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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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At least 451 records · Page 25

Imaging Carrier Dynamics and Transport in Hybrid Perovskites with Transient Absorption Microscopy

In this review, the recent progress in using transient absorption microscopy to image charge transport and dynamics in semiconducting hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites is discussed. The basic principles, instrumentation, and resolution of transient absorption microscopy are outlined. With temporal resolution as high as 10 fs, sub-diffraction-limit spatial resolution, and excited-state structural resolution, these experiments have provided crucial details on charge transport mechanisms that have been previously obscured in conventional ultrafast spectroscopy measurements. Morphology-dependent mapping unveils spatial heterogeneity in carrier recombination and cooling dynamics. By spatially separating the pump and probe beams, carrier transport across grain boundaries has been directly visualized. Further, femtosecond temporal resolution allows for the examination of nonequilibrium transport directly, revealing extraordinarily long-range hot carrier migration. The application of transient absorption microscopy is not limited to hybrid perovskites but can also be useful for other polycrystalline materials in which morphology plays an important role in carrier transport.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Automated Transformation of Lignin Topologies into Atomic Structures with LigninBuilder

Lignin is an abundant aromatic heteropolymer found in secondary plant cell walls and is a potential feedstock for conversion into bioderived fuels and chemicals. Lignin chemical diversity complicates traditional structural studies, and so, relatively little experimental evidence exists for how lignin structure exists in aqueous solution or how lignin polymers respond to changes in their chemical environment. Molecular modeling can address these concerns; however, prior computational structural lignin models typically did not capture lignin heterogeneity, as only a few polymers were considered. LigninBuilder creates a framework for building structural libraries for lignin from existing topological libraries, permitting significantly greater diversity of lignin structures to be sampled at atomic detail. As a demonstration of its capabilities, LigninBuilder was applied to three libraries of lignin from hardwood, softwood, and grass, and the resulting polymer structures were simulated in an aqueous environment. The lignins adopted compact globular structures, as would be expected for polymers in poor solvents. The differences between the libraries were largest when quantifying the packing of nonadjacent aromatic residues, with greater branching within the polymer resulting in poorer aromatic packing. Individual lignin polymers were also found to undergo rapid conformational changes, with the dwell time within a state growing as the square of the molecular weight. This first application of LigninBuilder demonstrates the potential for atomic-level insight into lignin interactions. LigninBuilder is distributed as a plugin to the visualization software VMD, lowering the barrier for modeling lignin structure in diverse environments.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

The secondary metabolism collaboratory: a database and web discussion portal for secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters

Secondary metabolites are small molecules produced by all corners of life, often with specialized bioactive functions with clinical and environmental relevance. Secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) can often be identified within DNA sequences by various sequence similarity tools, but determining the exact functions of genes in the pathway and predicting their chemical products can often only be done by careful, manual comparative analysis. To facilitate this, we report the first release of the secondary metabolism collaboratory (SMC), which aims to provide a comprehensive, tool-agnostic repository of BGC sequence data drawn from all publicly available and user-submitted bacterial and archaeal genome and contig sources. On the website, users are provided a searchable catalog of putative BGCs identified from each source, along with visualizations of gene and domain annotations derived from multiple sequence analysis tools. SMC’s data is also available through publicly-accessible application programming interface (API) endpoints to facilitate programmatic access. Users are encouraged to share their findings (and search for others’) through comment posts on BGC and source pages. At the time of writing, SMC is the largest repository of BGC information, holding 13.1M BGC regions from 1.3M source sequences and growing, and can be found at https://smc.jgi.doe.gov.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

TROPHY: A Topologically Robust Physics-Informed Tracking Framework for Tropical Cyclones

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are among the most destructive weather systems. Realistically and efficiently detecting and tracking TCs are critical for assessing their impacts and risks. In particular, the eye is a signature feature of a mature TC. Therefore, knowing the eyes’ locations and movements is crucial for both operational weather forecasts and climate risk assessments. Recently, a multilevel robustness framework has been introduced to study the critical points of time-varying vector fields. The framework quantifies the robustness (i.e., structural stability) of critical points across varying neighborhoods. By relating the multilevel robustness with critical point tracking, the framework has demonstrated its potential in cyclone tracking. An advantage is that it identifies cyclonic features using only 2D wind vector fields, which is encouraging as most tracking algorithms require multiple dynamic and thermodynamic variables at different altitudes. A disadvantage is that the framework does not scale well computationally for datasets containing a large number of cyclones. Herein this paper introduces a topologically robust physics-informed tracking framework (TROPHY) for TC tracking. The main idea is to integrate physical knowledge of TC to drastically improve the computational efficiency of multilevel robustness framework for large-scale climate datasets. First, during preprocessing, we propose a physics-informed feature selection strategy to filter 90% of critical points that are short-lived and have low stability, thus preserving good candidates for TC tracking. Second, during in-processing, we impose constraints during the multilevel robustness computation to focus only on physics-informed neighborhoods of TCs. We apply TROPHY to 30 years of 2D wind fields from reanalysis data in ERA5 and generate a number of TC tracks. In comparison with the observed tracks, we demonstrate that TROPHY can capture TC characteristics (e.g., frequency, intensity, duration, latitudes with maximum intensity, and genesis) that are comparable to and sometimes even better than a well-validated TC tracking algorithm that requires multiple dynamic and thermodynamic scalar fields.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

