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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 1,387 records · Page 77

Deep Learning Models Augment Analyst Decisions for Event Discrimination

Long-term seismic monitoring networks are well positioned to leverage advances in machine learning because of the abundance of labeled training data that curated event catalogs provide. In this study, we explore the use of Convolutional and Recurrent Neural Networks to accomplish discrimination of explosive and tectonic sources for local distances. Using a 5-year event catalog generated by the University of Utah Seismograph Stations we train models to produce automated event labels using 90 s event spectrograms from 3-component and single-channel sensors. Both network architectures are able to replicate analyst labels above 98%. Most commonly, model error is the result of label error (70% of cases). Accounting for mislabeled events (~1% of the catalog) model accuracy for both models increases to above 99%. Finally, classification accuracy remains above 98% for shallow tectonic events, indicating that spectral characteristics controlled by event depth do not play a dominant role in event discrimination.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

A Comparison of Neuromorphic Classification Tasks

A variety of neural network models and machine learning techniques have arisen over the past decade, and their successes with image classification have been stunning. With other classification tasks, selecting and configuring a neural network solution is not straightforward. In this paper, we evaluate and compare a variety of neural network models, trained by a variety of machine learning techniques, on a variety of classification tasks. While Deep Learning typically exhibits the best classification accuracy, we note the promise of Reservoir Computing, and evolutionary optimization on spiking neural networks. In many cases, these technologies perform as well as, or better than Deep Learning, and the resulting networks are much smaller than their Deep Learning counterparts.

Reynolds, John↗

Enterprise Risks for Scientific Software in the Post Exascale Era

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Office hosts three high performance computing Facilities and one high performance networking Facility. ASCR’s Facilities Division and these four Facilities established a joint working group to address the most severe threats to the software capabilities that can prevent the Facilities from supporting a diverse array of mission critical scientific research carried out by thousands of researchers from national labs, academia, and industry. This report outlines the risk categories, threat matrix calculations, and number of risks in each of the categories along with the threat levels. Two categories—programming environment/tools and system software—account for 13 out of the 20 risks encountered in the risk register. A significant risk to ASCR’s software ecosystem also arises from the possible loss of personnel and expertise past the end of the exascale computing project. The working group recommends that the software enterprise risks are reevaluated regularly, and are considered in future decision making regarding system acquisition, knowledge sharing, partnership development, and strategic planning

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Learning Optimal Multigrid Smoothers via Neural Networks

Multigrid methods are one of the most efficient techniques for solving large sparse linear systems arising from partial differential equations (PDEs) and graph Laplacians from machine learning applications. One of the key components of multigrid is smoothing, which aims at reducing high-frequency errors on each grid level. However, finding optimal smoothing algorithms is problem-dependent and can impose challenges for many problems. In this paper, we propose an efficient adaptive framework for learning optimized smoothers from operator stencils in the form of convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Here, the CNNs are trained on small-scale problems from a given type of PDEs based on a supervised loss function derived from multigrid convergence theories and can be applied to large-scale problems of the same class of PDEs. Numerical results on anisotropic rotated Laplacian problems and variable coefficient diffusion problems demonstrate improved convergence rates and solution time compared with classical hand-crafted relaxation methods.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Enabling Real-Time Communication in Multi-Agent Systems: A Graph Neural Network Based Approach

Global connectivity enables effective coordination in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Solving these connection problems under hardware constraints is an NP-hard non-Euclidean Degree Constrained Minimum Spanning Tree (DCMST) problem. Prior MAS controllers coordinate team movement for task completion and collision avoidance; some considering Line-of-Sight (LOS) maintenance but prioritizing flexibility over guarantees. Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) have been shown to find good solutions for DCMST, but their performance degrades with larger populations required to support a large MAS. We present a method based on edge graph attention networks, trained offline to reduce online computation times. Empirical comparisons with greedy polynomial-time solvers and EA show that our method leverages latent graph information to consistently find constraint-satisfying solutions in less time.

connectivity maintenance↗

Communication systems and methods

A communication system is provided that include one or more processors that are configured to instruct computing devices that communicate messages with each other via a time-sensitive network to securely exchange the messages using secret information, ad direct the computing devices to exchange the secret information via a dedicated quantum channel in the time-sensitive network. The one or more processors are also configured to determine a quantum channel synchronization time associated with the secret information exchanged via the dedicated quantum channel, and modify a local classical oscillator based on the quantum channel synchronization time, the local classical oscillator configured to provide a current time.

