It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Transforming wood waste for sustainable manufacturing
Marcus Foston takes a detailed look at lignin disassembly on path to replace petroleum with renewables
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS
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MARCUS FOSTON (LEFT) AND COLLABORATORS ARE EXPLORING HOW TO USE LIGNIN, A COMMON WASTE PRODUCT OF PAPER PULPING, AS A SOURCE OF RENEWABLE ALTERNATIVES TO PETROLEUM-DERIVED CHEMICALS.
Lignin, a complex organic polymer, is one of the main components of wood, providing structural support and rigidity to make trees strong enough to withstand the elements. When transforming wood into paper, lignin is a key ingredient that must be removed and often becomes waste.
Marcus Foston, associate professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is exploring how to add value to lignin by breaking it down into small molecules that are structurally similar to oxygenated hydrocarbons. These renewable chemicals are key components in many industrial processes and products, but they are traditionally sourced from non-renewable petroleum.
Foston’s study of lignin disassembly, done in collaboration with Sai Venkatesh Pingali, a neutron scattering scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ONRL), was published Jan. 17 in Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.
“Lignin’s structure actually looks a lot like what we get from petroleum,” said Foston, who is also the director of WashU’s Synthetic Biology Manufacturing of Advanced Materials Research Center (SMARC). “In current manufacturing processes, we spend time making petroleum look like the elements of lignin. Instead, I’m using a catalyst to break lignin down more easily and in such a way that it produces specific chemicals. Once we can produce chemical from lignin in a form we want, then we can make more efficient use of lignin, which is an abundant byproduct of pulping wood into paper.”
With collaborators at ORNL, Foston used neutron scattering to study how lignin interacts with solvents and catalysts during its disassembly under reaction conditions, including high temperature and pressure. ORNL’s advanced facilities allowed researchers to observe the reaction process in real time to improve their catalyst and further streamline reaction systems for lignin depolymerization. This direct, molecular-level view is critical, Foston said, to figure out how the catalyst and lignin behave in solution and to ensure the lignin doesn’t recondense into a polymer with bonds scientists can’t easily break.
“In this study, we’re specifically thinking about how we can take the large amount of lignin that gets produced during biofuel or paper production and use it to make renewable chemicals that replace some of the chemicals we currently get from petroleum,” Foston said. “More broadly, the same depolymerization principles we’re exploring with lignin could be used in other applications. For example, the same lessons from this study apply to plastic waste scenarios, where one approach is to deconstruct plastic waste into small molecules that could be used to make plastic or other useful products.”
“Ultimately, we want to take a bunch of chemicals that are coming from petroleum and figure out how we can make those renewably,” Foston added. “Everything we’re learning about lignin will apply to other spaces as well.”
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Zhang J, Yang Z, Ponukumati A, Senanayake M, Pingali SV, and Foston M. Structural evolution of lignin using in situ small-angle neutron scattering during catalytic disassembly. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. Jan. 17, 2024. DOI: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.3c06368?ref=PDF
This work was supported by the Herman Frasch Foundation for Chemical Research in Agricultural Chemistry (801-HF17), the U.S. National Science Foundation (CBET-1604095), and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research under the Genomic Sciences Program (FWP ERKP752). Neutron scattering research conducted using the Bio-SANS instrument, a DOE Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research resource (FWP ERKP291), used resources at the High-Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science, Scientific User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS HAVE TESTED CONCRETE SLABS CONTAINING PHASE-CHANGE MATERIAL THAT CAN WARM THEMSELVES UP WHEN TEMPERATURES FALL IN ORDER TO MELT OFF SNOW AND ICE. [LEFT TO RIGHT: REFERENCE SLAB, SLAB CONTAINING LIGHTWEIGHT AGGREGATE TREATED WITH PHASE-CHANGE MATERIAL; SLAB CONTAINING MICROENCAPSULATED PHASE-CHANGE MATERIAL]
There’s a patch of concrete on Drexel University’s campus that could portend a frost-free future for sidewalks and highways in the Northeast. Tucked inconspicuously next to a parking lot for the university’s facilities vehicles, two 30-inch-by-30-inch slabs have been warding off snow, sleet and freezing rain on their own — without shoveling, salting or scraping — for a little over three years. Researchers in Drexel’s College of Engineering, recently reported on the science behind the special concrete, that can warm itself up when it snows, or as temperatures approach freezing.
