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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

Behavioral, Brain Imaging and Genomic Measures to Predict Functional Outcomes Post - Bed Rest and Spaceflight

Astronauts experience sensorimotor disturbances during their initial exposure to microgravity and during the re-adaptation phase following a return to an Earth-gravitational environment. These alterations may disrupt crewmembers' ability to perform mission critical functional tasks requiring ambulation, manual control and gaze stability. Interestingly, astronauts who return from spaceflight show substantial differences in their abilities to readapt to a gravitational environment. The ability to predict the manner and degree to which individual astronauts would be affected would improve the effectiveness of countermeasure training programs designed to enhance sensorimotor adaptability. For such an approach to succeed, we must develop predictive measures of sensorimotor adaptability that will allow us to foresee, before actual spaceflight, which crewmembers are likely to experience the greatest challenges to their adaptive capacities. The goals of this project are to identify and characterize this set of predictive measures. Our approach includes: 1) behavioral tests to assess sensory bias and adaptability quantified using both strategic and plastic-adaptive responses; 2) imaging to determine individual brain morphological and functional features, using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion tensor imaging, resting state functional connectivity MRI, and sensorimotor adaptation task-related functional brain activation; and 3) assessment of genotypic markers of genetic polymorphisms in the catechol-O-methyl transferase, dopamine receptor D2, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor genes and genetic polymorphisms of alpha2-adrenergic receptors that play a role in the neural pathways underlying sensorimotor adaptation. We anticipate that these predictive measures will be significantly correlated with individual differences in sensorimotor adaptability after long-duration spaceflight and exposure to an analog bed rest environment. We will be conducting a retrospective study, leveraging data already collected from relevant ongoing or completed bed rest and spaceflight studies. These data will be combined with predictor metrics that will be collected prospectively (as described for behavioral, brain imaging and genomic measures) from these returning subjects to build models for predicting post-mission (bed rest - non-astronauts or space flight - astronauts) adaptive capability as manifested in their outcome measures. To date we have completed a study on 15 normal subjects with all of the above measures. In this presentation we will discuss the optimized set of tests for predictive metrics to be used for evaluating post mission adaptive capability as manifested in their outcome measures. Comparisons of model performance will allow us to better design and implement sensorimotor adaptability training countermeasures against decrements in post-mission adaptive capability that are customized for each crewmember's sensory biases, adaptive capacity, brain structure and functional capacities, and genetic predispositions. The ability to customize adaptability training will allow more efficient use of crew time during training and will optimize training prescriptions for astronauts to ensure expected outcomes.

Mulavara, A. P.↗

Behavioral, Brain Imaging and Genomic Measures to Predict Functional Outcomes Post-Bed Rest and Space Flight

Astronauts experience sensorimotor disturbances during their initial exposure to microgravity and during the re-adaptation phase following a return to an Earth-gravitational environment. These alterations may disrupt crewmembers' ability to perform mission critical functional tasks requiring ambulation, manual control and gaze stability. Interestingly, astronauts who return from spaceflight show substantial differences in their abilities to readapt to a gravitational environment. The ability to predict the manner and degree to which individual astronauts are affected will improve the effectiveness of countermeasure training programs designed to enhance sensorimotor adaptability. For such an approach to succeed, we must develop predictive measures of sensorimotor adaptability that will allow us to foresee, before actual spaceflight, which crewmembers are likely to experience greater challenges to their adaptive capacities. The goals of this project are to identify and characterize this set of predictive measures. Our approach includes: 1) behavioral tests to assess sensory bias and adaptability quantified using both strategic and plastic-adaptive responses; 2) imaging to determine individual brain morphological and functional features, using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion tensor imaging, resting state functional connectivity MRI, and sensorimotor adaptation task-related functional brain activation; and 3) assessment of genetic polymorphisms in the catechol-O-methyl transferase, dopamine receptor D2, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor genes and genetic polymorphisms of alpha2-adrenergic receptors that play a role in the neural pathways underlying sensorimotor adaptation. We anticipate that these predictive measures will be significantly correlated with individual differences in sensorimotor adaptability after long-duration spaceflight and exposure to an analog bed rest environment. We will be conducting a retrospective study, leveraging data already collected from relevant ongoing or completed bed rest and spaceflight studies. This data will be combined with predictor metrics that will be collected prospectively (as described for behavioral, brain imaging and genomic measures) from these returning subjects to build models for predicting post spaceflight and bed rest adaptive capability. In this presentation we will discuss the optimized set of tests for predictive metrics to be used for evaluating post mission adaptive capability as manifested in their outcome measures. Comparisons of model performance will allow us to better design and implement sensorimotor adaptability training countermeasures against decrements in post-mission adaptive capability that are customized for each crewmember's sensory biases, adaptive ability, brain structure, brain function, and genetic predispositions. The ability to customize adaptability training will allow more efficient use of crew time during training and will optimize training prescriptions for astronauts to mitigate the deleterious effects of spaceflight.