Bush, Stephen Francis↗

Deep learning of parameterized equations with applications to uncertainty quantification

We propose a learning algorithm for discovering unknown parameterized dynamical systems by using observational data of the state variables. Our method is built upon and extends the recent work of discovering unknown dynamical systems, in particular those using deep neural network (DNN). We propose a DNN structure, largely based upon the residual network (ResNet), to not only learn the unknown form of the governing equation but also take into account the random effect embedded in the system, which is generated by the random parameters. Once the DNN model is successfully constructed, it is able to produce system prediction over longer term and for arbitrary parameter values. For uncertainty quantification, it allows us to conduct uncertainty analysis by evaluating solution statistics over the parameter space.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Deep Kronecker neural networks: A general framework for neural networks with adaptive activation functions

Here we propose a new type of neural networks, Kronecker neural networks (KNNs), that form a general framework for neural networks with adaptive activation functions. KNNs employ the Kronecker product, which provides an efficient way of constructing a very wide network while keeping the number of parameters low. Our theoretical analysis reveals that under suitable conditions, KNNs induce a faster decay of the loss than that by the feed-forward networks. This is also empirically verified through a set of computational examples. Furthermore, under certain technical assumptions, we establish global convergence of gradient descent for KNNs. As a specific case, we propose the Rowdy activation function that is designed to get rid of any saturation region by injecting sinusoidal fluctuations, which include trainable parameters. The proposed Rowdy activation function can be employed in any neural network architecture like feed-forward neural networks, Recurrent neural networks, Convolutional neural networks etc. The effectiveness of KNNs with Rowdy activation is demonstrated through various computational experiments including function approximation using feed-forward neural networks, solution inference of partial differential equations using the physics-informed neural networks, and standard deep learning benchmark problems using convolutional and fully-connected neural networks.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

The Effects of Disturbance and Climate on Carbon Storage and the Exchanges of CO 2 Water Vapor and Energy Exchange of Evergreen Coniferous Forests in the Pacific Northwest: Integration of Eddy Flux, Plant and Soil Measurements at a Cluster of Supersites. Final report

