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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 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2016

Direction Finding Using an Antenna with Direction Dependent Impulse Response

Wideband antennas may be designed to have an impulse response that is direction dependent, not only in amplitude but also in waveform shape. This property can be used to perform direction finding using a single fixed antenna, without the need for an array or antenna rotation. In this paper direction finding is demonstrated using a simple candelabra-shaped monopole operating in the 1-3 GHz range. The method requires a known transmitted pulse shape and high signal-to-noise ratio, and is not as accurate or robust as conventional methods. However, it can add direction finding capability to a wideband communication system without the addition of any hardware.

spacecraft/cubesat RF sensing and Communications↗
DOE OSTI2023

Testing the Jump Finding Code for NEXUS Qubit Analysis

At Fermilab, the NEXUS dilution refrigerator is repeating the same experiment from Wilen et al. 1 underground to further investigate the effect of ionizing radiation and cosmic ray muons on qubit decoherence. This refrigerator is 100m underground in the MINOS cavern to significantly lower the incident rate of cosmic ray muons, meaning the majority of incidents is due to ionizing radiation. To gain a better understanding of how the rate of ionizing radiation affects the qubits, we use 4 radiation configurations to collect data from the chip. In this work, we examine the efficiency of our jump detection code to find jumps of various sizes. We do so using simulated data with a known number of injected jumps of known sizes. These jumps are charge offsets of the qubit, thought to be due to quasiparticle poisoning. To test this, we run the jump finding code on an array of simulated data in which two main parameters, the smoothing factor and the threshold at which a charge offset is considered a jump, are changed to test an array of these parameters. We then perform a χ2 analysis to find the best combination of these two parameters.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

From natural language to control signals: a conceptual framework for semantic channel finding in complex experimental infrastructure

Modern experimental platforms such as particle accelerators, fusion devices, telescopes, and industrial process control systems expose tens to hundreds of thousands of control and diagnostic channels, accumulated over decades of hardware evolution. Operators and AI systems alike depend on informal expert knowledge, inconsistent naming conventions, and scattered documentation to locate the signals required for monitoring, troubleshooting, and automated control, creating a persistent bottleneck for reliability, scalability, and emerging language-model-driven interfaces. We formalize semantic channel finding, the task of mapping natural-language intent to concrete control-system signals, as a general problem in complex experimental infrastructure, and introduce a four-paradigm conceptual framework to guide architecture selection based on facility-specific data regimes. The paradigms span (i) direct in-context lookup over small, curated channel dictionaries, (ii) constrained hierarchical navigation through structured trees, (iii) interactive agent exploration using iterative reasoning and tool-based database queries, and (iv) ontology-grounded semantic search that decouples channel meaning from facility-specific naming conventions. We demonstrate the practical feasibility of each paradigm through proof-of-concept implementations at four operational facilities spanning two orders of magnitude in scale: from compact free-electron lasers to large synchrotron light sources, operating under diverse control-system architectures ranging from clean hierarchical naming schemes to legacy environments with decades of heterogeneous conventions. Where evaluated against expert-curated operational queries, these instantiations achieve 90%–97% accuracy, validating the framework’s applicability across real-world deployment scenarios. To accelerate adoption across the broader scientific and industrial control-system community, we release open-source, plug-and-play implementations of all three interactive paradigms-direct lookup, hierarchical navigation, and middle-layer exploration-within the Osprey framework, together with tools for channel database generation, interactive testing, and minimal-configuration deployment. This work establishes semantic channel finding as a foundational capability for human-centric and agentic AI interfaces at large-scale facilities, providing both a systematic framework for architecture design and practical resources to enable adoption without building custom infrastructure from scratch.

channel finding↗
DOE OSTI2024

Stochastic Optimization to Find Optimum Beginning-of-Life Core Configuration of Stable Salt Reactor with Online Refueling

A stochastic optimization method has been developed to find an optimum equilibrium cycle core configuration of the waste-burning stable salt reactor, which is a fast-spectrum molten salt reactor with frequent online refueling. An optimum core configuration was determined with the goal of minimizing radial power peaking. Because of the vast number of potential candidate core configurations, stochastic optimization was applied based on simulated annealing and an additional acceleration method, which screened out unpromising core configurations. It has been demonstrated that the developed stochastic optimization method successfully finds the optimal core configuration regardless of the initial guess and outperforms the gradient descent approach. In addition, it has been observed that the use of a so-called out-in core configuration as the initial guess speeds up convergence of the iterative solution more than five times. Based on the searched optimum equilibrium cycle core configuration, new beginning-of-life (BOL) core configurations have been developed. In conclusion, the new BOL core configurations will be used in developing optimum refueling strategies.

