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At least 163 records · Page 9

Empirical radius formulas for canonical neutron stars from bidirectionally selecting features of equations of state in extended Bayesian analyses of observational data

Significant advancement in Bayesian inference of nuclear equation of state (EOS) from gravitational wave and x-ray observations of neutron stars (NSs) has been made by the nuclear astrophysics community especially since GW170817. By extending the traditional Bayesian analysis which normally ends at presenting the marginalized posterior probability distribution functions (PDFs) of individual EOS parameters and their correlations (or sometimes only the Pearson correlation coefficients which are only reliably useful when the variables are linearly correlated while they are actually often not), we search for a data-driven and robust empirical formula for the radius 𝑅 1.4 of canonical NSs in terms of the characteristic EOS parameters (features). We also identify the single most important but currently poorly known EOS parameter for determining the 𝑅 1.4 . Using three regression-model-building methodologies: bidirectional stepwise feature selection, least absolute shrinkage selection operator (LASSO) regression, and neural network regression on a large set of posterior EOSs and the corresponding 𝑅 1.4 values inferred from earlier comprehensive Bayesian analyses of NS observational data, we systematically and rigorously develop the most probable 𝑅 1.4 formulas with varying statistical accuracy and technical complexity. Here, the most important EOS parameters for determining 𝑅 1.4 are found consistently in each of the feature selection processes to be (in order of decreasing importance): curvature 𝐾 sym , slope 𝐿, skewness 𝐽 sym of nuclear symmetry energy, skewness 𝐽 0 , incompressibility 𝐾 0 of symmetric nuclear matter, and the magnitude 𝐸 sym ⁡(𝜌 0 ) of symmetry energy at the saturation density 𝜌 0 of nuclear matter.

Bayesian methods↗

The role of building characteristics, demographics, and urban heat islands in shaping residential energy use

This study assesses the effects of residential building structure, socio-demographics, and ambient temperature conditions of a neighborhood to overall energy expenditures of a household. Using annual utility billing data, existing tax-lot records, temperature data, and U.S. Census demographic data, we ask two research questions: (1) What role do differences in neighborhood ambient heat, structural conditions and behavior play in helping to explain residential energy use? And (2) In what ways do energy expenditures spatially cluster in relation to urban heat islands? Using linear regression, spatial regression, and spatial clustering techniques, we evaluated the role of physical location of these households in relation to ambient temperatures. Significant positive relationships among energy expenditures and building size, average household size, White population, and population over 65 were observed; Significant negative relationships among energy expenditures and building density, renter population and population with a bachelor’s degree or higher were also observed. Negative relationships among morning and afternoon measures of heat, suggest that some areas spend less on energy use as a result of the neighborhood scale thermal environment. Spatial analysis of ambient temperature and energy expenditures show that energy use throughout the city is spatially clustered, with more affluent areas using more energy, regardless of whether heat islands are present. The results help to frame the role that increasing ambient temperatures in cities play in the spatial disparity in energy demand.

Residential Buildings, Energy Expenditure, Socio-d↗

NEONiso R Package, versions greater than 0.5.2

Carbon fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems and their response to environmental change are a major source of uncertainty in the modern carbon cycle. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) presents the opportunity to merge eddy covariance (EC)-derived fluxes with CO2 isotope ratio measurements to gain insights into carbon cycle processes. Collected continuously and consistently across >40 sites, NEON EC and isotope data facilitate novel integrative analyses. However, currently provisioned atmospheric isotope data are uncalibrated, greatly limiting ability to perform cross-site analyses. Here, we present two approaches to calibrating NEON CO2 isotope ratios, along with an R package to calibrate NEON data. We find that calibrating CO2 isotopologues independently yields a lower d13C bias (<0.05‰) and higher precision (<0.40‰) than directly correcting d13C with linear regression (bias: <0.11‰, precision: 0.42‰), but with slightly higher error and lower precision in calibrated CO2 mole fraction. The magnitude of the corrections to d13C and CO2 mole fractions vary substantially by site, underscoring the need for users to apply a consistent calibration framework to data in the NEON archive. Post-calibration data sets show that site mean annual d13C correlates negatively with precipitation, temperature, and aridity, but positively with elevation. Forested and agricultural ecosystems exhibit larger gradients in CO2 and d13C than other sites, particularly during the summer and at night. The overview and analysis tools developed here will facilitate cross-site analysis using NEON data, provide a model for other continental-scale observational networks, and enable new advances leveraging the isotope ratios of specific carbon fluxes.