Self-heating concrete, like Drexel’s, is the latest in an ongoing effort to create more environmentally responsive and resilient infrastructure, particularly in the northern regions of the United States, where the National Highway Administration estimates states spend $2.3 billion on snow and ice removal operations each year and millions to repair roadways damaged by winter weather.
“One way to extend the service life of a concrete surfaces, like roadways, is to help them maintain a surface temperature above freezing during the winter,” said Amir Farnam, PhD, an associate professor in the College of Engineering whose Advanced Infrastructure Materials Lab has been leading the research. “Preventing freezing and thawing and cutting back on the need for plowing and salting are good ways to keep the surface from deteriorating. So, our work is looking at how we can incorporate special materials in the concrete that help it to maintain a higher surface temperature when the ambient temperature around it drops.”
“We have demonstrated that our self-heating concrete is capable of melting snow on its own, using only the environmental daytime thermal energy — and doing it without the help of salt, shoveling or heating systems,” Farnam said. “This self-heating concrete is suitable for mountainous and northern regions in the U.S., such as Northeast Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, where there are suitable heating and cooling cycles in winter.”
A Warm Welcome
The secret to the concrete’s warming is low-temperature liquid paraffin, which is a phase-change material, meaning it releases heat when it turns from its room-temperature state — as a liquid — to a solid, when temperatures drop. In a previous paper, the group reported that incorporating liquid paraffin into the concrete triggers heating when temperatures drop. Their latest research looks at two methods for incorporating the phase-change material in concrete slabs and how each fares outside in the cold.
One method involves treating porous lightweight aggregate — the pebbles and small stone fragments that are ingredients in concrete — with the paraffin. The aggregate absorb the liquid paraffin before being mixed into the concrete. The other strategy is mixing micro-capsules of paraffin directly into the concrete.
A Test in the Elements
The researchers poured one slab using each method and a third without any phase-change material, as a control. All three have been outside in the elements since December 2021. In the first two years, they faced a total of 32 freeze-thaw events — instances where temperature dropped below freezing, regardless of precipitation — and five snow falls of an inch or more.
Using cameras and thermal sensors, the researchers monitored the temperature and snow and ice-melting behavior of the slabs. They reported that the phase-change slabs maintained a surface temperature between 42- and 55-degrees Fahrenheit for up to 10 hours, when air temperatures dipped below freezing.
This heating is enough to melt a couple of inches of snow, at a rate of about a quarter of an inch of snow per hour. And while this may not be warm enough to melt a heavy snow event before plows are needed, it can help deice the road surface and increase transportation safety, even in heavy snow events.
Staying Warm Enough
Simply preventing the surface from dropping below freezing also goes a long way when it comes to preventing deterioration, according to the researchers.
“Freeze-thaw cycles, periods of extreme cooling – below freezing – and warming, can cause a surface to expand and contract in size, which puts a strain on its structural integrity and can cause damaging cracking and spalling over time,” said Robin Deb, a doctoral student in the College of Engineering, who helped to lead the research. “And while this alone may not degrade the structure to the point of failure, it creates a vulnerability that will lead to the problematic interior deterioration that we need to avoid. One of the promising findings is that the slabs with phase-change materials were able to stabilize their temperature above freezing when faced with dropping ambient temperatures.”
Slow and Steady
Overall, the treated lightweight aggregate slab performed better at sustaining its heating — keeping the temperature above freezing for up to 10 hours — while the slab with microencapsulated phase-change material was able to heat up more quickly, but only maintain the warming for half as long. The researchers suggest this is due to the relative disbursal of the phase-change material within the pores of the aggregate, by comparison to the concentration of phase-change material inside the microcapsules — a phenomenon that has been studied extensively.
They also noted that the porosity of the aggregate likely contributes to the paraffin remaining a liquid below its usual freezing temperature of 42 degrees Fahrenheit. This proved beneficial to the slab’s performance because the material did not immediately release its heat energy when the temperature began to drop — holding its release until the material reached 39 degrees Fahrenheit. By contrast, the microencapsulated paraffin began releasing its warming energy as soon as its temperature reached 42 degrees, which contributed to its relatively shorter activation period.
“Our findings suggest that the phase-change material treated lightweight aggregate concrete was more suited for deicing applications at sub-zero temperatures due to its gradual heat release within wider range of temperature,” Farnam said.
Room for Improvement
While both applications were able to raise the temperature of the concrete to between 53- and 55-degrees Fahrenheit, which is more than enough to melt snow. Their performance was affected by the ambient air temperature before a snowfall and the rate of snowfall.