VERAView Programmer’s Manual

VERAView’s component-based design facilitates its extension and integration into other applications and systems. In addition to describing VERAView’s architecture and components, this document provides details on the component application programming interfaces (APIs), illustrates how to use the APIs independently of VERAView itself, and explains how to extend VERAView with custom visualizations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

REDESIGNING A PERFORMANCE MONITORING SOFTWARE FOR SUPERCOMPUTERS

The objective of this project was to improve upon the existing Watchr software that charts performance test metrics from the Trilinos project run on supercomputers at Sandia and elsewhere across the DOE complex. Software was iteratively designed and developed using Python Pandas and Dash data visualization to improve the extensibility and user experience of Watchr. Documentation is being maintained for future developers who want to extend the application.

Camacho, Dane Joseph [Sandia National Laboratories↗

Toward a Smart Metaverse City: Immersive Realism and 3D Visualization of Digital Twin Cities

Metaverse and its related extended reality technologies can enable immersive, realistic, and participatory visualization of 3D data, and their use and the potential within a smart city can be effective for supporting urban research and urban operations management. This book chapter describes a vision for prototyping a “Smart Metaverse City” to combine the unique advantage of the Metaverse technology with the two-way connectivity of a digital twin city application. This synergy aims to create a virtual environment for immersive geovisualization to help researchers and the public understand the complex urban system through science-based and data-driven approaches. This book chapter selectively reviews past technological and paradigm advancements for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing 3D urban big data. Then we present a prototyping Geographic Information System (GIS) framework, together with some relevant data sources and open-source web technologies, to help researchers create a smart Metaverse city. We demonstrate our vision and discuss its application opportunities through a real-world example, a digital twin city developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to facilitate participatory, smart, and sustainable campus management.

Xu, Haowen↗

Prediction of cardiac death after adenosine myocardial perfusion SPECT based on machine learning

Background: We developed machine-learning (ML) models to estimate a patient’s risk of cardiac death based on adenosine myocardial perfusion SPECT (MPS) and associated clinical data, and compared their performance to baseline logistic regression (LR). We demonstrated an approach to visually convey the reasoning behind a patient’s risk to provide insight to clinicians beyond that of a “black box.” Methods: We trained multiple models using 122 potential clinical predictors (features) for 8321 patients, including 551 cases of subsequent cardiac death. Accuracy was measured by area under the ROC curve (AUC), computed within a cross-validation framework. We developed a method to display the model’s rationale to facilitate clinical interpretation. Results: The baseline LR (AUC = 0.76; 14 features) was outperformed by all other methods. A least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) model (AUC = 0.77; p = .045; 6 features) required the fewest features. A support vector machine (SVM) model (AUC = 0.83; p < .0001; 49 features) provided the highest accuracy. Conclusions: LASSO outperformed LR in both accuracy and simplicity (number of features), with SVM yielding best AUC for prediction of cardiac death in patients undergoing MPS. Combined with presenting the reasoning behind the risk scores, our results suggest that ML can be more effective than LR for this application.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

Microscopic Behaviors of Tri-n-Butyl Phosphate, n-Dodecane and Their Mixtures at Air/Liquid and Liquid/Liquid Interfaces: An AMBER Polarizable Force Field Study

In solvent extraction processes for recovering metal ions from used nuclear fuel, as well as other industrial applications, a better understanding of the metal complex phase transfer phenomenon would greatly aid ligand design and process optimization. We have approached this challenge by utilizing classical molecular dynamics simulations technique to gain visual appreciation of the vapor/liquid and liquid/liquid interface between tri-n-butyl phosphate (TBP) and n-dodecane with air and water. In this study, we successfully reparameterized polarizable force fields for TBP and n-dodecane that accurately reproduced several of their thermophysical properties such as: density, heat of vaporization, and dipole moment. Our models were able to predict the surface and interfacial tension of different systems when compared to experimental results also performed by us. Through this study, we gained numerous atomistic understanding of the behaviors of TBP and n-dodecane at the interface against air and water, useful in further computational studies of such systems. Lastly, our studies indicate that the initial configuration of a simulation may have a large effect on the final result.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Mechanochromic Palettes Based on Optical Rotation in Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Elastomers for Visual Signalling

