Latin Hypercube Sampling‐based diagnostic comparison of streamflow prediction skill using over 20 error measures. We provide a global sensitivity analysis that clarifies the significant spatial variations in parametric controls for CLM5 streamflow predictions across regions, temporal scales, and error metrics of interest. The baseline CLM5 shows relatively moderate to poor streamflow prediction skill in several CONUS regions, especially the arid Southwest and Central U.S. Hydrologic parameter uncertainty strongly affects CLM5 streamflow predictions, but its impacts vary in complex ways across U.S. regions, timescales, and flow regimes. Overall, CLM5's surface runoff and soil water parameters have the largest effects on simulated high flows, while canopy water and evaporation parameters have the most significant effects on the water balance.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Closures and Simulation for Thermal Radiation Transport in Stochastic Media with Nonlinear Temperature Dependence

Because of the practical challenge of rendering very complex realistic spatial structures for numerical work, it is common practice to resort to characterizing such media as stochastic mixtures of materials, ideally parametrized with low order statistics such as the mean, variance, and correlation functions of the now random material properties. This enables realizations of the medium to be repeatedly generated and radiation transport computations to, in principle, be performed for a large ensemble of these realizations to obtain a statistically well-characterized radiation field. Statistical post-processing yields desired quantities such as conditional and unconditional mean radiation flux and probability distributions of transmitted radiation. However, such computations prove expensive for all but the simplest stochastic geometries and are most suited for benchmarking approximate models. The most common approximations lead to homogenized media so that transport computations are required only on a single medium realization but by construct provide only limited statistical information on the radiation field. Almost all approximate approaches to this problem attempt to develop equations for low order moments of the radiation intensity (mean, second moment, correlation function) but inevitably encounter a closure problem: the equation for any statistical moment will contain terms depending on unknown higher-order moments. Thus, the challenge shifts to one of developing closure relations that relate the unknown moments to the lower order moments. Under very special conditions, an exact closure can be derived but in general closures are heuristically stated constitutive relations. Also, closure approaches depend on whether the mixing statistics are spatially and/or temporally continuous as in fluctuating turbulent fields, or discontinuous as in randomly mixed solid chunks of material. Thus, unconditional averaging is generally applied in the former case but conditional averaging is more appropriate when the mixing is discontinuous. In this work, the emphasis is on binary statistical mixtures of immiscible fluids as as such the quantities of interest are averages (flux, temperature) conditioned on the material type.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Hyperspectral segmentation of plants in fabricated ecosystems

Hyperspectral imaging provides a powerful tool for analyzing above-ground plant characteristics in fabricated ecosystems, offering rich spectral information across diverse wavelengths. This study presents an efficient workflow for hyperspectral data segmentation and subsequent data analytics, minimizing the need for user annotation through the use of ensembles of sparse mixed scale convolution neural networks. The segmentation process leverages the diversity of ensembles to achieve high accuracy with minimal labeled data, reducing labor-intensive annotation efforts. To further enhance robustness, we incorporate image alignment techniques to address spatial variability in the dataset. Downstream analysis focuses on using the segmented data for processing spectral data, enabling monitoring of plant health. This approach provides a scalable solution for spectral segmentation, and facilitates actionable insights into plant conditions in complex, controlled environments. Our results demonstrate the utility of combining advanced machine learning techniques with hyperspectral analytics for high-throughput plant monitoring.

Zwart, Petrus H.↗

Activation Domain Hunter (ADhunter) v2.0

ADhunter is a software program that enables accurate identification and quantification of transcriptional activation domains. Unlike previous software, ADhunter uses protein representations from a pre-trained protein language model, model ensembling, and a training dataset from a diverse sampling of protein sequence space for state-of-the-art performance. These advantages enable improved perception of transcriptional activation domains across sequence space that can be used for mapping natural genetic circuits and engineering synthetic genetic circuits. In particular, ADhunter enables fine-tuned control of gene expression through synthetic transcription factors that can be used for complex control of cellular programs.