“We found that PCM-incorporated pavements cannot completely melt heavy snow accumulation — larger than 2 inches,” Deb said. “It can, however, melt snowfalls less than two inches quite effectively. The PCM-incorporated slabs begin melting snow as soon as it starts to accumulate. And the gradual heat release can effectively deice a pavement’s surface, which would eliminate the need to pre-salt before the heavy snowfall.”
They also noted that if the phase-change material does not have some time to “recharge” by warming enough to return to its liquid state between freeze-thaw or snow events, then its performance may be diminished.
“Conducting this research was an important step for us to understand how concrete incorporating phase-change material behaves in nature,” Deb said. “With these findings, we will be able to continue to improve the system to one day optimize it for longer heating and greater melting. But it is encouraging to see evidence of significant reduction of freeze-thaw cycles, which demonstrates that PCM concrete is more freeze-thaw durable compared to traditional concrete.”
The team plans to continue to collect data on the slabs to understand the long-term effectiveness of the phase-change materials and study how this method may extend the lifespan of concrete.
Self-heating Concrete Melts Snow
Drexel University researchers have developed a type of concrete that can warm itself when temperatures fall in order to melt off snow and ice.
Development of Self-Heating Concrete Using Low-Temperature Phase Change Materials: Multiscale and In Situ Real-Time Evaluation of Snow-Melting and Freeze–Thaw Performance
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
18-Mar-2024
Cacao plants' defense against toxic cadmium unveiled
EUROPEAN SYNCHROTRON RADIATION FACILITY
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HESTER BLOMMAERT, PHD STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY GRENOBLE ALPES AND GERALDINE SARRET, RESEARCHER AT THE UNIVERSITY GRENOBLE ALPES DURING THE EXPERIMENT AT THE ESRF, THE EUROPEAN SYNCHROTRON
Researchers from the University Grenoble Alpes (UGA), France, together with the ESRF, the European Synchrotron located in Grenoble, France, used ESRF’s bright X-rays to unveil how cacao trees protect themselves from toxic metal cadmium. This knowledge is relevant as new EU regulations restrict cadmium concentration in chocolate. Their results are published in Environmental and Experimental Botany.
Cadmium often accumulates in food, but it is a highly toxic metal, which can be harmful in humans if chronically exposed to it, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization. The EU has imposed limits to the cadmium maximal concentration in foodstuffs such as rice, wheat, potatoes and more recently chocolate.
Whilst there have been studies on how cadmium is transferred from soil to the edible part of stable crops, there is hardly any research on cadmium in cacao cultivars. “Understanding how cadmium builds up in cacao trees is paramount to subsequently find strategies to mitigate the accumulation of this metal in the final product”, explains Geraldine Sarret, researcher at the University Grenoble Alpes (UGA) and co-corresponding author of the publication.
The UGA scientists travelled to the International Cocoa Genebank in Trinidad and Tobago, which hosts a field cacao collection with approximately 2400 cacao genotypes, to collect their samples in collaboration with the Cocoa Research Centre.
Then they came to the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, located in Grenoble, France, to investigate a particular cacao cultivar/variety that absorbs more cadmium than others do. Using synchrotron techniques -nano X-ray fluorescence on ESRF beamline ID16B and X-ray absorption on ID21-, they delved into the micro and nanoscale composition of the different parts of the plant. “Thanks to the ESRF, we could map of the presence of cadmium and other elements in an unprecedented resolution, so we could see the big picture but also going to the smallest detail”, says Hester Blommaert, PhD student at UGA and co-corresponding author of the publication. ”The concentration of cadmium in the different parts of the plant is very low, so much so that we couldn’t have done this research before EBS”, says Hiram Castillo-Michel, researcher at the ID21 beamline at the ESRF. “In the near future, we will see an increasing number of studies on similar food safety topics at ID21, where our recently installed new microscope will offer enhanced resolution and detection limits”, he adds.
The results yield a surprise: “We found that part of the cadmium is stored in calcium oxalate crystals in roots and branches of the cacao plant, which was unexpected”, explains Blommaert. In particular, the crystals were most abundant in the branches. Interestingly, whilst crystals were present in the leaves, they did not seem to help in detoxifying cadmium in this part of the plant. “We believe that the calcium oxalate crystals are a mechanism of detoxification of the plant against the metal”, she adds.
