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At least 1,621 records · Page 90

Ribosome-inactivation by a class of widely distributed C-tail anchored membrane proteins

Ribosome hibernation is a commonly used strategy that protects ribosomes under unfavorable conditions and regulates developmental processes. Multiple ribosome-hibernation factors have been identified in all domains of life, but due to their structural diversity and the lack of a common inactivation mechanism, it is currently unknown how many different hibernation factors exist. Here, we show that the YqjD/ElaB/YgaM paralogs, initially discovered as membrane-bound ribosome binding proteins in E. coli, constitute an abundant class of ribosome-hibernating proteins, which are conserved across all proteobacteria and some other bacterial phyla. Our data demonstrate that they inhibit in vitro protein synthesis by interacting with the 50S ribosomal subunit. In vivo cross-linking combined with mass spectrometry revealed their specific interactions with proteins surrounding the ribosomal tunnel exit and even their penetration into the ribosomal tunnel. Thus, YqjD/ElaB/YgaM inhibit translation by blocking the ribosomal tunnel and thus mimic the activity of antimicrobial peptides and macrolide antibiotics.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Vehicle energy consumption estimation using large scale simulations and machine learning methods

Vehicle energy consumption and powertrain operations for future vehicle powertrain technologies are predicted through full-vehicle simulations using Autonomie, a simulation tool developed at Argonne National Laboratory. Over 1 million vehicles, with different powertrain types (conventional and numerous electrified powertrains) and component technologies (advanced engines, batteries, electrical machines, light weighting) are simulated for outputs including vehicle fuel economy and cost. Despite the ability of Autonomic to predict fuel economy given various combination of vehicle inputs, the full-vehicle simulation is very time-consuming. It takes approximately 84 h to simulate for 33,060 vehicles even using distributed computing on a cluster of 128 worker nodes. Moreover, Autonomic is unable to populate a continuous output space through simulation since it only yields outputs with discrete values instead of an input-output relation. This paper proposes a novel large-scale learning and prediction process (LSLPP) via machine learning approaches to answer the need for a continuous space of vehicle fuel economy and a more efficient simulation process. By learning in a supervised fashion to discover structures in data, the machine learning approaches seek to train a model that can explain the data with which we can perform prediction over unseen data. As such, we are able to accomplish analytic continuation on the current discrete space of simulation results. In addition, we present a random sampling -based numerosity reduction algorithm incorporated in LSLPP that reduces simulation runs and improves efficiency of data procurement. We analytically derive a theoretical bound in order to guarantee the effectiveness of our algorithm. We also compare random sampling to stratified sampling and suggest sampling strategies. A user-friendly tool is developed to support the process. Our experimental results confirm that the proposed LSLPP is able to greatly accelerate prediction and analysis of vehicle fuel economy. The output of this study is used by the US government to evaluate the impact of its R&D funding on energy security and CO 2 emission as well as for the setting of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Enhanced Carbon Dioxide Capture Using a Mixed Amino Acid Salt Solution

This study investigated the carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) absorption and desorption performance of a mixed amino acid solution (containing glycine (G), alanine (A), proline (P), and lysine (L), GAPL). These four amino acids were intentionally selected to reflect the chemical and structural variations (pK a and steric hindrance of amino groups) of amino acids. The single cycle CO 2 capture experiment showed that the GAPL salt solution had 19% higher CO 2 absorption (0.91 mol CO 2 /mol amino acids) compared to the absorption calculated by adding the proportional capacities of G, A, P, and L (0.77 mol CO 2 /mol amino acids). 13 C NMR data delineated the effects of individual amino acids on carbamate and bicarbonate/carbonate formation and elucidated the distribution of captured CO 2 in the GAPL salt solution. The recirculation experiment concluded that the GAPL salt solution had much better CO 2 capture performance than the conventional monoethanolamine process. Less than 10% of the absorption and cyclic capacity of the GAPL salt solution was lost after ten cycles of CO 2 capture. Furthermore, this study demonstrated an approach that blended amino acid solutions can be tailored and designed as new, efficient reagents to massively capture CO 2 in a technically feasible, economically viable, and environmentally friendly manner.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Recent evolutions in the LTDP CDF project

