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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 163 records · Page 9

Ascribe XR v0.1.0

Ascribe XR is an immersive visualization software designed for scientists and engineers working with 3D data sets. Its key features include interactive exploration, multi-user collaboration, and flexible data import capabilities, supporting various formats such as meshes, volumes, and terrain maps. The software utilizes Godot, OpenXR and PC-VR technology to provide an immersive experience. Ascribe XR is used for data analysis, visualization, and collaboration in various fields, enabling users to gain deeper insights into complex data sets. Its advantages over similar technologies include its flexibility, customizability, and ease of use. Ascribe XR's interactive and immersive environment facilitates collaboration and accelerates the discovery process. Compared to traditional 2D visualization tools, Ascribe XR offers a more engaging and intuitive experience, allowing users to explore complex data sets in a more natural and interactive way. Its ability to support multi-user collaboration and flexible data import capabilities make it a versatile tool for various applications. Overall, Ascribe XR provides a unique combination of features, usability, and performance, making it an attractive solution for scientists and engineers working with 3D data sets.

Pandolfi, Ronald [Lawrence Berkeley National Labor↗

Heavy-tailed distribution of the number of papers within scientific journals

Scholarly publications represent at least two benefits for the study of the scientific community as a social group. First, they attest to some form of relation between scientists (collaborations, mentoring, heritage, …), useful to determine and analyze social subgroups. Second, most of them are recorded in large databases, easily accessible and including a lot of pertinent information, easing the quantitative and qualitative study of the scientific community. Understanding the underlying dynamics driving the creation of knowledge in general, and of scientific publication in particular, can contribute to maintaining a high level of research, by identifying good and bad practices in science. In this article, we aim to advance this understanding by a statistical analysis of publication within peer-reviewed journals. Namely, we show that the distribution of the number of papers published by an author in a given journal is heavy-tailed, but has a lighter tail than a power law. Interestingly, we demonstrate (both analytically and numerically) that such distributions match the result of a modified preferential attachment process, where, on top of a Barabási-Albert process, we take the finite career span of scientists into account.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

A Review of Recent and Emerging Machine Learning Applications for Climate Variability and Weather Phenomena

Abstract Climate variability and weather phenomena can cause extremes and pose significant risk to society and ecosystems, making continued advances in our physical understanding of such events of utmost importance for regional and global security. Advances in machine learning (ML) have been leveraged for applications in climate variability and weather, empowering scientists to approach questions using big data in new ways. Growing interest across the scientific community in these areas has motivated coordination between the physical and computer science disciplines to further advance the state of the science and tackle pressing challenges. During a recently held workshop that had participants across academia, private industry, and research laboratories, it became clear that a comprehensive review of recent and emerging ML applications for climate variability and weather phenomena that can cause extremes was needed. This article aims to fulfill this need by discussing recent advances, challenges, and research priorities in the following topics: sources of predictability for modes of climate variability, feature detection, extreme weather and climate prediction and precursors, observation–model integration, downscaling, and bias correction. This article provides a review for domain scientists seeking to incorporate ML into their research. It also provides a review for those with some ML experience seeking to broaden their knowledge of ML applications for climate variability and weather.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

The U.S. DOE ARM User Facility Establishes a New Site for Studies of Land–Aerosol–Cloud Interactions in the Southeastern United States

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility has established a new site in the Bankhead National Forest (BNF) in northern Alabama that will gather data on how clouds, the land surface, and aerosols interact at a hierarchy of scales important to understanding and simulating the Earth system. Starting its operations in October 2024, the BNF site provides a multi-year opportunity for scientists to unravel complex land-atmosphere interactions. A suite of ground-based sensors, elevated tower-based instrumentation, and aerial facilities will enable scientists to investigate those interactions from within the canopy to the clouds. The Southeastern United States was recommended by the DOE ARM and its collaborators in the broader community as an important region to address their common scientific questions given the region’s abundant surface-forced convective clouds and mesoscale convective systems that pose ongoing challenges in Earth system models. The region is also home to significant terrain complexity and land-use heterogeneity that will unleash new understanding of anthropogenic and biogenic aerosol processes, boundary-layer aerosol-cloud interactions, and the interactions between the terrestrial ecosystem and coupled aerosol-cloud-radiation processes.