Moltex static salt reactor↗
DOE OSTI2023

A simple data-driven level finding method of many-electron atoms and heavy nuclei based on statistical outlier detection

Here, we report a simple and pure data-driven method to find new energy levels of quantum many-body systems only from observed line wavelengths. In our method, all the possible combinations are computed from known energy levels and wavelengths of unidentified lines. As each excited state exhibits many transition lines to different lower levels, the true levels should be reconstructed coincidentally from many level-line combinations, while the wrong combinations distribute randomly. Such a coincidence can be easily detected statistically. We demonstrate this statistical method by finding new levels for various atomic and nuclear systems from unidentified line lists available online.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Optimizing the hit finding algorithm for liquid argon TPC neutrino detectors using parallel architectures

Neutrinos are particles that interact rarely, so identifying them requires large detectors which produce lots of data. Processing this data with the computing power available is becoming even more difficult as the detectors increase in size to reach their physics goals. Liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) neutrino experiments are expected to grow in the next decade to have 100 times more wires than in currently operating experiments, and modernization of LArTPC reconstruction code, including parallelization both at data- and instruction-level, will help to mitigate this challenge. The LArTPC hit finding algorithm is used across multiple experiments through a common software framework. In this paper we discuss a parallel implementation of this algorithm. Using a standalone setup we find speedup factors of two times from vectorization and 30–100 times from multi-threading on Intel architectures. The new version has been incorporated back into the framework so that it can be used by experiments. On a serial execution, the integrated version is about 10 times faster than the previous one and, once parallelization is enabled, more speedups comparable to the standalone program are achieved.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

PDBspheres: a method for finding 3D similarities in local regions in proteins

Abstract We present a structure-based method for finding and evaluating structural similarities in protein regions relevant to ligand binding. PDBspheres comprises an exhaustive library of protein structure regions (‘spheres’) adjacent to complexed ligands derived from the Protein Data Bank (PDB), along with methods to find and evaluate structural matches between a protein of interest and spheres in the library. PDBspheres uses the LGA (Local–Global Alignment) structure alignment algorithm as the main engine for detecting structural similarities between the protein of interest and template spheres from the library, which currently contains >2 million spheres. To assess confidence in structural matches, an all-atom-based similarity metric takes side chain placement into account. Here, we describe the PDBspheres method, demonstrate its ability to detect and characterize binding sites in protein structures, show how PDBspheres—a strictly structure-based method—performs on a curated dataset of 2528 ligand-bound and ligand-free crystal structures, and use PDBspheres to cluster pockets and assess structural similarities among protein binding sites of 4876 structures in the ‘refined set’ of the PDBbind 2019 dataset.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Finding evidence for inflation and the origin of galactic magnetic fields with CMB surveys

The origin of the μG magnetic fields observed in galaxies is unknown. One promising scenario is that magnetic fields generated during inflation, larger than 0.1 nG on Mpc scales, were adiabatically compressed to μG strengths in galaxies during structure formation. Thus, detecting a scale-invariant primordial magnetic field (PMF) above 0.1 nG on Mpc scales just after recombination would indicate an inflationary origin of galactic magnetic fields. Furthermore, this would also provide compelling evidence that inflation occurred since only an inflationary mechanism could generate such a strong, scale-invariant magnetic field on Mpc scales. In contrast, constraining the scale-invariant PMF strength to be below 0.1 nG would imply an inflationary scenario is not the primary origin, since such weak PMFs cannot be amplified enough via adiabatic compression to produce the strength of the galactic fields we observe today. We find that measurements of anisotropic birefringence by future CMB surveys will be able to improve the sensitivity to Mpc-scale inflationary PMFs by an order of magnitude, and, in particular, that CMB-HD would lower the upper bound to 0.072 nG at the 95% C.L., which is below the critical 0.1 nG threshold for ruling out a purely inflationary origin. If inflationary PMFs exist, we find that a CMB-HD survey would be able to detect them with about 3σ significance or higher, providing evidence for inflation itself.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Finding Your Niche: An Evolutionary Approach to HPC Topologies