Mechanochromic photonic materials present promising prospects for enhancing diverse facets of human life. Cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers (CLCEs) present immediate mechanochromic properties, allowing their utility in various fields, including camouflages, textiles, and anticounterfeiting. Nonetheless, it is essential to provide differentiated color information corresponding to diverse types and degrees of deformation for practical use in real life. Herein, the mechanochromic responses of CLCEs are investigated using their optical rotation under compression and uniaxial stretching. The CLCEs exhibit the same reflection colors indistinguishable for compression and uniaxial stretching due to their contracted pitches. In contrast, the linearly polarized light passing through deformed CLCEs can be modulated by optical rotation, resulting in distinct transmission colors that can be discerned through mechanical deformations. A visual signaling system with color information derived from optical rotation is demonstrated. By comprehending and manipulating the mechanoresponsive behavior of CLCEs, these materials can be advanced into innovative solutions with enhanced functionality and performance, thereby broadening their applications for human life enhancement.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Voltage-Based Strategies for Preventing Battery Degradation under Diverse Fast-Charging Conditions

Maintaining safe operating conditions is a key challenge for high-performance lithium-ion battery applications. The lithium-plating reaction remains a risk during charging, but limited studies consider the highly variable charging conditions possible in commercial cells. Here we combine pseudo-2D electrochemical modeling with data visualization methods to reveal important relationships between the measurable cell voltage and difficult-to-predict Li-plating onset criteria. An extensively validated model is used to compute Li plating for thousands of multistep charging conditions spanning diverse rates, temperatures, states-of-charge, and cell aging. Here we observe an empirical cell operating voltage limit below which plating does not occur across all conditions, and this limit varies with the battery state-of-charge and aging. A model sensitivity analysis also indicates that, when comparing two charging voltage profiles, the capacity difference at 4.0 V correlates well with the difference in the plating onset capacity. These results encourage simple strategies for Li-plating prevention that are complementary to existing battery controls.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Mechanochromic Palettes of Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Elastomers for Visual Signaling

Mechanochromic photonic materials present promising prospects for enhancing diverse facets of human life. Cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers (CLCEs) present immediate mechanochromic properties, allowing their utility in various fields, including camouflages, textiles, and anticounterfeiting. Nonetheless, it is essential to provide differentiated color information corresponding to diverse types and degrees of deformation for practical use in real life. Herein, we investigate the mechanochromic responses of CLCEs using their optical rotation under compression and uniaxial stretching. The CLCEs exhibit the same reflection colors indistinguishable for compression and uniaxial stretching due to their contracted pitches. In contrast, the linearly polarized light passing through deformed CLCEs can be modulated by optical rotation, resulting in distinct transmission colors that can be discerned through mechanical deformations. We demonstrate a visual signaling system with color information derived from optical rotation. By comprehending and manipulating the mechanoresponsive behavior of CLCEs, we can advance these materials into innovative solutions with enhanced functionality and performance, thereby broadening their applications for human life enhancement.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Correlative single-cell hard X-ray computed tomography and X-ray fluorescence imaging

Abstract X-ray computed tomography (XCT) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) imaging are two non-invasive imaging techniques to study cellular structures and chemical element distributions, respectively. However, correlative X-ray computed tomography and fluorescence imaging for the same cell have yet to be routinely realized due to challenges in sample preparation and X-ray radiation damage. Here we report an integrated experimental and computational workflow for achieving correlative multi-modality X-ray imaging of a single cell. The method consists of the preparation of radiation-resistant single-cell samples using live-cell imaging-assisted chemical fixation and freeze-drying procedures, targeting and labeling cells for correlative XCT and XRF measurement, and computational reconstruction of the correlative and multi-modality images. With XCT, cellular structures including the overall structure and intracellular organelles are visualized, while XRF imaging reveals the distribution of multiple chemical elements within the same cell. Our correlative method demonstrates the feasibility and broad applicability of using X-rays to understand cellular structures and the roles of chemical elements and related proteins in signaling and other biological processes.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

X-ray diffraction under grazing incidence conditions

Material properties frequently relate to structures at or near surfaces, particularly in thin films. As a result, it is essential to understand these structures at the molecular and atomistic levels. The most accurate and widely used techniques for characterizing crystallographic order are based on X-ray diffraction. When dealing with thin films or interfaces, standard approaches, such as single crystal or powder diffraction, are not suitable. However, X-ray diffraction under grazing incidence conditions can provide the required information. Here, in this Primer, grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD) is comprehensively introduced, starting from basic considerations on X-ray diffraction at crystals with reduced dimensionality and the optical properties of X-rays, followed by a more in-depth description of an experimental performance, including X-ray sources, goniometers and detectors. Experimental errors, limitations and reproducibility are discussed. Various applications, from highly ordered inorganic single crystal surfaces to weakly ordered polymer thin films, are presented to illustrate the potential of GIXD. Data visualizations, representations and evaluation strategies are summarized, based on the example of anthracene thin films. The Primer compiles information relevant to perform high-quality GIXD experiments, evaluate data and interpret results, to extend knowledge about X-ray diffraction from surfaces, interfaces and thin films.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