Aerosols↗

Landmark Publications in Analytical Atomic Spectrometry: Fundamentals and Instrumentation Development

The almost-two-centuries history of spectrochemical analysis has generated a body of literature so vast that it has become nearly intractable for experts, much less for those wishing to enter the field. Authoritative, focused reviews help to address this problem but become so granular that the overall directions of the field are lost. This broader perspective can be provided partially by general overviews but then the thinking, experimental details, theoretical underpinnings, and instrumental innovations of the original work must be sacrificed. In the present compilation, this dilemma is overcome by assembling the most impactful publications in the area of analytical atomic spectrometry. Each entry was proposed by at least one current expert in the field and supported by a narrative that justifies its inclusion. The entries were then assembled into a coherent sequence and returned to contributors for a round-robin review. A total of 48 scientists participated in this endeavor, contributing a combined list of 1055 individual articles spanning 17 sub-disciplines of spectrochemical analysis into what the current community views as “key” publications. Of these cited articles, 60 received nominations from four or more scientists, establishing them as the most indispensable reading materials. The outcome of this collaborative effort is intended to serve as a valuable resource not only for current practitioners in atomic spectroscopy but also for present and future students who represent coming generations of analytical atomic spectroscopists.

Instruments & Instrumentation↗

HUMAN-ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TEAMING FOR THE U.S. NAVY: DEVELOPING A HOLISTIC RESEARCH ROADMAP

With the ever-increasing deluge of data and demand for warfighters to make decisions upon its analysis, U.S. defense strategy has prioritized the development of artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) systems that can analyze multi-source data streams and suggest courses of action. However, there is a history of systems that have failed to be adopted by the warfighter due not only to unsolved technical challenges, but also a lack of usability or contributions to mission effectiveness, perceived or otherwise. To avoid this, research into human-AI teaming shows promise for developing AI systems that work with frontline operators. A recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report (NASEM, 2022) presented 57 research objectives in this area; however, the U.S. Navy requires a more-focused set of priorities, as it is impossible to tackle every priority. A workshop involving 23 human factors scientists, computer scientists, and active-duty sailors was organized at the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, resulting in a set of five research priorities spanning near-, mid-, and far-term time frames. This panel will summarize the results of this workshop, with a focus on the big questions both going into this workshop and coming out of it. The panel participants come from government, academia, and industry, providing perspective from the different kinds of organizations required to accomplish these research goals.

Wong, Jason↗

A terminology for in situ visualization and analysis systems

The term "in situ processing" has evolved over the last decade to mean both a specific strategy for visualizing and analyzing data and an umbrella term for a processing paradigm. The resulting confusion makes it difficult for visualization and analysis scientists to communicate with each other and with their stakeholders. To address this problem, a group of over 50 experts convened with the goal of standardizing terminology. This paper summarizes their findings and proposes a new terminology for describing in situ systems. An important finding from this group was that in situ systems are best described via multiple, distinct axes: integration type, proximity, access, division of execution, operation controls, and output type. This paper discusses these axes, evaluates existing systems within the axes, and explores how currently used terms relate to the axes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