Traditional interconnection network design approaches focus on building general network topologies by optimizing the bisection bandwidth or minimizing the network’s diameter to reduce the maximum distance between any two nodes, thus amortizing the overall execution time of the HPC workloads. While such network topologies may accommodate a wide variety of applications in general, this may result in sub-optimal performance for many frequently-executed or dynamic workloads. In this paper, instead of focusing on designing an all-encompassing, general-purpose network topology, we develop a methodology to design customized network interconnects, evolved by “finding” the optimal topologies for a particular target workload given by its communication and contention profiles. To this end, we implement a Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based approach for network topology design tailored to improve the overall execution time of a particular workload of interest. We conducted extensive experiments with well-known motifs in physics-based workloads (Sweep3D and FFT), as well as with a representative graph application (MiniVite), using the well-known Structural Simulation Toolkit (SST) Macroscale Element Library (SST/macro) simulator for network interconnect evaluation. We demonstrate that our genetic algorithm-based approach is robust enough to find the underlying optimal topology of a particular workload.

network interconnects, graph search, meta-heuristi↗
DOE OSTI2021

Modulation of sensory perception by hydrogen peroxide enables Caenorhabditis elegans to find a niche that provides both food and protection from hydrogen peroxide

Hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) is the most common chemical threat that organisms face. Here, we show that H 2 O 2 alters the bacterial food preference of Caenorhabditis elegans , enabling the nematodes to find a safe environment with food. H 2 O 2 induces the nematodes to leave food patches of laboratory and microbiome bacteria when those bacterial communities have insufficient H 2 O 2 -degrading capacity. The nematode’s behavior is directed by H 2 O 2 -sensing neurons that promote escape from H 2 O 2 and by bacteria-sensing neurons that promote attraction to bacteria. However, the input for H 2 O 2 -sensing neurons is removed by bacterial H 2 O 2 -degrading enzymes and the bacteria-sensing neurons’ perception of bacteria is prevented by H 2 O 2 . The resulting cross-attenuation provides a general mechanism that ensures the nematode’s behavior is faithful to the lethal threat of hydrogen peroxide, increasing the nematode’s chances of finding a niche that provides both food and protection from hydrogen peroxide.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Applying Multi-Frequency AC LOCO for Finding Sextupole Errors

A fast and precise technique of multi-frequency AC LOCO has been developed and tested for finding the sextupole alignment and field-offset errors at NSLS-II. This technique is based on sine-wave beam excitation simultaneously at multiple frequencies via different fast correctors. The unique combination of the fast speed and high measurement accuracy opens the door for two different types of potential applications: finding the sextupole alignment and field-offset errors. Beam excitation via fast correctors results in the elimination of the systematic error caused by the hysteresis effect. Systematic errors of the sextupole alignment caused by orbit drift and power supply calibration are also eliminated because the measurement takes only two minutes and does not depend on the current-to-field conversion of sextupole magnets. Furthermore, the simulation studies indicate that multi-frequency AC LOCO together with an orbit bump bigger than 0.5 mm can be applied to measure the relative field offset of a sextupole magnet with a precision better than 10%. The measurement technique is described and the results of two proof-of-principle experiments carried out at NSLS-II are presented.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Advancing Grid Resilience through Smart Charge Management: Findings from Maryland’s Pilot