In the latest years, CNAF (the national center of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics INFN dedicated to Research and Development on Information and Communication Technologies) has been working on the Long Term Data Preservation (LTDP) project for the CDF experiment, active at Fermilab from 1990 to 2011. The main aims of the project are to protect the most relevant part of the CDF RUN-2 data collected between 2001 and 2011 and already stored on tape at CNAF (4 PB), as well as to ensure the availability and the access to the analysis facility to those data over time. Lately, the CDF database, hosting information about CDF datasets such as their structure, file locations and metadata, has been imported from Fermilab to CNAF. Also, the Sequential Access via Metadata (SAM) station data handling tool for CDF data management, that allows to manage data transfers and to retrieve information from the CDF database, has been properly installed and configured at CNAF. This was a fundamental step in the perspective of a complete decommissioning of CDF services on Fermilab side. An access system has been designed and tested to submit CDF analysis jobs, using CDF software distributed via CERN Virtual Machine File System (CVMFS) and requesting delivery of CDF files stored on CNAF tapes, as well as data present only on Fermilab storage archive. Moreover, the availability and the correctness of all CDF data stored on CNAF tapes has been verified. This paper describes all these recent evolutions in detail, presenting the future plans for the LTDP project at CNAF.

Fornari, Federico↗

Maximizing efficiency of dataset compression for machine learning potentials with information theory

Machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) balance high accuracy and lower costs compared to density functional theory calculations, but their performance often depends on the size and diversity of training datasets. Large datasets improve model accuracy and generalization but are computationally expensive to produce and train on, while smaller datasets risk discarding rare but important atomic environments and compromising MLIP accuracy/reliability. Here, we develop an information-theoretical framework to quantify the efficiency of dataset compression methods and propose an algorithm that maximizes this efficiency. By framing atomistic dataset compression as an instance of the minimum set cover (MSC) problem over atom-centered environments, our method identifies the smallest subset of structures that contains as much information as possible from the original dataset while pruning redundant information. The approach is extensively demonstrated on the GAP-20 and TM23 datasets and validated on 64 varied datasets from the ColabFit repository. Across all cases, MSC consistently retains outliers, preserves dataset diversity, and reproduces the long-tail distributions of forces even at high compression rates, outperforming other subsampling methods. Furthermore, MLIPs trained on MSC-compressed datasets exhibit reduced error for out-of-distribution data even in low-data regimes. We explain these results using an outlier analysis and show that such quantitative conclusions could not be achieved with conventional dimensionality reduction methods. The algorithm is implemented in the open-source QUESTS package and can be used for several tasks in atomistic modeling, from data subsampling, outlier detection, and training improved MLIPs at a lower cost.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

The internal structure and geodynamics of Mars inferred from a 4.2-Gyr zircon record

Combining U–Pb ages with Lu–Hf data in zircon provides insights into the magmatic history of rocky planets. The Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034/7533 meteorites are samples of the southern highlands of Mars containing zircon with ages as old as 4476.3 ± 0.9 Ma, interpreted to reflect reworking of the primordial Martian crust by impacts. We extracted a statistically significant zircon population (n= 57) from NWA 7533 that defines a temporal record spanning 4.2 Gyr. Ancient zircons record ages from 4485.5 ± 2.2 Ma to 4331.0 ± 1.4 Ma, defining a bimodal distribution with groupings at 4474 ± 10 Ma and 4442 ± 17 Ma. We interpret these to represent intense bombardment episodes at the planet’s surface, possibly triggered by the early migration of gas giant planets. The unradiogenic initial Hf-isotope composition of these zircons establishes that Mars’s igneous activity prior to ~4.3 Ga was limited to impact-related reworking of a chemically enriched, primordial crust. A group of younger detrital zircons record ages from 1548.0 ± 8.8 Ma to 299.5 ± 0.6 Ma. The only plausible sources for these grains are the temporally associated Elysium and Tharsis volcanic provinces that are the expressions of deep-seated mantle plumes. The chondritic-like Hf-isotope compositions of these zircons require the existence of a primitive and convecting mantle reservoir, indicating that Mars has been in a stagnant-lid tectonic regime for most of its history. Our results imply that zircon is ubiquitous on the Martian surface, providing a faithful record of the planet’s magmatic history.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Cosmology with the Roman Space Telescope – Synergies with CMB lensing

