In AI and law, systems that are designed for decision support should be explainable when pursuing justice. In order for these systems to be fair and responsible, they should make correct decisions and make them using a sound and transparent rationale. In this paper, we introduce a knowledge-driven method for model-agnostic rationale evaluation using dedicated test cases, similar to unit-testing in professional software development. We apply this new method in a set of machine learning experiments aimed at extracting known knowledge structures from artificial datasets from fictional and non-fictional legal settings. We show that our method allows us to analyze the rationale of black-box machine learning systems by assessing which rationale elements are learned or not. Furthermore, we show that the rationale can be adjusted using tailor-made training data based on the results of the rationale evaluation.

There is considerable interest in designing meta-reinforcement learning (meta-RL) algorithms, which enable autonomous agents to adapt new tasks from small amount of experience. In meta-RL, the specification (such as reward function) of current task is hidden from the agent. In addition, states are hidden within each task owing to sensor noise or limitations in realistic environments. Therefore, the meta-RL agent faces the challenge of specifying both the hidden task and states based on small amount of experience. To address this, we propose estimating disentangled belief about task and states, leveraging an inductive bias that the task and states can be regarded as global and local features of each task. Specifically, we train a hierarchical state-space model (HSSM) parameterized by deep neural networks as an environment model, whose global and local latent variables correspond to task and states, respectively. Because the HSSM does not allow analytical computation of posterior distribution, i.e., belief, we employ amortized inference to approximate it. After the belief is obtained, we can augment observations of a model-free policy with the belief to efficiently train the policy. Moreover, because task and state information are factorized and interpretable, the downstream policy training is facilitated compared with the prior methods that did not consider the hierarchical nature. Empirical validations on a GridWorld environment confirm that the HSSM can separate the hidden task and states information. Then, we compare the meta-RL agent with the HSSM to prior meta-RL methods in MuJoCo environments, and confirm that our agent requires less training data and reaches higher final performance.

Multi working-machines pathfinding solution enables more mobile machines simultaneously to work inside of a working site so that the productivity can be expected to increase evolutionary. To date, the potential cooperation conflicts among construction machinery limit the amount of construction machinery investment in a concrete working site. To solve the cooperation problem, civil engineers optimize the working site from a logistic perspective while computer scientists improve pathfinding algorithms' performance on the given benchmark maps. In the practical implementation of a construction site, it is sensible to solve the problem with a hybrid solution; therefore, in our study, we proposed an algorithm based on a cutting-edge multi-pathfinding algorithm to enable the massive number of machines cooperation and offer the advice to modify the unreasonable part of the working site in the meantime. Using the logistic information from BIM, such as unloading and loading point, we added a pathfinding solution for multi machines to improve the whole construction fleet's productivity. In the previous study, the experiments were limited to no more than ten participants, and the computational time to gather the solution was not given; thus, we publish our pseudo-code, our tested map, and benchmark our results. Our algorithm's most extensive feature is that it can quickly replan the path to overcome the emergency on a construction site.

![Figure][1] Most of Victoria and New South Wales in Australia experienced the Millennium Drought. River levels dropped, and reservoirs were at a fraction of their capacity. In 2010, the Lake Eildon reservoir in Victoria was at 29% capacity. PHOTO: ASHLEY COOPER/CONSTRUCTION PHOTOGRAPHY/AVALON/GETTY IMAGES Ecological systems can switch into qualitatively different states after small perturbations ([ 1 ][2]). Climate change and anthropic activities are dominant drivers of such ecological shifts, which affect the ability of these systems to recover from future disturbance ([ 2 ][3]). Such finite resilience in complex and dynamic natural systems has been predicted and documented ([ 3 ][4]). However, whether abrupt transitions have occurred or will occur in the water cycle is an unsolved problem ([ 4 ][5]). The possibility for river basins to achieve thresholds at which tiny perturbations alter their state and lead to chronic water scarcity or excessive water bears substantial implications for the sustainable use of water resources in extreme climate conditions ([ 5 ][6]). On page 745 of this issue, Peterson et al. ([ 6 ][7]) demonstrate that river systems exhibit a finite resilience to perturbations and that climate may indeed drive river basins between alternative states. To assess multistability in hydrological systems, Peterson et al. statistically investigated annual and seasonal precipitation and runoff records of more than 160 river basins in Victoria, Australia, before, during, and after the Millennium Drought (2001–2009), the worst drought ever recorded for southeast Australia ([ 7 ][8]). River basins are networks of channels and ridges that convey water to a common outlet. The studied river basins had neither major reservoirs nor water extractions, and runoff changes were not correlated to remotely sensed changes of Earth's surface cover. Seven years after the meteorological drought ended (that is, when dry weather