Central Europe
Back to school: robots learn from factory workers
What if training a robot to handle dirty, dangerous work on the factory floor was as simple as showing it how? Czech startup RoboTwin is doing exactly that, helping factory workers teach robots new skills by demonstration. Instead of writing complex code, workers perform the job once and RoboTwin's technology turns those movements into a robot programme - opening the door to automation for smaller manufacturers. Founded in Prague in 2021, RoboTwin builds handheld devices and no-code software that capture human movements and translate them into instructions for industrial robots. The aim is to make automation faster, simpler and more accessible to manufacturers that do not have specialist robotics programmers.
Amortising Inference and Meta-Learning Priors in Neural Networks
Rochussen, Tommy, Fortuin, Vincent
One of the core facets of Bayesianism is in the updating of prior beliefs in light of new evidence$\text{ -- }$so how can we maintain a Bayesian approach if we have no prior beliefs in the first place? This is one of the central challenges in the field of Bayesian deep learning, where it is not clear how to represent beliefs about a prediction task by prior distributions over model parameters. Bridging the fields of Bayesian deep learning and probabilistic meta-learning, we introduce a way to $\textit{learn}$ a weights prior from a collection of datasets by introducing a way to perform per-dataset amortised variational inference. The model we develop can be viewed as a neural process whose latent variable is the set of weights of a BNN and whose decoder is the neural network parameterised by a sample of the latent variable itself. This unique model allows us to study the behaviour of Bayesian neural networks under well-specified priors, use Bayesian neural networks as flexible generative models, and perform desirable but previously elusive feats in neural processes such as within-task minibatching or meta-learning under extreme data-starvation.
The sex trends set to define 2026 - including 'digital threesomes' and the return of the office romance
Revealed: Chilling text NASCAR star Greg Biffle's wife sent to her mom just minutes before tragic plane crash'Old age' doesn't kill us... scientists reveal true causes of death Immutable: I can't get enough of Melania, the Real Housewife of Washington, says JAN MOIR The tiny diet change that brought down my sky-high cholesterol WITHOUT statins or drugs. Mike was told he risked a heart attack or stroke. CNBC anchor who slammed Trump's tariffs as'insane' stunned live on air as inflation figures send shockwaves through Wall Street Dramatic bodycam video shows moment suspected kidnapper is arrested after 40 years on the run... as her neighbor thinks arrest is a joke Rob Reiner's'petrified' parting words about son Nick at Conan O'Brien party... and why his haunted A-list friends can't stop talking about it Reiner family bombshell as insiders reveal who is paying for Nick's celebrity lawyer... their secret motive... and who will REALLY inherit $200m fortune Doctors said my hip pain was just tendinitis from sitting all day at work. The real cause may kill me... they had left it far too late Bondi hero is handed $2.5million cheque in his hospital bed - then asks unbelievable question Pete Davidson is a dad! Kim Kardashian's ex welcomes first child with model girlfriend Elsie Hewitt Mica Miller's pastor husband is indicted for shocking acts before his wife was killed days after filing for divorce Trump suspends diversity visa lottery after Kristi Noem says'heinous' Brown University shooter entered US through program Jeffrey Epstein attended dinner with tech billionaires three years after he was convicted of sex crimes - as new photos of the event are released from pedophile's estate The sex trends set to define 2026 - including'digital threesomes' and the return of the office romance You probably won't discuss it around the Christmas dinner table - but experts have revealed the sex trends set to define 2026. Similar to how fashion, tech and lifestyle trends change over time, sexual behaviour also experiences cultural shifts.
'Extremely rare' Roman tomb discovered in Germany
'Extremely rare' Roman tomb discovered in Germany No riches or remains are inside--but it probably wasn't tomb raiders. This stone circle was part of a Roman burial mound called a tumulus. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. In 15 BCE, the Romans invaded parts of Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. The region would eventually become the province of Raetia, but it was not valued for its economic resources.