In addition, they also discovered that cadmium combines with sulphur in certain cells in the roots. This mechanism is well known in roots of cereals, where cadmium is retained in the vacuoles and bound to thiol-containing molecules. In the case of cacao, this mechanism is less pronounced, and more cadmium is transferred to aerial parts.
Overall, the strategy developed by cacao plants to manage cadmium is different from cereals, in terms of root to shoot transfer, storage compartments and storage forms.
“This new knowledge is a prerequisite for the selection or breeding of cacao cultivars accumulating less cadmium, and support a safe cacao production in South America”, says Sarret. “However, we need to continue our studies, using other types of cacao plants and in different environmental conditions, to be able to design more precise strategies”, she concludes.
The scientists - here Hester Blommaert, Phd at the University Grenoble Alpes- travelled to the International Cocoa Genebank in Trinidad and Tobago, which hosts a field cacao collection with approximately 2400 cacao genotypes, to collect their samples in collaboration with the Cocoa Research Centre. Then they came to the ESRF to investigate a particular cacao cultivar/variety that absorbs more cadmium than others do.
Ca-oxalate crystals are involved in cadmium storage in a high Cd accumulating cultivar of cacao
Genes identified that allow bacteria to thrive despite toxic heavy metal in soil
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
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A NATIVE HILL LOTUS PLANT (ACMISPONBRACHYCARPUS) GROWING HAPPILY IN TOXIC SERPENTINE SOIL DUE TO SUPPORT FROM ITS NITROGEN FIXING RHIZOBIA BACTERIA SYMBIONTS. PHOTO TAKEN AT THE DONALD AND SYLVIA MCLAUGHLIN NATURAL RESERV IN CALIFORNIA.
CREDIT: ANGELIQUA MONTOYA, WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Some soil bacteria can acquire sets of genes that enable them to pump the heavy metal nickel out of their systems, a study has found. This enables the bacteria to not only thrive in otherwise toxic soils but help plants grow there as well.
A Washington State University-led research team pinpointed a set of genes in wild soil bacteria that allows them to do this in serpentine soils which have naturally high concentrations of toxic nickel. The genetic discovery, detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, could help inform future bioremediation efforts that seek to return plants to polluted soils.
“We can say with certainty that these are the genes that are letting the bacteria survive the heavy metal exposure because if we take them away, they die. If we add them to a new bacterium that was sensitive to the heavy metal, all of the sudden it’s resistant,” said Stephanie Porter, the study’s senior author and a WSU evolutionary ecologist.
Soil bacteria called rhizobia are critical to legume plants, including commercial crops like soybean and alfalfa, since they symbiotically bond with roots and help the plants fix nitrogen, essentially fertilizing the plant.
For this study, Porter and her colleagues took samples of wild rhizobia bacteria from 55 grasslands in Oregon and California, some with nickel-heavy serpentine soils and some without. They conducted a range of genetic analysis and found a set of genes, called the nickel resistance operon, were necessary to allow the bacteria to survive exposure to the heavy metal.
They also found that the adaptation was finely tuned to the level of nickel in the soil. Bacteria from areas with high nickel concentrations had versions of the genes that conferred more tolerance, while those from areas with lower amounts had genes that were not as effective for tolerating higher levels of nickel.
“It’s like there’s this very beautiful matching between these rhizobia and their habitats,” Porter said. “It’s an exquisite evolutionary story about how diversity arises and is maintained in nature—to very closely match the level of challenge that these organisms face.”
The team is investigating further the way the bacteria achieve this adaptation through what is known as “horizontal gene transfer.” Unlike animals, bacteria do not only transfer genetic information from parent to child. They can also share “mobile” sets of genes with peer bacteria just by coming in close contact with them.
Porter likens this process to downloading an app on a smartphone, where one bacterium cell joins up with another in the environment, and they exchange packets of information, essentially sets of genes. The bacterium then “downloads” the information and the new DNA becomes part of that organism’s genome.
Many kinds of bacteria do this to adapt to different environments, said co-author Angeliqua Montoya, a WSU Ph.D. candidate in Porter’s lab. This includes some bacteria which are problematic for humans, such as the harmful bacteria that can acquire resistance to antibiotics.
“There is a whole spectrum of traits that these mobile elements confer in bacteria,” Montoya said.
The researchers are betting that by better understanding these mobile genetic elements, some of these traits can be harnessed to use microbes to help overcome challenges, like polluted soils, that are having increasing impacts.