ABSTRACT We explore synergies between the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and CMB lensing data to constrain dark energy and modified gravity scenarios. A simulated likelihood analysis of the galaxy clustering and weak lensing data from the Roman Space Telescope High Latitude Survey combined with CMB lensing data from the Simons Observatory is undertaken, marginalizing over important astrophysical effects and calibration uncertainties. Included in the modelling are the effects of baryons on small-scale clustering, scale-dependent growth suppression by neutrinos, as well as uncertainties in the galaxy clustering biases, in the intrinsic alignment contributions to the lensing signal, in the redshift distributions, and in the galaxy shape calibration. The addition of CMB lensing roughly doubles the dark energy figure-of-merit from Roman photometric survey data alone, varying from a factor of 1.7 to 2.4 improvement depending on the particular Roman survey configuration. Alternatively, the inclusion of CMB lensing information can compensate for uncertainties in the Roman galaxy shape calibration if it falls below the design goals. Furthermore, we report the first forecast of Roman constraints on a model-independent structure growth, parametrized by σ8(z), and on the Hu-Sawicki f(R) gravity as well as an improved forecast of the phenomenological (Σ0, μ0) model. We find that CMB lensing plays a crucial role in constraining σ8(z) at z > 2, with percent-level constraints forecasted out to z = 4. CMB lensing information does not improve constraints on the f(R) model substantially. It does, however, increase the (Σ0, μ0) figure-of-merit by a factor of about 1.5.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

On the relative bias of void tracers in the Dark Energy Survey

Luminous tracers of large-scale structure are not entirely representative of the distribution of mass in our Universe. As they arise from the highest peaks in the matter density field, the spatial distribution of luminous objects is biased towards those peaks. On large scales, where density fluctuations are mild, this bias simply amounts to a constant offset in the clustering amplitude of the tracer, known as linear bias. In this work we focus on the relative bias between galaxies and galaxy clusters that are located inside and in the vicinity of cosmic voids, extended regions of relatively low density in the large-scale structure of the Universe. With the help of mock data we verify that the relation between galaxy and cluster overdensity around voids remains linear. Hence, the void-centric density profiles of different tracers can be linked by a single multiplicative constant. This amounts to the same value as the relative linear bias between tracers for the largest voids in the sample. For voids of small sizes, which typically arise in higher density regions, this constant has a higher value, possibly showing an environmental dependence similar to that observed for the linear bias itself. We confirm our findings by analysing data obtained during the first year of observations by the Dark Energy Survey. As a side product, we present the first catalogue of three-dimensional voids extracted from a photometric survey with a controlled photo-z uncertainty. Finally, our results will be relevant in forthcoming analyses that attempt to use voids as cosmological probes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Effect of an electric field on the orientation of a liquid crystal in a cell with a nonuniform director distribution

The electric field-induced reorientation of a nematic liquid crystal in cells with a planar helicoidal or a homeoplanar structure of a director field is studied theoretically and experimentally. The dependences of the capacitances of these systems on the voltage in an applied electric field below and above the Fréedericksz threshold are experimentally obtained and numerically calculated. The calculations use the director distribution in volume that is obtained by direct minimization of free energy at various voltages. The inhomogeneity of the electric field inside a cell is taken into account. The calculation results are shown to agree with the experimental data.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Progress on Computational Modeling of Water-Based NSTF (FY2021)

