人工智能（AI）系统在接下来的几十年中有很大的希望可以改善医疗保健。具体而言，利用多个数据源和输入模式的AI系统有望成为一种可行的方法，可以在广泛的应用程序中提供更准确的结果和可部署的管道。在这项工作中，我们提出并评估一个统一的医学中的整体AI（HAIM）框架，以促进利用多模式输入的AI系统的生成和测试。我们的方法使用可通用的数据预处理和机器学习建模阶段，可以很容易地适应医疗保健环境中的研究和部署。我们通过训练和表征基于MIMIC-IV-MM的14,324个独立模型来评估我们的HAIM框架，该模型是一种多模式临床数据库（n = 34,537个样本），其中包含7,279个独特的住院和6,485名患者，涵盖了4个数据模态的所有可能输入组合（即，所有可能的输入组合）表格，时间序列，文本和图像），11个独特的数据源和12个预测任务。我们表明，该框架可以始终如一地生产出在各种医疗保健示范中超过相似的单源方法的模型（乘以6-33％），包括10种不同的胸部病理学诊断，以及休息时间和48小时的死亡率预测。我们还使用Shapley值量化了每种模式和数据源的贡献，这证明了数据类型重要性的异质性以及在不同医疗保健相关的任务中多模式输入的必要性。我们的整体医学AI（HAIM）框架的可推广性能和灵活性可以为未来的临床和运营医疗环境中的多模式预测系统提供有希望的途径。

我们为学习限制建立了混合整数优化的广泛方法论基础。我们提出了一种用于数据驱动决策的端到端管道，其中使用机器学习直接从数据中学习限制和目标，并且培训的模型嵌入在优化配方中。我们利用许多机器学习方法的混合整数优化 - 焦点，包括线性模型，决策树，集合和多层的感知。对多种方法的考虑允许我们捕获决策，上下文变量和结果之间的各种潜在关系。我们还使用观察结果的凸船体来表征决策信任区域，以确保可信的建议并避免推断。我们有效地使用列生成和聚类来纳入这个表示。结合域驱动的约束和客观术语，嵌入式模型和信任区域定义了处方生成的混合整数优化问题。我们将此框架实施为从业者的Python包（OptiCl）。我们展示了化疗优化和世界食物计划规划中的方法。案例研究说明了在生成高质量处方的框架中的框架，由信任区域添加的值，加入多个机器学习方法以及包含多个学习约束的框架。

The recent increase in public and academic interest in preserving biodiversity has led to the growth of the field of conservation technology. This field involves designing and constructing tools that utilize technology to aid in the conservation of wildlife. In this article, we will use case studies to demonstrate the importance of designing conservation tools with human-wildlife interaction in mind and provide a framework for creating successful tools. These case studies include a range of complexities, from simple cat collars to machine learning and game theory methodologies. Our goal is to introduce and inform current and future researchers in the field of conservation technology and provide references for educating the next generation of conservation technologists. Conservation technology not only has the potential to benefit biodiversity but also has broader impacts on fields such as sustainability and environmental protection. By using innovative technologies to address conservation challenges, we can find more effective and efficient solutions to protect and preserve our planet's resources.

We present the interpretable meta neural ordinary differential equation (iMODE) method to rapidly learn generalizable (i.e., not parameter-specific) dynamics from trajectories of multiple dynamical systems that vary in their physical parameters. The iMODE method learns meta-knowledge, the functional variations of the force field of dynamical system instances without knowing the physical parameters, by adopting a bi-level optimization framework: an outer level capturing the common force field form among studied dynamical system instances and an inner level adapting to individual system instances. A priori physical knowledge can be conveniently embedded in the neural network architecture as inductive bias, such as conservative force field and Euclidean symmetry. With the learned meta-knowledge, iMODE can model an unseen system within seconds, and inversely reveal knowledge on the physical parameters of a system, or as a Neural Gauge to "measure" the physical parameters of an unseen system with observed trajectories. We test the validity of the iMODE method on bistable, double pendulum, Van der Pol, Slinky, and reaction-diffusion systems.

While the brain connectivity network can inform the understanding and diagnosis of developmental dyslexia, its cause-effect relationships have not yet enough been examined. Employing electroencephalography signals and band-limited white noise stimulus at 4.8 Hz (prosodic-syllabic frequency), we measure the phase Granger causalities among channels to identify differences between dyslexic learners and controls, thereby proposing a method to calculate directional connectivity. As causal relationships run in both directions, we explore three scenarios, namely channels' activity as sources, as sinks, and in total. Our proposed method can be used for both classification and exploratory analysis. In all scenarios, we find confirmation of the established right-lateralized Theta sampling network anomaly, in line with the temporal sampling framework's assumption of oscillatory differences in the Theta and Gamma bands. Further, we show that this anomaly primarily occurs in the causal relationships of channels acting as sinks, where it is significantly more pronounced than when only total activity is observed. In the sink scenario, our classifier obtains 0.84 and 0.88 accuracy and 0.87 and 0.93 AUC for the Theta and Gamma bands, respectively.

