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At least 1,783 records · Page 99

PDG: A Composite Method Based on the Resolution of the Identity

The Gaussian-3 (G3) composite approach for thermochemical properties is revisited in light of the enhanced computational efficiency and reduced memory costs by applying the resolution-of-the-identity (RI) approximation for two-electron repulsion integrals (ERIs) to the computationally demanding component methods in the G3 model: the energy and gradient computations via the second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) and the energy computations using the coupled-cluster singles–doubles method augmented with noniterative triples corrections [CCSD(T)]. Efficient implementation of the RI-based methods is achieved by employing a hybrid distributed/shared memory model based on MPI and OpenMP. The new variant of the G3 composite approach based on the RI approximation is termed the RI-G3 scheme, or alternatively the PDG method. The accuracy of the new RI-G3/PDG scheme is compared to the “standard” G3 composite approach that employs the memory-expensive four-center ERIs in the MP2 and CCSD(T) calculations. Taking the computation of the heats of formation of the closed-shell molecules in the G3/99 test set as a test case, it is demonstrated that the RI approximation introduces negligible changes to the mean absolute errors relative to the standard G3 model (less than 0.1 kcal/mol), while the standard deviations remain unaltered. Furthermore, the efficiency and memory requirements for the RI-MP2 and RI-CCSD(T) methods are compared to the standard MP2 and CCSD(T) approaches, respectively. The hybrid MPI/OpenMP-based RI-MP2 energy plus gradient computation is found to attain a 7.5× speedup over the standard MP2 calculations. For the most demanding CCSD(T) calculations, the application of the RI approximation is found to nearly halve the memory demand, confer about a 4–5× speedup for the CCSD iterations, and reduce the computational time for the compute-intensive triples correction step by several hours.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Frequency and Time Domain Nuclear-Electronic Orbital Equation-of-Motion Coupled Cluster Methods: Combination Bands and Electronic-Protonic Double Excitations

The accurate description of excited vibronic states is important for modeling a wide range of photoinduced processes. The nuclear-electronic orbital (NEO) approach, which treats specified protons on the same level as the electrons, can describe excited electronic-protonic states. Herein the multicomponent equation-of-motion coupled cluster with singles and doubles (NEO-EOM-CCSD) method and its time-domain counterpart, TD-NEO-EOM-CCSD, are developed and implemented. The application of these methods to the HCN molecule highlights their capabilities. These methods predict qualitatively reasonable energies and intensities for a combination band corresponding to simultaneous excitation of two vibrational modes, as well as an overtone. These methods also describe states with double excitation character, such as excited electronic-protonic states corresponding to the simultaneous excitation of an electron and a proton. The ability of the NEO-EOM-CCSD method and its time-dependent counterpart to describe combination bands, overtones, and double excitations will enable a wide range of photochemical applications.

Pavosevic, Fabijan↗

A Unified Analytical Method Greenness Score ( uAMGS ) Quantifies How Microscopic Imaging Is Greener Than Conventional Liquid Chromatography

Green chemistry is a set of principles for assessing, developing, and implementing methods that are safer, more efficient, and less detrimental to the environment. The analytical method greenness score (AMGS) is one of many metrics that attempt to evaluate traditional liquid chromatography (LC) based on the energy consumption of the instrument and the safety, health risks, and environmental impact of the solvents employed. Unfortunately, in practice, the AMGS is primarily focused on traditional separation methods in the pharmaceutical industry and is not amenable to cutting-edge separation science, including miniaturization. To broaden this scope, the unified Analytical Method Greenness Score (uAMGS) is presented here, which clarifies and expands on the underlying mathematics and incorporates both dimensional and uncertainty analysis, enabling its application to a broader range of analytical techniques. The uAMGS is used to compare the greenness of two distinct methods: single-molecule microscopy (SMM) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), which were used to collect equivalent data. uAMGS determines that SMM is significantly greener than HPLC due primarily to decreased solvent consumption. Overall, the uAMGS should allow chemists ranging from undergraduates to industrial PhDs to assess the greenness of a wide range of separations.