Mulavara, A. P.↗

DSS-SimPy-RL (Open-DSS and SimPy based Cyber-Physical RL environment) [SWR-23-29]

Recently, numerous data-driven approaches to control an electric grid using machine learning techniques have been investigated. With the advancement of reinforcement learning (RL) based techniques, gradually the conventional optimization based solvers are being replaced with RL approach where there is uncertainty in the environment such as renewable generation or cyber system emulation. However, to train an agent efficiently, it requires numerous interactions with an environment to learn the best policies. There are numerous RL environments for the power systems based on some well-known simulators, similarly there are environment for communication domains. While majority of the cyber emulators are based in an UNIX environment, the power simulators are based in the Windows-based operating system, the generation of cyber-physical mixed domain RL environment has been challenging. Existing co-simulation methods are efficient but resource and time intensive to generate large scale data set for training RL agents. Hence, this software focuses on development and validation of a mixed domain RL environment using Open DSS for the physical side and leverages a discrete event simulator python package, SimPy, for cyber-side emulation which is Operating Systems agnostic. Further utilizing this software co-simulation and training RL agents for re-routing based resilient control for network reconfiguration and volt-var control in power distribution feeder are performed.

Sahu, Abhijeet↗

Georgia Tech Accelerated, Compressed, and Regularized Compute of Kinetic-based PDEs (Final Report)

This report summarizes the collaborative effort between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Georgia Tech to enhance the BoBa library for tensor train computation in PDE solvers, with a target on kinetic equations and their continuum limits. We aimed to reduce computational cost and memory usage by replacing traditional array-based computations with tensor trains. We examined the compressibility of time-evolving solutions to the Euler equations with discontinuities. We also explored using the first invsicid and linear regularization of the compressible flow equations via the information geometric regularization (IGR). We explored this in a tensor train formulation. To identify that inverse terms in the IGR equations pose problems for tensor train formulations and investigate efficient methods for batched inversion of tensor trains.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Uncertainty-aware molecular dynamics from Bayesian active learning for phase transformations and thermal transport in SiC

Abstract Machine learning interatomic force fields are promising for combining high computational efficiency and accuracy in modeling quantum interactions and simulating atomistic dynamics. Active learning methods have been recently developed to train force fields efficiently and automatically. Among them, Bayesian active learning utilizes principled uncertainty quantification to make data acquisition decisions. In this work, we present a general Bayesian active learning workflow, where the force field is constructed from a sparse Gaussian process regression model based on atomic cluster expansion descriptors. To circumvent the high computational cost of the sparse Gaussian process uncertainty calculation, we formulate a high-performance approximate mapping of the uncertainty and demonstrate a speedup of several orders of magnitude. We demonstrate the autonomous active learning workflow by training a Bayesian force field model for silicon carbide (SiC) polymorphs in only a few days of computer time and show that pressure-induced phase transformations are accurately captured. The resulting model exhibits close agreement with both ab initio calculations and experimental measurements, and outperforms existing empirical models on vibrational and thermal properties. The active learning workflow readily generalizes to a wide range of material systems and accelerates their computational understanding.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Training self-learning circuits for power-efficient solutions

As the size and ubiquity of artificial intelligence and computational machine learning models grow, the energy required to train and use them is rapidly becoming economically and environmentally unsustainable. Recent laboratory prototypes of self-learning electronic circuits, such as “physical learning machines,” open the door to analog hardware that directly employs physics to learn desired functions from examples at a low energy cost. In this work, we show that this hardware platform allows for an even further reduction in energy consumption by using good initial conditions and a new learning algorithm. Using analytical calculations, simulations, and experiments, we show that a trade-off emerges when learning dynamics attempt to minimize both the error and the power consumption of the solution—greater power reductions can be achieved at the cost of decreasing solution accuracy. Finally, we demonstrate a practical procedure to weigh the relative importance of error and power minimization, improving the power efficiency given a specific tolerance to error.