Variational autoencoders model high-dimensional data by positing low-dimensional latent variables that are mapped through a flexible distribution parametrized by a neural network. Unfortunately, variational autoencoders often suffer from posterior collapse: the posterior of the latent variables is equal to its prior, rendering the variational autoencoder useless as a means to produce meaningful representations. Existing approaches to posterior collapse often attribute it to the use of neural networks or optimization issues due to variational approximation. In this paper, we consider posterior collapse as a problem of latent variable non-identifiability. We prove that the posterior collapses if and only if the latent variables are non-identifiable in the generative model. This fact implies that posterior collapse is not a phenomenon specific to the use of flexible distributions or approximate inference. Rather, it can occur in classical probabilistic models even with exact inference, which we also demonstrate. Based on these results, we propose a class of latent-identifiable variational autoencoders, deep generative models which enforce identifiability without sacrificing flexibility. This model class resolves the problem of latent variable non-identifiability by leveraging bijective Brenier maps and parameterizing them with input convex neural networks, without special variational inference objectives or optimization tricks. Across synthetic and real datasets, latent-identifiable variational autoencoders outperform existing methods in mitigating posterior collapse and providing meaningful representations of the data.

There are multiple scales of abstraction from which we can describe the same image, depending on whether we are focusing on fine-grained details or a more global attribute of the image. In brain mapping, learning to automatically parse images to build representations of both small-scale features (e.g., the presence of cells or blood vessels) and global properties of an image (e.g., which brain region the image comes from) is a crucial and open challenge. However, most existing datasets and benchmarks for neuroanatomy consider only a single downstream task at a time. To bridge this gap, we introduce a new dataset, annotations, and multiple downstream tasks that provide diverse ways to readout information about brain structure and architecture from the same image. Our multi-task neuroimaging benchmark (MTNeuro) is built on volumetric, micrometer-resolution X-ray microtomography images spanning a large thalamocortical section of mouse brain, encompassing multiple cortical and subcortical regions. We generated a number of different prediction challenges and evaluated several supervised and self-supervised models for brain-region prediction and pixel-level semantic segmentation of microstructures. Our experiments not only highlight the rich heterogeneity of this dataset, but also provide insights into how self-supervised approaches can be used to learn representations that capture multiple attributes of a single image and perform well on a variety of downstream tasks. Datasets, code, and pre-trained baseline models are provided at: https://mtneuro.github.io/ .

We derive a set of causal deep neural networks whose architectures are a consequence of tensor (multilinear) factor analysis. Forward causal questions are addressed with a neural network architecture composed of causal capsules and a tensor transformer. The former estimate a set of latent variables that represent the causal factors, and the latter governs their interaction. Causal capsules and tensor transformers may be implemented using shallow autoencoders, but for a scalable architecture we employ block algebra and derive a deep neural network composed of a hierarchy of autoencoders. An interleaved kernel hierarchy preprocesses the data resulting in a hierarchy of kernel tensor factor models. Inverse causal questions are addressed with a neural network that implements multilinear projection and estimates the causes of effects. As an alternative to aggressive bottleneck dimension reduction or regularized regression that may camouflage an inherently underdetermined inverse problem, we prescribe modeling different aspects of the mechanism of data formation with piecewise tensor models whose multilinear projections are well-defined and produce multiple candidate solutions. Our forward and inverse neural network architectures are suitable for asynchronous parallel computation.

Landing an unmanned aerial vehicle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on top of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) in harsh open waters is a challenging problem, owing to forces that can damage the UAV due to a severe roll and/or pitch angle of the USV during touchdown. To tackle this, we propose a novel model predictive control (MPC) approach enabling a UAV to land autonomously on a USV in these harsh conditions. The MPC employs a novel objective function and an online decomposition of the oscillatory motion of the vessel to predict, attempt, and accomplish the landing during near-zero tilt of the landing platform. The nonlinear prediction of the motion of the vessel is performed using visual data from an onboard camera. Therefore, the system does not require any communication with the USV or a control station. The proposed method was analyzed in numerous robotics simulations in harsh and extreme conditions and further validated in various real-world scenarios.

Compliance in actuation has been exploited to generate highly dynamic maneuvers such as throwing that take advantage of the potential energy stored in joint springs. However, the energy storage and release could not be well-timed yet. On the contrary, for multi-link systems, the natural system dynamics might even work against the actual goal. With the introduction of variable stiffness actuators, this problem has been partially addressed. With a suitable optimal control strategy, the approximate decoupling of the motor from the link can be achieved to maximize the energy transfer into the distal link prior to launch. However, such continuous stiffness variation is complex and typically leads to oscillatory swing-up motions instead of clear launch sequences. To circumvent this issue, we investigate decoupling for speed maximization with a dedicated novel actuator concept denoted Bi-Stiffness Actuation. With this, it is possible to fully decouple the link from the joint mechanism by a switch-and-hold clutch and simultaneously keep the elastic energy stored. We show that with this novel paradigm, it is not only possible to reach the same optimal performance as with power-equivalent variable stiffness actuation, but even directly control the energy transfer timing. This is a major step forward compared to previous optimal control approaches, which rely on optimizing the full time-series control input.