Fiorella, Richard↗

Advancing the quantification of aerosol-cloud interactions with the CALIPSO-CloudSat-Aqua/MODIS record

Aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions are assessed over the non-polar ocean using more than 11 years of combined Aqua-MODIS, CALIPSO-CALIOP, and CloudSat products. The analysis first shows the benefit of incorporating vertically resolved aerosol extinction coefficient (σext) in aerosol-cloud interactions (ACI) assessments, demonstrating that: σext vertically collocated with the cloud layer () correlates best with cloud droplet number concentration (Nd), column-integrated aerosol optical depth (AOD) cannot explain the Nd variability in the extratropics, and the S-shape of the AOD-Nd relationship reported in previous studies is not replicated when using instead of AOD, with a Nd- linearity more consistent with in-situ studies over the ocean. ACI metric, estimated as the log-scale regression between CALIOP and MODIS Nd reveals that the eastern Pacific is the region with the strongest ACI, followed by the Southern Ocean. The susceptibility of clouds to changes in their liquid water path (LWP) and frequency of precipitation followed a 2-step calculation by combining the Nd- regression (ACI) with the regression between these macrophysical variables and Nd. LWP susceptibility is negative (LWP decreases with aerosol loading) and statistically significant over the eastern Pacific, eastern Atlantic, and extratropics. In contrast, vast areas of the tropical and subtropical ocean feature negligible changes in LWP with aerosol. Precipitation frequency susceptibility is negative, but the values are only significant over the coastal eastern Pacific and Atlantic. The findings suggest that previous modeling assessments relying on AOD may need to be revisited by taking advantage of the synergy between passive and active sensors.

Li, Zhujun↗

Multiscale petrophysical characterization and flow unit classification of the Minnelusa eolian sandstones

Integration of petrophysical and geological information is critical to simulation of subsurface carbon storage (GCS). In this sense, two depositional facies were identified from the core description and well-log interpretation, namely massive (MS) and cross-bedded (CB) facies groups. Additionally, pore-scale characteristics were studied by a combination of techniques, e.g. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and mercury intrusion capillary pressure (MICP). Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and petrographic analyses show that the pore structure is dominantly controlled by the depositional environment and dolomite cementation. NMR-T 2 distributions of MS and CB facies show triple and quadruple modes, respectively. In addition, MICP of high- and low-permeability MS facies samples, and their CB facies group mixtures were collected. The MS sample pore-throat size distribution is uni-modal, while the triple-modal characteristic of the mixtures indicates heterogeneous pore structures at the sub-core scale for CB facies. The reliably estimates of porosity and permeability for both facies groups via NMR techniques and the MLR (Multiple Linear Regression) approach demonstrate the applicability of these techniques to eolian sandstone. Moreover, irreducible water saturation via the T 2 -cutoff method correlates strongly with T 2LM instead of porosity. Finally, the rock quality index and flow zone indicator were calculated based on Combinable Magnetic Resonance (CMR) log interpretations. This provides direct connection to properties measured in the well. Four flow units were classified for both facies groups. Finally, results show that better reservoir quality with significant heterogeneities is observed in the CB facies. This study highlights the importance integrating multiscale petrophysical properties including facies, pore architecture and diagenesis analysis with core- to log-scale property characterization. The results herein validate our reservoir characterization and flow unit classification in eolian reservoirs.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Performance of methods for SARS-CoV-2 variant detection and abundance estimation within mixed population samples