Stern, Menachem (ORCID:0000000302158082)↗

A Transfer Learning Strategy for Improving the Data Efficiency of Deep Reinforcement Learning Control in Smart Buildings

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful tool that has shown promising results in many domains such as robotics and game-playing. Because RL algorithms learn optimal control policies by continuously interacting with their environments, these algorithms require a lot of data to learn, which limits their application to a wide range of domains. For this reason, there is an immense need for improving the training and data efficiency of RL. Towards addressing this research gap, this paper proposes a transfer learning (TL) approach to improve the efficiency of the RL algorithms by reducing data need and, thus, reducing training time. To demonstrate the proposed approach, a knowledge transfer from a set of buildings to another building was conducted. The results show that the proposed TL approach is a promising method that can efficiently harness the information from similar RL tasks and reduce the data needs of RL algorithms.

Amasyali, Kadir↗

Layer-Parallel Training of Deep Residual Neural Networks

Residual neural networks (ResNets) are a promising class of deep neural networks that have shown excellent performance for a number of learning tasks, e.g., image classification and recognition. Mathematically, ResNet architectures can be interpreted as forward Euler discretizations of a nonlinear initial value problem whose time-dependent control variables represent the weights of the neural network. Hence, training a ResNet can be cast as an optimal control problem of the associated dynamical system. For similar time-dependent optimal control problems arising in engineering applications, parallel-in-time methods have shown notable improvements in scalability. This paper demonstrates the use of those techniques for efficient and effective training of ResNets. The proposed algorithms replace the classical (sequential) forward and backward propagation through the network layers with a parallel nonlinear multigrid iteration applied to the layer domain. This adds a new dimension of parallelism across layers that is attractive when training very deep networks. From this basic idea, we derive multiple layer-parallel methods. The most efficient version employs a simultaneous optimization approach where updates to the network parameters are based on inexact gradient information in order to speed up the training process. Finally, using numerical examples from supervised classification, we demonstrate that the new approach achieves a training performance similar to that of traditional methods, but enables layer-parallelism and thus provides speedup over layer-serial methods through greater concurrency.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Filament-Free Bulk Resistive Memory Enables Deterministic Analogue Switching

Digital computing is nearing its physical limits as computing needs and energy consumption rapidly increase. Analogue-memory-based neuromorphic computing can be orders of magnitude more energy efficient at data-intensive tasks like deep neural networks, but has been limited by the inaccurate and unpredictable switching of analogue resistive memory. Filamentary resistive random access memory (RRAM) suffers from stochastic switching due to the random kinetic motion of discrete defects in the nanometer-sized filament. Here, this stochasticity is overcome by incorporating a solid electrolyte interlayer, in this case, yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ), toward eliminating filaments. Filament-free, bulk-RRAM cells instead store analogue states using the bulk point defect concentration, yielding predictable switching because the statistical ensemble behavior of oxygen vacancy defects is deterministic even when individual defects are stochastic. Both experiments and modeling show bulk-RRAM devices using TiO2-X switching layers and YSZ electrolytes yield deterministic and linear analogue switching for efficient inference and training. Bulk-RRAM solves many outstanding issues with memristor unpredictability that have inhibited commercialization, and can, therefore, enable unprecedented new applications for energy-efficient neuromorphic computing. Beyond RRAM, this work shows how harnessing bulk point defects in ionic materials can be used to engineer deterministic nanoelectronic materials and devices.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Inversion of Time-Lapse Seismic Reservoir Monitoring Data Using CycleGAN: A Deep Learning-Based Approach for Estimating Dynamic Reservoir Property Changes