This report presents research findings from a four-year Smart Charge Management (SCM) pilot program conducted by Maryland’s largest electric utilities—Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE), Potomac Electric Power Company (Pepco), and Delmarva Power & Light (DPL)—to evaluate strategies for optimizing electric vehicle (EV) charging loads and enhancing grid stability. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Argonne National Laboratory collaborated with all project partners and examined the effectiveness of Time-of-Use (TOU) and Load Balancing (LB) strategies in managing peak demand, deferring costly infrastructure upgrades, and reducing grid constraints at the feeder level. Using charging data from over 4,600 EV drivers, the study analyzed SCM’s impact on the distribution systems of BGE and Pepco, which consists of over 2000 feeders. Unlike prior research that focused on system-wide trends or synthetic feeders, this analysis offers granular, feeder-level insights based on real-world operational data. It highlights how transformer density, load profiles, and infrastructure constraints influence smart charging performance. Results show feeder-level conditions play a crucial role in SCM effectiveness, with most feeders benefiting more from LB, while TOU-based SCM may be sufficient for others. By 2035, LB reduced peak charging loads by 27% on average, compared to 23% under TOU-based SCM, though some feeders saw reductions exceeding 35%, while others experienced minimal impact. Feeders with higher transformer utilization and limited capacity benefited more from LB, which more effectively distributed charging demand during off-peak hours. Beyond reducing grid constraints, SCM offers long-term operational and financial benefits. By shifting EV charging demand strategically, utilities can optimize asset utilization, delay infrastructure investments, and enhance grid performance. In terms of infrastructure upgrade deferrals, at the feeder level, LB consistently reduced peak charging loads and resulting infrastructure upgrade costs, particularly in high EV enrollment areas, decreasing the number of overloaded transformers by up to 35%, while TOU-based SCM achieved 20-30% reductions depending on feeder characteristics. At the system level, LB has the potential to defer total upgrade costs by $\$$186 million for BGE, compared to $\$$159 million under TOU-based SCM. For Pepco, TOU-based SCM performed slightly better, deferring upgrade costs by $\$$30 million, compared to $\$$29 million under LB. Section 4.5 reviews some of the system differences between BGE and Pepco. However, as EV adoption scales, TOU-based SCM will introduce secondary peak charging loads, reinforcing the need for more advanced, adaptive SCM approaches to prevent new grid challenges. As EV adoption continues to grow, feeder-level managed charging strategies will be essential for mitigating grid stress, improving infrastructure efficiency, and maintaining energy affordability for consumers. This report provides critical insights for utilities, Public Utility Commissions (PUCs), and state agencies on the role of feeder-specific smart charging in infrastructure planning, policy development, and grid modernization. The findings underscore the importance of tailored, data-driven SCM solutions that align with local grid conditions, ensuring a resilient, cost-effective transition to increasing EV adoption while safeguarding distribution system performance.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Initial Findings from US Department of Energy’s Better Plants Virtual in-Plant Training on 50001 Ready

Manufacturing facilities use about 35% of the domestic energy in the United States every year. Implementing an effective energy management system (EnMS) is one of the most important approaches to improve energy efficiency. However, the implementation of EnMS is low for many countries (including the US) and even for energy-intensive sectors. The reasons for the low implementation rate of energy management systems had been investigated by multiple researchers, but very few studies have focused on the barriers and challenges of implementing ISO 50001-based energy management systems. To contribute to this understudied area, this paper discusses the implementation and outcomes of the first Better Plants 50001 Ready Virtual In-plant Training. This paper first provides an overview of 50001 Ready and the 50001 Ready Navigator Tool. Then, it provides details on this training event and its outcomes. Finally, it discusses findings from the responses to 40 live polling questions about the status of the 25 tasks of the 50001 Ready Navigator for participating companies, key components of the participating manufacturing companies’ energy management systems, and challenges and barriers that these companies are facing. The findings suggest that although many companies understood the importance of an effective energy management system, about half of them do not understand the required resources for building energy management systems, and most of them have only just begun establishing these systems and need more assistance and resources in multiple areas. More specifically, more assistance is necessary for the following: (1) improving corporate management’s understanding of the time and resources needed to build an EnMS as well as the benefits; (2) creating linear regression models for more accurate energy performance tracking; (3) understanding energy use, collecting and analyzing energy performance data; (4) optimizing equipment operational controls, and creating action plans.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

