With the rapid advances in programmable materials, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) have become a pivotal technology for future wireless communications. The simultaneous transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (STAR-RIS) can both transmit and reflect signals, enabling comprehensive signal control and expanding application scenarios. This paper introduces an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to further enhance system flexibility and proposes an optimization design for the spectrum efficiency of the STAR-RIS-UAV-assisted wireless communication system. We present a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithm capable of iteratively optimizing beamforming, phase shifts, and UAV positioning to maximize the system's sum rate through continuous interactions with the environment. To improve exploration in deterministic policies, we introduce a stochastic perturbation factor, which enhances exploration capabilities. As exploration is strengthened, the algorithm's ability to accurately evaluate the state-action value function becomes critical. Thus, based on the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm, we propose a convolution-augmented deep deterministic policy gradient (CA-DDPG) algorithm that balances exploration and evaluation to improve the system's sum rate. The simulation results demonstrate that the CA-DDPG algorithm effectively interacts with the environment, optimizing the beamforming matrix, phase shift matrix, and UAV location, thereby improving system capacity and achieving better performance than other algorithms.

Conscious state estimation is important in various medical settings, including sleep staging and anesthesia management, to ensure patient safety and optimize health outcomes. Traditional methods predominantly utilize electroencephalography (EEG), which faces challenges such as high sensitivity to noise and the requirement for controlled environments. In this study, we propose the consciousness-ECG transformer that leverages electrocardiography (ECG) signals for non-invasive and reliable conscious state estimation. Our approach employs a transformer with decoupled query attention to effectively capture heart rate variability features that distinguish between conscious and unconscious states. We implemented the conscious state estimation system with real-time monitoring and validated our system on datasets involving sleep staging and anesthesia level monitoring during surgeries. Experimental results demonstrate that our model outperforms baseline models, achieving accuracies of 0.877 on sleep staging and 0.880 on anesthesia level monitoring. Moreover, our model achieves the highest area under curve values of 0.786 and 0.895 on sleep staging and anesthesia level monitoring, respectively. The proposed system offers a practical and robust alternative to EEG-based methods, particularly suited for dynamic clinical environments. Our results highlight the potential of ECG-based consciousness monitoring to enhance patient safety and advance our understanding of conscious states.

Abstract--Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into software engineering (SE) tools for tasks that extend beyond code synthesis, including judgment under uncertainty and reasoning in ethically significant contexts. We present a fully automated framework for assessing ethical reasoning capabilities across 16 LLMs in a zero-shot setting, using 30 real-world ethically charged scenarios. Each model is prompted to identify the most applicable ethical theory to an action, assess its moral acceptability, and explain the reasoning behind their choice. Responses are compared against expert ethicists' choices using inter-model agreement metrics. Our results show that LLMs achieve an average Theory Consistency Rate (TCR) of 73.3% and Binary Agreement Rate (BAR) on moral acceptability of 86.7%, with interpretable divergences concentrated in ethically ambiguous cases. A qualitative analysis of free-text explanations reveals strong conceptual convergence across models despite surface-level lexical diversity. These findings support the potential viability of LLMs as ethical inference engines within SE pipelines, enabling scalable, auditable, and adaptive integration of user-aligned ethical reasoning. Our focus is the Ethical Interpreter component of a broader profiling pipeline: we evaluate whether current LLMs exhibit sufficient interpretive stability and theory-consistent reasoning to support automated profiling. Autonomous systems are increasingly becoming an integral part of our daily lives across diverse domains [1], [2]. These systems can operate independently without any human intervention and make decisions acting on behalf of their users [3]-[6]. Their rapid growth brings both opportunities and challenges. From a software engineering perspective, as these systems become pervasive, a key challenge is designing systems that, beyond meeting technical requirements, also account for ethical considerations [7]-[11]. Recently, various studies have focused on the ethical implications of these software-intensive systems on individuals and society [10], [12]-[15]. Software engineering ethics encompasses principles and rules that guide engineers' decisions throughout the design and development process [16]. V arious approaches have also been introduced that ensure that systems align with broad ethical values like fairness, transparency, and safety [17]-[22].

