During WWI, a daredevil pilot helped invent the first'drones' Lawrence Sperry's autopilot proved planes could fly themselves. Lawrence Sperry was a pioneer, a showman, and inventor. Without him, flying today would look very different. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. On November 21, 1916, pilot and inventor Lawrence Sperry was flying over Long Island's Great South Bay with his student Dorothy Rice Pierce when his plane suddenly plunged into the water .

Science Archaeology Medieval shipwreck mistaken for underwater'rubbish' Loaded with grave slabs, the 13th century English ship was dragged to a grave of its own. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. After centuries at the bottom of the English Channel, remnants from one of England's oldest surviving shipwrecks are finally back on shore. Yet the reason it took maritime archaeologists this long to retrieve items from the 13th century Mortar Wreck was not because of its depth or the ravages of time. The shipwreck was mistaken for modern construction debris.

UK's sweeping asylum law changes: How will they impact refugees? Shabana Mahmood, the United Kingdom's home secretary, has said the country's asylum system is "not working" and is placing "intense strain on communities" ahead of proposals for major government reforms that would end refugees' automatic right to settle permanently in the UK. Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Mahmood said undocumented migration is "tearing the country apart". First, they would end the automatic path to settled status for refugees after five years. And second, they would remove state benefits from those who have the right to work and can support themselves.

Captain of tanker linked to Russian'shadow fleet' charged in France The captain of an oil tanker believed to be part of Russia's shadow fleet of vessels used to evade sanctions has been charged by French authorities. The Chinese national was handed one count of refusing to follow instructions from the French navy and told to attend a court hearing in the northern coastal city of Brest next February. The Boracay left Russia last month and was off the coast of Denmark when unidentified drones forced the temporary closure of several airports last week. The tanker was earlier boarded by French soldiers because it was on a list of vessels subject to EU sanctions for carrying Russian oil exports. Russian President Vladimir Putin called France's actions piracy.

French troops board oil tanker linked to Russian'shadow fleet' French soldiers have boarded an oil tanker believed to be part of Russia's shadow fleet, used to evade sanctions imposed because of the war in Ukraine. The Boracay left Russia last month and was off the coast of Denmark when unidentified drones forced the temporary closure of several airports last week. It has been anchored off western France for a few days. French President Emmanuel Macron said at an EU leaders' summit in Copenhagen on Wednesday that the crew had committed serious offences, but did not elaborate. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had no knowledge of the vessel.

President Trump's state visit to the UK secured $350 billion in US tech investments to strengthen Britain's AI capabilities and counter Chinese influence.

Charlie Kirk assassin's ammunition'engraved with transgender and antifascist' messages My last phone call with Charlie: MARK HALPERIN remembers a dedicated, political genius, who didn't hate anyone. FBI under pressure over open airport five miles from Charlie Kirk assassination hit as private jet'vanishes' after shooting Elite sniper breaks down Charlie Kirk assassin's sick plot... and reveals tiny detail everyone's missed: The gun. Silenced by a bullet to the throat - then came the sneers. MAUREEN CALLAHAN's blistering rebuke as America faces greatest political crisis since the 60s Musk dethroned as richest person by forgotten Wall Street darling's founder as stock soars 42% MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd fired over'disgusting' on-air comments about Charlie Kirk shortly after conservative star was assassinated Jimmy Kimmel reacts to assassination of Charlie Kirk: 'No finger pointing' Charlie Kirk's widow wrestling with shattering truth kids must hear soon Sweater weather starts here - the cozy, chic pieces from Soft Surroundings you'll actually wear all season Trader Joe's continues USA takeover as it snaps up more land after opening new stores this year Fierce debate erupts over'non-human' technology in space after video captures UFO surviving Hellfire strike TMZ forced to apologize after staff heard erupting in laughter as Charlie Kirk's death was announced Police tapes capture chilling details of Charlie Kirk gunman's appearance as FBI faces fury over his escape This Oscar-nominated actress, 68, will soon reunite with her ex in Spain for their daughter's wedding, can you guess who? READ MORE: 'Cannibal' ladybirds from East Asia are wiping out British species It's been hundreds of years since the French last tried to conquer Britain.

Appropriate modelling of extreme skew surges is crucial, particularly for coastal risk management. Our study focuses on modelling extreme skew surges along the French Atlantic coast, with a particular emphasis on investigating the extremal dependence structure between stations. We employ the peak-over-threshold framework, where a multivariate extreme event is defined whenever at least one location records a large value, though not necessarily all stations simultaneously. A novel method for determining an appropriate level (threshold) above which observations can be classified as extreme is proposed. Two complementary approaches are explored. First, the multivariate generalized Pareto distribution is employed to model extremes, leveraging its properties to derive a generative model that predicts extreme skew surges at one station based on observed extremes at nearby stations. Second, a novel extreme regression framework is assessed for point predictions. This specific regression framework enables accurate point predictions using only the "angle" of input variables, i.e. input variables divided by their norms. The ultimate objective is to reconstruct historical skew surge time series at stations with limited data. This is achieved by integrating extreme skew surge data from stations with longer records, such as Brest and Saint-Nazaire, which provide over 150 years of observations.

With the recent development of new geometric and angular-radial frameworks for multivariate extremes, reliably simulating from angular variables in moderate-to-high dimensions is of increasing importance. Empirical approaches have the benefit of simplicity, and work reasonably well in low dimensions, but as the number of variables increases, they can lack the required flexibility and scalability. Classical parametric models for angular variables, such as the von Mises-Fisher (vMF) distribution, provide an alternative. Exploiting mixtures of vMF distributions increases their flexibility, but there are cases where even this is not sufficient to capture the intricate features that can arise in data. Owing to their flexibility, generative deep learning methods are able to capture complex data structures; they therefore have the potential to be useful in the simulation of angular variables. In this paper, we explore a range of deep learning approaches for this task, including generative adversarial networks, normalizing flows and flow matching. We assess their performance via a range of metrics and make comparisons to the more classical approach of using a mixture of vMF distributions. The methods are also applied to a metocean data set, demonstrating their applicability to real-world, complex data structures.

Movements of maritime vessels are inherently complex and challenging to model due to the dynamic and often unpredictable nature of maritime operations. Even within structured maritime environments, such as shipping lanes and port approaches, where vessels adhere to navigational rules and predefined sea routes, uncovering underlying patterns is far from trivial. The necessity for accurate modeling of the mobility of maritime vessels arises from the numerous applications it serves, including risk assessment for collision avoidance, optimization of shipping routes, and efficient port management. This paper introduces FLP-XR, a model that leverages maritime mobility data to construct a robust framework that offers precise predictions while ensuring extremely fast training and inference capabilities. We demonstrate the efficiency of our approach through an extensive experimental study using three real-world AIS datasets. According to the experimental results, FLP-XR outperforms the current state-of-the-art in many cases, whereas it performs 2-3 orders of magnitude faster in terms of training and inference.