Archetypal analysis (AA) was originally proposed in 1994 by Adele Cutler and Leo Breiman as a computational procedure to extract the distinct aspects called archetypes in observations with each observational record approximated as a mixture (i.e., convex combination) of these archetypes. AA thereby provides straightforward, interpretable, and explainable representations for feature extraction and dimensionality reduction, facilitating the understanding of the structure of high-dimensional data with wide applications throughout the sciences. However, AA also faces challenges, particularly as the associated optimization problem is non-convex. This survey provides researchers and data mining practitioners an overview of methodologies and opportunities that AA has to offer surveying the many applications of AA across disparate fields of science, as well as best practices for modeling data using AA and limitations. The survey concludes by explaining important future research directions concerning AA.

Adoption of AI driven techniques in public services remains low due to challenges related to accuracy and speed of information at population scale. Computer vision techniques for traffic monitoring have not gained much popularity despite their relative strength in areas such as autonomous driving. Despite large number of academic methods for Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems, very few provide an end to end solution for patrolling in the city. This paper presents a novel prototype for a low power GPU based patrolling system to be deployed in an urban environment on surveillance vehicles for automated vehicle detection, recognition and tracking. In this work, we propose a complete ALPR system for Singapore license plates having both single and double line creating our own YOLO based network. We focus on unconstrained capture scenarios as would be the case in real world application, where the license plate (LP) might be considerably distorted due to oblique views. In this work, we first detect the license plate from the full image using RFB-Net and rectify multiple distorted license plates in a single image. After that, the detected license plate image is fed to our network for character recognition. We evaluate the performance of our proposed system on a newly built dataset covering more than 16,000 images. The system was able to correctly detect license plates with 86\% precision and recognize characters of a license plate in 67\% of the test set, and 89\% accuracy with one incorrect character (partial match). We also test latency of our system and achieve 64FPS on Tesla P4 GPU

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become essential for analyzing complex data and solving highly-challenging tasks. It is being applied across numerous disciplines beyond computer science, including Food Engineering, where there is a growing demand for accurate and trustworthy predictions to meet stringent food quality standards. However, this requires increasingly complex AI models, raising reliability concerns. In response, eXplainable AI (XAI) has emerged to provide insights into AI decision-making, aiding model interpretation by developers and users. Nevertheless, XAI remains underutilized in Food Engineering, limiting model reliability. For instance, in food quality control, AI models using spectral imaging can detect contaminants or assess freshness levels, but their opaque decision-making process hinders adoption. XAI techniques such as SHAP (Shapley Additive Explanations) and Grad-CAM (Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping) can pinpoint which spectral wavelengths or image regions contribute most to a prediction, enhancing transparency and aiding quality control inspectors in verifying AI-generated assessments. This survey presents a taxonomy for classifying food quality research using XAI techniques, organized by data types and explanation methods, to guide researchers in choosing suitable approaches. We also highlight trends, challenges, and opportunities to encourage the adoption of XAI in Food Engineering.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as an effective paradigm for generating contextually accurate answers by integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) with retrieval mechanisms. However, in legal contexts, users frequently reference norms by their labels or nicknames (e.g., Article 5 of the Constitution or Consumer Defense Code (CDC)), rather than by their content, posing challenges for traditional RAG approaches that rely solely on semantic embeddings of text. Furthermore, legal texts themselves heavily rely on explicit cross-references (e.g., "pursuant to Article 34") that function as pointers. Both scenarios pose challenges for traditional RAG approaches that rely solely on semantic embeddings of text, often failing to retrieve the necessary referenced content. This paper introduces Poly-Vector Retrieval, a method assigning multiple distinct embeddings to each legal provision: one embedding captures the content (the full text), another captures the label (the identifier or proper name), and optionally additional embeddings capture alternative denominations. Inspired by Frege's distinction between Sense and Reference, this poly-vector retrieval approach treats labels, identifiers and reference markers as rigid designators and content embeddings as carriers of semantic substance. Experiments on the Brazilian Federal Constitution demonstrate that Poly-Vector Retrieval significantly improves retrieval accuracy for label-centric queries and potential to resolve internal and external cross-references, without compromising performance on purely semantic queries. The study discusses philosophical and practical implications of explicitly separating reference from content in vector embeddings and proposes future research directions for applying this approach to broader legal datasets and other domains characterized by explicit reference identifiers.