This report documents the FY21 progress and achievements made in the computational analyses of the water-based NSTF. Both system-level and high-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analyses were performed to gain a complete understanding of the complex flow and heat transfer phenomena in natural convection systems. The progress on the waterbased NSTF experimental testing is summarized in a companion report (ANL-ART-230). As a continuation of progress from previous years, in FY21 the RELAP5 model of the NSTF was first updated to include a representative heated cavity that incorporated convection and conduction means of heat transfer. Two different cavity models were developed, one that models the radiation heat exchange among all surfaces in one enclosure (Cavity Model 1), and another that employs multiple radiation enclosures with each considering the surfaces at one axial level (Cavity Model 2). This updated RELAP5 deck was benchmarked with single-phase test data to tune form loss coefficients of the elbows and tees, along with heat transfer coefficients within the cavity and off the external insulation panels. This tuned model was then found to accurately predict fluid temperatures within 2.5% and both system and riser flow rates within 6% during single-phase, steady-state simulations. For transient simulations, there is a slight over prediction of the flow rate, fluid temperatures, and heater temperatures during the heat-up period, which indicate that the transient heat loss may be underestimated. Following, the capabilities of RELAP5-3D were examined, which feature a conduction enclosure model that is not present in the current version of RELAP5-MOD3.3 used for all previous NSTF simulations. As an initial comparison of the two codes, single-phase simulations were run that used similar input decks. The results indicate that the single-phase flow predicted by the two codes was very similar, however RELAP5-3D appears to predict a higher system flow during the two-phase transient when compared to the flow rates predicted by RELAP5-MOD3.3. Furthermore, RELAP5-3D run did not capture the density wave oscillations or geysering phenomena, which are large oscillation flow instabilities observed in the experimental facility. To further the prediction capabilities for capturing two-phase instabilities, Options 55, 57, 58, 61, which are implemented by default in RELAP5-MOD3.3 but not in RELAP5-3D, were investigated. When enabling Option 61, RELAP5-3D agrees well with MOD3.3 in predicting the total system flow, while other options have negligible effect on the predicted total system flow by RELAP5-3D. However, none of these options enables RELAP5-3D to produce the same flow instabilities. For future steps, efforts are currently underway to investigate RELAP5-3D’s different behavior in predicting low-pressure two-phase instabilities. STAR-CCM+ was used to perform CFD analysis of the water-based test facility and provide simulation results for comparisons to experimental data. Efforts first focused on describing the characteristics of flow within the heated cavity. A study was performed on whether possible leakage flow between the two sides of the cavity could substantially impact and explain the results. An additional second assumption was examined which defined adiabatic side walls, so physical insulation structures were added to the models to allow conduction across this outer insulation. The results suggest that potential porosity of the insulation could be a major factor in the temperature distribution within the cavity and should be considered in any studies where it is desirable to know the cavity wall temperatures to higher accuracy.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Multi-Scale Characterization of Porosity and Cracks in Silicon Carbide Cladding after Transient Reactor Test Facility Irradiation

Silicon carbide (SiC) ceramic matrix composite (CMC) cladding is currently being pursued as one of the leading candidates for accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) cladding for light water reactor applications. The morphology of fabrication defects, including the size and shape of voids, is one of the key challenges that impacts cladding performance and guarantees reactor safety. Therefore, quantification of defects’ size, location, distribution, and leak paths is critical to determining SiC CMC in-core performance. This research aims to provide quantitative insight into the defect’s distribution under multi-scale characterization at different length scales before and after different Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT) irradiation tests. A non-destructive multi-scale evaluation of irradiated SiC will help to assess critical microstructural defects from production and/or experimental testing to better understand and predict overall cladding performance. X-ray computed tomography (XCT), a non-destructive, data-rich characterization technique, is combined with lower length scale electronic microscopic characterization, which provides microscale morphology and structural characterization. This paper discusses a fully automatic workflow to detect and analyze SiC-SiC defects using image processing techniques on 3D X-ray images. Following the XCT data analysis, advanced characterizations from focused ion beam (FIB) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were conducted to verify the findings from the XCT data, especially quantitative results from local nano-scale TEM 3D tomography data, which were utilized to complement the 3D XCT results. In this work, three SiC samples (two irradiated and one unirradiated) provided by General Atomics are investigated. The irradiated samples were irradiated in a way that was expected to induce cracking, and indeed, the automated workflow developed in this work was able to successfully identify and characterize the defects formation in the irradiated samples while detecting no observed cracking in the unirradiated sample. These results demonstrate the value of automated XCT tools to better understand the damage and damage propagation in SiC-SiC structures for nuclear applications.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Coupling fine-scale root and canopy structure using ground-based remote sensing