This is the final technical report containing a summary of all findings with regard to the following objectives of the project: (1) To quantify and understand the effects of wildfire on carbon storage and the exchanges of energy, CO2, and water vapor in a chronosequence of ponderosa pine (disturbance gradient); (2) To investigate the effects of seasonal and interannual variation in climate on carbon storage and the exchanges of energy, CO2, and water vapor in mature conifer forests in two climate zones: mesic 40-yr old Douglas-fir and semi-arid 60-yr old ponderosa pine (climate gradient); (3) To reduce uncertainty in estimates of CO2 feedbacks to the atmosphere by providing an improved model formulation for existing biosphere-atmosphere models; and (4) To provide high quality data for AmeriFlux and the NACP on micrometeorology, meteorology, and biology of these systems. Objective (1): A study integrating satellite remote sensing, AmeriFlux data, and field surveys in a simulation modeling framework estimated that the pyrogenic carbon emissions, tree mortality, and net carbon exchange associated with four large wildfires that burned ~50,000 hectares in 2002-2003 were equivalent to 2.4% of Oregon statewide anthropogenic carbon emissions over the same two-year period. Most emissions were from the combustion of the forest floor and understory vegetation, and only about 1% of live tree mass was combusted on average. Objective (2): A study of multi-year flux records across a chronosequence of ponderosa pine forests yielded that the net carbon uptake is over three times greater at a mature pine forest compared with young pine. The larger leaf area and wetter and cooler soils of the mature forest mainly caused this effect. A study analyzing seven years of carbon and water dynamics showed that interannual and seasonal variability of net carbon exchange was primarily related to variability in growing season length, which was a linear function of plant-available soil moisture in spring and early summer. A multi-year drought (2001-2003) led to a significant reduction of net ecosystem exchange due to carry-over effects in soil moisture and carbohydrate reserves in plant-tissue. In the same forest, the interannual variability in the rate carbon is lost from the soil and forest floor is considerable and related to the variability in tree growth as much as it is to variability in soil climatic conditions. Objective (3): Flux data from the mature ponderosa pine site support a physical basis for filtering nighttime data with friction velocity above the canopy. An analysis of wind fields and heat transport in the subcanopy at the mesic 40-year old Douglas site yielded that the non-linear structure and behavior of spatial temperature gradients and the flow field require enhanced sensor networks to estimate advective fluxes in the subcanopy of forest to close the surface energy balance in forests. Reliable estimates for flux uncertainties are needed to improve model validation and data assimilation in process-based carbon models, inverse modeling studies and model-data synthesis, where the uncertainties may be as important as the fluxes themselves. An analysis of the time scale dependence of the random and flux sampling error yielded that the additional flux obtained by increasing the perturbation timescale beyond about 10 minutes is dominated by random sampling error, and therefore little confidence can be placed in its value. Artificial correlation between gross ecosystem productivity (GEP) and ecosystem respiration (Re) is a consequence of flux partitioning of eddy covariance flux data when GEP is computed as the difference between NEE and computed daytime Re (e.g. using nighttime Re extrapolated into daytime using soil or air temperatures). Tower-data must be adequately spatially averaged before comparison to gridded model output as the time variability of both is inherently different. The eddy-covariance data collected at the mature ponderosa pine site and the mesic Douglas fir site were used to develop and evaluate a new method to extract the signal of ecosystem respiration directly from daytime net ecosystem exchange. This approach may help reducing uncertainty in carbon budgets by providing direct measurements of ecosystem respiration during daylight conditions by replacing modeled estimates. Objective (4): We submitted our flux and biological and ancillary data to the AmeriFlux web site and to Fluxnet. This includes atmospheric carbon, water, and heat fluxes, soil fluxes, NPP, carbon stocks, LAI, and disturbance history. Fluxnet is updating the original La Thuile files and will include the more recent years of data. They will be using a new approach to compute GPP, following discussions within the network about the need to improve GPP methodology

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

FTP 100: An Ultra-High Speed Data Transfer Service Over Next Generation 100 Gigabit Per Second Network

Data-intensive applications, including high energy and nuclear physics, astrophysics, climate modeling, nano-scale materials science, genomics, and financing, are expected to generate exabytes of data over the coming years, which must be transferred, visualized, and analyzed by geographically distributed teams of users. High-performance network capabilities must be available to these users at the application level in a transparent, virtualized manner. Moreover, the application users must have the capability to move large datasets from local and remote locations across network environments to their home institutions. To solve these challenges, the main goal of our project is to design and evaluate high-performance data transfer software to support various data-intensive applications. First, we have designed a middleware software that provides access to Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) functionalities. This middleware integrates network access, memory management and multitasking in its core design. We address a number of issues related to its efficient implementation, for instance, explicit buffer management and memory registration, and parallelization of RDMA operations, which are vital to delivering the benefit of RDMA to the applications. Built on top of this middleware, an implementation and experimental evaluation of the RDMA-based FTP software, RFTP, is described and evaluated. This application has been implemented by our team to exploit the full capabilities of advanced RDMA mechanisms for ultra-high speed bulk data transfer applications on Energy Sciences Network (ESnet). Second, we designed our data transfer software to optimize TCP/IP based data transfer performance such that RFTP can be fully compatible with today’s Internet. Our kernel optimization techniques with Linux system calls sendfile and splice, can reduce data copy cost. In this report, we summarize the technical challenges of our project, the primary software design methods, the major project milestones achieved, as well as the testbed evaluation work and demonstrations during our project life time.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Joint Chance Constraints Reduction Through Learning in Active Distribution Networks

