1,660 research outputs found
Ab initio data-analytics study of carbon-dioxide activation on semiconductor oxide surfaces
The excessive emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere threaten to shift the CO2 cycle planet-wide and induce unpredictable climate changes. Using artificial intelligence (AI) trained on high-throughput first principles based data for a broad family of oxides, we develop a strategy for a rational design of catalytic materials for converting CO2 to fuels and other useful chemicals. We demonstrate that an electron transfer to the π-antibonding orbital of the adsorbed molecule and the associated bending of the initially linear molecule, previously proposed as the indicator of activation, are insufficient to account for the good catalytic performance of experimentally characterized oxide surfaces. Instead, our AI model identifies the common feature of these surfaces in the binding of a molecular O atom to a surface cation, which results in a strong elongation and therefore weakening of one molecular C-O bond. This finding suggests using the C-O bond elongation as an indicator of CO2 activation. Based on these findings, we propose a set of new promising oxide-based catalysts for CO2 conversion, and a recipe to find more
Ab initio data-analytics study of carbon-dioxide activation on semiconductor oxide surfaces
The excessive emissions of carbon dioxide (CO) into the atmosphere
threaten to shift the CO cycle planet-wide and induce unpredictable climate
changes. Using artificial intelligence (AI) trained on high-throughput first
principles based data for a broad family of oxides, we develop a strategy for a
rational design of catalytic materials for converting CO to fuels and other
useful chemicals. We demonstrate that an electron transfer to the
-antibonding orbital of the adsorbed molecule and the associated bending
of the initially linear molecule, previously proposed as the indicator of
activation, are insufficient to account for the good catalytic performance of
experimentally characterized oxide surfaces. Instead, our AI model identifies
the common feature of these surfaces in the binding of a molecular O atom to a
surface cation, which results in a strong elongation and therefore weakening of
one molecular C-O bond. This finding suggests using the C-O bond elongation as
an indicator of CO activation. Based on these findings, we propose a set of
new promising oxide-based catalysts for CO conversion, and a recipe to find
more
Identifying outstanding transition-metal-alloy heterogeneous catalysts for the oxygen reduction and evolution reactions via subgroup discovery
In order to estimate the reactivity of a large number of potentially complex
heterogeneous catalysts while searching for novel and more efficient materials,
physical as well as data-centric models have been developed for a faster
evaluation of adsorption energies compared to first-principles calculations.
However, global models designed to describe as many materials as possible might
overlook the very few compounds that have the appropriate adsorption properties
to be suitable for a given catalytic process. Here, the subgroup-discovery
(SGD) local artificial-intelligence approach is used to identify the key
descriptive parameters and constrains on their values, the so-called SG rules,
which particularly describe transition-metal surfaces with outstanding
adsorption properties for the oxygen reduction and evolution reactions. We
start from a data set of 95 oxygen adsorption energy values evaluated by
density-functional-theory calculations for several monometallic surfaces along
with 16 atomic, bulk and surface properties as candidate descriptive
parameters. From this data set, SGD identifies constraints on the most relevant
parameters describing materials and adsorption sites that (i) result in O
adsorption energies within the Sabatier-optimal range required for the oxygen
reduction reaction and (ii) present the largest deviations from the linear
scaling relations between O and OH adsorption energies, which limit the
performance in the oxygen evolution reaction. The SG rules not only reflect the
local underlying physicochemical phenomena that result in the desired
adsorption properties but also guide the challenging design of alloy catalysts
Subjectively Interesting Subgroup Discovery on Real-valued Targets
Deriving insights from high-dimensional data is one of the core problems in
data mining. The difficulty mainly stems from the fact that there are
exponentially many variable combinations to potentially consider, and there are
infinitely many if we consider weighted combinations, even for linear
combinations. Hence, an obvious question is whether we can automate the search
for interesting patterns and visualizations. In this paper, we consider the
setting where a user wants to learn as efficiently as possible about
real-valued attributes. For example, to understand the distribution of crime
rates in different geographic areas in terms of other (numerical, ordinal
and/or categorical) variables that describe the areas. We introduce a method to
find subgroups in the data that are maximally informative (in the formal
Information Theoretic sense) with respect to a single or set of real-valued
target attributes. The subgroup descriptions are in terms of a succinct set of
arbitrarily-typed other attributes. The approach is based on the Subjective
Interestingness framework FORSIED to enable the use of prior knowledge when
finding most informative non-redundant patterns, and hence the method also
supports iterative data mining.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, conference submissio
Learning Rules for Materials Properties and Functions
In materials science and engineering, one is typically searching for materials that exhibit exceptional performance for a certain function, and the number of these materials is extremely small. Thus, statistically speaking, we are interested in the identification of *rare phenomena*, and the scientific discovery typically resembles the proverbial hunt for the needle in a haystack
Efficiently Discovering Locally Exceptional yet Globally Representative Subgroups
