FIB/SEM断层扫描代表了电池研究和许多其他领域中三维纳米结构表征的必不可少的工具。然而，在许多情况下，对比度和3D分类/重建问题出现，这极大地限制了该技术的适用性，尤其是在多孔材料上，例如电池或燃料电池中用于电极材料的材料。区分不同的组件（例如主动LI存储颗粒和碳/粘合剂材料）很困难，并且通常可以防止对图像数据进行可靠的定量分析，甚至可能导致关于结构 - 质地关系的错误结论。在这项贡献中，我们提出了一种新型的数据分类方法，该方法是通过FIB/SEM断层扫描获得的三维图像数据及其在NMC电池电极材料中的应用。我们使用两个不同的图像信号，即Angled SE2腔室检测器和Inlens检测器信号的信号，将信号组合在一起并训练一个随机森林，即特定的机器学习算法。我们证明，这种方法可以克服适合多相测量的现有技术的当前局限性，并且即使在当前的最新技术失败或对大型训练集的需求之后，它也可以进行定量数据重建。这种方法可能会作为使用FIB/SEM断层扫描的未来研究指南。

ICECUBE是一种用于检测1 GEV和1 PEV之间大气和天体中微子的光学传感器的立方公斤阵列，该阵列已部署1.45 km至2.45 km的南极的冰盖表面以下1.45 km至2.45 km。来自ICE探测器的事件的分类和重建在ICeCube数据分析中起着核心作用。重建和分类事件是一个挑战，这是由于探测器的几何形状，不均匀的散射和冰中光的吸收，并且低于100 GEV的光，每个事件产生的信号光子数量相对较少。为了应对这一挑战，可以将ICECUBE事件表示为点云图形，并将图形神经网络（GNN）作为分类和重建方法。 GNN能够将中微子事件与宇宙射线背景区分开，对不同的中微子事件类型进行分类，并重建沉积的能量，方向和相互作用顶点。基于仿真，我们提供了1-100 GEV能量范围的比较与当前ICECUBE分析中使用的当前最新最大似然技术，包括已知系统不确定性的影响。对于中微子事件分类，与当前的IceCube方法相比，GNN以固定的假阳性速率（FPR）提高了信号效率的18％。另外，GNN在固定信号效率下将FPR的降低超过8（低于半百分比）。对于能源，方向和相互作用顶点的重建，与当前最大似然技术相比，分辨率平均提高了13％-20％。当在GPU上运行时，GNN能够以几乎是2.7 kHz的中位数ICECUBE触发速率的速率处理ICECUBE事件，这打开了在在线搜索瞬态事件中使用低能量中微子的可能性。

在过去的几十年中，人工智能领域大大进展，灵感来自生物学和神经科学领域的发现。这项工作的想法是由来自传入和横向/内部联系的人脑中皮质区域的自组织过程的过程启发。在这项工作中，我们开发了一个原始的脑激发神经模型，将自组织地图（SOM）和Hebbian学习在重新参与索马里（RESOM）模型中。该框架应用于多模式分类问题。与基于未经监督的学习的现有方法相比，该模型增强了最先进的结果。这项工作还通过在名为SPARP（自配置3D蜂窝自适应平台）的专用FPGA的平台上的模拟结果和硬件执行，演示了模型的分布式和可扩展性。头皮板可以以模块化方式互连，以支持神经模型的结构。这种统一的软件和硬件方法使得能够缩放处理并允许来自多个模态的信息进行动态合并。硬件板上的部署提供了在多个设备上并行执行的性能结果，通过专用串行链路在每个板之间的通信。由于多模式关联，所提出的统一架构，由RESOM模型和头皮硬件平台组成的精度显着提高，与集中式GPU实现相比，延迟和功耗之间的良好折衷。

尽管当前的视觉算法在许多具有挑战性的任务上都表现出色，但尚不清楚他们如何理解现实世界环境的物理动态。在这里，我们介绍了Physion，一种数据集和基准，用于严格评估预测物理场景如何随着时间而发展的能力。我们的数据集具有对各种物理现象的现实模拟，包括刚性和软体体碰撞，稳定的多对象配置，滚动，滑动和弹丸运动，因此比以前的基准提供了更全面的挑战。我们使用Physion来基准一套模型，其体系结构，学习目标，投入输出结构和培训数据各不相同。同时，我们在同一场景上获得了人类预测行为的精确测量，从而使我们能够直接评估任何模型能够近似人类行为的效果。我们发现，学习以对象为中心的表示的视觉算法通常优于那些没有人的表现，但仍未达到人类绩效。另一方面，绘制具有直接访问物理状态信息的神经网络的表现效果更好，并且做出与人类制作的预测更相似。这些结果表明，提取场景的物理表征是在视力算法中实现人类水平和类似人类的物理理解的主要瓶颈。我们已公开发布了所有数据和代码，以促进使用物理以完全可重现的方式对其他模型进行基准测试，从而使对视觉算法的进度进行系统的评估，这些算法像人们一样坚固地了解物理环境。

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.