The work received support from the National Science Foundation, the Murdock Charitable Trust, and Washington State University. Other researchers on the study include first author Hanna Kehlet Delgado and co-authors Camille Wendlandt, Chrisopher Dexheimer, Miles Roberts and Maren Friesen from WSU; Kyson Jenson and Joel Griffitts from Bringham Young University; and Lorena Torres Martinez from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Rhizobia bacteria residing within a plant’s root nodule tissue. Image captured via scanning electron microscope at a Washington State University.
CREDIT
Abigail Eaker, Washington State University
A native Bird’s-Foot Trefoil plant (Acmisponwrangelianus), showing root nodules filled with nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria in a chunk of soil.
A natural serpentine soil outcrop--the area devoid of vegetation indicate where high levels of the heavy metal, nickel, are too toxic for many plants to grow. Image taken at the Hopland Research and Extension Center, CA
Largest-ever map of universe’s active supermassive black holes released
The new map includes around 1.3 million quasars from across the visible universe and could help scientists better understand the properties of dark matter
CREDIT: ESA/GAIA/DPAC; LUCY READING-IKKANDA/SIMONS FOUNDATION; K. STOREY-FISHER ET AL. 2024
Astronomers have charted the largest-ever volume of the universe with a new map of active supermassive black holes living at the centers of galaxies. Called quasars, the gas-gobbling black holes are, ironically, some of the universe’s brightest objects.
The new map logs the location of about 1.3 million quasars in space and time, the furthest of which shone bright when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old. (For comparison, the universe is now 13.7 billion years old.)
“This quasar catalog is different from all previous catalogs in that it gives us a three-dimensional map of the largest-ever volume of the universe,” says map co-creator David Hogg, a senior research scientist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City and a professor of physics and data science at New York University. “It isn’t the catalog with the most quasars, and it isn’t the catalog with the best-quality measurements of quasars, but it is the catalog with the largest total volume of the universe mapped.”
The scientists built the new map using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope. While Gaia’s main objective is to map the stars in our galaxy, it also inadvertently spots objects outside the Milky Way, such as quasars and other galaxies, as it scans the sky.
“We were able to make measurements of how matter clusters together in the early universe that are as precise as some of those from major international survey projects — which is quite remarkable given that we got our data as a ‘bonus’ from the Milky Way–focused Gaia project,” Storey-Fisher says.
Quasars are powered by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies and can be hundreds of times as bright as an entire galaxy. As the black hole’s gravitational pull spins up nearby gas, the process generates an extremely bright disk and sometimes jets of light that telescopes can observe.
The galaxies that quasars inhabit are surrounded by massive halos of invisible material called dark matter. By studying quasars, astronomers can learn more about dark matter, such as how much it clumps together.
Astronomers can also use the locations of distant quasars and their host galaxies to better understand how the cosmos expanded over time. For example, scientists have already compared the new quasar map with the oldest light in our cosmos, the cosmic microwave background. As this light travels to us, it is bent by the intervening web of dark matter — the same web mapped out by the quasars. By comparing the two, scientists can measure how strongly matter clumps together.
“It has been very exciting to see this catalog spurring so much new science,” Storey-Fisher says. “Researchers around the world are using the quasar map to measure everything from the initial density fluctuations that seeded the cosmic web to the distribution of cosmic voids to the motion of our solar system through the universe.”
The team used data from Gaia’s third data release, which contained 6.6 million quasar candidates, and data from NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. By combining the datasets, the team removed contaminants such as stars and galaxies from Gaia’s original dataset and more precisely pinpointed the distances to the quasars. The team also created a map showing where dust, stars and other nuisances are expected to block our view of certain quasars, which is critical for interpreting the quasar map.
“This quasar catalog is a great example of how productive astronomical projects are,” says Hogg. “Gaia was designed to measure stars in our own galaxy, but it also found millions of quasars at the same time, which give us a map of the entire universe.”
This graphic representation of the map shows the location of quasars from our vantage point, the center of the sphere. The regions empty of quasars are where the disk of our galaxy blocks our view. Quasars with larger redshifts are further away from us.
CREDIT
ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Simons Foundation; K. Storey-Fisher et al. 2024
ABOUT THE FLATIRON INSTITUTE
The Flatiron Institute is the research division of the Simons Foundation. The institute's mission is to advance scientific research through computational methods, including data analysis, theory, modeling and simulation. The institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics creates new computational frameworks that allow scientists to analyze big astronomical datasets and to understand complex, multi-scale physics in a cosmological context.