The accurate identification of SARS-CoV-2 (SC2) variants and estimation of their abundance in mixed population samples (e.g., air or wastewater) is imperative for successful surveillance of community level trends. Assessing the performance of SC2 variant composition estimators (VCEs) should improve our confidence in public health decision making. Here, we introduce a linear regression based VCE and compare its performance to four other VCEs: two re-purposed DNA sequence read classifiers (Kallisto and Kraken2), a maximum-likelihood based method (Lineage deComposition for Sars-Cov-2 pooled samples (LCS)), and a regression based method (Freyja). We simulated DNA sequence datasets of known variant composition from both Illumina and Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) platforms and assessed the performance of each VCE. We also evaluated VCEs performance using publicly available empirical wastewater samples collected for SC2 surveillance efforts. Bioinformatic analyses were performed with a custom NextFlow workflow (C-WAP, CFSAN Wastewater Analysis Pipeline). Relative root mean squared error (RRMSE) was used as a measure of performance with respect to the known abundance and concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) was used to measure agreement between pairs of estimators. Based on our results from simulated data, Kallisto was the most accurate estimator as it had the lowest RRMSE, followed by Freyja. Kallisto and Freyja had the most similar predictions, reflected by the highest CCC metrics. We also found that accuracy was platform and amplicon panel dependent. For example, the accuracy of Freyja was significantly higher with Illumina data compared to ONT data; performance of Kallisto was best with ARTICv4. However, when analyzing empirical data there was poor agreement among methods and variations in the number of variants detected (e.g., Freyja ARTICv4 had a mean of 2.2 variants while Kallisto ARTICv4 had a mean of 10.1 variants). This work provides an understanding of the differences in performance of a number of VCEs and how accurate they are in capturing the relative abundance of SC2 variants within a mixed sample (e.g., wastewater). Such information should help officials gauge the confidence they can have in such data for informing public health decisions.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

ANN-based ground motion model for Turkey using stochastic simulation of earthquakes

SUMMARY Turkey is characterized by a high level of seismic activity attributed to its complex tectonic structure. The country has a dense network to record earthquake ground motions; however, to study previous earthquakes and to account for potential future ones, ground motion simulations are required. Ground motion simulation techniques offer an alternative means of generating region-specific time-series data for locations with limited seismic networks or regions with seismic data gaps, facilitating the study of potential catastrophic earthquakes. In this research, a local ground motion model (GMM) for Turkey is developed using region-specific simulated records, thus constructing a homogeneous data set. The simulations employ the stochastic finite-fault approach and utilize validated input-model parameters in distinct regions, namely Afyon, Erzincan, Duzce, Istanbul and Van. To overcome the limitations of linear regression-based models, artificial neural network is used to establish the form of equations and coefficients. The predictive input parameters encompass fault mechanism (FM), focal depth (FD), moment magnitude (Mw), Joyner and Boore distance (RJB) and average shear wave velocity in the top 30 m (Vs30). The data set comprises 7359 records with Mw ranging between 5.0 and 7.5 and RJB ranging from 0 to 272 km. The results are presented in terms of spectral ordinates within the period range of 0.03–2.0 s, as well as peak ground acceleration and peak ground velocity. The quantification of the GMM uncertainty is achieved through the analysis of residuals, enabling insights into inter- and intra-event uncertainties. The simulation results and the effectiveness of the model are verified by comparing the predicted values of ground motion parameters with the observed values recorded during previous events in the region. The results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed model in simulating physical phenomena.

Karimzadeh, Shaghayegh (ORCID:0000000337531676)↗

QUBO formulations for training machine learning models

Abstract Training machine learning models on classical computers is usually a time and compute intensive process. With Moore’s law nearing its inevitable end and an ever-increasing demand for large-scale data analysis using machine learning, we must leverage non-conventional computing paradigms like quantum computing to train machine learning models efficiently. Adiabatic quantum computers can approximately solve NP-hard problems, such as the quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO), faster than classical computers. Since many machine learning problems are also NP-hard, we believe adiabatic quantum computers might be instrumental in training machine learning models efficiently in the post Moore’s law era. In order to solve problems on adiabatic quantum computers, they must be formulated as QUBO problems, which is very challenging. In this paper, we formulate the training problems of three machine learning models—linear regression, support vector machine (SVM) and balanced k-means clustering—as QUBO problems, making them conducive to be trained on adiabatic quantum computers. We also analyze the computational complexities of our formulations and compare them to corresponding state-of-the-art classical approaches. We show that the time and space complexities of our formulations are better (in case of SVM and balanced k-means clustering) or equivalent (in case of linear regression) to their classical counterparts.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Machine Learning Analysis of Temperature-Strain Relationships for Structural Health Monitoring of Pipes: Self-powered wireless sensor system for health monitoring of liquid-sodium cooled fast reactors