ESS-DIVE guidelines for archiving terrestrial model data

This dataset contains supporting documents and images for ESS-DIVE terrestrial model data archiving guidelines.Terrestrial models are broadly defined as numerical models that couple both land dynamics and energy, water, carbon, or nutrient fluxes. We created these guidelines based on input from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Biological and Environmental Research land modeling community. The guidelines are intended to help modelers determine which components of their terrestrial model data associated with publication should be archived. Based on input from the land modeling community, the guidelines recommend archiving both model input and testing data, as well as code, script, and metadata. The guidelines also recommend archiving model data output, depending on the limitations set by data repositories. Lastly, we provide recommendations for bundling data files for publication as well as a discussion about tools that can facilitate model data archiving and reuse.This dataset is an archive of the associated GitHub repository for our model archiving guidelines (https://github.com/ess-dive-community/essdive-model-data-archiving-guidelines). The ‘README.pdf’ file gives a general introduction to the guidelines, and the ‘instructions.pdf’ file provides more detailed steps for following the guidelines. We also provide 2 figures in this data package: 1) a decision tree (model_data_guidelines_decision_tree.png) that can help users determine which components of their model data to archive. and 2) the ‘model_data_guidelines_flmd.png’ file depicts the different files that can be archived in addition to the model data itself. Lastly, we include 3 digitized tables from our associated manuscript and 3 CSV files with anonymized input from DOE scientists about the importance of different aspects of model data archiving from which we developed the guidelines.Dataset updates for v1.1.0: We updated this data package on 2021-11-22 in response to review comments on our related manuscript. In this update we removed one figure so that the model archiving guidelines are conveyed in text rather than an image. We updated the file-level metadata (FLMD) figure to be in accord with the most recent FLMD recommendations. We made minor edits to the README file to update the recommended citation and added two co-authors. We also added 6 new data files (3 are anonymized input from DOE scientists that helped to inform guidelines, and 3 are digitized tables from our manuscript.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Distributed heterogeneous compute infrastructure for the study of additive manufacturing systems

We present the current status of a large-scale computing framework to address the need of the multidisciplinary effort to study chemical dynamics. Specifically, we are enabling scientists to process and store experimental data, run large-scale computationally expensive high-fidelity physical simulation, and analyze these results using the state-of-the-art data analytics tools, machine learning, and uncertainty quantification methods using heterogeneous computing resources, such as CPU and GPU cluster. The framework can integrate or abstract out multiple domains based on roles. In order to develop this framework, we have leveraged an existing framework coupled with in-house heterogeneous computing resources. We present the results of using this framework on a single metadata triggered workflow to accelerate an additive manufacturing use case.

heterogeneous computing, hpc, workflows, reproduci↗

CrossCheck: Rapid, Reproducible, and Interpretable Model Evaluation

Evaluation beyond aggregate performance metrics, e.g. F1-score, is crucial to both establish an appropriate level of trust in machine learning models and identify future model improvements. In this paper we demonstrate CrossCheck, an interactive visualization tool for rapid crossmodel comparison and reproducible error analysis. We describe the tool and discuss design and implementation details. We then present three use cases (named entity recognition, reading comprehension, and clickbait detection) that show the benefits of using the tool for model evaluation. CrossCheck allows data scientists to make informed decisions to choose between multiple models, identify when the models are correct and for which examples, investigate whether the models are making the same mistakes as humans, evaluate models’ generalizability and highlight models’ limitations, strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, CrossCheck is implemented as a Jupyter widget, which allows rapid and convenient integration into data scientists’ model development workflows.

Arendt, Dustin L.↗

PyGDH: Python Grid Discretization Helper

Mathematical models expressed in the form of discretized equations play an important role inmany scientific disciplines. In our experience, few domain scientists have sufficient backgroundin numerical computing (or the time required to acquire such a background) to use manyflexible and powerful but complex open source packages, such as FEniCS (Alnæs et al., 2015)and OpenFOAM (The OpenFOAM Foundation Ltd, n.d.). Many user-friendly open sourcepackages, such as FiPy (J. E. Guyer & Warren, 2009), and many commercial packages, suchas COMSOL Multiphysics (COMSOL AB, n.d.) and Simcenter STAR-CCM+ (Siemens DigitalIndustries Software, n.d.), provide limited flexibility in the equations that users can express.Additionally, the use of commercial packages, which by nature do not perform calculationstransparently, can hinder reproducibility, which is vital to the scientific process. PyGDH(“pigged”) is a Python 2 / Python 3 (Python Software Foundation, 1991–2020) package thatis meant to be accessible to scientists who might not be specialists in scientific computing,while approaching the level of flexibility associated with writing dedicated programs tailoredto solving specific problems. The PyGDH User’s Guide provides detailed instructions forcreating numerical models, including a brief introduction to necessary command line andPython (Python Software Foundation, 1991–2020) skills, and discussions of discretization andvalidation. Note that PyGDH emphasizes flexibility and simplicity over performance, and wasnot designed for high-performance applications or models describing complex spatial domains.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