WPGNN and PLayGen (Wind Plant Graph Neural Network and Plant Layout Generator) [SWR-21-90]

WPGNN is the graph neural network machine learning based surrogate model and software that provides a streamlined approximation of wind plant wake models. It can rapidly estimate the energy production of the plant and turbines for any arbitrarily sized wind plant and layout under any inflow condition. Associated tools include graphing and visualization capabilities as well as a wind plant generator capable of creating randomized realizations of canonical wind plant layouts. The WPGNN architecture and application is extendable to multiple wake models, turbine technologies and features, and supports downstream optimizations of wind plant layouts and control strategies. In addition to the WPGNN, we include the code for the plant layout generator (PLayGen) playgen.py. This generator can produce random realizations of realistic wind plant layouts from one of the four canonical styles: cluster, single string, multiple string, or parallel string. The PLayGen_demo.ipynb notebook provides a demonstration of how to use the generator tool.

Harrison-Atlas, Dylan↗

Cyber100 Compass [SWR 23-64]

Cyber100 Compass ("Compass") is a unique risk assessment framework that will enable grid system planners to understand and mitigate cybersecurity risk for grids transitioning to high levels of renewable generation, including 100%. The idea for Compass was developed by NREL based on past work on high-renewable grids and a series of discussions with DOE. Compass is part of Cyber100, a portfolio of proposed research activities that would greatly expand understanding of cybersecurity for high-renewable grids. Compass is a desktop application designed with a user-friendly interface. The tool gathers information from users, conducts probabilistic backend calculations, and outputs a series of visualizations to help users understand and analyze their cybersecurity risks based on the unique features of their future grid. Compass will take as inputs the values for different conditions and produce a risk score of the resulting grid. By trying different configurations, system planners can compare the resultant risks against their own risk tolerance and decide which system-of-system controls to implement as they transition toward a 100% renewable grid.

Martin, Maurice↗

Enabling human–infrastructure interfaces for inspection using augmented reality

Decaying infrastructure maintenance cost allocation depends heavily on accurate and safe inspection in the field. New tools to conduct inspections can assist in prioritizing investments in maintenance and repairs. The industrial revolution termed as “Industry 4.0” is based on the intelligence of machines working with humans in a collaborative workspace. Contrarily, infrastructure management has relied on the human for making day-to-day decisions. New emerging technologies can assist during infrastructure inspections, to quantify structural condition with more objective data. However, today’s owners agree in trusting the inspector’s decision in the field over data collected with sensors. If data collected in the field is accessible during the inspections, the inspector decisions can be improved with sensors. New research opportunities in the human–infrastructure interface would allow researchers to improve the human awareness of their surrounding environment during inspections. This article studies the role of Augmented Reality (AR) technology as a tool to increase human awareness of infrastructure in their inspection work. The domains of interest of this research include both infrastructure inspections (emphasis on the collection of data of structures to inform management decisions) and emergency management (focus on the data collection of the environment to inform human actions). This article describes the use of a head-mounted device to access real-time data and information during their field inspection. The authors leverage the use of low-cost smart sensors and QR code scanners integrated with Augmented Reality applications for augmented human interface with the physical environment. This article presents a novel interface architecture for developing Augmented Reality–enabled inspection to assist the inspector’s workflow in conducting infrastructure inspection works with two new applications and summarizes the results from various experiments. The main contributions of this work to computer-aided community are enabling inspectors to visualize data files from database and real-time data access using an Augmented Reality environment.

Maharjan, D.↗

Rainwater Harvesting State Regulations and Technical Resources

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) conducted in-depth research of state-level rainwater harvesting regulations for the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) to help federal agencies strategically identify locations conducive to rainwater harvesting projects. Currently, rainwater harvesting is not regulated by the federal government; instead it is up to individual states to regulate the collection and use of rainwater. There is no centralized information about state-level regulations on rainwater harvesting maintained by a federal agency or outside organization. To fill this information gap, PNNL performed detailed internet searches for each state, which included researching regulations associated with state agencies, universities, Cooperative Extension Offices, city governments, and related organizations. The state-by-state information about rainwater harvesting regulations was compiled and assembled into an interactive map that is color coded by state regulations. The map provides a visual representation of the general types of rainwater harvesting policies across the country as well as general information about the state programs if applicable. The map allows the user to quickly discern where rainwater harvesting is supported and regulated by the state. This map was created in June 2015 and the data were updated in June 2019.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