chemical separations↗

Methods for Carbon Mass Closure in Polyolefin Hydrocracking

Heterogeneous catalytic hydrocracking of polyolefins is a promising approach for the processing of postconsumer plastics, but product quantification methods remain inconsistent across the literature. In systems that generate a large fraction of vapor-phase products, typical product capture methods can result in large carbon balance deficits, exceeding 50%, compromising reported yields and selectivities. Here, we identify the major sources of product loss and develop enhanced capture methods to improve the quantification accuracy. Seven supplemental techniques were evaluated, targeting either increased vapor recovery (by increasing the volatility or system volume) or enhanced retention in the liquid phase (by decreasing volatility). Among these, a flow collection approach using a continuous helium sweep and downstream gas sampling bag capture yielded the highest recovery, achieving a 96 ± 9.2% carbon balance closure. We show that the efficacy of these methods is strongly dependent on product distribution. In general, solvent addition was most effective when condensable species dominate the product distribution, while flow collection was preferred when both condensable species and light gases are present in high concentrations. These results highlight the need for method-specific workup strategies and demonstrate that no single protocol is universally optimal. We provide general guidelines for selecting and implementing robust product capture techniques, enabling accurate yield and selectivity determinations in polyolefin hydrocracking systems.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Frequency-Bessel Transform Method for Effective Imaging of Higher-Mode Rayleigh Dispersion Curves From Ambient Seismic Noise Data

It has been widely recognized that the cross-correlation function of ambient seismic noise data recorded at two stations approximates to the part of Greens function between two stations. Therefore, the cross-correlation function should include higher modes, aside from the fundamental mode. However, the problem of measuring or extracting overtones from ambient seismic noise data remains. In this paper, we propose the frequency-Bessel transform method (F-J method) for extracting the dispersion curves of higher modes from ambient seismic noise data. We then assess the validity, accuracy, and applicability of the F-J method by conducting extensive numerical simulations and processing the observed ambient seismic noise data of the USArray. As demonstrated in this study, the F-J method is a convenient, practical, and accurate method for extracting the dispersion curves of multimodes from ambient seismic noise data and therefore has significant potentiality in the field of ambient seismic noise tomography.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Comparing EGF Methods for Estimating Corner Frequency and Stress Drop from P-wave Spectra

Empirical Green's functions (EGF) are widely applied to correct earthquake spectra for attenuation and other path effects in order to estimate corner frequencies and stress drops, but these source parameter estimates often exhibit poor agreement between different studies. We investigate this issue by analyzing a compact cluster of over 3000 aftershocks of the 1992 Landers earthquake. We apply and compare two different analysis and modeling methods: (1) the spectral decomposition and global EGF fitting approach, and (2) a more traditional EGF method of modeling spectral ratios. We find that spectral decomposition yields event terms that are consistent with stacks of spectral ratios for individual events, but source-parameter estimates nonetheless vary between the methods. The main source of differences comes from the modeling approach used to estimate the EGF. The global EGF-fitting approach suffers from parameter tradeoffs among the absolute stress drop, the stress-drop scaling with moment, and the high-frequency falloff rate, but has the advantage that the relative spectral shapes and stress drops among the different events in the cluster are well-resolved even if their absolute levels are not. The spectral-ratio approach solves for a different EGF for each target event without imposing any constraint on the corner frequency, f c , of the smaller events, and so can produce biased results for target-event f c . Placing constraints on the small-event f c improves the performance of the spectral-ratio method and allows the two methods to yield very similar results.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Physics‐Informed Machine Learning Method for Large‐Scale Data Assimilation Problems

Abstract We develop a physics‐informed machine learning approach for large‐scale data assimilation and parameter estimation and apply it for estimating transmissivity and hydraulic head in the two‐dimensional steady‐state subsurface flow model of the Hanford Site given synthetic measurements of said variables. In our approach, we extend the physics‐informed conditional Karhunen‐Loéve expansion (PICKLE) method to modeling subsurface flow with unknown flux (Neumann) and varying head (time‐dependent Dirichlet) boundary conditions. We demonstrate that the PICKLE method is comparable in accuracy with the standard maximum a posteriori (MAP) method, but is significantly faster than MAP for large‐scale problems. Both methods use a mesh to discretize the computational domain. In MAP, the parameters and states are discretized on the mesh; therefore, the size of the MAP parameter estimation problem directly depends on the mesh size. In PICKLE, the mesh is used to evaluate the residuals of the governing equation, while the parameters and states are approximated by the truncated conditional Karhunen‐Loéve expansions with the number of parameters controlled by the smoothness of the parameter and state fields, and not by the mesh size. For a considered example, we demonstrate that the computational cost of PICKLE increases near linearly (as N 1.15 ) with the number of grid nodes N , while that of MAP increases much faster (as N 3.28 ). We also show that once trained for one set of Dirichlet boundary conditions (i.e., one river stage), the PICKLE method provides accurate estimates of the hydraulic head for any value of the Dirichlet boundary conditions (i.e., for any river stage).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Bias-Adjustment Methods for Future Subdaily Precipitation Extremes Consistent Across Durations