The future of the correlated electron problem

A central problem in modern condensed matter physics is the understanding of materials with strong electron correlations. Despite extensive work, the essential physics of many of these systems is not understood and there is very little ability to make predictions in this class of materials. In this manuscript we share our personal views on the major open problems in the field of correlated electron systems. We discuss some possible routes to make progress in this rich and fascinating field. This manuscript is the result of the vigorous discussions and deliberations that took place at Johns Hopkins University during a three-day workshop January 27, 28, and 29, 2020 that brought together six senior scientists and 46 more junior scientists. Our hope, is that the topics we have presented will provide inspiration for others working in this field and motivation for the idea that significant progress can be made on very hard problems if we focus our collective energies.

Alexandradinata, Aris [Univ. of Illinois at Urbana↗

ARM Lead Mentor Selection Process

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program was created in 1989 with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop several highly instrumented ground stations to study cloud-formation processes and their influence on radiative transfer. This scientific infrastructure provides for fixed sites, mobile facilities, an aerial facility, and a data archive available for use by scientists worldwide through the ARM Climate Research Facility—a scientific user facility. The ARM Climate Research Facility currently operates more than 300 instrument systems that provide ground-based observations of the atmospheric column. To keep ARM at the forefront of climate observations, the ARM infrastructure depends heavily on instrument scientists and engineers, known as Mentors. Mentors must have an excellent understanding of instrumentation theory and operation for their instrument areas and have comprehensive knowledge of critical scale-dependent atmospheric processes. They must also possess the technical and analytical skills to develop new data retrievals that provide innovative approaches for creating research-quality data sets. The ARM Facility seeks the best overall qualified candidate, or team when appropriate, that can fulfill Mentor requirements in a timely manner. The roles and responsibilities of the ARM Instrument Operations Manager are provided in Appendix A. The key role and responsibilities and detailed responsibilities of ARM Lead Mentors are provided in Appendix B and Appendix C, respectively.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

ASCR@40: Highlights and Impacts of ASCR’s Programs

A report compiled by the ASCAC Subcommittee on the 40-year history of ASCR for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research. The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) sits within the Office of Science in the Department of Energy (DOE). Per their web pages, “the mission of the ASCR program is to discover, develop, and deploy computational and networking capabilities to analyze, model, simulate, and predict complex phenomena important to the DOE.” This succinct statement encompasses a wide range of responsibilities for computing and networking facilities; for procuring, deploying, and operating high performance computing, networking, and storage resources; for basic research in mathematics and computer science; for developing and sustaining a large body of software; and for partnering with organizations across the Office of Science and beyond. While its mission statement may seem very contemporary, the roots of ASCR are quite deep—long predating the creation of DOE. Applied mathematics and advanced computing were both elements of the Theoretical Division of the Manhattan Project. In the early 1950s, the Manhattan Project scientist and mathematician John von Neumann, then a commissioner for the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission), advocated for the creation of a Mathematics program to support the continued development and applications of digital computing. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) scientist John Pasta created such a program to fund researchers at universities and AEC laboratories. Under several organizational name changes, this program has persisted ever since, and would eventually grow to become ASCR.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Technology Transfer Excellence Award NTXBio

While a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Dr. Alex Koglin developed two compounds to create a better vaccine for Tuberculosis (TB). In 2015, Dr. Koglin took an entrepreneurial leave of absence from the Laboratory to start NTXBio, LLC. His objective was to develop and commercialize a TB vaccine based on two compounds he created while a scientist at the Los Alamos. In 2018, a total of 1.5 million people died from TB. According to the World Health Organization TB is the leading infectious disease resulting in death worldwide. Approximately one-quarter of the world’s population is infected with mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes TB. Dr. Koglin non-exclusively licensed the two compounds from Los Alamos and began further development of the technology in collaboration with the Government of South Africa and universities to address the need for a vaccine to prevent TB. In their research and development of the compounds there was no evidence of cross resistance between other bacteria and the bacteria that causes TB. The compounds were tested in mouse models and demonstrated they can treat TB. Also, the tests have not shown any of the massive side effects that the current treatments for TB are showing. The company started production of the compounds using current manufacturing processes. Using these processes NTXBio could not produce the compounds at a reasonable price to be available for patients in third world countries. The company shifted to developing a new methodology “invitro synthetic biology” that can increase the production of these compounds and other vaccine molecules in a more affordable way. Dr. Koglin’s startup NTXBio is working to positively influence and secure the world vaccine supply by developing rapid on-demand production of the full spectrum of protein vaccines. Starting with the TB vaccine and advancing to common childhood vaccines, emergency and experimental vaccines such as those needed for COVID-19. NTXBio is capable of accelerated prototyping and manufacturing with increased purity and greater stability while reducing both cost and production time. The newly developed production methodology can be applied to not only the TB compounds licensed from Los Alamos, but also to their compounds that advance vaccine production for other diseases. Their technology produces vaccines fast enough to be fully deployable in areas without the need of specialized storage conditions and response times.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Request for the establishment of quantum information foundries