ceased to dominate), more than a third of the river basins had not returned to previous runoff conditions, and most of them showed no signs of recovering soon. Conversely, basins that did shift back to a normal runoff state had shown warning signs in the 3 years before recovery. Unlike hydrological models that assume an infinite resilience of river systems, these findings imply that river basins do not always recover from droughts and that returning to predrought runoff conditions is not just a matter of time. Rather, the onset of positive feedbacks in hydrological systems, such as increased transpiration in nonrecovered basins, may amplify the impacts of climate change and, alarmingly, reduce the probability of switching back to a normal runoff state. Among basins switching back to predrought conditions, runoff recovery was not simply explained by increased soil moisture or groundwater recharge, as estimated by exploring basin wetness during shifts between multiple states. Hydrological recovery may instead have been driven by complex interactions of vegetation and soil hydraulics, which demands further research. Although climate shifts are predicted to alter water processes over widespread regions ([ 8 ][9]), the existence of multiple equilibrium points in the water cycle has focused on small subcontinental scales. Positive feedbacks between precipitation and soil moisture have suggested the emergence of preferential states in soil moisture dynamics and the persistence of droughts in the state of Illinois in the United States ([ 9 ][10]). Bistability was also demonstrated in coupled salt-vegetation dynamics at the basin scale, where gradual changes of salt concentration in irrigation water led to abrupt and irreversible changes in land productivity ([ 10 ][11]). Bistability was also identified in urban settings, where more frequent floods, droughts, population growth, and competition for resources may challenge the resilience of water supply systems and lead worldwide cities toward poverty ([ 11 ][12]). The conclusion of Peterson et al. —that river basins may irreversibly enter a persistent water scarcity state after severe meteorological droughts—challenges the comforting assumption that water systems naturally tend to absorb disturbances. This emphasizes the necessity to change the way global water processes are conceptualized. Assessing the existence of multiple equilibrium points in a natural water system and accounting for feedback mechanisms will likely help improve understanding of the hydrological response of river basins in drying regions and the development of appropriate water management adaptation strategies to climate change. However, the intrinsic heterogeneity of water systems and the stochastic nature of meteorological forcing (such as temperature, precipitation, and wind) raise questions about the possibility that all river basins have multiple equilibrium points ([ 12 ][13]). Further research is needed to identify the critical tipping points at which river basins switch to alternative states as well as the early warning signals of change in their resilience. This requires long-term monitoring of river basins that not only experience climate disturbances up and beyond critical thresholds but also do not undergo notable land-use change. Unfortunately, screening dynamic water processes is an actual challenge, and substantial limitations in current monitoring systems hamper systematic basin-scale hydrological investigations. Observations through standard equipment are still inadequate to fully grasp natural processes ([ 13 ][14]). They offer limited spatial coverage and generally involve high maintenance costs, which hinder implementation in many parts of the world, such as remote environments and developing countries ([ 14 ][15]). Although classical hydrological observations have been consistently decreasing worldwide since the 1980s, the recent use of innovative and unintended technology (such as low-cost electronics and participatory sensing) is providing opportunities for sensing the water cycle at even higher spatiotemporal resolutions ([ 15 ][16]). Dense and accurate monitoring of the hydrological response of and within river basins coupled with advanced data interpretation are necessary steps toward disentangling the complex interactions between basin morphological and functional attributes and hydroclimatic drivers in a changing world. 1. [↵][17]1. M. Scheffer, 2. S. Carpenter, 3. J. A. Foley, 4. C. Folke, 5. B. Walker , Nature 413, 591 (2001). [OpenUrl][18][CrossRef][19][PubMed][20][Web of Science][21] 2. [↵][22]1. B. Walker, 2. C. S. Holling, 3. S. R. Carpenter, 4. A. Kinzig , Ecol. Soc. 9, (2004). 3. [↵][23]1. R. M. May , Nature 269, 471 (1977). [OpenUrl][24][CrossRef][25][Web of Science][26] 4. 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SCI COMMUN ### Conservation President Joe Biden's administration moved last week to overturn a regulation adopted by his predecessor that eliminated sanctions against companies whose operations accidentally kill migratory birds. Trump administration officials had said the fines should be reserved for intentional deaths—an interpretation that broke with long-standing policy and would have prevented, for example, any penalties against the companies responsible for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that killed as many as 1 million birds. Wildlife biologists have said the original, broader enforcement was essential to curtail steep declines in populations of 1100 bird species covered by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Biden's administration would replace Trump's regulation with a new one, which could take months to finalize. Conservation advocates have long proposed a permitting program that would protect companies from legal action for accidental deaths if they adopt practices and technology shown to prevent most bird deaths. ### Energy ![Figure][1] CREDITS: (GRAPHIC) N. CARY/ SCIENCE ; (DATA) GLOBAL ENERGY REVIEW 2021 , IEA