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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 703 records · Page 39

MULTICOM2 open-source protein structure prediction system powered by deep learning and distance prediction

Protein structure prediction is an important problem in bioinformatics and has been studied for decades. However, there are still few open-source comprehensive protein structure prediction packages publicly available in the field. In this paper, we present our latest open-source protein tertiary structure prediction system—MULTICOM2, an integration of template-based modeling (TBM) and template-free modeling (FM) methods. The template-based modeling uses sequence alignment tools with deep multiple sequence alignments to search for structural templates, which are much faster and more accurate than MULTICOM1. The template-free (ab initio or de novo) modeling uses the inter-residue distances predicted by DeepDist to reconstruct tertiary structure models without using any known structure as template. In the blind CASP14 experiment, the average TM-score of the models predicted by our server predictor based on the MULTICOM2 system is 0.720 for 58 TBM (regular) domains and 0.514 for 38 FM and FM/TBM (hard) domains, indicating that MULTICOM2 is capable of predicting good tertiary structures across the board. It can predict the correct fold for 76 CASP14 domains (95% regular domains and 55% hard domains) if only one prediction is made for a domain. The success rate is increased to 3% for both regular and hard domains if five predictions are made per domain. Moreover, the prediction accuracy of the pure template-free structure modeling method on both TBM and FM targets is very close to the combination of template-based and template-free modeling methods. This demonstrates that the distance-based template-free modeling method powered by deep learning can largely replace the traditional template-based modeling method even on TBM targets that TBM methods used to dominate and therefore provides a uniform structure modeling approach to any protein. Finally, on the 38 CASP14 FM and FM/TBM hard domains, MULTICOM2 server predictors (MULTICOM-HYBRID, MULTICOM-DEEP, MULTICOM-DIST) were ranked among the top 20 automated server predictors in the CASP14 experiment. After combining multiple predictors from the same research group as one entry, MULTICOM-HYBRID was ranked no. 5. The source code of MULTICOM2 is freely available at https://github.com/multicom-toolbox/multicom/tree/multicom_v2.0 .

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Design and calibration of a novel transient radiative heat flux meter for a spacecraft thermal test

Radiative heat flux measurement is significantly important for a spacecraft thermal test. To satisfy the requirements of both high accuracy and fast response, a novel transient radiative heat flux meter was developed. Its thermal receiver consists of a central thermal receiver and two thermal guarded annular plates, which ensure the temperature distribution of the central thermal receiver to be uniform enough for reasonably applying lumped heat capacity method in a transient radiative heat flux measurement. This novel transient radiative heat flux meter design can also take accurate measurements regardless of spacecraft surface temperature and incident radiation spectrum. The measurement principle was elaborated and the coefficients were calibrated. Experimental results from testing a blackbody furnace and an Xenon lamp show that this novel transient radiative heat flux meter can be used to measure transient radiative heat flux up to 1400 W/m{sup 2} with high accuracy and the response time of less than 10 s.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Lateral capacity assessment of offshore wind suction bucket foundation in clay via centrifuge modelling

The lateral bearing behaviors of suction bucket foundations for offshore wind turbines are investigated by centrifuge modelling in this paper. The centrifuge tests were performed in lightly over-consolidated clay and heavily over-consolidated clay, and three bucket foundation models with aspect ratios of 0.38, 0.5, and 1.3 were tested. The tests were force-controlled, and both static loads and cyclic loads were applied. In static tests, ultimate bearing capacities of suction bucket foundations were extracted from load-displacement curves as the first method, and the results were reinforced by stiffness-displacement curves. The displacement rates were calculated to find critical bearing capacities and ultimate bearing capacities of the foundations as the second method. The cyclic tests include cyclic loads with uniform and increased amplitudes. The accumulated lateral displacements and secant stiffnesses were discussed, and their variations with cycle numbers were studied.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Optimized x-ray emission from 10 ns long germanium x-ray sources at the National Ignition Facility

This study investigates methods to optimize quasi-monochromatic, ~10 ns long x-ray sources (XRS) for time-resolved x-ray diffraction measurements of phase transitions during dynamic laser compression measurements at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). To support this, we produce continuous and pulsed XRS by irradiating a Ge foil with NIF lasers to achieve an intensity of 2 × 10 15 W/cm 2 , optimizing the laser-to-x-ray conversion efficiency. Our x-ray source is dominated by Ge He-α line emission. Here, we discuss methods to optimize the source to maintain a uniform XRS for ~10 ns, mitigating cold plasma and higher energy x-ray emission lines.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Alpha Air Sample Counting Efficiency Versus Dust Loading: Evaluation of a Large Data Set