Model output from climate projections often requires bias-adjustment to compensate for systematic model errors. A bias-adjustment method for extreme precipitation intensity is proposed that preserves the scaling equation for different accumulation levels from hourly to daily, using intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) modeling. A validation is performed within a pseudo-reality setting, based on hourly precipitation from 28 regional climate model projections of the EURO-CORDEX ensemble over Belgium. The scaling-based adjustment methods improve upon previous methods, an optimal method is identified, and, analytical quantile mapping methods must be avoided due to three identified problems. The ensemble mean of the adjusted extreme precipitation intensity obeys the above-mentioned scale-invariance property, which is consistent with observed extreme intensities. We thus show that IDF modeling provides added value in the context of bias-adjustment, and, that the particular IDF model proposed balances well between accuracy and the preservation of desired properties such as scale invariance and consistency among rainfall durations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

The Flux-Differencing Discontinuous Galerkin Method Applied to an Idealized Fully Compressible Nonhydrostatic Dry Atmosphere

Dynamical cores used to study the circulation of the atmosphere employ various numerical methods ranging from finite-volume, spectral element, global spectral, and hybrid methods. In this work, we explore the use of Flux-Differencing Discontinuous Galerkin (FDDG) methods to simulate a fully compressible dry atmosphere at various resolutions. We show that the method offers a judicious compromise between high-order accuracy and stability for large-eddy simulations and simulations of the atmospheric general circulation. In particular, filters, divergence damping, diffusion, hyperdiffusion, or sponge-layers are not required to ensure stability; only the numerical dissipation naturally afforded by FDDG is necessary. We apply the method to the simulation of dry convection in an atmospheric boundary layer and in a global atmospheric dynamical core in the standard benchmark of Held and Suarez

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Numerical Investigation of Observational Flux Partitioning Methods for Water Vapor and Carbon Dioxide

Abstract While yearly budgets of CO 2 flux (F c ) and evapotranspiration (ET) above vegetation can be readily obtained from eddy‐covariance measurements, the separate quantification of their soil (respiration and evaporation) and canopy (photosynthesis and transpiration) components remains an elusive yet critical research objective. In this work, we investigate four methods to partition observed total fluxes into soil and plant sources: two new and two existing approaches that are based solely on analysis of conventional high frequency eddy‐covariance (EC) data. The physical validity of the assumptions of all four methods, as well as their performance under different scenarios, are tested with the aid of large‐eddy simulations, which are used to replicate eddy‐covariance field experiments. Our results indicate that canopies with large, exposed soil patches increase the mixing and correlation of scalars; this negatively impacts the performance of the partitioning methods, all of which require some degree of uncorrelatedness between CO 2 and water vapor. In addition, best performances for all partitioning methods were found when all four flux components are non‐negligible, and measurements are collected close to the canopy top. Methods relying on the water‐use efficiency (W) perform better whenWis known a priori, but are shown to be very sensitive to uncertainties in this input variable especially when canopy fluxes dominate. We conclude by showing how the correlation coefficient between CO 2 and water vapor can be used to infer the reliability of differentWparameterizations.

Environmental Sciences & Ecology↗

Discovering charge density functionals and structure-property relationships with PROPhet: A general framework for coupling machine learning and first-principles methods

Modern ab initio methods have rapidly increased our understanding of solid state materials properties, chemical reactions, and the quantum interactions between atoms. However, poor scaling often renders direct ab initio calculations intractable for large or complex systems. There are two obvious avenues through which to remedy this problem: (i) develop new, less expensive methods to calculate system properties, or (ii) make existing methods faster. This paper describes an open source framework designed to pursue both of these avenues. PROPhet (short for PROPerty Prophet) utilizes machine learning techniques to find complex, non-linear mappings between sets of material or system properties. The result is a single code capable of learning analytical potentials, non-linear density functionals, and other structure-property or property-property relationships. These capabilities enable highly accurate mesoscopic simulations, facilitate computation of expensive properties, and enable the development of predictive models for systematic materials design and optimization. Here, this work explores the coupling of machine learning to ab initio methods through means both familiar (e.g., the creation of various potentials and energy functionals) and less familiar (e.g., the creation of density functionals for arbitrary properties), serving both to demonstrate PROPhet’s ability to create exciting post-processing analysis tools and to open the door to improving ab initio methods themselves with these powerful machine learning techniques.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Method for the Destruction of Endotoxin in Synthetic Spider Silk Proteins

