Class-incremental learning deals with sequential data streams composed of batches of classes. Various algorithms have been proposed to address the challenging case where samples from past classes cannot be stored. However, selecting an appropriate algorithm for a user-defined setting is an open problem, as the relative performance of these algorithms depends on the incremental settings. To solve this problem, we introduce an algorithm recommendation method that simulates the future data stream. Given an initial set of classes, it leverages generative models to simulate future classes from the same visual domain. We evaluate recent algorithms on the simulated stream and recommend the one which performs best in the user-defined incremental setting. We illustrate the effectiveness of our method on three large datasets using six algorithms and six incremental settings. Our method outperforms competitive baselines, and performance is close to that of an oracle choosing the best algorithm in each setting. This work contributes to facilitate the practical deployment of incremental learning.

This scientific report presents a novel methodology for the early prediction of important political events using News datasets. The methodology leverages natural language processing, graph theory, clique analysis, and semantic relationships to uncover hidden predictive signals within the data. Initially, we designed a preliminary version of the method and tested it on a few events. This analysis revealed limitations in the initial research phase. We then enhanced the model in two key ways: first, we added a filtration step to only consider politically relevant news before further processing; second, we adjusted the input features to make the alert system more sensitive to significant spikes in the data. After finalizing the improved methodology, we tested it on eleven events including US protests, the Ukraine war, and French protests. Results demonstrate the superiority of our approach compared to baseline methods. Through targeted refinements, our model can now provide earlier and more accurate predictions of major political events based on subtle patterns in news data.

The case of the Zodiac Killer is one of the most widely known unsolved serial killer cases in history. The unidentified killer murdered five known victims and terrorized the state of California. He also communicated extensively with the press and law enforcement. Besides his murders, Zodiac was known for his use of ciphers. The first Zodiac cipher was solved within a week of its publication, while the second cipher was solved by the authors after 51 years, when it was discovered to be a transposition and homophonic substitution cipher with unusual qualities. In this paper, we detail the historical significance of this cipher and the numerous efforts which culminated in its solution.

Exploring the application of deep learning technologies in the field of medical diagnostics, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) provides a unique perspective for observing and diagnosing complex neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer Disease (AD). With advancements in deep learning, particularly in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and the Xception network architecture, we are now able to analyze and classify vast amounts of MRI data with unprecedented accuracy. The progress of this technology not only enhances our understanding of brain structural changes but also opens up new avenues for monitoring disease progression through non-invasive means and potentially allows for precise diagnosis in the early stages of the disease. This study aims to classify MRI images using deep learning models to identify different stages of Alzheimer Disease through a series of innovative data processing and model construction steps. Our experimental results show that the deep learning framework based on the Xception model achieved a 99.6% accuracy rate in the multi-class MRI image classification task, demonstrating its potential application value in assistive diagnosis. Future research will focus on expanding the dataset, improving model interpretability, and clinical validation to further promote the application of deep learning technology in the medical field, with the hope of bringing earlier diagnosis and more personalized treatment plans to Alzheimer Disease patients.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is a prevalent approach to infuse a private knowledge base of documents with Large Language Models (LLM) to build Generative Q\&A (Question-Answering) systems. However, RAG accuracy becomes increasingly challenging as the corpus of documents scales up, with Retrievers playing an outsized role in the overall RAG accuracy by extracting the most relevant document from the corpus to provide context to the LLM. In this paper, we propose the 'Blended RAG' method of leveraging semantic search techniques, such as Dense Vector indexes and Sparse Encoder indexes, blended with hybrid query strategies. Our study achieves better retrieval results and sets new benchmarks for IR (Information Retrieval) datasets like NQ and TREC-COVID datasets. We further extend such a 'Blended Retriever' to the RAG system to demonstrate far superior results on Generative Q\&A datasets like SQUAD, even surpassing fine-tuning performance.

Online updating of time series forecasting models aims to tackle the challenge of concept drifting by adjusting forecasting models based on streaming data. While numerous algorithms have been developed, most of them focus on model design and updating. In practice, many of these methods struggle with continuous performance regression in the face of accumulated concept drifts over time. To address this limitation, we present a novel approach, Concept \textbf{D}rift \textbf{D}etection an\textbf{D} \textbf{A}daptation (D3A), that first detects drifting conception and then aggressively adapts the current model to the drifted concepts after the detection for rapid adaption. To best harness the utility of historical data for model adaptation, we propose a data augmentation strategy introducing Gaussian noise into existing training instances. It helps mitigate the data distribution gap, a critical factor contributing to train-test performance inconsistency. The significance of our data augmentation process is verified by our theoretical analysis. Our empirical studies across six datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of D3A in improving model adaptation capability. Notably, compared to a simple Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN) baseline, D3A reduces the average Mean Squared Error (MSE) by $43.9\%$. For the state-of-the-art (SOTA) model, the MSE is reduced by $33.3\%$.

