Webb County
Baby spider monkeys rescued in Texas
Animal traffickers face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. It should go without saying, but please don't smuggle spider monkeys. While responding to a human trafficking case earlier this year, United States Border Patrol agents in Laredo, Texas, found two of these tiny primates . The driver failed to yield and fled the scene, leading officers to respond.
Renewable Energy Prediction: A Comparative Study of Deep Learning Models for Complex Dataset Analysis
Wang, Haibo, Huang, Jun, Sua, Lutfu, Alidaee, Bahram
The increasing focus on predicting renewable energy production aligns with advancements in deep learning (DL). The inherent variability of renewable sources and the complexity of prediction methods require robust approaches, such as DL models, in the renewable energy sector. DL models are preferred over traditional machine learning (ML) because they capture complex, nonlinear relationships in renewable energy datasets. This study examines key factors influencing DL technique accuracy, including sampling and hyperparameter optimization, by comparing various methods and training and test ratios within a DL framework. Seven machine learning methods, LSTM, Stacked LSTM, CNN, CNN-LSTM, DNN, Time-Distributed MLP (TD-MLP), and Autoencoder (AE), are evaluated using a dataset combining weather and photovoltaic power output data from 12 locations. Regularization techniques such as early stopping, neuron dropout, L1 and L2 regularization are applied to address overfitting. The results demonstrate that the combination of early stopping, dropout, and L1 regularization provides the best performance to reduce overfitting in the CNN and TD-MLP models with larger training set, while the combination of early stopping, dropout, and L2 regularization is the most effective to reduce the overfitting in CNN-LSTM and AE models with smaller training set.
Whistleblowers claim Border Patrol surveillance cameras 'out of service' as GOP demands answers from DHS
Fox News host Sean Hannity calls out Vice President Kamala Harris' far-left policies ahead of the November election on'Hannity.' Over the last year, Fox News correspondents Bill Melguin and Griff Jenkins have been following complaints from Border Patrol sources that many of the crucial remote surveillance cameras in multiple sectors along the southern border have not been operational. U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee Republicans say whistleblowers came forward to the committee last week, claiming that "some of the busiest Southwest border sectors have nearly 50 or more cameras offline with multiple towers that have been out of service for more than a year." On Wednesday, the House Homeland Security Committee sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, claiming that whistleblowers came forward to the committee last week with concerning information on this issue. The letter from Republicans to Mayorkas demanded answers.
Border Patrol facing large-scale surveillance camera outage with 'significant impacts': report
Former National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd on border agents threatening to leave if Kamala Harris wins the presidential election and explains agents' frustrations with the Biden-Harris administration. The Border Patrol is facing a large-scale outage of security cameras at the southern border with a memo reportedly warning it is having "significant impacts" on operations in apprehending migrants, although officials note there are other layers of security in place as well. NBC News reported that an October memo said nearly one-third of cameras, roughly 150 of 500 cameras on surveillance towers, were out due to technical issues. "The nationwide issue is having significant impacts on [Border Patrol] operations," the memo said. The Remote Video Surveillance Systems are nearly 15 years old and are used to monitor areas of the border without the need for regular on the ground patrols.
Hybrid Heuristic Algorithms for Adiabatic Quantum Machine Learning Models
Alidaee, Bahram, Wang, Haibo, Sua, Lutfu, Liu, Wade
The recent developments of adiabatic quantum machine learning (AQML) methods and applications based on the quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) model have received attention from academics and practitioners. Traditional machine learning methods such as support vector machines, balanced k-means clustering, linear regression, Decision Tree Splitting, Restricted Boltzmann Machines, and Deep Belief Networks can be transformed into a QUBO model. The training of adiabatic quantum machine learning models is the bottleneck for computation. Heuristics-based quantum annealing solvers such as Simulated Annealing and Multiple Start Tabu Search (MSTS) are implemented to speed up the training of AQML based on the QUBO model. The main purpose of this paper is to present a hybrid heuristic embedding an r-flip strategy to solve large-scale QUBO with an improved solution and shorter computing time compared to the state-of-the-art MSTS method. The results of the substantial computational experiments are reported to compare an r-flip strategy embedded hybrid heuristic and a multiple start tabu search algorithm on a set of benchmark instances and three large-scale QUBO instances. The r-flip strategy embedded algorithm provides very high-quality solutions within the CPU time limits of 60 and 600 seconds.
