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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 1,711 records · Page 95

Estimation of cerebral blood flow velocity during breath-hold challenge using artificial neural networks

The effect of untreated Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) on cerebral haemodynamics and CA impairment is an active field of research interest. A breath-hold challenge is usually used in clinical and research settings to simulate cardiovascular and cerebrovascular changes that mimic OSA events. This work utilises temporal arterial oxygen saturation (SpO 2 ) and photoplethysmography (PPG) signals to estimate the temporal cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFv) waveform. Measurements of CBFv, SpO 2 , and PPG, were acquired concurrently from volunteers performing two different protocols of breath-hold challenge in the supine position. Past values of the SpO 2 and PPG signals were used to estimate the current values of CBFv using different permutations and topologies of supervised learning with shallow artificial neural networks (ANNs). Measurements from one protocol were used to train the ANNs and find the optimum topologies, which in turn were tested using the other protocol. Data collected from 10 normotensive, healthy subjects (four females, age 28.5 ± 6.1 years, Body Mass Index (BMI) 24.0 ± 4.7 kg/m 2 ) were used in this study. The results show that different subjects have different optimum topologies for ANNs, thus indicating the effects of inter-subject variability on ANNs. Successfully reconstructed blind waveforms for the same subject group in the second protocol showed a reasonable accuracy of 60–80% estimation compared to the measured waveforms.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Improving operational performance using machine learning analysis of Radiation Portal Monitor measurements

Radiation Portal Monitors (RPMs) have been installed worldwide to scan vehicles and cargo for the presence of radiological and nuclear materials. In field operations, the sensitivity of these systems is typically limited by the relatively high rates of nuisance alarms that usually must be followed up with secondary inspections. We have developed a machine-learning based alarm analysis system that has been deployed at numerous locations in the U.S. and internationally. Our Enhanced Radiological Nuclear Inspection and Evaluation (ERNIE) analysis software and its derivatives have demonstrated increased sensitivity to radiological and nuclear material of concern while reducing nuisance alarms by as much as an order of magnitude.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Utility maximizing dynamic resource management in an oversubscribed energy-constrained heterogeneous computing system

The need for greater performance in high performance computing systems combined with rising costs of electricity to power these systems motivates the need for energy-efficient resource management. Driven by the requirements of the Extreme Scale Systems Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, our study addresses the problem of scheduling dynamically-arriving tasks to machines in an oversubscribed and energy-constrained heterogeneous distributed computing environment. Our goal is to maximize total “utility” earned by the system, where the utility of a task is defined by a monotonically-decreasing function that represents the value of completing that task at different times. To address this problem, we design four energy-aware resource allocation heuristics and compare their performance to heuristics from the literature. For our given energy-constrained environment, we also design an energy filtering technique that helps some heuristics regulate their energy consumption by allowing tasks to only consume up to an estimated fair-share of energy. Extensive sensitivity analyses of the heuristics in environments with different levels of heterogeneity show that heuristics with the ability to balance both energy consumption and utility exhibit the best performance because they save energy for use by future tasks.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Substrate binding-induced conformational transitions in the omega-3 fatty acid transporter MFSD2A

Major Facilitator Superfamily Domain containing 2 A (MFSD2A) is a transporter that is highly enriched at the blood-brain and blood-retinal barriers, where it mediates Na + -dependent uptake of ω-3 fatty acids in the form of lysolipids into the brain and eyes, respectively. Despite recent structural insights, it remains unclear how this process is initiated, and driven by Na + . Here, we perform Molecular Dynamics simulations which demonstrate that substrates enter outward facing MFSD2A from the outer leaflet of the membrane via lateral openings between transmembrane helices 5/8 and 2/11. The substrate headgroup enters first and engages in Na + -bridged interactions with a conserved glutamic acid, while the tail is surrounded by hydrophobic residues. This binding mode is consistent with a “trap-and-flip” mechanism and triggers transition to an occluded conformation. Furthermore, using machine learning analysis, we identify key elements that enable these transitions. These results advance our molecular understanding of the MFSD2A transport cycle.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

3D-Printing of Meso-structurally Ordered Carbon Fiber/Polymer Composites with Unprecedented Orthotropic Physical Properties