The 12P/Pons-Brooks comet as seen from Pico de las Nieves on Gran Canaria, Spain.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No - it's a comet that has been spotted from Earth for the first time in 71 years.
The 12P/Pons-Brooks comet is growing brighter and is now visible in the night sky - but you'll still need binoculars or a telescope to see it.
Image:A composite photo of the comet taken in Cumbria. Pic: PA/Stuart Atkinson
However, it may be visible to the naked eye in the coming weeks.
It has already had several outbursts of activity, according to Dr Megan Argo, an astrophysicist at the University of Central Lancashire.
"If we're lucky, it may have another in the next few weeks as it passes through the sky," she said.
The comet, named after its discoverers Jean-Louis Pons and William Robert Brooks, spends most of its time in the outer reaches of the solar system, where it is very cold.
It comes back to the inner solar system - passing by Earth - every 71 years and is known as a periodic comet because of this.
As the comet gets close to the sun while passing through the inner solar system, the heat causes the ice to melt straight to gas - through a process called sublimation - and some of the material is lost from the surface.
"This gas forms both a cloud around the solid nucleus of the comet - known as the coma - and a tail of material that can stretch many millions of miles in space," Dr Argo said.
"The tail is made of gas and dust that has been pushed away from the comet by the power of the solar wind streaming from the sun, and this tail is the bit that can become spectacular in the sky as seen from Earth."
Dr Argo said that while 12P/Pons-Brooks is developing a nice tail, it is "not quite visible without binoculars or a telescope just yet".
For those looking to spot the comet, it is below - and slightly to the left - of the Andromeda Galaxy.
The best way to see the comet is to find a place with dark skies and no tall trees, buildings or hills to block the views, astronomers say.
Rensselaer researcher receives DOE grant to develop models that track the formation of black holes
$1.5 million grant supports the creation of surrogate machine learning models for extreme-scale distributed computing infrastructure
When a star goes supernova, a massive burst of neutrinos is the first signal that can escape the density of the collapsing star. Detecting and analyzing this phenomenon in real time would allow us insight into stellar dynamics and, potentially, black hole formation. Detection of these types of signals from modern physics detectors is notoriously hard and presents computational challenges that push the bounds of modern and next-generation computing. Transmitting and analyzing the data from the massive particle physics detectors to the next generation of extreme-scale computing will require detailed modeling of the networking, hardware, and leadership class computing systems. These models will allow researchers to find and optimize the computing pathways, configurations, and infrastructure topologies so that they can handle these massive data loads.
To meet these challenges, the Tachyon Project – named for a hypothetical atomic particle that travels faster than light – has been awarded $7.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) High Energy Physics (HEP) program to model, simulate, and validate the transport, transmission, and analysis of particle physics data using extreme-scale computing systems, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) techniques. Christopher Carothers, Ph.D., professor and director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Computational Innovations, which has been awarded $1.5 million of the total grant, will serve as principal investigator for the project.
Over the five years of the DOE grant, the Tachyon Project will utilize data and information from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National lab computing facilities. The project will model the entire distributed infrastructure required to transmit and analyze data from the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), hosted by Fermilab, to the computing facilities at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) in near real time. It will do this by creating surrogate machine learning models trained on both historical facility data and massively parallel simulation data. This will enable scientists at Fermilab to predict and tune workflow performance, improve resiliency, and increase the rate of scientific discovery in both the experimental and computing fields.
Joining Carothers in this research are co-PIs Kevin Brown, Argonne National Laboratory; Andrew Norman, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; Zhiling Lan, University of Illinois Chicago; Kwan-Liu Ma, UC Davis; Tanwi Mallick, Argonne National Laboratory; Robert Ross, Argonne National Laboratory; and Kai Shu, Illinois Institute of Technology.
Founded in 1824, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is America’s first technological research university. Rensselaer encompasses five schools, over 30 research centers, more than 140 academic programs including 25 new programs, and a dynamic community made up of over 6,800 students and 110,000 living alumni. Rensselaer faculty and alumni include upwards of 155 National Academy members, six members of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, six National Medal of Technology winners, six National Medal of Science winners, and a Nobel Prize winner in Physics. With nearly 200 years of experience advancing scientific and technological knowledge, Rensselaer remains focused on addressing global challenges with a spirit of ingenuity and collaboration. To learn more, please visit www.rpi.edu.
