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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 109 records · Page 6

Enabling particle applications for exascale computing platforms

The Exascale Computing Project (ECP) is invested in co-design to assure that key applications are ready for exascale computing. Within ECP, the Co-design Center for Particle Applications (CoPA) is addressing challenges faced by particle-based applications across four “sub-motifs”: short-range particle–particle interactions (e.g., those which often dominate molecular dynamics (MD) and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) methods), long-range particle–particle interactions (e.g., electrostatic MD and gravitational N-body), particle-in-cell (PIC) methods, and linear-scaling electronic structure and quantum molecular dynamics (QMD) algorithms. Our crosscutting co-designed technologies fall into two categories: proxy applications (or “apps”) and libraries. Proxy apps are vehicles used to evaluate the viability of incorporating various types of algorithms, data structures, and architecture-specific optimizations and the associated trade-offs; examples include ExaMiniMD, CabanaMD, CabanaPIC, and ExaSP2. Libraries are modular instantiations that multiple applications can utilize or be built upon; CoPA has developed the Cabana particle library, PROGRESS/BML libraries for QMD, and the SWFFT and fftMPI parallel FFT libraries. Success is measured by identifiable “lessons learned” that are translated either directly into parent production application codes or into libraries, with demonstrated performance and/or productivity improvement. The libraries and their use in CoPA’s ECP application partner codes are also addressed.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Structural variant analysis of a cancer reference cell line sample using multiple sequencing technologies

The cancer genome is commonly altered with thousands of structural rearrangements including insertions, deletions, translocation, inversions, duplications, and copy number variations. Thus, structural variant (SV) characterization plays a paramount role in cancer target identification, oncology diagnostics, and personalized medicine. As part of the SEQC2 Consortium effort, the present study established and evaluated a consensus SV call set using a breast cancer reference cell line and matched normal control derived from the same donor, which were used in our companion benchmarking studies as reference samples. We systematically investigated somatic SVs in the reference cancer cell line by comparing to a matched normal cell line using multiple NGS platforms including Illumina short-read, 10X Genomics linked reads, PacBio long reads, Oxford Nanopore long reads, and high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C). We established a consensus SV call set of a total of 1788 SVs including 717 deletions, 230 duplications, 551 insertions, 133 inversions, 146 translocations, and 11 breakends for the reference cancer cell line. To independently evaluate and cross-validate the accuracy of our consensus SV call set, we used orthogonal methods including PCR-based validation, Affymetrix arrays, Bionano optical mapping, and identification of fusion genes detected from RNA-seq. We evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of each NGS technology for SV determination, and our findings provide an actionable guide to improve cancer genome SV detection sensitivity and accuracy. A high-confidence consensus SV call set was established for the reference cancer cell line. A large subset of the variants identified was validated by multiple orthogonal methods.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

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↗

Theoretical Insights for Improving the Schottky-Barrier Height at the Ga2O3/Pt Interface

In this work, we study the Schottky-barrier height (SBH) at the junction between ..beta..-Ga2O3 and platinum, a system of great importance for the next generation of high-power and high-temperature electronic devices. Specifically, we obtain interfacial atomic structures at different orientations using our structure-matching algorithm and compute their SBH using electronic structure calculations based on hybrid density-functional theory.

CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS,P↗

A semi-agnostic ansatz with variable structure for variational quantum algorithms

Quantum machine learning—and specifically Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs)—offers a powerful, flexible paradigm for programming near-term quantum computers, with applications in chemistry, metrology, materials science, data science, and mathematics. Here, one trains an ansatz, in the form of a parameterized quantum circuit, to accomplish a task of interest. However, challenges have recently emerged suggesting that deep ansatzes are difficult to train, due to flat training landscapes caused by randomness or by hardware noise. This motivates our work, where we present a variable structure approach to build ansatzes for VQAs. Our approach, called VAns (Variable Ansatz), applies a set of rules to both grow and (crucially) remove quantum gates in an informed manner during the optimization. Consequently, VAns is ideally suited to mitigate trainability and noise-related issues by keeping the ansatz shallow. We employ VAns in the variational quantum eigensolver for condensed matter and quantum chemistry applications, in the quantum autoencoder for data compression and in unitary compilation problems showing successful results in all cases.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Protein structure prediction guided by crosslinking restraints – A systematic evaluation of the impact of the crosslinking spacer length