This report presents machine learning (ML) analysis of temperature-strain relationships for structural health monitoring of nuclear reactor stainless steel (SS) pipes with the strain gauge sensor directly printed on the pipe with a 3D conformal aerosol jet printer. We investigate correlations for two sensor pairs installed on the same SS304 pipe: commercial K-type thermocouple with a printed gold strain gauge (TC3-SG3), and commercial K-type thermocouple with commercial Kyowa strain gauge (TC0-SG0). The temperature ranges for the sensor pairs TC0-SG0 and TC3-SG3 are 20.00°C to 266.37°C and 39.95°C to 219.28°C respectively. ML algorithms in this study include Linear Regression (baseline method), Ridge Regression, Lasso Regression, and Gradient Boosting. Performance evaluation metrics include Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Square Error (MSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), R 2 Score, and Explained Variance. Using advanced feature engineering techniques, we extracted 27 temperature-based features and 30 strategic inclusion features. The best performance was obtained with the Gradient Boosting method, which achieves prediction accuracy of R 2 = 0.9999 and RMSE = 7.69 μStrain for TC0-SG0, and R 2 = 0.9998 and RMSE = 18.03 μStrain for TC3-SG3. While the temperature-strain correlations are weaker for the gauge directly printed on the pipe than for the commercial strain gauge, deployment-ready performance exceeding industry standards is achieved for both sensor pairs.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Standardising the “Gregory method” for calculating equilibrium climate sensitivity

The equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) – the equilibrium global mean temperature response to a doubling of atmospheric CO 2 – is a high-profile metric for quantifying the Earth system's response to human-induced climate change. A widely applied approach to estimating the ECS is the “Gregory method” (Gregory et al., 2004), which uses an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression between the net radiative flux, N, and surface air temperature anomalies, ΔT, from a 150 year experiment in which atmospheric CO 2 concentrations are quadrupled. The ECS is determined by extrapolating the linear fit to N=0, i.e. the ΔT-intercept, indicating the point at which the system is back in equilibrium. This method has been used to compare ECS estimates across the CMIP5 and CMIP6 ensembles and will likely be a key diagnostic for CMIP7. Despite its widespread application, there is little consistency or transparency between studies in how the climate model data is processed prior to the regression, leading to potential discrepancies in ECS estimates. We identify 32 alternative data processing pathways, varying by differences in global mean weighting, net radiative flux variable, anomaly calculation method, and linear regression fit. Using 44 CMIP6 models, we systematically assess the impact of these choices on ECS estimates and calculate uncertainty ranges using two bootstrap approaches. While the inter-model ECS range is insensitive to the data processing pathway, individual outlier models exhibit notable differences. Approximating a model's native grid cell area (if irregular) with cosine of the latitude can decrease the ECS by 11 %, the choice of N-variable can change the ECS by 6 %, and some anomaly calculation methods can introduce spurious temporal correlations in the processed data. Beyond data processing choices, we also evaluate an alternative linear regression method – total least squares (TLS) – which has a more statistically robust basis than OLS. However, for consistency with previous literature, and given TLS may reduce the ECS compared to OLS (by up to 24 %), thereby making a known bias in the Gregory method worse, we do not feel there is sufficient clarity to recommend a transition to TLS in all cases. To improve reproducibility and comparability in future studies, we recommend a standardised Gregory method: weighting the global mean by cell area, using the top of the atmosphere (as opposed to the top of model) N-variable, and calculating anomalies by first applying a rolling average to the preindustrial control timeseries then subtracting from the raw CO 2 quadrupling experiment. This approach accounts for model drift while reducing noise in the data to best meet the pre-conditions of the linear regression. While CMIP6 results of the multi-model mean ECS appear insensitive to these processing choices, similar assumptions may not hold for CMIP7, underscoring the need for standardised data preparation in future climate sensitivity assessments.