The Impact of Void-finding Algorithms on Galaxy Classification

We explore how the definition of a void influences the conclusions drawn about the impact of the void environment on galactic properties using two void-finding algorithms in the Void Analysis Software Toolkit: Voronoi Voids (V 2 ), a Python implementation of ZOnes Bordering On Voidness (ZOBOV); and VoidFinder, an algorithm that grows and merges spherical void regions. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7, we find that galaxies found in VoidFinder voids tend to be bluer and fainter and to have higher (specific) star formation rates than galaxies in denser regions. Conversely, galaxies found in V 2 voids show less significant differences when compared to galaxies in denser regions, less consistent with the large-scale environmental effects on galaxy properties expected from both simulations and previous observations. These results align with previous simulation results that show V 2 -identified voids “leak” into the dense walls between voids because their boundaries extend up to the density maxima in the walls. As a result, when using ZOBOV-based void-finders, galaxies likely to be part of wall regions are instead classified as void galaxies, a misclassification that can be critical to our understanding of galaxy evolution.

cosmic web↗
DOE OSTI2025

On Finding Black Holes in Photometric Microlensing Surveys

There are expected to be millions of isolated black holes in the galaxy resulting from the deaths of massive stars. Measuring the abundance and properties of this remnant population would shed light on the end stages of stellar evolution and the evolution paths of black hole systems. Detecting isolated black holes is currently only possible via gravitational microlensing, which has so far yielded one definitive detection. The difficulty in finding microlensing black holes lies in having to choose a small subset of events, based on characteristics of their light curves, to allocate expensive and scarce follow-up resources to confirm the identity of the lens. Current methods either rely on simple cuts in parameter space without using the full distribution information or are only effective on small subsets of events. In this paper, we present a new lens classification method. The classifier takes in posterior constraints on light-curve parameters and combines them with a Galactic simulation to estimate the lens class probability. This method is flexible and can be used with any set of microlensing light-curve parameters, making it applicable to large samples of events. We make this classification framework available via the popclass Python package. We apply the classifier to ~10,000 microlensing events from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment survey and find 23 high-probability black hole candidates. Our classifier also suggests that the only known isolated black hole is an observational outlier, according to current Galactic models, and the allocation of astrometric follow-up on this event was a high-risk strategy.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Find the Gap: Black Hole Population Analysis with an Astrophysically Motivated Mass Function

We introduce a novel black hole mass function that realistically models the physics of pair-instability supernovae with a minimal number of parameters. Applying this to all events in the LIGO-Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog 2 (GWTC-2), we detect a peak at M BHMG = 46$^{+17}_{-6}$ M ⊙ . Repeating the analysis without the black holes from the event GW190521, we find this feature at M BHMG =54± 6 M ⊙ . These results establish the edge of the anticipated "black hole mass gap" at a value compatible with the expectation from standard stellar structure theory. The mass gap manifests itself as a discontinuity in the mass function and is populated by a distinct, less-abundant population of higher-mass black holes. We find that the primary black hole population scales with power-law index -1.95 ± 0.51 (-1.97 ± 0.44) with (without) GW190521, consistent with models of star formation. Using Bayesian techniques, we establish that our mass function fits a new catalog of black hole masses approximately as well as pre-existing phenomenological mass functions. We also remark on the implications of these results for constraining or discovering new phenomena in nuclear and particle physics.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1973

Experimental interstellar organic chemistry - Preliminary findings

Review of the results of some explicit experimental simulation of interstellar organic chemistry consisting in low-temperature high-vacuum UV irradiation of condensed simple gases known or suspected to be present in the interstellar medium. The results include the finding that acetonitrile may be present in the interstellar medium. The implication of this and other findings are discussed.

Khare, B. N.↗
NASA NTRS1975

Direction-finding measurements of auroral kilometric radiation

Direction-finding measurements with plasma wave experiments on the Hawkeye 1 and Imp 8 satellites are used to locate the source region of auroral kilometric radiation. This radiation has peak intensities between about 100 and 300 kHz and is emitted in intense sporadic bursts lasting for from half an hour to several hours. At peak intensity the total power emitted in this frequency range exceeds 1 billion W. The occurrence of this radiation is known to be closely associated with bright auroral arcs which occur in the local evening auroral regions. Hawkeye 1 provides direction-finding measurements of kilometric radiation from observations at high latitudes over the northern polar regions, and Imp 8 provides similar observations at large radial distances near the equatorial plane. Results from both satellites place the source of the intense auroral kilometric rdiation in the late local evening at about 22.0 hours LT and at a distance of about 0.75 earth radii from the polar axis of the earth.

Kurth, W. S.↗