Dust loading on air sample filters is known to cause a loss of efficiency for direct counting of alpha activity on the filters, but the amount of dust loading and the correction factor needed to account for attenuated alpha particles is difficult to assess. In this paper, correction factors are developed by statistical analysis of a large database of air sample results for a uranium and plutonium processing facility at the Savannah River Site. As is typically the case, dust-loading data is not directly available, but sample volume is found to be a reasonable proxy measure; the amount of dust loading is inferred by a combination of the derived correction factors and a Monte Carlo model. The technique compares the distribution of activity ratios [beta/(beta + alpha)] by volume and applies a range of correction factors on the raw alpha count rate. The best-fit results with this method are compared with MCNP modeling of activity uniformly deposited in the dust and analytical laboratory results of digested filters. Finally, a linear fit is proposed to evenly-deposited alpha activity collected on filters with dust loading over a range of about 2 mg cm -2 to 1,000 mg cm -2 .

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Progressive Tree-Based Compression of Large-Scale Particle Data

Scientific simulations and observations using particles have been creating large datasets that require effective and efficient data reduction to store, transfer, and analyze. However, current approaches either compress only small data well while being inefficient for large data, or handle large data but with insufficient compression. Toward effective and scalable compression/decompression of particle positions, we introduce new kinds of particle hierarchies and corresponding traversal orders that quickly reduce reconstruction error while being fast and low in memory footprint. Our solution to compression of large-scale particle data is a flexible block-based hierarchy that supports progressive, random-access, and error-driven decoding, where error estimation heuristics can be supplied by the user. For low-level node encoding, we introduce new schemes that effectively compress both uniform and densely structured particle distributions. Our proposed methods thus target all three phases of a tree-based particle compression pipeline, namely tree construction, tree traversal, and node encoding. In conclusion, the improved efficacy and flexibility of these methods over existing compressors are demonstrated through extensive experimentation, using a wide range of scientific particle datasets.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Operation and performance of the ATLAS tile calorimeter in LHC Run 2

The ATLAS tile calorimeter (TileCal) is the hadronic sampling calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This paper gives an overview of the calorimeter’s operation and performance during the years 2015–2018 (Run 2). In this period, ATLAS collected proton–proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and the TileCal was 99.65% efficient for data-taking. The signal reconstruction, the calibration procedures, and the detector operational status are presented. The performance of two ATLAS trigger systems making use of TileCal information, the minimum-bias trigger scintillators and the tile muon trigger, is discussed. Studies of radiation effects allow the degradation of the output signals at the end of the LHC and HL-LHC operations to be estimated. Finally, the TileCal response to isolated muons, hadrons and jets from proton–proton collisions is presented. The energy and time calibration methods performed excellently, resulting in good stability and uniformity of the calorimeter response during Run 2. The setting of the energy scale was performed with an uncertainty of 2%. The results demonstrate that the performance is in accordance with specifications defined in the Technical Design Report.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Advanced electrode manufacturing to enable low cost PEM electrolysis

A critical challenge for the implementation of proton exchange membrane (PEM)-based water electrolyzers for the H2@Scale vision is the capital cost, which is largely driven by related factors of overdesign and highly manual legacy manufacturing methods. Typical electrolyzer cells have an order of magnitude higher membrane thickness and catalyst loading vs. fuel cells, in part because the manufacturing methods being used are not capable of producing uniform and reliable electrodes on thin membranes with low loading. Advanced electrode manufacturing is therefore the key enabler to reduce the cost of the electrolyzer stack, particularly roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing of catalyst coated layers (CCLs) and catalyst coated membranes (CCMs). The electrolyzer manufacturing process still relies on traditional sheet-to-sheet (S2S) processes, which requires intensive labor to make parts to meet the specification requirements. This project leverages fuel cell expertise (GM) with Proton’s knowledge of electrolyzer components to develop the electrocatalyst ink formulations and coating processes using slot die (ORNL) and gravure (NREL) coatings, with proof of concept at the pilot-scale (Kodak).

08 HYDROGEN↗

Analysis of shape of porous cooled medium for an imposed surface heat flux and temperature

The surface of a porous cooled medium is to be maintained at a specified design temperature while being subjected to uniform heating by an external source. An analytical method is given for determining the shape of the medium surface that will satisfy these boundary conditions. The analysis accounts for temperature dependent variations of fluid density and viscosity and for temperature dependent matrix thermal conductivity. The energy equation is combined with Darcy's law in such a way that a potential can be defined that satisfies Laplace's equation. All of the heat-transfer and flow quantities are expressed in terms of this potential. The determination of the shape of the porous cooled region is thereby reduced to a free-boundary problem such as in inviscid free jet theory. Two illustrative examples are carried out: a porous leading edge with coolant supplied through a slot and a porous cooled duct with a rectangular outer boundary.