Electricity production from renewable sources, led by solar photovoltaics and wind, continued years of steady growth globally during the COVID-19 pandemic, a report says. The production grew 7% in 2020, even as overall demand for electricity dropped and generation from fossil fuels declined. This year, as social restrictions ease and demand climbs, renewable electricity is expected to increase by 8%, the International Energy Agency said last month in its Global Energy Review 2021 . Overall, production from renewables, especially in China, is forecast to provide half the total increase in electricity this year. But power from fossil fuels will grow as well, and analysts say the switch away from coal and other carbon-emitting energy sources is not happening fast enough to reduce the effects of global warming. ### COVID-19 In a move that promises to increase the meager supply of COVID-19 vaccines in poorer countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) last week gave a Chinese-made product the green light. Sinopharm, which makes its vaccine by chemically inactivating the pandemic coronavirus, received an Emergency Use Listing (EUL), a designation WHO gives after reviewing efficacy, safety, and manufacturing practices. It allows the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility, a global consortium promoting equity in vaccine distribution, to purchase and distribute Sinopharm's vaccine. COVAX and Sinopharm are still negotiating a price, and the company says it can increase production. More than 65 million doses have already been administered in 45 countries that have authorized its use. COVAX has struggled to buy affordable vaccines that have EULs—most are too expensive, or supplies were prepurchased by other countries. To date, COVAX has shipped fewer than 60 million doses. ### Vaccines After a protracted internal debate, the Biden administration last week said it supports a proposed international agreement to waive patents on the intellectual property used to make COVID-19 vaccines. The move was hailed by advocates of increased vaccine access and fairness in their distribution, who contend that it will attract new companies to help alleviate a global shortage and reduce costs. But many health officials and vaccinemakers caution that it will not increase supply for many months and that newcomers who want to produce the vaccines face bottlenecks including a lack of technical know-how and widespread shortage of raw materials. ### Public health U.S. regulators on 10 May authorized Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for use in children ages 12 to 15, expanding availability beyond older teens and adults. The go-ahead is the first in the United States for this age group and a key step in restarting in-person schooling, team sports, and other group activities. The decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was expected after the companies announced in March results from a trial of 2260 adolescents in that age group; 18 who received a placebo developed COVID-19 versus none who received the vaccine. Pfizer has said it expects to obtain safety and efficacy data from clinical trials studying children ages 2 to 11 by September, when it plans to ask FDA to permit use in that age group. A small fraction of all Americans who have died from COVID-19 were under age 18, and children who contract COVID-19 tend to have milder symptoms, but some face long-term health problems. However, many U.S. parents remain hesitant to vaccinate their children because of misinformation and because FDA has only authorized COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use, not given them full approval. ### Virology The World Health Organization (WHO) on 10 May designated as a variant of concern a version of the pandemic coronavirus first identified in India in February. Evidence suggests the variant, B.1.617, now found in about 40 countries, is more transmissible than original strains of SARS-CoV-2, WHO said. It is the fourth variant to receive this WHO designation, following ones first found in Brazil, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. ### Governance To be better prepared for the next pandemic, the world needs a Global Health Threats Council akin to the United Nations Security Council, which would bring together country leaders from different regions along with representatives of the private sector and civil society, according to the first comprehensive review of the global response to COVID-19, released on 12 May. The 13-member Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which was commissioned by the World Health Organization, also proposes creating an International Pandemic Financing Facility with annual funding of $5 billion to $10 billion and giving WHO a bigger budget, more independence, and new powers to investigate outbreaks anywhere in the world, among many other recommendations. The panel was led by two former heads of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Helen Clark of New Zealand, and included public health specialists, diplomats, and economists. “Pandemics pose potential existential threats to humanity and must be elevated to the highest level,” says the report, COVID-19: Make it the Last Pandemic . ### Public attitudes U.S. adults voice varying support for rules by governments and businesses that could require people to prove they received a COVID-19 vaccine before certain in-person activities, such as attending crowded events or entering their office, a Gallup poll reported last week. Most of the 3731 respondents surveyed in April favored proof to travel by airplane (57%) and attend large events such as concerts (55%). But support dipped below a majority for requiring proof to enter one's workplace (45%) or dine indoors at a restaurant (40%). Responses differed by political party affiliation and willingness to be vaccinated. ### Leadership Nancy Messonnier, a top official at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who drew the ire of former