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) play a key role in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), particularly in enabling real-time communication for emergency vehicles. However, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which interfere with safety-critical communication channels, can severely impair their reliability. This study introduces a robust and scalable framework to detect DDoS attacks in highway-based VANET environments. A synthetic dataset was constructed using Network Simulator 3 (NS-3) in conjunction with the Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) and further enriched with real-world mobility traces from Germany's A81 highway, extracted via OpenStreetMap (OSM). Three traffic categories were simulated: DDoS, VoIP, and TCP-based video streaming (VideoTCP). The data preprocessing pipeline included normalization, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) feature engineering, missing value imputation, and class balancing using the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE). Feature importance was assessed using SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP). Eleven classifiers were benchmarked, among them XGBoost (XGB), CatBoost (CB), AdaBoost (AB), GradientBoosting (GB), and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN). XGB and CB achieved the best performance, each attaining an F1-score of 96%. These results highlight the robustness of the proposed framework and its potential for real-time deployment in VANETs to secure critical emergency communications.

In disaster scenarios where conventional energy infrastructure is compromised, secure and traceable energy trading between solar-powered households and mobile charging units becomes a necessity. To ensure the integrity of such transactions over a blockchain network, robust and unpredictable nonce generation is vital. This study proposes an SDN-enabled architecture where machine learning regressors are leveraged not for their accuracy, but for their potential to generate randomized values suitable as nonce candidates. Therefore, it is newly called Proof of AutoML. Here, SDN allows flexible control over data flows and energy routing policies even in fragmented or degraded networks, ensuring adaptive response during emergencies. Using a 9000-sample dataset, we evaluate five AutoML-selected regression models - Gradient Boosting, LightGBM, Random Forest, Extra Trees, and K-Nearest Neighbors - not by their prediction accuracy, but by their ability to produce diverse and non-deterministic outputs across shuffled data inputs. Randomness analysis reveals that Random Forest and Extra Trees regressors exhibit complete dependency on randomness, whereas Gradient Boosting, K-Nearest Neighbors and LightGBM show strong but slightly lower randomness scores (97.6%, 98.8% and 99.9%, respectively). These findings highlight that certain machine learning models, particularly tree-based ensembles, may serve as effective and lightweight nonce generators within blockchain-secured, SDN-based energy trading infrastructures resilient to disaster conditions.

Telerobotics is a key foundation in autonomous Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS), enabling remote operations across various domains. However, conventional cloud-based telerobotics suffers from latency, reliability, scalability, and resilience issues, hindering real-time performance in critical applications. Cloud-Fog Telerobotics (CFTel) builds on the Cloud-Fog Automation (CFA) paradigm to address these limitations by leveraging a distributed Cloud-Edge-Robotics computing architecture, enabling deterministic connectivity, deterministic connected intelligence, and deterministic networked computing. This paper synthesizes recent advancements in CFTel, aiming to highlight its role in facilitating scalable, low-latency, autonomous, and AI-driven telerobotics. We analyze architectural frameworks and technologies that enable them, including 5G Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication, Edge Intelligence, Embodied AI, and Digital Twins. The study demonstrates that CFTel has the potential to enhance real-time control, scalability, and autonomy while supporting service-oriented solutions. We also discuss practical challenges, including latency constraints, cybersecurity risks, interoperability issues, and standardization efforts. This work serves as a foundational reference for researchers, stakeholders, and industry practitioners in future telerobotics research.

Plant diseases pose a serious challenge to agriculture by reducing crop yield and affecting food quality. Early detection and classification of these diseases are essential for minimising losses and improving crop management practices. This study applies Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Long Short - Term Memory (LSTM) models to classify plant leaf diseases usin g a dataset containing 70,295 training images and 17,572 validation images across 38 disease classes. The CNN model was trained using the Adam optimiser with a learning rate of 0.0001 and categorical cross - entropy as the loss function. After 10 training ep ochs, the model achieved a training accuracy of 99.1% and a validation accuracy of 96.4%. The LSTM model reached a validation accuracy of 93.43%. Performance was evaluated using precision, recall, F1 - score, and confusion matrix, confirming the reliability of the CNN - based approach. The results suggest that deep learning models, particularly CNN, enable an effective solution for accurate and scalable plant disease classification, supporting practical applications in agricultural monitoring .