Ecosystem physical structure, defined by the quantity and spatial distribution of biomass, influences a range of ecosystem functions. Remote sensing tools permit the non-destructive characterization of canopy and root features, potentially providing opportunities to link above- and belowground structure at fine spatial resolution in functionally meaningful ways. To test this possibility, we employed ground-based portable canopy LiDAR (PCL) and ground penetrating radar (GPR) along co-located transects in forested sites spanning multiple stages of ecosystem development and, consequently, of structural complexity. We examined canopy and root structural data for coherence (i.e., correlation in the frequency of spatial variation) at multiple spatial scales 10 m within each site using wavelet analysis. Forest sites varied substantially in vertical canopy and root structure, with leaf area index and root mass more becoming even vertically as forests aged. In all sites, above- and belowground structure, characterized as mean maximum canopy height and root mass, exhibited significant coherence at a scale of 3.5–4 m, and results suggest that the scale of coherence may increase with stand age. Our findings demonstrate that canopy and root structure are linked at characteristic spatial scales, which provides the basis to optimize scales of observation. Lastly, our study highlights the potential, and limitations, for fusing LiDAR and radar technologies to quantitatively couple above- and belowground ecosystem structure.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

HERUS: A CO ATLAS FROM SPIRE SPECTROSCOPY OF LOCAL ULIRGs

We present the Herschel SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (FTS) atlas for a complete flux-limited sample of local ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) as part of the HERschel Ultra Luminous InfraRed Galaxy Survey (HERUS). The data reduction is described in detail and was optimized for faint FTS sources ,with particular care being taken for the subtraction of the background, which dominates the continuum shape of the spectra. To improve the final spectra, special treatment in the data reduction has been given to any observation suffering from artifacts in the data caused by anomalous instrumental effects. Complete spectra are shown covering 200–671 μ m, with photometry in the SPIRE bands at 250, 350, and 500 μ m. The spectra include near complete CO ladders for over half of our sample, as well as fine structure lines from [C i] 370 μ m, [C i] 609 μ m, and [N ii] 205 μ m. We also detect H{sub 2}O lines in several objects. We construct CO spectral line energy distributions (SLEDs) for the sample, and compare their slopes with the far-infrared (FIR) colors and luminosities. We show that the CO SLEDs of ULIRGs can be broadly grouped into three classes based on their excitation. We find that the mid- J (5 < J < 8) lines are better correlated with the total FIR luminosity, suggesting that the warm gas component is closely linked to recent star formation. The higher J transitions do not linearly correlate with the FIR luminosity, consistent with them originating in hotter, denser gas that is unconnected to the current star formation. We conclude that in most cases more than one temperature component is required to model the CO SLEDs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Bias correcting regional scale Earth system model projections: novel approach using empirical mode decomposition

Bias correction is a crucial step in using Earth system model outputs for assessments, as it adjusts systematic errors by comparing the model to observations. However, standard methods – ranging from mean-based linear scaling to distribution-based quantile mapping typically treat bias correction as a single-scale process, overlooking the fact that biases can manifest differently across daily, seasonal, and annual timescales. In this study, we propose a novel, timescale-aware bias-correction approach built on Empirical Mode Decomposition. By decomposing the meteorological signal into multiple oscillatory components and aggregating them to represent distinct timescales, we apply targeted corrections to each component, thereby preserving both short- and long-term structure in the data. Experimental illustrations show that the timescale-aware EMDBC framework matches the performance of conventional quantile-delta mapping (QDM) at the native daily scale and achieves progressively larger bias reductions at bi-weekly, seasonal, and annual scales. As a result, the proposed approach offers a more robust path to accurate and reliable Earth system projections, strengthening their utility for resilience and adaptation planning.