Geosciences↗

Machine learning elastic constants of multi-component alloys

The present manuscript explores application of machine learning methods for determining elastic constants and other derived mechanical properties of multi-component alloys. Here, a number of machine learning models, including linear regression, neural network and random forest based models, are trained and tested on a dataset of binary alloys generated using density functional theory (DFT) calculations and spanning over a large number of elemental species in the periodic table. Starting with a wide range of simple and easily accessible compositionally-averaged elemental features, a correlation-based feature selection strategy was used to systematically down-select a set of most relevant features towards the prediction of the elasticity tensor components. The true predictive performance and the associated uncertainties of the models were established by testing on unseen data and bootstrapping, respectively. A single and pair-wise feature partial dependence analysis was performed to visualize the average property trends in the multi-dimensional feature space in order to further understand the achieved predictive performance. The utility of the trained model is further demonstrated by obtaining sufficiently accurate yet highly efficient approximations for bulk modulus, Young’s modulus, shear modulus and Poisson’s ratio for alloys beyond the binary space (i.e., two-component alloys) on which the model was originally trained. More importantly, we test and validate the predictive performance of the developed model directly against the experimentally measured elastic constants of technologically relevant multi-component alloys (such as, Ni- and Ti-based alloys). Finally, utility of such a data-enabled route is demonstrated by predicting the possible range of various elastic properties for vast composition space available within the five component Ni-Cr-Fe-Mo-W alloy system in a high-throughput manner.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Application of Partial Least Squares Approaches to Pyroprocessing ER Data

Multivariate approaches show promise for application to process monitoring for safeguards of pyroprocessing. Past MPACT work explored the application of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to detect off-normal conditions in pyroprocessing electrorefiner (ER) data from in the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) known as the Scalable Pyrochemical Recycling testbed (SPyRe) ER. PCA, however, does not consider the output variables. In FY24, multivariate analysis was extended from PCA to Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis. PLS maximizes the variance between both the input signals and output variables. In the case of this work, PLS was applied in two different manners: Predictive PLS and Discriminant PLS. Predictive PLS maximizes the covariance between the process variables of the ER and the measured U concentration from in-situ voltammetry. Discriminant PLS maximizes the covariance between the process variables and a set of training process “states” such as known off-normal conditions. By projecting into the latent variable space in PLS, the process variables can be regressed onto the outputs and predictions can be made for new data sets. In this work, by applying predictive PLS, a penalized non-linear PLS approach was able to make predictions of concentration based on test and training data and detect when operations were off-normal. However, the predictive PLS does not classify the signals to which off-normal operations are attributable. Discriminant PLS can be used to classify off-normal operations but is inadequate to properly classify specific off-normal classes like power supply faults when the Discriminant PLS model is only specifically trained to detect that off-normal class. When all faults are trained against the observation data, all three operational classes are accurately classified and distinguished. Thus, future application of latent variable techniques should not select any given method, but should use a mixture of PCA, Predictive PLS, and Discriminant PLS.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Combined full shape analysis of BOSS galaxies and eBOSS quasars using an iterative emulator