Due to an increase in distributed generation and controllable loads, distribution networks are frequently operating under high levels of uncertainty. Joint chance constraints, which seek to satisfy multiple constraints simultaneously with a prescribed probability, are one way to incorporate uncertainty across sets of constraints for optimization and control of these networks. Due to the complexity of evaluating these constraints directly, sampling approaches or approximations can be used to transform the joint chance constraint into deterministic constraints. However, sampling techniques may be extremely computationally expensive and not suitable for physical networks operating on fast timescales, and conservative approximations may needlessly result in a much higher cost of system operation. The proposed framework aims to provide a scalable, data-driven approach which learns operational trends in a power network, eliminates zero-probability events (e.g., inactive constraints), and uses this additional information to accurately and efficiently approximate the joint chance constraint directly.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Physics constrained learning for data-driven inverse modeling from sparse observations

Deep neural networks (DNN) have been used to model nonlinear relations between physical quantities. Those DNNs are embedded in physical systems described by partial differential equations (PDE) and trained by minimizing a loss function that measures the discrepancy between predictions and observations in some chosen norm. This loss function often includes the PDE constraints as a penalty term when only sparse observations are available. As a result, the PDE is only satisfied approximately by the solution. However, the penalty term typically slows down the convergence of the optimizer for stiff problems. We present a new approach that trains the embedded DNNs while numerically satisfying the PDE constraints. We develop an algorithm that enables differentiating both explicit and implicit numerical solvers in reverse-mode automatic differentiation. This allows the gradients of the DNNs and the PDE solvers to be computed in a unified framework. We demonstrate that our approach enjoys faster convergence and better stability in relatively stiff problems compared to the penalty method. Furthermore, our approach allows for the potential to solve and accelerate a wide range of data-driven inverse modeling, where the physical constraints are described by PDEs and need to be satisfied accurately.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Enhancing molecular design efficiency: Uniting language models and generative networks with genetic algorithms

This study examines the effectiveness of generative models in drug discovery, material science, and polymer science, aiming to overcome constraints associated with traditional inverse design methods relying on heuristic rules. Generative models generate synthetic data resembling real data, enabling deep learning model training without extensive labeled datasets. They prove valuable in creating virtual libraries of molecules for material science and facilitating drug discovery by generating molecules with specific properties. While generative adversarial networks (GANs) are explored for these purposes, mode collapse restricts their efficacy, limiting novel structure variability. To address this, we introduce a masked language model (LM) inspired by natural language processing. Although LMs alone can have inherent limitations, we propose a hybrid architecture combining LMs and GANs to efficiently generate new molecules, demonstrating superior performance over standalone masked LMs, particularly for smaller population sizes. This hybrid LM-GAN architecture enhances efficiency in optimizing properties and generating novel samples.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Sensitive and Specific Peak Detection for SELDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry Using a Wavelet/Neural-Network Based Approach

SELDI-TOF mass spectrometer’s compact size and automated, high throughput design have been attractive to clinical researchers, and the platform has seen steady-use in biomarker studies. Despite new algorithms and preprocessing pipelines that have been developed to address reproducibility issues, visual inspection of the results of SELDI spectra preprocessing by the best algorithms still shows miscalled peaks and systematic sources of error. This suggests that there continues to be problems with SELDI preprocessing. In this work, we study the preprocessing of SELDI in detail and introduce improvements. While many algorithms, including the vendor supplied software, can identify peak clusters of specific mass (or m/z) in groups of spectra with high specificity and low false discover rate (FDR), the algorithms tend to underperform estimating the exact prevalence and intensity of peaks in those clusters. Thus group differences that at first appear very strong are shown, after careful and laborious hand inspection of the spectra, to be less than significant. Here we introduce a wavelet/neural network based algorithm which mimics what a team of expert, human users would call for peaks in each of several hundred spectra in a typical SELDI clinical study. The wavelet denoising part of the algorithm optimally smoothes the signal in each spectrum according to an improved suite of signal processing algorithms previously reported (the LibSELDI toolbox under development). The neural network part of the algorithm combines those results with the raw signal and a training dataset of expertly called peaks, to call peaks in a test set of spectra with approximately 95% accuracy. The new method was applied to data collected from a study of cervical mucus for the early detection of cervical cancer in HPV infected women. The method shows promise in addressing the ongoing SELDI reproducibility issues.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Structural Health Monitoring of Microreactor Safety Systems Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Microreactors, a class of modular reactors with net power output of less than 20 MWth, have innovative applications in nuclear and nonnuclear industries due to their portability, reliability, resilience, and high capacity factors. In order to operate microreactors on a wider scale, it is essential to bring down maintenance life-cycle costs while ensuring the integrity of operating such systems. Autonomous operations in microreactors using augmented digital-twin (DT) technology can serve as a cost-effective solution by increasing awareness about the system’s health. Structural health monitoring (SHM) is a key component of nuclear DT frameworks. Artificial neural networks can be beneficial to detect degradation in the nuclear safety systems, such as piping equipment systems, by monitoring the sensor data obtained from the plant and its corresponding structures, systems and components. In this report, an SHM methodology is presented which uses convolutional neural networks to determine degraded locations and their corresponding degradation-severity levels at various locations of nuclear piping equipment systems. A simple pipe system, subjected to seismic loads, is selected to design the post-hazard SHM framework. The effectiveness of the proposed SHM methodology is demonstrated by obtaining high accuracy in detecting degraded locations as well as the severity levels.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Machine Learning-Assisted Stability Boundary Determination of Multiport Autonomous Reconfigurable Solar Power Plants