A Digital Twin (DT) is a simulation of a physical system that provides information to make decisions that add economic, social or commercial value. The behaviour of a physical system changes over time, a DT must therefore be continually updated with data from the physical systems to reflect its changing behaviour. For resource-constrained systems, updating a DT is non-trivial because of challenges such as on-board learning and the off-board data transfer. This paper presents a framework for updating data-driven DTs of resource-constrained systems geared towards system health monitoring. The proposed solution consists of: (1) an on-board system running a light-weight DT allowing the prioritisation and parsimonious transfer of data generated by the physical system; and (2) off-board robust updating of the DT and detection of anomalous behaviours. Two case studies are considered using a production gas turbine engine system to demonstrate the digital representation accuracy for real-world, time-varying physical systems.

We consider infinite horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with fast-slow structure, meaning that certain parts of the state space move "fast" (and in a sense, are more influential) while other parts transition more "slowly." Such structure is common in real-world problems where sequential decisions need to be made at high frequencies, yet information that varies at a slower timescale also influences the optimal policy. Examples include: (1) service allocation for a multi-class queue with (slowly varying) stochastic costs, (2) a restless multi-armed bandit with an environmental state, and (3) energy demand response, where both day-ahead and real-time prices play a role in the firm's revenue. Models that fully capture these problems often result in MDPs with large state spaces and large effective time horizons (due to frequent decisions), rendering them computationally intractable. We propose an approximate dynamic programming algorithmic framework based on the idea of "freezing" the slow states, solving a set of simpler finite-horizon MDPs (the lower-level MDPs), and applying value iteration (VI) to an auxiliary MDP that transitions on a slower timescale (the upper-level MDP). We also extend the technique to a function approximation setting, where a feature-based linear architecture is used. On the theoretical side, we analyze the regret incurred by each variant of our frozen-state approach. Finally, we give empirical evidence that the frozen-state approach generates effective policies using just a fraction of the computational cost, while illustrating that simply omitting slow states from the decision modeling is often not a viable heuristic.

While the capabilities of autonomous systems have been steadily improving in recent years, these systems still struggle to rapidly explore previously unknown environments without the aid of GPS-assisted navigation. The DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge aimed to fast track the development of autonomous exploration systems by evaluating their performance in real-world underground search-and-rescue scenarios. Subterranean environments present a plethora of challenges for robotic systems, such as limited communications, complex topology, visually-degraded sensing, and harsh terrain. The presented solution enables long-term autonomy with minimal human supervision by combining a powerful and independent single-agent autonomy stack, with higher level mission management operating over a flexible mesh network. The autonomy suite deployed on quadruped and wheeled robots was fully independent, freeing the human supervision to loosely supervise the mission and make high-impact strategic decisions. We also discuss lessons learned from fielding our system at the SubT Final Event, relating to vehicle versatility, system adaptability, and re-configurable communications.

Machine learning is the dominant approach to artificial intelligence, through which computers learn from data and experience. In the framework of supervised learning, for a computer to learn from data accurately and efficiently, some auxiliary information about the data distribution and target function should be provided to it through the learning model. This notion of auxiliary information relates to the concept of regularization in statistical learning theory. A common feature among real-world datasets is that data domains are multiscale and target functions are well-behaved and smooth. In this paper, we propose a learning model that exploits this multiscale data structure and discuss its statistical and computational benefits. The hierarchical learning model is inspired by the logical and progressive easy-to-hard learning mechanism of human beings and has interpretable levels. The model apportions computational resources according to the complexity of data instances and target functions. This property can have multiple benefits, including higher inference speed and computational savings in training a model for many users or when training is interrupted. We provide a statistical analysis of the learning mechanism using multiscale entropies and show that it can yield significantly stronger guarantees than uniform convergence bounds.

Implicit Neural Representations (INR) have recently shown to be powerful tool for high-quality video compression. However, existing works are limiting as they do not explicitly exploit the temporal redundancy in videos, leading to a long encoding time. Additionally, these methods have fixed architectures which do not scale to longer videos or higher resolutions. To address these issues, we propose NIRVANA, which treats videos as groups of frames and fits separate networks to each group performing patch-wise prediction. This design shares computation within each group, in the spatial and temporal dimensions, resulting in reduced encoding time of the video. The video representation is modeled autoregressively, with networks fit on a current group initialized using weights from the previous group's model. To further enhance efficiency, we perform quantization of the network parameters during training, requiring no post-hoc pruning or quantization. When compared with previous works on the benchmark UVG dataset, NIRVANA improves encoding quality from 37.36 to 37.70 (in terms of PSNR) and the encoding speed by 12X, while maintaining the same compression rate. In contrast to prior video INR works which struggle with larger resolution and longer videos, we show that our algorithm is highly flexible and scales naturally due to its patch-wise and autoregressive designs. Moreover, our method achieves variable bitrate compression by adapting to videos with varying inter-frame motion. NIRVANA achieves 6X decoding speed and scales well with more GPUs, making it practical for various deployment scenarios.