Warning that THREE tropical diseases are heading to Britain: Scientists discover mosquitoes that spread dengue fever, chikungunya, and Zika in the UK for the first time
Trump dollar coin design released by Treasury... and it's inspired by the most iconic political photo of the century Top plastic surgeons reveal secrets behind Taylor Swift's'changing' face: 'It is looking very full' Fans erupt at Taylor Swift's'dig' at Travis Kelce's ex Kayla Nicole in wild The Life of a Showgirl track Shroud of Turin mystery deepens as surgeon spots hidden detail that points to Jesus' resurrection Hollywood A-listers pay me $50,000 to cure their drug addicted nepo-babies because they can't afford for these secrets to go public I'm no longer sleeping with my husband - and never will again, says MOLLY RYDDELL. I love him, but counted down the moments until he climaxed. Then I couldn't bear it any more and the truth spilled out... so many women feel the same Lori Loughlin's husband Mossimo Giannulli seen with mystery brunette in tiny skirt day after shock split I'm a woman with autism... here are the signs you might be masking, even from yourself I've loved Taylor Swift for years. I was so happy after trying a trendy new cosmetic procedure. But 10 years later I suffered a devastating side effect... the doctor had lied The'middle-class kinks' saving marriages: Wives reveal the eight buzzy sex trends that revived their lagging libidos - including the fantasy husbands are secretly obsessed with Cake-faced 90s sitcom star looks unrecognizable as she ditches the heavy eyeshadow for an LA errand run can you guess who?
EnScale: Temporally-consistent multivariate generative downscaling via proper scoring rules
Schillinger, Maybritt, Samarin, Maxim, Shen, Xinwei, Knutti, Reto, Meinshausen, Nicolai
The practical use of future climate projections from global circulation models (GCMs) is often limited by their coarse spatial resolution, requiring downscaling to generate high-resolution data. Regional climate models (RCMs) provide this refinement, but are computationally expensive. To address this issue, machine learning models can learn the downscaling function, mapping coarse GCM outputs to high-resolution fields. Among these, generative approaches aim to capture the full conditional distribution of RCM data given coarse-scale GCM data, which is characterized by large variability and thus challenging to model accurately. We introduce EnScale, a generative machine learning framework that emulates the full GCM-to-RCM map by training on multiple pairs of GCM and corresponding RCM data. It first adjusts large-scale mismatches between GCM and coarsened RCM data, followed by a super-resolution step to generate high-resolution fields. Both steps employ generative models optimized with the energy score, a proper scoring rule. Compared to state-of-the-art ML downscaling approaches, our setup reduces computational cost by about one order of magnitude. EnScale jointly emulates multiple variables -- temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, and wind -- spatially consistent over an area in Central Europe. In addition, we propose a variant EnScale-t that enables temporally consistent downscaling. We establish a comprehensive evaluation framework across various categories including calibration, spatial structure, extremes, and multivariate dependencies. Comparison with diverse benchmarks demonstrates EnScale's strong performance and computational efficiency. EnScale offers a promising approach for accurate and temporally consistent RCM emulation.
A Composite-Loss Graph Neural Network for the Multivariate Post-Processing of Ensemble Weather Forecasts
Ensemble forecasting systems have advanced meteorology by providing probabilistic estimates of future states, supporting applications from renewable energy production to transportation safety. Nonetheless, systematic biases often persist, making statistical post-processing essential. Traditional parametric post-processing techniques and machine learning-based methods can produce calibrated predictive distributions at specific locations and lead times, yet often struggle to capture dependencies across forecast dimensions. To address this, multivariate post-processing methods-such as ensemble copula coupling and the Schaake shuffle-are widely applied in a second step to restore realistic inter-variable or spatio-temporal dependencies. The aim of this study is the multivariate post-processing of ensemble forecasts using a graph neural network (dualGNN) trained with a composite loss function that combines the energy score (ES) and the variogram score (VS). The method is evaluated on two datasets: WRF-based solar irradiance forecasts over northern Chile and ECMWF visibility forecasts for Central Europe. The dualGNN consistently outperforms all empirical copula-based post-processed forecasts and shows significant improvements compared to graph neural networks trained solely on either the continuous ranked probability score (CRPS) or the ES, according to the evaluated multivariate verification metrics. Furthermore, for the WRF forecasts, the rank-order structure of the dualGNN forecasts captures valuable dependency information, enabling a more effective restoration of spatial relationships than either the raw numerical weather prediction ensemble or historical observational rank structures. By contrast, for the visibility forecasts, the GNNs trained on CRPS, ES, or the ES-VS combination outperform the calibrated reference.