Quantum information science still requires basic science research to achieve its full potential. However, scientists require access to fabricated device samples if we are to utilize the full toolset for solving the pressing issues in the field such as materials, device layout, or optimal error correction methods.Currently, access to samples is either prohibitively expensive, or requires close collaboration with one of the few groups in the world developing these systems. A dedicated quantum foundry could,in principle,provide affordable samples designed with current best practices to a host of scientists who otherwise do not have access. We detail several different foundry models which we believe will assist the community in developing the science for both the underlying processes, as well as the more advanced chip layout and circuit design. Opening access to the broader community has the potential to significantly lower the barrier to entry and vastly improve the ability for researchers in fields ranging from condensed matter to materials characterization to systems engineering to contribute to accelerating the advance of quantum information science and technology.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Navigation and Meteorological Data from Multiple Sensors on Airborne Platform (NAVMET-AIR) Value-Added Product Report

The Navigation and Meteorological Data from Multiple Sensors on Airborne Platform (NAVMET-AIR) value-added product encompasses the aafnaviwg data set in the ARM Data Center (ADC), known as the IWG file, named for the Inter-Agency Working Group for Airborne Data and Telemetry Systems (IWGADTS). Its purpose is to produce a suite of tools to promote standardization of instrument interface, data format, and data processing. This data set’s contents are navigational and meteorological state variables at 1 Hz. It also contains higher-order data flags created by ARM Aerial Facility (AAF) scientists to aid analysis such as periods when the aircraft is flying level, operating in maneuvers, or flying through cloud. Due to the nature of research flights, the payload of the aircraft consists of many duplicate and overlapping instruments to ensure, in case of instrument failure, there is a backup to record the data. Measurements from multiple instruments are consolidated into a single file. Each variable of this data set is carefully chosen from the onboard instrumentation and quality checked by AAF scientists to create this wholistic and most accurate data set for airborne research. This document is intended to be a hub towards the individual “read me” files produced for each campaign. For reference about what instrument was used for calculations on specific days, the read me files are located in the ARM IOP archive at the addresses listed, or access the IOP (intensive operational period) database at https://www.archive.arm.gov/.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Understanding Interactive and Reproducible Computing With Jupyter Tools at Facilities

Increasingly Jupyter tools are being adopted and incorporated into High Performance Computing (HPC) and scientific user facilities. Adopting Jupyter tools enables more interactive and reproducible computational work at facilities across data life cycles. As the volume, variety, and scope of data grow, scientists need to be able to analyze and share results in user friendly ways. Human-centered research highlights design challenges around computational notebooks, and our qualitative user study shifts focus to better characterize how Jupyter tools are being used in HPC and science user facilities today. We conducted twenty-nine interviews, and obtained 103 survey responses from NERSC Jupyter users, to better understand the increasing role of interactive computing tools in DOE sponsored scientific work. We examine a range of issues that emerge using and supporting Jupyter in HPC ecosystems, including: how Jupyter is being used by scientists in HPC and user facility ecosystems; how facilities are purposefully supporting Jupyter in their ecosystems; feedback NERSC users have about the facility’s deployment, and, discuss features NERSC indicated would be helpful. We offer a variety of takeaways for staff supporting Jupyter at facilities, Project Jupyter and related open source communities, and funding agencies supporting interactive computing work.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