Enhancing supply chain security with automated machine learning
Wang, Haibo, Sua, Lutfu S., Alidaee, Bahram
This study tackles the complexities of global supply chains, which are increasingly vulnerable to disruptions caused by port congestion, material shortages, and inflation. To address these challenges, we explore the application of machine learning methods, which excel in predicting and optimizing solutions based on large datasets. Our focus is on enhancing supply chain security through fraud detection, maintenance prediction, and material backorder forecasting. We introduce an automated machine learning framework that streamlines data analysis, model construction, and hyperparameter optimization for these tasks. By automating these processes, our framework improves the efficiency and effectiveness of supply chain security measures. Our research identifies key factors that influence machine learning performance, including sampling methods, categorical encoding, feature selection, and hyperparameter optimization. We demonstrate the importance of considering these factors when applying machine learning to supply chain challenges. Traditional mathematical programming models often struggle to cope with the complexity of large-scale supply chain problems. Our study shows that machine learning methods can provide a viable alternative, particularly when dealing with extensive datasets and complex patterns. The automated machine learning framework presented in this study offers a novel approach to supply chain security, contributing to the existing body of knowledge in the field. Its comprehensive automation of machine learning processes makes it a valuable contribution to the domain of supply chain management.
A New Surveillance Tool Invades Border Towns
This week, WIRED reported that a group of prolific scammers known as the Yahoo Boys are openly operating on major platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, and Telegram. Evading content moderation systems, the group organizes and engages in criminal activities that range from scams to sextortion schemes. On Wednesday, researchers published a paper detailing a new AI-based methodology to detect the "shape" of suspected money laundering activity on a blockchain. The researchers--composed of scientists from the cryptocurrency tracing firm Elliptic, MIT, and IBM--collected patterns of bitcoin transactions from known scammers to an exchange where dirty crypto could get turned into cash. They used this data to train an AI model to detect similar patterns.
Texas Republican who represents border communities issues warning on migrant surge: 'There's no end in sight'
AUSTIN, Texas โ Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican who represents a district in Texas that spans more than 800 miles along the border, warned that the surge of migrants crossing into the US illegally won't stop until Congress takes action. Tomorrow, it's your city, whether that's Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Florida," Gonzales told Fox News Digital on Saturday. There have been more than two million migrant encounters this fiscal year, including more than 203,000 just last month. House Republicans unveiled their "Commitment to America" agenda this week, which calls for ending catch-and-release loopholes, requiring proof of legal status for a job, and increasing funding for infrastructure and advanced technology at the border. Autonomous surveillance towers are a key piece of technology that Congress should fund for Border Patrol, Gonzales said. The towers, which can be erected in just a few hours and reach 33 feet in height, scan the surrounding area and use artificial intelligence to detect both migrants and the human smugglers who traffic them. "Every border sector is asking for more of these," Gonzales said. "What you don't hear too much about โ the'gotaways' โ these are people that we know entered the country illegally, but we don't know where they went.
Banned Chinese Facial Recognition Technology Was Used in Search for US Protesters - Slashdot
Some protesters in Minnesota set a fire last year. But then the surveillance footage from that day "set off a nearly yearlong, international manhunt...involving multiple federal agencies and Mexican police. The pursuit also involved a facial recognition system made by a Chinese company that has been blacklisted by the U.S. government." The New York Times tells the story of the couple who was eventually arrested: Ms. Yousif gave birth while on the run, and was separated from her baby for four months by the authorities. To prosecutors, the pursuit of Mr. Felan, who was charged with arson, and Ms. Yousif, who was charged with helping him flee, was a routine response to a case of property destruction...