Here we report the first example of a class of additively manufactured carbon fiber reinforced composite (AMCFRC) materials which have been achieved through the use of a latent thermal cured aromatic thermoset resin system, through an adaptation of direct ink writing (DIW) 3D-printing technology. We have developed a means of printing high performance thermoset carbon fiber composites, which allow the fiber component of a resin and carbon fiber fluid to be aligned in three dimensions via controlled micro-extrusion and subsequently cured into complex geometries. Characterization of our composite systems clearly show that we achieved a high order of fiber alignment within the composite microstructure, which in turn allows these materials to outperform equivalently filled randomly oriented carbon fiber and polymer composites. Moreover, our AM carbon fiber composite systems exhibit highly orthotropic mechanical and electrical responses as a direct result of the alignment of carbon fiber bundles in the microscale which we predict will ultimately lead to the design of truly tailorable carbon fiber/polymer hybrid materials having locally programmable complex electrical, thermal and mechanical response.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

P SI4 1.4: Open-source software for high-throughput quantum chemistry

PSI4 is a free and open-source ab initio electronic structure program providing implementations of Hartree–Fock, density functional theory, many-body perturbation theory, configuration interaction, density cumulant theory, symmetry-adapted perturbation theory, and coupled-cluster theory. Most of the methods are quite efficient, thanks to density fitting and multi-core parallelism. The program is a hybrid of C++ and Python, and calculations may be run with very simple text files or using the Python API, facilitating post-processing and complex workflows; method developers also have access to most of PSI4 's core functionalities via Python. Job specification may be passed using The Molecular Sciences Software Institute (MolSSI) QCSCHEMA data format, facilitating interoperability. We announce a rewrite of our top-level computation driver, and concomitant adoption of the MolSSI QCARCHIVE INFRASTRUCTURE project, makes the latest version of PSI4 well suited to distributed computation of large numbers of independent tasks. The project has fostered the development of independent software components that may be reused in other quantum chemistry programs.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Ergodicity, lack thereof, and the performance of reservoir computing with memristive networks

Abstract Networks composed of nanoscale memristive components, such as nanowire and nanoparticle networks, have recently received considerable attention because of their potential use as neuromorphic devices. In this study, we explore ergodicity in memristive networks, showing that the performance on machine leaning tasks improves when these networks are tuned to operate at the edge between two global stability points. We find this lack of ergodicity is associated with the emergence of memory in the system. We measure the level of ergodicity using the Thirumalai-Mountain metric, and we show that in the absence of ergodicity, two different memristive network systems show improved performance when utilized as reservoir computers (RC). We highlight that it is also important to let the system synchronize to the input signal in order for the performance of the RC to exhibit improvements over the baseline.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Long-time molecular dynamics simulations on massively parallel platforms: A comparison of parallel replica dynamics and parallel trajectory splicing

Molecular dynamics (MD) is one of the most widely used techniques in computational materials science. By providing fully resolved trajectories, it allows for a natural description of static, thermodynamic, and kinetic properties. A major hurdle that has hampered the use of MD is the fact that the timescales that can be directly simulated are very limited, even when using massively parallel computers. We compare two time-parallelization approaches, parallel replica dynamics (ParRep) and parallel trajectory splicing (ParSplice), that were specifically designed to address this issue for rare event systems by leveraging parallel computing resources. Using simulations of the relaxation of small disordered platinum nanoparticles, a comparative performance analysis of the two methods is presented. Finally, the results show that ParSplice can significantly outperform ParRep in the common case where the trajectory remains trapped for a long time within a region of configuration space but makes rapid structural transitions within this region.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Advanced Artificial Science. The development of an artificial science and engineering research infrastructure to facilitate innovative computational modeling, analysis, and application to interdisciplinary areas of scientific investigation.