Waldburger, Lucas [Lawrence Berkeley National Labo↗

Statistical Approach on Utilizing Ground-based Experiments to Model Break-up Events

Two laboratory-based impact tests have been conducted to develop and extend the capability of NASA satellite breakup models. The first experiment, the Satellite Orbital Debris Characterization Impact Test (SOCIT), was conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA in 1992. It employed a fully functional U.S. Navy Transit spacecraft, fabricated from materials commonly used in the 1960s. SOCIT fragmentation data formed the basis of the current NASA Standard Satellite Breakup Model (SSBM). A second experiment, DebriSat, was conducted in 2014 by the DebriSat consortium: the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office; the United States Space Force Space Systems Command, formerly the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, the Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Complex, and the University of Florida. This impact test was performed on a high-fidelity mock-up satellite assembled from modern components. Data from both experiments are expected to contribute to the next-generation models for on-orbit breakup analyses, long-term environment predictions, and debris risk assessment. This paper uses the direct statistical sampling of the SOCIT and DebriSat data ensembles to model an on-orbit breakup event, rather than the analytic expressions estimated from the samples as with as with the NASA SSBM and its predecessor. This direct method involves drawing fragments (i.e., sampling with replacement) from each fragmentation data-subset containing mass, shape category, material density, characteristic length, mass, and cross-sectional area. As part of the sampling process, the properties of sampled fragment data (e.g., area-to-mass ratios) are numerically checked to ensure they do not contain unrealistic quantities. The process to simulate a breakup cloud composed of fragments from SOCIT and DebriSat datasets is discussed. The methodology for ensuring that conservation of overall mass of the sampled fragment cloud under this sampling approach is highlighted. Finally, the results are compared with simulated clouds generated from SSBM for specific historical breakup events.

Andrew Vavrin↗

Statistical Approach on Utilizing Ground-Based Experiments to Model Break-Up Events

Two laboratory-based impact tests have been conducted to develop and extend the capability of NASA satellite breakup models. The first experiment, the Satellite Orbital Debris Characterization Impact Test (SOCIT), was conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA in 1992. It employed a fully functional U.S. Navy Transit spacecraft, fabricated from materials commonly used in the 1960s. SOCIT fragmentation data formed the basis of the current NASA Standard Satellite Breakup Model (SSBM). A second experiment, DebriSat, was conducted in 2014 by the DebriSat consortium: the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office, the United States Space Force Space Systems Command, formerly the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, the Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Complex, and the University of Florida. This impact test was performed on a high-fidelity mock-up satellite assembled from modern components. Data from both experiments are expected to contribute to the next-generation models for on-orbit breakup analyses, long-term environment predictions, and debris risk assessment. This paper uses the direct statistical sampling of the SOCIT and DebriSat data ensembles to model an on-orbit breakup event, rather than the analytic expressions estimated from the samples in the SSBM and its predecessor. This direct method involves drawing fragments (i.e., sampling with replacement) from each fragmentation data-subset containing mass, shape category, material density, characteristic length, mass, and cross-sectional area. As part of the sampling process, the properties of sampled fragment data (e.g., area-to-mass ratios) are numerically checked to ensure they do not contain unrealistic quantities. The process to simulate a breakup cloud composed of fragments from SOCIT and DebriSat datasets is discussed. The methodology for ensuring that conservation of overall mass of the sampled fragment cloud under this sampling approach is highlighted. Finally, the results are compared with simulated clouds generated from SSBM for specific historical breakup events.

Andrew Vavrin↗

Historical evaluation and future projections of compound heatwave and drought extremes over the conterminous United States in CMIP6 *

Abstract Independently, both droughts and heatwaves can induce severe impacts on human and natural systems. However, when these two climate extremes occur concurrently in a given region, their compound impacts are often more pronounced. With the improvement in both the spatiotemporal resolution and representation of complex climate processes in the global climate models (GCMs), they are increasingly used to study future changes in these extremes and associated regional impacts. However, GCM selection for such impact assessments is generally based on historical performance and/or future mean changes, without considering individual or compound extremes. In contrast, this study evaluates historical performance and projected changes in heatwaves, droughts, and compound heatwave-droughts using an ensemble of GCMs from the latest Phase 6 of Coupled Models Intercomparison Project at a regional scale across the conterminous United States. Additionally, we explore the inter-model differences in the projected changes that are associated with various characteristics of extremes and the choice of drought indices. Our analysis reveals considerable variation among the GCMs, as well as substantial differences in the projected changes based on the choice of drought indices and region of interest. For example, the projected increases in both the frequency and intensity of drought and associated compound extreme days, based on the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index far exceed those derived from the standard precipitation index. Further, the largest changes in the frequency of compound extremes are projected over the Southwest, South Central, and parts of the Southeast while the smallest changes are projected over the Northeast. Overall, this study provides important insights for the interpretation and selection of GCMs for future assessment studies that are crucial for the development of regional adaptation strategies in the face of climate change.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