Recent development of high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) instruments enables chemical crosslinking (XL) to become a high-throughput method for obtaining structural information about proteins. Restraints derived from XL-MS experiments have been used successfully for structure refinement and protein–protein docking. However, one formidable question is under which circumstances XL-MS data might be sufficient to determine a protein’s tertiary structure de novo? Answering this question will not only include understanding the impact of XL-MS data on sampling and scoring within a de novo protein structure prediction algorithm, it must also determine an optimal crosslinker type and length for protein structure determination. While a longer crosslinker will yield more restraints, the value of each restraint for protein structure prediction decreases as the restraint is consistent with a larger conformational space. In this study, the number of crosslinks and their discriminative power was systematically analyzed in silico on a set of 2055 non-redundant protein folds considering Lys–Lys, Lys–Asp, Lys–Glu, Cys–Cys, and Arg–Arg reactive crosslinkers between 1 and 60 Å. Depending on the protein size a heuristic was developed that determines the optimal crosslinker length. Next, simulated restraints of variable length were used to de novo predict the tertiary structure of fifteen proteins using the BCL::Fold algorithm. The results demonstrate that a distinct crosslinker length exists for which information content for de novo protein structure prediction is maximized. The sampling accuracy improves on average by 1.0 Å and up to 2.2 Å in the most prominent example. XL-MS restraints enable consistently an improved selection of native-like models with an average enrichment of 2.1.

Biochemistry & Molecular Biology↗

QForte: An Efficient State-Vector Emulator and Quantum Algorithms Library for Molecular Electronic Structure

Here, we introduce a novel open-source software package QForte, a comprehensive development tool for new quantum simulation algorithms. QForte incorporates functionality for handling molecular Hamiltonians, fermionic encoding, ansatz construction, time evolution, and state-vector emulation, requiring only a classical electronic structure package as a dependency. QForte also contains black-box implementations of a wide variety of quantum algorithms, including variational and projective quantum eigensolvers, adaptive eigensolvers, quantum imaginary time evolution, and quantum Krylov methods. We highlight two features of QForte: (i) how the Python class structure of QForte enables the facile implementation of new algorithms, and (ii) how existing algorithms can be executed in just a few lines of code.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Theoretical Investigation of Delafossite-Cu 2 ZnSnO 4 as a Promising Photovoltaic Absorber

In the quest for efficient and cost-effective photovoltaic absorber materials beyond silicon, considerable attention has been directed toward exploring alternatives. One such material, zincblende-derived Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS), has shown promise due to its ideal band gap size and high absorption coefficient. However, challenges such as structural defects and secondary phase formation have hindered its development. In this study, we examine the potential of another compound, Cu2ZnSnO4 (CZTO), with a similar composition to CZTS as a promising alternative. Employing ab initio density function theory (DFT) calculations in combination with an evolutionary structure prediction algorithm, we identify that the crystalline phase of delafossite structure is the most stable among the 900 (meta)stable CZTO. Its thermodynamic stability at room temperature is also confirmed by the molecular dynamics study. Excitingly, this new phase of CZTO displays a direct band gap where the dipole-allowed transition occurs, making it a strong candidate for efficient light absorptions. Furthermore, the estimation of spectroscopic limited maximum efficiency (SLME) directly demonstrates the high potential of delafossite-CZTO as a photovoltaic absorber. Our numerical results suggest that delafossite-CZTO holds promise for future photovoltaic applications.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Development of Steady-State and Dynamic Mass and Energy Constrained Neural Networks for Distributed Chemical Systems Using Noisy Transient Data

The paper presents the development of algorithms for mass and energy constrained neural network models that can exactly conserve the overall mass and energy of distributed chemical process systems, even though the noisy transient data used for optimal model training violate the same. In contrast to approximately satisfying mass and energy balance constraints of a system by soft penalization of objective function, algorithms have been developed for solving equality-constrained nonlinear optimization problems, thus providing the guarantee of exactly satisfying the system mass and energy conservation laws. For developing dynamic mass-energy constrained network models for distributed systems, hybrid series and parallel dynamic-static neural networks have been leveraged. The developed algorithms for solving both the training and forward problems are validated using both steady-state and dynamic data in the presence of various noise characteristics. The developed data-driven algorithms are flexible to exactly satisfy mass and energy balance constraints for dynamic chemical processes if the system holdup information is available. The proposed network structures and algorithms are applied to the development of data-driven lumped and distributed models of an adiabatic superheater/reheater system, a nonisothermal continuous stirred tank reactor, as well as an electrically heated plug-flow reactor system where one form of energy gets transformed to another. It has been observed that the mass-energy constrained neural networks yield a root mean squared error of <1% with respect to the system truth for the case studies evaluated in this work.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Powder diffraction and crystal structure prediction identify four new coumarin polymorphs