This is a final report of the DOE award DE-SC0001132, Advanced Artificial Science. The development of an artificial science and engineering research infrastructure to facilitate innovative computational modeling, analysis, and application to interdisciplinary areas of scientific investigation. This document describes the achievements of the goals, and resulting research made possible by this award.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Cloud Computing Applications in Support of Earth Science Activities at Marshall Space Flight Center

Currently, the NASA Nebula Cloud Computing Platform is available to Agency personnel in a pre-release status as the system undergoes a formal operational readiness review. Over the past year, two projects within the Earth Science Office at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center have been investigating the performance and value of Nebula s "Infrastructure as a Service", or "IaaS" concept and applying cloud computing concepts to advance their respective mission goals. The Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center focuses on the transition of unique NASA satellite observations and weather forecasting capabilities for use within the operational forecasting community through partnerships with NOAA s National Weather Service (NWS). SPoRT has evaluated the performance of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model on virtual machines deployed within Nebula and used Nebula instances to simulate local forecasts in support of regional forecast studies of interest to select NWS forecast offices. In addition to weather forecasting applications, rapidly deployable Nebula virtual machines have supported the processing of high resolution NASA satellite imagery to support disaster assessment following the historic severe weather and tornado outbreak of April 27, 2011. Other modeling and satellite analysis activities are underway in support of NASA s SERVIR program, which integrates satellite observations, ground-based data and forecast models to monitor environmental change and improve disaster response in Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Himalayas. Leveraging SPoRT s experience, SERVIR is working to establish a real-time weather forecasting model for Central America. Other modeling efforts include hydrologic forecasts for Kenya, driven by NASA satellite observations and reanalysis data sets provided by the broader meteorological community. Forecast modeling efforts are supplemented by short-term forecasts of convective initiation, determined by geostationary satellite observations processed on virtual machines powered by Nebula.

Molthan, Andrew L.↗

Data for FUN-PROSE: A Deep Learning Approach to Predict Condition-Specific Gene Expression in Fungi

mRNA levels of all genes in a genome is a critical piece of information defining the overall state of the cell in a given environmental condition. Being able to reconstruct such condition-specific expression in fungal genomes is particularly important to metabolically engineer these organisms to produce desired chemicals in industrially scalable conditions. Most previous deep learning approaches focused on predicting the average expression levels of a gene based on its promoter sequence, ignoring its variation across different conditions. Here we present FUN-PROSE—a deep learning model trained to predict differential expression of individual genes across various conditions using their promoter sequences and expression levels of all transcription factors. We train and test our model on three fungal species and get the correlation between predicted and observed condition-specific gene expression as high as 0.85. We then interpret our model to extract promoter sequence motifs responsible for variable expression of individual genes. We also carried out input feature importance analysis to connect individual transcription factors to their gene targets. A sizeable fraction of both sequence motifs and TF-gene interactions learned by our model agree with previously known biological information, while the rest corresponds to either novel biological facts or indirect correlations.

Genomics↗

PhotoSketch: a photocentric urban 3D modeling system

Online mapping services from Google, Apple, and Microsoft are exceedingly popular applications for exploring 3D urban cities. Their explosive growth provides impetus for photorealistic 3D modeling of urban scenes. Although classical algorithms such as multiview stereo and laser range scanners are traditional sources for detailed 3D models of existing structures, they generate heavyweight models that are not appropriate for the streaming data that these navigation applications leverage. Instead, lightweight models as produced by interactive image-based tools are better suited for this domain. The contribution of this work is that it merges the benefits of multiview geometry, an intuitive sketching interface, and dynamic texture mapping to produce lightweight photorealistic 3D models of buildings. We present experimental results from urban scenes using our PhotoSketch system.

3D photography↗

Intermediate-state-trapped mutants pinpoint G protein-coupled receptor conformational allostery

Understanding the roles of intermediate states in signaling is pivotal to unraveling the activation processes of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). However, the field is still struggling to define these conformational states with sufficient resolution to study their individual functions. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of enriching the populations of discrete states via conformation-biased mutants. These mutants adopt distinct distributions among five states that lie along the activation pathway of adenosine A 2A receptor (A 2A R), a class A GPCR. Our study reveals a structurally conserved cation-π lock between transmembrane helix VI (TM6) and Helix8 that regulates cytoplasmic cavity opening as a “gatekeeper” for G protein penetration. A GPCR activation process based on the well-discerned conformational states is thus proposed, allosterically micro-modulated by the cation-π lock and a previously well-defined ionic interaction between TM3 and TM6. Intermediate-state-trapped mutants will also provide useful information in relation to receptor-G protein signal transduction.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