Ganguli, Arkaprabha [Argonne National Laboratory (↗

NanoPSD: A software for automatic detection of Nano-Particle Shape Distribution in electron microscopy images

Accurate quantification of the size and morphology of nanoparticles from electron microscopy (EM) images is essential to understand growth mechanisms, surface reactivity, and functional behavior in nanoscale materials. Manual analysis remains slow, subjective, and difficult to reproduce in large datasets. We introduce NanoPSD (Nano-Particle Shape Distribution), an open-source and fully automated framework for quantitative particle detection and morphology analysis from EM images. NanoPSD integrates adaptive contrast enhancement, polarity-agnostic scale-bar detection, Optical Character Recognition (OCR)-based calibration, and classical segmentation via Otsu thresholding with morphological refinement. Particle contours are used to extract geometric descriptors, including equivalent circular diameter, aspect ratio, circularity, and solidity, enabling automated classification into spherical, rod-like, and aggregate morphologies. The framework supports both single-image and batch processing, generating publication-quality visualizations, LaTeX-ready tables, and structured comma-separated values (CSV) datasets. As a demonstration, we applied NanoPSD to plasma-synthesized nanoparticle samples diagnosed via transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The code produced statistically robust size and morphology distributions spanning a few to tens of nanometers with minimal user supervision. The pipeline demonstrates high reproducibility and scalability, processing large image collections with consistent calibration and output formatting. Its modular design enables seamless integration of future deep-learning-based segmentation models, providing a pathway toward intelligent, data-driven electron microscopy analysis.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Topologically Guided, Automated Construction of Metal–Organic Frameworks and Their Evaluation for Energy-Related Applications

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are promising materials for a range of energy and environmental applications. Here we describe in detail a computational algorithm and code to generate MOFs based on edge-transitive topological nets for subsequent evaluation via molecular simulation. This algorithm has been previously used by us to construct and evaluate 13 512 MOFs of 41 different topologies for cryo-adsorbed hydrogen storage. Grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations are used here to evaluate the 13 512 structures for the storage of gaseous fuels such as hydrogen and methane and nondistillative separation of xenon/krypton mixtures at various operating conditions. MOF performance for both gaseous fuel storage and xenon/krypton separation is influenced by topology. In conclusion, simulation data suggest that gaseous fuel storage performance is topology-dependent due to MOF properties such as void fraction and surface area combining differently in different topologies, whereas xenon/krypton separation performance is topology-dependent due to how topology constrains the pore size distribution.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Defect Tolerance in Methylammonium Lead Triiodide Perovskite

Photovoltaic applications of perovskite semiconductor material systems have generated considerable interest in part because of predictions that primary defect energy levels reside outside the bandgap. We present experimental evidence that this enabling material property is present in the halide-lead perovskite, CH3NH3PbI3 (MAPbI3), consistent with theoretical predictions. By performing X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, we induce and track dynamic chemical and electronic transformations in the perovskite. These data show compositional changes that begin immediately with exposure to X-ray irradiation, whereas the predominant electronic structure of the thin film on compact TiO2 appears tolerant to the formation of compensating defect pairs of VI and VMA and for a large range of I/Pb ratios. Changing film composition is correlated with a shift of the valence-band maximum only as the halide-lead ratio drops below 2.5. This delay is attributed to the invariance of MAPbI3 electronic structure to distributed defects that can significantly transform the electronic density of states only when in high concentrations.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