Although synthetic spider silk has impressive potential as a biomaterial, endotoxin contamination of the spider silk proteins is a concern, regardless of the production method. The purpose of this research was to establish a standardized method to either remove or destroy the endotoxins present in synthetic spider silk proteins, such that the endotoxin level was consistently equal to or less than 0.25 EU/mL, the FDA limit for similar implant materials. Although dry heat is generally the preferred method for endotoxin destruction, heating the silk proteins to the necessary temperatures led to compromised mechanical properties in the resultant materials. In light of this, other endotoxin destruction methods were investigated, including caustic rinses and autoclaving. It was found that autoclaving synthetic spider silk protein dopes three times in a row consistently decreased the endotoxin level 10–20 fold, achieving levels at or below the desired level of 0.25 EU/mL. Products made from triple autoclaved silk dopes maintained mechanical properties comparable to products from untreated dopes while still maintaining low endotoxin levels. Triple autoclaving is an effective and scalable method for preparing synthetic spider silk proteins with endotoxin levels sufficiently low for use as biomaterials without compromising the mechanical properties of the materials.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Intercomparison of sensible and latent heat flux measurements from combined eddy covariance, energy balance, and Bowen ratio methods above a grassland prairie

We present a comparison of four different methods of measuring sensible (H) and latent (LE) heat fluxes for a year over a mixed grass prairie ecosystem in the Nebraska SandHills [eddy covariance (EC), energy balance/Bowen ratio (EBBR), residual energy (RES), modified Bowen ratio (MBR) methods]. Additionally, we developed a set of quality control criteria for each method and present a simplification to the traditional EBBR setup. Using EC as reference, all methods yielded similar estimates of yearly H (regression slopes (m) ~ 2% from unity; H EC > H EBBR , H RES , and H MBR ). For yearly LE, EBBR and RES yielded similar estimates with EC (m ~ 2% from unity; LE EC < LE EBBR and LE RES ), while a larger bias was found from MBR (m ~ 8% from unity; LE EC > LE MBR ). At shorter time scales (~ hourly), moderate scatter was found about linear regression fits for H between EBBR and EC (R 2 = 0.81), with smaller scatter between RES and MBR, and EC (R 2 = 0.91). For LE, smaller scatter was also measured between EC, and EBBR and RES (R 2 = 0.89 and 0.87, respectively), with the larger scatter between EC and MBR (R 2 = 0.65). This suggests methods other than EC may be well suited to longer-term applications (≥ yearly), but have larger uncertainty on individual measurements.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Finite-difference time-domain methods

The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is a widespread numerical tool for full-wave analysis of electromagnetic fields in complex media and for detailed geometries. Applications of the FDTD method cover a range of time and spatial scales, extending from subatomic to galactic lengths and from classical to quantum physics. Technology areas that benefit from the FDTD method include biomedicine — bioimaging, biophotonics, bioelectronics and biosensors; geophysics — remote sensing, communications, space weather hazards and geolocation; metamaterials — sub-wavelength focusing lenses, electromagnetic cloaks and continuously scanning leaky-wave antennas; optics — diffractive optical elements, photonic bandgap structures, photonic crystal waveguides and ring-resonator devices; plasmonics — plasmonic waveguides and antennas; and quantum applications — quantum devices and quantum radar. This Primer summarizes the main features of the FDTD method, along with key extensions that enable accurate solutions to be obtained for different research questions. Additionally, hardware considerations are discussed, plus examples of how to extract magnitude and phase data, Brillouin diagrams and scattering parameters from the output of an FDTD model. Furthermore, the Primer ends with a discussion of ongoing challenges and opportunities to further enhance the FDTD method for current and future applications.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Charge-patching method for the calculation of electronic structure of polypeptides

Theoretical study of the electronic structures of protein is a fundamental challenge in computational biochemistry due to the large size of the systems. The electronic structure of a protein is important for some of the important protein functionalities, such as photosynthesis. Here, we explored the charge-patching method to calculate the electronic structure of polypeptides. This method generates the charge densities of the systems by patching the charge motifs calculated from small prototype systems. The method was tested on a range of polypeptides, including the glycine polypeptide in 2 7 -ribbon, α-helix, 3 10 -helix, and β-strand structures. After the charge density profiles of these systems were obtained, the electronic structures of these glycine polypeptides were further calculated based on density functional theory (DFT) using a folded-spectrum method. The highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) were analyzed and compared with conventional direct DFT calculations. The charge-patching method results were found to be in good agreement with the directed DFT results.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Local self-interaction correction method with a simple scaling factor