Siegel, R.↗

Measuring charge nonuniformity in MOS devices

Convenient method of determining inherent lateral charge non-uniformities along silicon dioxide/silicon interface of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) employs rapid measurement of capacitance of interface as function of voltage at liquid nitrogen temperature. Charge distribution is extracted by fast-Fourier-transform analysis of capacitance voltage (C-V) measurement.

Maserjian, J.↗

Discrete model reference adaptive systems with measurement noise

A digital computer simulation study is presented for a class of discrete model reference adaptive systems designed using Liapunov's direct method. Plant output measurements are assumed to contain uniformly distributed additive noise. It is shown that the design works well even when such noise is relatively extreme. A new result is presented pertaining to improving the convergence properties of these systems. This result is obtained by modifying the dynamic characteristics of the augmented error equation.

Monopoli, R. V.↗

On an algorithm for analysis of the radiation patterns of dual reflector and segmented reflector antennas

An algorithm has been developed to calculate the radiation patterns of a large reflector antenna for space applications. The algorithm treats each panel in the reflector array as an analytic surface having n-sided polygonal boundaries. The radiation fields for individual panels are computed and stored separately, and then added to yield a uniform radiation pattern for the entire reflector. Numerical methods developed to reduce the overlap of the aperture fields of adjacent panels are described in detail. Calculations of the tangential field components of the aperture plane are carried out based on the principles of geometric optics (GO). Some radiation patterns calculated with the algorithm are compared with patterns produced by other methods, together with measured data for a classical Cassegrain antenna and the calculated patterns are illustrated.

Christodoulou, C. G.↗

Effect of an electron scattering cloud on X-ray oscillations produced by beaming

The effect of a scattering cloud on the amplitude of oscillations produced by a rotating beam of X-rays is investigated using analytical and Monte Carlo methods. The scattering cloud was modeled as a uniform density sphere, and the source was represented as an anistropic distribution of radiation emerging from a point at the center of the scattering cloud. The intensity distribution produced by the source beam is examined as a function of optical depth. The relation between electron scattering optical depth and the forward-backward ratio is studied. It is observed that the scattering in a central corona of various optical depths reduces the amplitude of the oscillation. The data suggest that the quasi-periodic oscillations observed in the X-ray intensities of some luminous low-mass X-ray binaries are caused by oscillations in the luminosity of the X-ray star.

Brainerd, J.↗

Uniformly high order accurate essentially non-oscillatory schemes. III

In the present continuation of development and analysis efforts towards essentially nonoscillatory shock-capturing approximations of hyperbolic conservation laws, the Godunov (1959) scheme and its MUSCL second-order-accurate extension are generalized to an arbitrary order of accuracy by means of a hierarchy of uniformly high-order-accurate schemes. The design method, which involves the solution's essentially nonoscillatory piecewise polynomial reconstruction on the basis of its cell averages, followed by time-evolution through an approximate solution of the resulting initial value problem and its averaging over each cell, employs an adaptive stencil of grid points to yield schemes that are highly nonlinear.

Harten, Ami↗

On WKB expansions for Alfven waves in the solar wind

The WKB expansion for 'toroidal' Alfven waves in solar wind, which is described by equations of Heinemann and Olbert (1980), is examined. In this case, the multiple scales method (Nayfeh, 1981) is used to obtain a uniform expansion. It is shown that the WKB expansion used by Belcher (1971) and Hollweg (1973) for Alfven waves in the solar wind is nonuniformly convergent.

Hollweg, Joseph V.↗

Positivity-preserving numerical schemes for multidimensional advection

This report describes the construction of an explicit, single time-step, conservative, finite-volume method for multidimensional advective flow, based on a uniformly third-order polynomial interpolation algorithm (UTOPIA). Particular attention is paid to the problem of flow-to-grid angle-dependent, anisotropic distortion typical of one-dimensional schemes used component-wise. The third-order multidimensional scheme automatically includes certain cross-difference terms that guarantee good isotropy (and stability). However, above first-order, polynomial-based advection schemes do not preserve positivity (the multidimensional analogue of monotonicity). For this reason, a multidimensional generalization of the first author's universal flux-limiter is sought. This is a very challenging problem. A simple flux-limiter can be found; but this introduces strong anisotropic distortion. A more sophisticated technique, limiting part of the flux and then restoring the isotropy-maintaining cross-terms afterwards, gives more satisfactory results. Test cases are confined to two dimensions; three-dimensional extensions are briefly discussed.

Leonard, B. P.↗

Dark matter and the equivalence principle

A survey is presented of the current understanding of dark matter invoked by astrophysical theory and cosmology. Einstein's equivalence principle asserts that local measurements cannot distinguish a system at rest in a gravitational field from one that is in uniform acceleration in empty space. Recent test-methods for the equivalence principle are presently discussed as bases for testing of dark matter scenarios involving the long-range forces between either baryonic or nonbaryonic dark matter and ordinary matter.

Frieman, Joshua A.↗