Subgroup discovery is a local pattern mining technique to find interpretable descriptions of sub-populations that stand out on a given target variable. That is, these sub-populations are exceptional with regard to the global distribution. In this paper we argue that in many applications, such as scientific discovery, subgroups are only useful if they are additionally representative of the global distribution with regard to a control variable. That is, when the distribution of this control variable is the same, or almost the same, as over the whole data. We formalise this objective function and give an efficient algorithm to compute its tight optimistic estimator for the case of a numeric target and a binary control variable. This enables us to use the branch-and-bound framework to efficiently discover the top- subgroups that are both exceptional as well as representative. Experimental evaluation on a wide range of datasets shows that with this algorithm we discover meaningful representative patterns and are up to orders of magnitude faster in terms of node evaluations as well as time
Double-blind test program for astrometric planet detection with Gaia
We use detailed simulations of the Gaia observations of synthetic planetary
systems and develop and utilize independent software codes in double-blind mode
to analyze the data, including statistical tools for planet detection and
different algorithms for single and multiple Keplerian orbit fitting that use
no a priori knowledge of the true orbital parameters of the systems. 1) Planets
with astrometric signatures times the single-measurement error
and period yr can be detected reliably, with a very
small number of false positives. 2) At twice the detection limit, uncertainties
in orbital parameters and masses are typically . 3) Over 70% of
two-planet systems with well-separated periods in the range
yr, , and eccentricity are
correctly identified. 4) Favorable orbital configurations have orbital elements
measured to better than 10% accuracy of the time, and the value of the
mutual inclination angle determined with uncertainties \leq 10^{\degr}. 5)
Finally, uncertainties obtained from the fitting procedures are a good estimate
of the actual errors. Extrapolating from the present-day statistical properties
of the exoplanet sample, the results imply that a Gaia with = 8
as, in its unbiased and complete magnitude-limited census of planetary
systems, will measure several thousand giant planets out to 3-4 AUs from stars
within 200 pc, and will characterize hundreds of multiple-planet systems,
including meaningful coplanarity tests. Finally, we put Gaia into context,
identifying several areas of planetary-system science in which Gaia can be
expected to have a relevant impact, when combined with data coming from other
ongoing and future planet search programs.Comment: 32 pages, 24 figures, 6 tables. Accepted for pubolication in A&
Asteroid families classification: exploiting very large data sets
The number of asteroids with accurately determined orbits increases fast. The
catalogs of asteroid physical observations have also increased, although the
number of objects is still smaller than in the orbital catalogs. We developed a
new approach to the asteroid family classification by combining the
Hierarchical Clustering Method (HCM) with a method to add new members to
existing families. This procedure makes use of the much larger amount of
information contained in the proper elements catalogs, with respect to
classifications using also physical observations for a smaller number of
asteroids. Our work is based on the large catalog of the high accuracy
synthetic proper elements (available from AstDyS). We first identify a number
of core families; to these we attribute the next layer of smaller objects.
Then, we remove all the family members from the catalog, and reapply the HCM to
the rest. This gives both halo families which extend the core families and new
independent families, consisting mainly of small asteroids. These two cases are
discriminated by another step of attribution of new members and by merging
intersecting families. By using information from absolute magnitudes, we take
advantage of the larger size range in some families to analyze their shape in
the proper semimajor axis vs. inverse diameter plane. This leads to a new
method to estimate the family age (or ages). The results from the previous
steps are then analyzed, using also auxiliary information on physical
properties including WISE albedos and SDSS color indexes. This allows to solve
some difficult cases of families overlapping in the proper elements space but
generated by different collisional events. We analyze some examples of
cratering families (Massalia, Vesta, Eunomia) which show internal structures,
interpreted as multiple collisions. We also discuss why Ceres has no family
KP solitons in shallow water
The main purpose of the paper is to provide a survey of our recent studies on
soliton solutions of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) equation. The
classification is based on the far-field patterns of the solutions which
consist of a finite number of line-solitons. Each soliton solution is then
defined by a point of the totally non-negative Grassmann variety which can be
parametrized by a unique derangement of the symmetric group of permutations.
Our study also includes certain numerical stability problems of those soliton
solutions. Numerical simulations of the initial value problems indicate that
certain class of initial waves asymptotically approach to these exact solutions
of the KP equation. We then discuss an application of our theory to the Mach
reflection problem in shallow water. This problem describes the resonant
interaction of solitary waves appearing in the reflection of an obliquely
incident wave onto a vertical wall, and it predicts an extra-ordinary four-fold
amplification of the wave at the wall. There are several numerical studies
confirming the prediction, but all indicate disagreements with the KP theory.
Contrary to those previous numerical studies, we find that the KP theory
actually provides an excellent model to describe the Mach reflection phenomena
when the higher order corrections are included to the quasi-two dimensional
approximation. We also present laboratory experiments of the Mach reflection
recently carried out by Yeh and his colleagues, and show how precisely the KP
theory predicts this wave behavior.Comment: 50 pages, 25 figure
Properties of hot and dense matter from relativistic heavy ion collisions
We review the progress achieved in extracting the properties of hot and dense
matter from relativistic heavy ion collisions at the relativistic heavy ion
collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the large hadron collider
(LHC) at CERN. We focus on bulk properties of the medium, in particular the
evidence for thermalization, aspects of the equation of state, transport
properties, as well as fluctuations and correlations. We also discuss the
in-medium properties of hadrons with light and heavy quarks, and measurements
of dileptons and quarkonia. This review is dedicated to the memory of Gerald E.
Brown
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