President Donald Trump in February 2020 for her unvarnished public warning about the impending coronavirus pandemic, will leave the agency on 14 May, she told colleagues last week in an email. Two weeks before the email, she had been reassigned from heading CDC's COVID-19 task force, Politico reported. She will join the Skoll Foundation as executive director for pandemics and health systems. At CDC since 1995, Messonnier led the launch of a low-cost meningitis vaccine in Africa and rose to head the agency's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. After she warned at a press conference 15 months ago that the pandemic might severely sicken many Americans, stock markets plunged, and she did not appear at any subsequent White House briefings. ### Seismology One of the largest seismic research projects in history, used to study structures in Earth's crust and mantle as deep as 3000 kilometers, is ending its run. Begun in 2004 and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the several hundred seismic stations of the Transportable Array collected earthquake data as a way of peering deep inside Earth. The stations were deployed at first in the western states and then were moved east across the country every few years. In 2017, the project's final phase began when the network was transported to Alaska. Pandemic-related delays prompted an extra year of operation, but in early May, more than 80 stations went dark, awaiting collection this summer. Another 100 will remain in Alaska, many of them in remote, previously unmonitored regions, filling gaps in the state's seismic coverage. ### Drug development A psychedelic drug has passed a major milestone by showing evidence of benefit as a supplement to talk therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), researchers report this week. The results came from the first phase 3 clinical trial combining psychotherapy with the drug 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), popularly called ecstasy, for people with severe, chronic PTSD. The study, sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), recruited 90 people to receive talk therapy during 15 sessions, including three “experimental” ones in which they received either MDMA or a placebo. The MDMA group saw significantly greater improvements on a PTSD symptom scale, the researchers said in Nature Medicine . Two months after the final experimental session, 67% of those who got MDMA no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, versus 32% of those who got a placebo. MAPS aims to confirm those benefits in a 100-person trial now enrolling volunteers and, in 2023, to seek approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for MDMA-assisted therapy. ### Conservation Researchers are pressing Chile's government to increase protections for whales along its coast against deadly ship collisions. After three whales were found dead during just 8 days in April, 65 Chilean marine mammal specialists issued a public plea for the government to act. They called for rerouting ships away from sensitive regions, setting speed limits, and establishing an alert system to warn vessel pilots of nearby whales. Hundreds of vessels plying Chilean waters pose significant threats to the estimated 40% of the world's cetacean species that frequent them, researchers say. In 2008, Chile declared its entire 6500-kilometer-long coastline a whale sanctuary. But the country's protections for marine mammals still exist only on paper or lack details. The government says it is working to increase safety measures. But researchers say it must commit adequate funding to succeed. ### Space science NASA marked two milestones this week—the final tests on Earth of its next marquee space telescope, and the start of a long journey home for a trove of asteroid rocks. NASA engineers are wrapping up testing on the giant gold-tinted mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope. Afterward, the long-delayed, $9 billion observatory will be shipped off to French Guiana for launch on 31 October. Also this week, NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe began its 2-year flight back to Earth from the asteroid Bennu, carrying up to 400 grams of rocky chunks the spacecraft collected from its surface. It will be the largest U.S. haul of rocks collected in space since the Apollo program, and NASA's first from an asteroid. ### Aquaculture Nutrition expert Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted was awarded the World Food Prize this week for research that used aquaculture to improve the diets of millions of people across Asia and Africa. Thilsted, who began her career at Trinidad and Tobago's Ministry of Agriculture, Land & Fisheries, now heads nutrition research at WorldFish, a nonprofit research center in Penang state in Malaysia. In Bangladesh, she studied small, native fish species widely eaten by farmers. Thilsted identified micronutrients the fish contain and their valuable role in the healthy development of infants and toddlers; adding these fish also helps the body absorb other micronutrients in rice and vegetables. She developed ways to cheaply raise fish, combining large and small species in ponds, which increases production. These methods have helped make Bangladesh one of the world's top aquaculture producers. [1]: pending:yes

Nayat Sánchez-Pi is the Director of the Inria Chile Research Center. We asked her about her research and about the OcéanIA project which she leads. The aim of the OcéanIA project is to develop new artificial intelligence and mathematical modeling tools to contribute to the understanding of the oceans and their role in regulating and sustaining the biosphere, and tackling the climate change. I have been working in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning for more than 15 years now. During this time I have always had an interest in finding ways of taking the state-of-the-art of my area of research and applying it to have a direct impact on the real world.