Mobile Internet user credit assessment is an important way for communication operators to establish decisions and formulate measures, and it is also a guarantee for operators to obtain expected benefits. However, credit evaluation methods have long been monopolized by financial industries such as banks and credit. As supporters and providers of platform network technology and network resources, communication operators are also builders and maintainers of communication networks. Internet data improves the user's credit evaluation strategy. This paper uses the massive data provided by communication operators to carry out research on the operator's user credit evaluation model based on the fusion LightGBM algorithm. First, for the massive data related to user evaluation provided by operators, key features are extracted by data preprocessing and feature engineering methods, and a multi-dimensional feature set with statistical significance is constructed; then, linear regression, decision tree, LightGBM, and other machine learning algorithms build multiple basic models to find the best basic model; finally, integrates Averaging, Voting, Blending, Stacking and other integrated algorithms to refine multiple fusion models, and finally establish the most suitable fusion model for operator user evaluation.

Transmission line detection technology is crucial for automatic monitoring and ensuring the safety of electrical facilities. The YOLOv5 series is currently one of the most advanced and widely used methods for object detection. However, it faces inherent challenges, such as high computational load on devices and insufficient detection accuracy. To address these concerns, this paper presents an enhanced lightweight YOLOv5 technique customized for mobile devices, specifically intended for identifying objects associated with transmission lines. The C3Ghost module is integrated into the convolutional network of YOLOv5 to reduce floating point operations per second (FLOPs) in the feature channel fusion process and improve feature expression performance. In addition, a FasterNet module is introduced to replace the c3 module in the YOLOv5 Backbone. The FasterNet module uses Partial Convolutions to process only a portion of the input channels, improving feature extraction efficiency and reducing computational overhead. To address the imbalance between simple and challenging samples in the dataset and the diversity of aspect ratios of bounding boxes, the wIoU v3 LOSS is adopted as the loss function. To validate the performance of the proposed approach, Experiments are conducted on a custom dataset of transmission line poles. The results show that the proposed model achieves a 1% increase in detection accuracy, a 13% reduction in FLOPs, and a 26% decrease in model parameters compared to the existing YOLOv5.In the ablation experiment, it was also discovered that while the Fastnet module and the CSghost module improved the precision of the original YOLOv5 baseline model, they caused a decrease in the mAP@.5-.95 metric. However, the improvement of the wIoUv3 loss function significantly mitigated the decline of the mAP@.5-.95 metric.

Eerie new drone footage has for the first time revealed the extent of the damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant 13 years on from its meltdown. The plant's operators, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, released 12 photos from inside the site, which are the first ever images from inside the main structural support called the pedestal in the hardest-hit reactor's primary containment vessel, an area directly under the reactor's core. Officials had long hoped to reach the area to examine the core and melted nuclear fuel which dripped there when the plant's cooling systems were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The high-definition color images captured by the drones show brown objects with various shapes and sizes dangling from various locations in the pedestal. Parts of the control-rod drive mechanism, which controls the nuclear chain reaction, and other equipment attached to the core were dislodged by the drones. The Fukushima disaster was one of the world's most devastating nuclear mishaps The plant's operators, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, released 12 photos from inside the site TEPCO officials said they were unable to tell from the images whether the dangling lumps were melted fuel or melted equipment without obtaining other data such as radiation levels.

The observation of the advancing and retreating pattern of polar sea ice cover stands as a vital indicator of global warming. This research aims to develop a robust, effective, and scalable system for classifying polar sea ice as thick/snow-covered, young/thin, or open water using Sentinel-2 (S2) images. Since the S2 satellite is actively capturing high-resolution imagery over the earth's surface, there are lots of images that need to be classified. One major obstacle is the absence of labeled S2 training data (images) to act as the ground truth. We demonstrate a scalable and accurate method for segmenting and automatically labeling S2 images using carefully determined color thresholds. We employ a parallel workflow using PySpark to scale and achieve 9-fold data loading and 16-fold map-reduce speedup on auto-labeling S2 images based on thin cloud and shadow-filtered color-based segmentation to generate label data. The auto-labeled data generated from this process are then employed to train a U-Net machine learning model, resulting in good classification accuracy. As training the U-Net classification model is computationally heavy and time-consuming, we distribute the U-Net model training to scale it over 8 GPUs using the Horovod framework over a DGX cluster with a 7.21x speedup without affecting the accuracy of the model. Using the Antarctic's Ross Sea region as an example, the U-Net model trained on auto-labeled data achieves a classification accuracy of 98.97% for auto-labeled training datasets when the thin clouds and shadows from the S2 images are filtered out.