The multiport autonomous reconfigurable solar (MARS) power plant is a promising solution to integrate renewable resources and energy storage systems into the alternating current (ac) power grid and an high-voltage direct current (HVdc) link. In the MARS system, various input power sources are connected to the individual submodules (SMs) through direct current (dc)–dc converters. However, the presence of external power sources can result in unbalanced capacitor voltages of SMs, thereby violating stability constraints under multiple/diverse operating conditions. This article aims to address the gap by accurately determining the stability boundary of the MARS system. As such, a novel machine learning (ML)-assisted energy balancing control (EBC) criterion is proposed. Further, in conjunction with a refined EBC, this approach ensures balanced capacitor voltages across various types of SMs, significantly enhancing the overall system efficiency. The proposed EBC criterion effectively controls EBC activation and deactivation, achieving remarkable accuracy. Both power systems computer aided design (PSCAD)/electromagnetic transients including direct current (EMTDC) simulations and control hardware-in-the-loop (cHIL) tests are conducted to validate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method. By combining the EBC and ML-assisted EBC criterion, efficient energy management is achieved for systems featuring multiple input power sources, such as MARS. This approach enables the system to fully exploit its potential across an expanded operational range while upholding high-efficiency standards.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Bayesian Entropy Neural Networks for physics-aware prediction

This article addresses the need for deep learning models to integrate well-defined constraints into their outputs, driven by their application in surrogate models, learning with limited data and partial information, and scenarios requiring flexible model behavior to incorporate non-data sample information. We introduce Bayesian Entropy Neural Networks (BENN), a framework grounded in Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) principles, designed to impose constraints on Bayesian Neural Network (BNN) predictions. BENN is capable of constraining not only the predicted values but also their derivatives and variances, ensuring a more robust and reliable model output. To achieve simultaneous uncertainty quantification and constraint satisfaction, we employ the method of multipliers approach. This allows for the concurrent estimation of neural network parameters and the Lagrangian multipliers associated with the constraints. Our experiments, spanning diverse applications such as beam deflection modeling and microstructure generation, demonstrate the effectiveness of BENN. The results highlight significant improvements over traditional BNNs and showcase competitive performance relative to contemporary constrained deep learning methods.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Ensembles of Networks Produced from Neural Architecture Search

Neural architecture search (NAS) is a popular topic at the intersection of deep learning and high performance computing. NAS focuses on optimizing the architecture of neural networks along with their hyperparameters in order to produce networks with superior performance. Much of the focus has been on how to produce a single best network to solve a machine learning problem, but as NAS methods produce many networks that work very well, this affords the opportunity to ensemble these networks to produce an improved result. Additionally, the diversity of network structures produced by NAS drives a natural bias towards diversity of predictions produced by the individual networks. This results in an improved ensemble over simply creating an ensemble that contains duplicates of the best network architecture retrained to have unique weights.

Herron, Emily↗