Encoder-decoder style deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) are able to extract features directly from images, mix them with scalar inputs within a general low-dimensional latent space, and generate outputs which represent complex physical phenomenon. One challenge faced by deep learning methods is modeling large non-stationary systems whose characteristics change quickly with time for which re-training is not feasible. In this paper we present a method for adaptive tuning of the low-dimensional latent space of deep encoder-decoder style CNNs based on real-time feedback to compensate for unknown and fast distribution shifts. We demonstrate the approach for predicting the properties of a time-varying charged particle beam in a particle accelerator whose initial distribution and components (accelerating electric fields and focusing magnetic fields) are quickly changing with time and may not be measurable during operations. Our method utilizes the low-dimensional latent space basis directly to generate new outputs and therefore does not require access to new input beam distributions for re-training, which is important for large systems such as particle accelerators where input distribution measurements interrupt normal operations.

Deep Neural Network (DNN), one of the most powerful machine learning algorithms, is increasingly leveraged to overcome the bottleneck of effectively exploring and analyzing massive data to boost advanced scientific development. It is not a surprise that cloud computing providers offer the cloud-based DNN as an out-of-the-box service. Though there are some benefits from the cloud-based DNN, the interaction mechanism among two or multiple entities in the cloud inevitably induces new privacy risks. This survey presents the most recent findings of privacy attacks and defenses appeared in cloud-based neural network services. We systematically and thoroughly review privacy attacks and defenses in the pipeline of cloud-based DNN service, i.e., data manipulation, training, and prediction. In particular, a new theory, called cloud-based ML privacy game, is extracted from the recently published literature to provide a deep understanding of state-of-the-art research. Finally, the challenges and future work are presented to help researchers to continue to push forward the competitions between privacy attackers and defenders.

Most successful computer vision models transform low-level features, such as Gabor filter responses, into richer representations of intermediate or mid-level complexity for downstream visual tasks. These mid-level representations have not been explored for event cameras, although it is especially relevant to the visually sparse and often disjoint spatial information in the event stream. By making use of locally consistent intermediate representations, termed as superevents, numerous visual tasks ranging from semantic segmentation, visual tracking, depth estimation shall benefit. In essence, superevents are perceptually consistent local units that delineate parts of an object in a scene. Inspired by recent deep learning architectures, we present a novel method that employs lifetime augmentation for obtaining an event stream representation that is fed to a fully convolutional network to extract superevents. Our qualitative and quantitative experimental results on several sequences of a benchmark dataset highlights the significant potential for event-based downstream applications.

Questions of fairness, robustness, and transparency are paramount to address before deploying NLP systems. Central to these concerns is the question of reliability: Can NLP systems reliably treat different demographics fairly and function correctly in diverse and noisy environments? To address this, we argue for the need for reliability testing and contextualize it among existing work on improving accountability. We show how adversarial attacks can be reframed for this goal, via a framework for developing reliability tests. We argue that Figure 1: How DOCTOR can integrate with existing reliability testing -- with an emphasis on interdisciplinary system development workflows. Test (left) and system collaboration -- will enable rigorous development (right) take place in parallel, separate and targeted testing, and aid in the enactment teams. Reliability tests can thus be constructed independent and enforcement of industry standards. of the system development team, either by an internal "red team" or by independent auditors.