A recently proposed local self-interaction correction (LSIC) method [Zope et al., J. Chem. Phys., 2019, 151, 214108] when applied to the simplest local density approximation provides a significant improvement over standard Perdew–Zunger SIC (PZSIC) for both equilibrium properties such as total or atomization energies as well as properties involving stretched bond such as barrier heights. The method uses an iso-orbital indicator to identify the single-electron regions. To demonstrate the LSIC method, Zope et al. used the ratio z σ of von Weizsäcker τ W σ and total kinetic energy densities τ σ , (z σ = τ W σ /τ σ ) as a scaling factor to scale the self-interaction correction. The present work further explores the LSIC method using a ratio of orbital and spin densities as a simpler scaling factor in place of the ratio of kinetic energy densities. We compute a wide array of both, equilibrium and non-equilibrium properties using LSIC and orbital scaling methods using this simple scaling factor and compare them with previously reported results. Our study shows that LSIC with the simple scaling factor performs better than PZSIC, with results comparable to those obtained by LSIC( z σ ) for most properties, but has slightly larger errors than LSIC( z σ ). Furthermore, we study the binding energies of small water clusters using both scaling factors. Our results show that LSIC with zσ has limitations in predicting the cluster binding energies of weakly bonded systems due to the inability of z σ to distinguish weakly bonded regions from slowly varying density regions. LSIC when used with the density ratio as a scaling factor, on the other hand, provides a good description of water cluster binding energies, thus highlighting the appropriate choice of the iso-orbital indicator.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Accurate energies for ππ* excited states via exchange scaling: the XS-CASSCF method

The state-averaged complete-active space self-consistent field method (SA-CASSCF) is a widely employed electronic structure method used for studying photochemistry and dynamics owing to its ability to provide a reliable description even of complicated cases while still retaining computational efficiency. However, SA-CASSCF suffers from one Achilles heel, related to the description of ionic ππ* excited states, whose energy is often overestimated by 1–2 eV. In light of this challenge, we present the XS-CASSCF method, a new approach based on the idea of exchange scaling (XS) that screens the involved energy terms to improve the excitation energies of singlet ionic ππ* states. First, we illustrate the power of the XS-CASSCF method using hexatriene and para-quinodimethane as examples, showing that it corrects the targeted ionic states while leaving the other states largely unaffected, giving root-mean-square errors (RMSE) below 0.2 eV for the four lowest states in both cases. Subsequently, XS-CASSCF vertical excitation energies are tested against theoretical best estimates for a set of 11 molecules and 56 excited states. XS-CASSCF performs exceptionally well for the ππ* states of hydrocarbons, reducing the RMSE over 21 excitation energies from 0.96 to 0.27 eV. In the challenging subset of molecules with heteroatoms and a larger number of ππ* and nπ* states, we find that improvements can also be obtained, albeit not as pronounced. We conclude with an outlook into more realistic molecular materials focusing on their singlet–triplet (S 1 /T 1 ) gaps, finding that significant improvements can be obtained along the whole range of S 1 /T 1 gaps studied, going from 0.1 eV to more than 1.5 eV. Owing to notable improvements across significant classes of molecules combined with its conceptual simplicity, we believe that XS-CASSCF is a promising addition to the electronic structure toolbox, serving both as a standalone electronic structure method and as a starting point for further correlated treatment.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Determining the Minimum Phase‐to‐Phase Gap Distance for Unconventional Transmission Lines Using Numerical Method

With the increasing demand for power transmission, compact, high surge impedance loading (HSIL) high-voltage transmission lines have emerged as a viable solution due to their reduced land acquisition costs and higher power delivery capability. The compactness of a transmission line depends on effective insulation coordination, particularly in determining the phase-to-phase clearance, which is governed by the critical flashover voltage under switching and lightning overvoltage conditions. Traditional methods for phase-to-phase clearance rely on empirical formulas derived from experimental data, which are convenient for conventional high-voltage lines. However, unconventional HSIL lines require a faster and more adaptable evaluation method, as they involve optimized conductor positioning to reduce right-of-way requirements while enhancing natural power loadability. This study presents a simplified numerical approach to determine the minimum phase-to-phase gap, utilizing arc propagation viability curves, and offers an efficient alternative to conventional empirical methods. The proposed method was successfully applied to a 500 kV conventional line as well as 500 and 735 kV unconventional line designs, demonstrating its capability in accurately assessing insulation requirements. Results reveal that the method can support reduced gap clearances while still maintaining reliability, thereby validating its usefulness in optimizing compact transmission line configurations.

Arafat, Easir [The University of Texas at Dallas, ↗