Carbon capture and storage is being pursued globally as a geoengineering measure for reducing the emission of anthropogenic CO 2 the atmosphere. Comprehensive monitoring, verification, and accounting programs must be established for demonstrating the safe storage of injected CO 2 . One of the most commonly deployed monitoring techniques is time-lapse seismic reservoir monitoring (also known as 4-D seismic), which involves comparing 3-D seismic survey data taken at the same study site but over different times. Analyses of 4-D seismic data volumes can help improve the quality of storage reservoir characterization, track the movement of injected CO 2 plume, and identify potential CO 2 spillover/leakage from the storage reservoirblue. However, the derivation of high-resolution CO 2 saturation maps from 4-D seismic data is a highly nonlinear and ill-posed inverse problem, often requiring significant computational effort. In this research, we apply a physics-based deep learning method to facilitate the solution of both the forward and inverse problems in seismic inversion while honoring physical constraints. A cycle generative adversarial neural network (CycleGAN) model is trained to learn the bidirectional functional mappings between the reservoir dynamic property changes and seismic attribute changes, such that both forward and inverse solutions can be obtained efficiently from the trained model. We show that our CycleGAN-based approach not only improves the reliability of 4-D seismic inversion but also expedites the quantitative interpretation. Our deep learning-based workflow is generic and can be readily used for reservoir characterization and reservoir model updates involving the use of 4-D seismic data.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks for Solving Heat Transfer Problems

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have been used as a deep learning approach to solving physics and engineering problems. Using deep learning for these problems is attractive in that reasonably accurate models can be inferred from only raw data, eliminating the need to define the exact physical equations governing a problem. We expand on previous work using GANs to generate steady-state solutions to the two-dimensional heat equation. Using a basic conditional GAN (cGAN), we generate accurate solutions for rectangular domains conditioned on four edge boundary conditions (MAE < 0.5%). For finding steady-state solutions over arbitrary two-dimensional domains (not constrained to rectangles), we use a cGAN designed for image-to-image translation. We train this GAN on various types of geometric domains (circles, squares, triangles, shapes with one circular or rectangular hole), achieving accurate results on test data made up of geometries similar to those in training (MAE < 1%). For both of these GANs, we experiment with different loss function terms, showing that a term using the gradients of solution images significantly improves the basic cGAN but not the image-to-image GAN. Lastly, we show that the image-to-image GAN performs poorly when applied to two-dimensional geometries that vary in structure from training data (MAE < 8% for shapes with multiple holes or different shaped holes). This demonstrates the cGAN's lack of generalizability. While the cGAN is an accurate and computationally efficient method when trained and tested on similarly structured data, it is a much less reliable method when applied to data that is slightly different in structure from the training data.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Large Scale Caching and Streaming of Training Data for Online Deep Learning

The training of deep neural network models on large data remains a difficult problem, despite progress towards scalable techniques. In particular, there is a mismatch between the random but predetermined order in which AI flows select training samples and the streaming I/O patterns for which traditional HPC data storage (e.g., parallel file systems) are designed. In addition, as more data are obtained, it is feasible neither simply to train learning models incrementally, due to catastrophic forgetting (i.e., bias towards new samples), nor to train frequently from scratch, due to prohibitive time and/or resource constraints. In this paper, we study data management techniques that combine caching and streaming with rehearsal support in order to enable efficient access to training samples in both offline training and continual learning. We revisit state-of-art streaming approaches based on data pipelines that transparently handle prefetching, caching, shuffling, and data augmentation, and discuss the challenges and opportunities that arise when combining these methods with data-parallel training techniques. We also report on preliminary experiments that evaluate the I/O overheads involved in accessing the training samples from a parallel file system (PFS) under several concurrency scenarios, highlighting the impact of the PFS on the design of the data pipelines.

data pipelines↗

ALTRIOS (Advanced Locomotive Technology and Rail Infrastructure Optimization System) [SWR-22-54]