ABSTRACT Standard full-shape clustering analyses in Fourier space rely on a fixed power spectrum template, defined at the fiducial cosmology used to convert redshifts into distances, and compress the cosmological information into the Alcock–Paczynski parameters and the linear growth rate of structure. In this paper, we propose an analysis method that operates directly in the cosmology parameter space and varies the power spectrum template accordingly at each tested point. Predictions for the power spectrum multipoles from the TNS model are computed at different cosmologies in the framework of $\Lambda \rm {CDM}$. Applied to the final eBOSS QSO and LRG samples together with the low-z DR12 BOSS galaxy sample, our analysis results in a set of constraints on the cosmological parameters Ωcdm, H0, σ8, Ωb, and ns. To reduce the number of computed models, we construct an iterative process to sample the likelihood surface, where each iteration consists of a Gaussian process regression. This method is validated with mocks from N-body simulations. From the combined analysis of the (e)BOSS data, we obtain the following constraints: σ8 = 0.877 ± 0.049 and $\Omega _{\rm m}=0.304^{+0.016}_{-0.010}$ without any external prior. The eBOSS quasar sample alone shows a 3.1σ discrepancy compared to the Planck prediction.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Integrating very-high-resolution UAS data and airborne imaging spectroscopy to map the fractional composition of Arctic plant functional types in Western Alaska

Widespread changes in vegetation cover and composition are driving strong impacts on Arctic ecosystem functioning and global climate feedbacks. An accurate characterization of tundra vegetation composition is required to understand how the Arctic will respond to future climate change. However, quantifying tundra vegetation composition over large areas is challenging as commonly-used satellite observations are too coarse, spatially and spectrally, to differentiate low-lying tundra vegetation types. Recent airborne and spaceborne imaging spectroscopy platforms provide better data to characterize vegetation composition. Yet, our ability to characterize vegetation composition with imaging spectroscopy remains largely unexplored in the Arctic, particularly due to a lack of ground observations needed to train and test classification models. To address this problem, we collected very-high-resolution (VHR, ~5 cm) unoccupied aerial system (UAS) imagery at three low-Arctic tundra sites located on the Seward Peninsula, western Alaska. In this paper, we examine the feasibility of integrating imagery from the UAS and the hyperspectral Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer, Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG) airborne instrument to map the fractional composition of 12 key Arctic plant functional types (PFTs). To this end, we first mapped the 12 PFTs from our VHR UAS imagery using random forest classification. We then used these UAS-derived PFT maps as ground truth to develop partial least squares regression (PLSR) models to predict the fractional cover (FCover) of each PFT from AVIRIS-NG imagery. Further, we evaluated the performance of our PLSR models using reserved UAS samples, as well as by mapping PFT FCover and dominant PFT for large tundra landscapes. Our results show that 1) Arctic PFTs can be effectively mapped using VHR UAS imagery, with overall accuracy between 86% and 92%, 2) when the UAS mapped PFTs were used to inform PLSR scaling models, the FCover of the 12 PFTs could be effectively estimated from AVIRIS-NG imagery with a mean absolute error (MAE) <0.13, and 3) our PLSR models outperformed traditional, fully constrained least-squares (FCLS) linear mixture analysis and produced high-quality, spatially contiguous PFT FCover and PFT maps that captured vegetation spatial patterns with similar accuracy to those developed from UAS imagery. The developed PLSR models have the potential to be broadly applied for quantifying vegetation composition with AVIRIS-NG images to help monitor tundra vegetation dynamics and improve process-based modeling of tundra ecosystems.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Time trend analysis of rare cancer incidence 2011–2018: Nationwide population-based cancer registries in Japan

Rare cancers collectively account for a significant proportion of the overall cancer burden in Japan. We aimed to describe and examine the incidence of each rare cancer and the temporal changes using the internationally agreed rare cancer classification. Cancer cases registered in regional population-based cancer registries from 2011 to 2015 and the National Cancer Registry (NCR) from 2016 to 2018 were classified into 18 families, 68 Tier-1 cancer groupings, and 216 single cancer entities based on the RARECAREnet list. Crude incidence rates and age-standardized incidence rates (ASR) were calculated for Tier-1 and Tier-2 cancers. The annual percent change and the 95% and 99% confidence limits for annual ASR for each of the 68 Tier-1 cancers were estimated using the log-linear regression of the weighted least squares method. The differences in ASRs between 2011 and 2018 were evaluated as an absolute change. A total of 5,640,879 cases were classified into Tier-1 and Tier-2 cancers. The ASRs of 18 out of 52 Tier-1 cancers in the rare cancer families increased, whereas the ASR for epithelial tumors of gallbladder decreased. The ASRs of 6 out of the 16 Tier-1 cancers in the common cancer families increased, whereas those of epithelial tumors of stomach and liver decreased. There was no significant change in the incidence of the other 40 Tier-1 cancers. The incidence of several cancers increased due to the dissemination of diagnostic concepts, improved diagnostic techniques, changes in coding practice, and the initiation of the NCR.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Regularized Differentiation for Bioburden Density Estimation in Planetary Protection