The rapid advancement of deep learning (DL) has transformed healthcare, particularly in cancer detection and diagnosis. DL surpasses traditional machine learning and human accuracy, making it a critical tool for identifying diseases. Despite numerous reviews on DL in healthcare, a comprehensive analysis of its role in cancer detection remains limited. Existing studies focus on specific aspects, leaving gaps in understanding its broader impact. This paper addresses these gaps by reviewing advanced DL techniques, including transfer learning (TL), reinforcement learning (RL), federated learning (FL), Transformers, and large language models (LLMs). These approaches enhance accuracy, tackle data scarcity, and enable decentralized learning while maintaining data privacy. TL adapts pre-trained models to new datasets, improving performance with limited labeled data. RL optimizes diagnostic pathways and treatment strategies, while FL fosters collaborative model development without sharing sensitive data. Transformers and LLMs, traditionally used in natural language processing, are now applied to medical data for improved interpretability. Additionally, this review examines these techniques' efficiency in cancer diagnosis, addresses challenges like data imbalance, and proposes solutions. It serves as a resource for researchers and practitioners, providing insights into current trends and guiding future research in advanced DL for cancer detection.

--Salps are marine animals consisting of chains of jellyfish-like units. Their capacity for effective underwater undulatory locomotion through coordinating multi-jet propulsion has aroused significant interest in the field of robotics and inspired extensive research including design, modeling, and control. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of the locomotion of salp-like systems using the robotic platform "LandSalp" based on geometric mechanics, including mechanism design, dynamic modeling, system identification, and motion planning and control. Our work takes a step toward a better understanding of salps' underwater locomotion and provides a clear path for extending these insights to more complex and capable underwater robotic systems. Furthermore, this study illustrates the effectiveness of geometric mechanics in bio-inspired robots for efficient data-driven locomotion modeling, demonstrated by learning the dynamics of LandSalp from only 3 minutes of experimental data. Lastly, we extend the geometric mechanics principles to multi-jet propulsion systems with stability considerations and validate the theory through experiments on the LandSalp hardware. These creatures are capable of efficient underwater undulatory locomotion by coordinating multi-jet propulsion. The structure and locomotion patterns of salps are closely related, which has attracted widespread interest in both biological and ecological research [1-5]. In the field of robotics, salps have attracted increasing attention due to their jet propulsion by expelling water through contraction, efficient underwater locomotion, and multi-unit coordination. Salps and jellyfish have inspired numerous robotic studies on the design of jet propulsion soft robots [6-12] and multi-robot coordination [13-17]. However, in the field of motion planning and control, most studies primarily consider undulatory locomotion by self-propulsion via body deformation [18-23], with only a few works involving underwater locomotion using jet propulsion [24-26]. This work was supported in part by ONR A ward N00014-23-1-2171. All the authors are with the Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute at Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR USA. The units composing biological salps are called "zooids" (i.e., pseudoan-imals or not-quite-animals) because they exhibit many properties of animals but are not independent organisms from the colony. To discuss the general properties of multi-jet locomotion without making claims about the biological systems that inspire them, we use the terminology "chains" and "units" throughout this paper. The salp picture is reproduced from [27].

Vision Large Language Models (VLMs) combine visual understanding with natural language processing, enabling tasks like image captioning, visual question answering, and video analysis. While VLMs show impressive capabilities across domains such as autonomous vehicles, smart surveillance, and healthcare, their deployment on resource-constrained edge devices remains challenging due to processing power, memory, and energy limitations. This survey explores recent advancements in optimizing VLMs for edge environments, focusing on model compression techniques, including pruning, quantization, knowledge distillation, and specialized hardware solutions that enhance efficiency. We provide a detailed discussion of efficient training and fine-tuning methods, edge deployment challenges, and privacy considerations. Additionally, we discuss the diverse applications of lightweight VLMs across healthcare, environmental monitoring, and autonomous systems, illustrating their growing impact. By highlighting key design strategies, current challenges, and offering recommendations for future directions, this survey aims to inspire further research into the practical deployment of VLMs, ultimately making advanced AI accessible in resource-limited settings.