The Advanced Locomotive Technology and Rail Infrastructure Optimization System (ALTRIOS) is a unique, fully integrated, open-source software tool to evaluate strategies for deploying advanced locomotive technologies and associated infrastructure for cost-effective decarbonization. ALTRIOS simulates freight-demand driven train scheduling, mainline meet-pass planning, locomotive dynamics, train dynamics, energy conversion efficiencies, and energy storage dynamics of line-haul train operations. Because new locomotives represent a significant long-term capital investment and new technologies must be thoroughly demonstrated before deployment, this tool provides guidance on the risk/reward tradeoffs of different technology rollout strategies. An open, integrated simulation tool is invaluable for identifying future research needs and making decisions on technology development, routes, and train selection. ALTRIOS was developed as part of a collaborative effort by a team comprising the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), and BNSF Railway. Python Package: https://pypi.org/project/altrios/ Rust Crate: https://crates.io/crates/altrios-core

Baker, Chad↗

Final Report for ARPA-E LOCOMOTIVES Advanced Locomotive Technology and Rail Infrastructure Optimization System (ALTRIOS) Project

The Advanced Locomotive Technology and Rail Infrastructure Optimization System (ALTRIOS) is a unique, fully integrated, open-source software tool used to evaluate strategies for cost-effectively deploying advanced locomotive technologies and associated infrastructure. ALTRIOS simulates freight-demand-driven train scheduling, mainline meet-pass planning, locomotive dynamics, train dynamics, energy conversion efficiencies, and energy storage dynamics of line-haul train operations. Because new locomotives represent a significant long-term capital investment and new technologies must be thoroughly demonstrated before deployment, this tool provides guidance on the risk/reward trade-offs and operation integration of different technology rollout strategies. An open, integrated simulation tool is valuable for identifying future research needs and making decisions on technology development, routes, and train selection. This final report details the ALTRIOS software architecture, major modules and components, and data validation process. It demonstrates the software's utility through a 30-year rollout case study targeting high penetration of advanced powertrain technologies by 2050 for two BNSF Railway routes: loaded taconite ore trains from Hibbing, Minnesota, to Superior, Wisconsin, and mixed-freight trains from Superior to Minneapolis, Minnesota.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Patch2Self2: Self-supervised Denoising on Coresets via Matrix Sketching

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) non-invasively maps brain white matter yet necessitates denoising due to low signal-to-noise ratios. Patch2Self (P2S) employing self-supervised techniques and regression on a Casorati matrix effectively denoises dMRI images and has become the new de-facto standard in this field. P2S however is resource intensive both in terms of running time and memory usage as it uses all voxels (n) from all-but-one held-in volumes (d-1) to learn a linear mapping Phi : \mathbb R ^ n x(d-1) \mapsto \mathbb R ^ n for denoising the held-out volume. The increasing size and dimensionality of higher resolution dMRI acquisitions can make P2S infeasible for large-scale analyses. This work exploits the redundancy imposed by P2S to alleviate its performance issues and inspect regions that influence the noise disproportionately. Specifically this study makes a three-fold contribution: (1) We present Patch2Self2 (P2S2) a method that uses matrix sketching to perform self-supervised denoising. By solving a sub-problem on a smaller sub-space so called coreset we show how P2S2 can yield a significant speedup in training time while using less memory. (2) We present a theoretical analysis of P2S2 focusing on determining the optimal sketch size through rank estimation a key step in achieving a balance between denoising accuracy and computational efficiency. (3) We show how the so-called statistical leverage scores can be used to interpret the denoising of dMRI data a process that was traditionally treated as a black-box. Experimental results on both simulated and real data affirm that P2S2 maintains denoising quality while significantly enhancing speed and memory efficiency achieved by training on a reduced data subset.

Fadnavis, Shreyas↗

Training Data Regarding Optimal Power Flow For Efficient Machine Learning

The code is intended to take the data outputted by the MATPOWER OPF solver tools and restructures the data in a way that is best suited for machine learning. The variables are read and the desired values are taken and added to an array in the correct format. This array is then converted into a python array for future use. The code also utilizes MATPOWER's ability to construct different power flow scenarios and repeat them a chosen number of times. Each iteration will add a new line to the formatted array so that the final output is a matrix has a height equal to the number of repetition used.

Seidel, RachaelI↗