In this paper, we propose and investigate the performance of two novel shrinkage estimators for bioburden density estimation in planetary protection. The estimators are based on the regularized differentiation of a cumulative count of colony forming units collected throughout the data collecting session or the life cycle of the entire mission. The regularized differentiation recasts the problem of bioburden density estimation as a linear least squares problem. The least squares problem is then solved through regularization techniques, such as truncated singular value decomposition and penalized least squares. The regularization is necessary to avoid noise amplification during the differentiation of noisy data. The two regularization estimators are compared with four other commonly used estimators to simultaneously evaluate the means of multivariable independent Poisson distributions: the maximum likelihood, noninformative Bayes estimator with Jeffreys prior, Empirical Bayes using conjugate gamma-Poisson model with gamma parameters selected by method of moments, and the Clevenson-Zidek estimator. It is shown through computer-simulated data that the regularized differentiation based on ridge regression has the smallest mean-squared error among all estimators. The analysis of shrinkage mechanism implemented by regularized differentiation is performed, and it is shown that the regularized differentiation amounts to performing a weighted averaging of all the samples. The weights are determined by the regularization parameter automatically selected by the L-curve technique. Since the method of least squares makes no distributional assumptions about the data, it presents an attractive technique for bioburden density estimation when there are concerns about the misspecification of the distributional model. The paper concludes with the analysis of the bioburden data collected during InSight mission and directions for future work.

97 - MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Time-temperature-superposition analysis of diverse datasets by the minimum-arclength method: long-term prediction with uncertainty margins

In a recent publication, we carried out an extensive analysis of an unsupervised method of determining optimum shift factors in time-temperature-superposition of accelerated-aging data that involves minimizing the vertical arclength to obtain the master curve. For synthetic Arrhenius data with a variety of noise distributions, the work showed that, in conjunction with bootstrap-resampling, the method can produce reliable estimates of the mean activation energy along with uncertainty quantification. Here, we apply the above method to six different datasets taken from the published literature and demonstrate accurate prediction of mean activation energy from the data as-is without the need for any pre-processing or fitting. We also compare uncertainty margins computed by second-order bootstrap with that by linear regression theory and show that the former appears to provide consistent margins in the presence of common noise types in real data, including intra-isotherm measurement-errors, sample-to-sample variations, and intrinsic deviation from perfect Arrhenius behavior.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Predicting Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor Performance Using Flow-Cytometry-Derived High and Low Nucleic Acid Content Cells

Having a tool to monitor the microbial abundances rapidly and to utilize the data to predict the reactor performance would facilitate the operation of an anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR). This study aims to achieve the aforementioned scenario by developing a linear regression model that incorporates a time-lagging mode. The model uses low nucleic acid (LNA) cell numbers and the ratio of high nucleic acid (HNA) to LNA cells as an input data set. First, the model was trained using data sets obtained from a 35 L pilot-scale AnMBR. The model was able to predict the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency and methane production 3.5 days in advance. Subsequent validation of the model using flow cytometry (FCM)-derived data (at time t – 3.5 days) obtained from another biologically independent reactor did not exhibit any substantial difference between predicted and actual measurements of reactor performance at time t. Further cell sorting, 16S rRNA gene sequencing, and correlation analysis partly attributed this accurate prediction to HNA genera (e.g., Anaerovibrio and unclassified Bacteroidales) and LNA genera (e.g., Achromobacter, Ochrobactrum, and unclassified Anaerolineae). In summary, our findings suggest that HNA and LNA cell routine enumeration, along with the trained model, can derive a fast approach to predict the AnMBR performance.

42 ENGINEERING↗