Coumarin, a simple, commodity chemical isolated from beans in 1820, has, to date, only yielded one solid state structure. Here, we report a rich polymorphism of coumarin grown from the melt. Four new metastable forms were identified and their crystal structures were solved using a combination of computational crystal structure prediction algorithms and X-ray powder diffraction. With five crystal structures, coumarin has become one of the few rigid molecules showing extensive polymorphism at ambient conditions. We demonstrate the crucial role of advanced electronic structure calculations including many-body dispersion effects for accurate ranking of the stability of coumarin polymorphs and the need to account for anharmonic vibrational contributions to their free energy. As such, coumarin is a model system for studying weak intermolecular interactions, crystallization mechanisms, and kinetic effects.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Exploring the fragmentation efficiency of proteins analyzed by MALDI-TOF-TOF tandem mass spectrometry using computational and statistical analyses

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight-time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF-TOF) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is a rapid technique for identifying intact proteins from unfractionated mixtures by top-down proteomic analysis. MS/MS allows isolation of specific intact protein ions prior to fragmentation, allowing fragment ion attribution to a specific precursor ion. However, the fragmentation efficiency of mature, intact protein ions by MS/MS post-source decay (PSD) varies widely, and the biochemical and structural factors of the protein that contribute to it are poorly understood. With the advent of protein structure prediction algorithms such as Alphafold2, we have wider access to protein structures for which no crystal structure exists. In this work, we use a statistical approach to explore the properties of bacterial proteins that can affect their gas phase dissociation via PSD. We extract various protein properties from Alphafold2 predictions and analyze their effect on fragmentation efficiency. Our results show that the fragmentation efficiency from cleavage of the polypeptide backbone on the C-terminal side of glutamic acid (E) and asparagine (N) residues were nearly equal. In addition, we found that the rearrangement and cleavage on the C-terminal side of aspartic acid (D) residues that result from the aspartic acid effect (AAE) were higher than for E- and N-residues. From residue interaction network analysis, we identified several local centrality measures and discussed their implications regarding the AAE. We also confirmed the selective cleavage of the backbone at D-proline bonds in proteins and further extend it to N-proline bonds. Finally, we note an enhancement of the AAE mechanism when the residue on the C-terminal side of D-, E- and N-residues is glycine. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of this phenomenon. Our study demonstrates the value of using statistical analyses of protein sequences and their predicted structures to better understand the fragmentation of the intact protein ions in the gas phase.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Density-driven ionization potential depression and its effects on material properties

Changes in ionization potential at high density drive changes in material transport properties and often in crystal structure and equation of state. Current models used to describe and predict these effects have not been tested in regimes much beyond ~200 GPa, because of limitations in experimental techniques. Now, however, high-energy laser facilities with flexible pulse-shaping capabilities have made it possible to reach pressures in the 1000 GPa range, while maintaining temperatures below 1 eV. We have used these new methods to ramp-compress cobalt and magnesium and have measured shifts in the k-shell emission lines to infer changes in ionization stage, and x-ray diffraction to measure changes in crystal structure. In the case of cobalt, commonly-used detailed models for effective ionization based on isolated-atom electronic structure are shown to give the wrong answer, while self-consistent density-functional-theory-based models reproduce the data well. In the case of magnesium, zero-kelvin density functional theory predictions of density-driven electron localization in lattice interstitials (so-called electride phases) at high pressure are found to be too simple to describe material evolution along a laser ramp-compression pathway. Instead, by a combination of experiment, first-principles theory and evolutionary structure-searching algorithms, we have discovered several unexpected lower-symmetry metastable structures. First principles results find that the density of localized interstitial charge in the high-pressure magnesium phases is too low to be measurable with x-ray diffraction, and the body of theory work which has predicted high pressure electride phases for many systems, based on analysis of electron localization function, needs to be re-examined.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

A bi-level spatiotemporal clustering approach and its application to drought extraction

We present a novel flexible bi-level spatiotemporal clustering algorithm to extract events based on their intensity and spatiotemporal structures. Our algorithm consists of using (i) a novel space-time k-means clustering to obtain spatiotemporally coherent intensity clusters, and (ii) a density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) to spatiotemporally section the intensity clusters into individual events. We discuss the development of the algorithm, the selection, tuning and meaning of the parameters within each step, as well as its validation. Finally, we apply the algorithm to a spatiotemporal drought index, standardized vapor pressure deficit drought index (SVDI), over the continental United States (US) from 1980–2021 and show that it captures historical drought events over the continental United States and their spatiotemporal extents.

17 WIND ENERGY↗