Large language models (LLMs) are transforming global decision-making and societal systems by processing diverse data at unprecedented scales. However, their potential to homogenize human values poses critical risks, similar to biodiversity loss undermining ecological resilience. Rooted in the ancient Greek concept of ethos, meaning both individual character and the shared moral fabric of communities, EthosGPT draws on a tradition that spans from Aristotle's virtue ethics to Adam Smith's moral sentiments as the ethical foundation of economic cooperation. These traditions underscore the vital role of value diversity in fostering social trust, institutional legitimacy, and long-term prosperity. EthosGPT addresses the challenge of value homogenization by introducing an open-source framework for mapping and evaluating LLMs within a global scale of human values. Using international survey data on cultural indices, prompt-based assessments, and comparative statistical analyses, EthosGPT reveals both the adaptability and biases of LLMs across regions and cultures. It offers actionable insights for developing inclusive LLMs, such as diversifying training data and preserving endangered cultural heritage to ensure representation in AI systems. These contributions align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), SDG 11.4 (Cultural Heritage Preservation), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). Through interdisciplinary collaboration, EthosGPT promotes AI systems that are both technically robust and ethically inclusive, advancing value plurality as a cornerstone for sustainable and equitable futures.

Anthropic announced that its Claude AI can integrate with Google Workspace. This tie-in allows the AI assistant to access any information in Gmail, Google Documents and Google Calendar. Enterprise-level customers even get a special cataloguing option for Documents that aims to offer even better speed and accuracy when retrieving information. This update could make Claude more helpful when it comes to using the chatbot for scheduling or accessing information within the Google ecosystem. The blog post with the announcement specified that the Enterprise option comes with special security controls for confidentiality, but doesn't detail if or how other users might be able to keep Claude from accessing sensitive information that might be stored in an email or document.

In today's globalized world, there are increasing opportunities for individuals to communicate using a common non-native language (lingua franca). Non-native speakers often have opportunities to listen to foreign languages, but may not comprehend them as fully as native speakers do. To aid real-time comprehension, live transcription of subtitles is frequently used in everyday life (e.g., during Zoom conversations, watching YouTube videos, or on social networking sites). However, simultaneously reading subtitles while listening can increase cognitive load. In this study, we propose Dynamik, a system that reduces cognitive load during reading by decreasing the size of less important words and enlarging important ones, thereby enhancing sentence contrast. Our results indicate that Dynamik can reduce certain aspects of cognitive load, specifically, participants' perceived performance and effort among individuals with low proficiency in English, as well as enhance the users' sense of comprehension, especially among people with low English ability. We further discuss our methods' applicability to other languages and potential improvements and further research directions.

Background: Spatial transcriptomics have emerged as a powerful tool in biomedical research because of its ability to capture both the spatial contexts and abundance of the complete RNA transcript profile in organs of interest. However, limitations of the technology such as the relatively low resolution and comparatively insufficient sequencing depth make it difficult to reliably extract real biological signals from these data. To alleviate this challenge, we propose a novel transfer learning framework, referred to as TransST, to adaptively leverage the cell-labeled information from external sources in inferring cell-level heterogeneity of a target spatial transcriptomics data. Results: Applications in several real studies as well as a number of simulation settings show that our approach significantly improves existing techniques. For example, in the breast cancer study, TransST successfully identifies five biologically meaningful cell clusters, including the two subgroups of cancer in situ and invasive cancer; in addition, only TransST is able to separate the adipose tissues from the connective issues among all the studied methods. Conclusions: In summary, the proposed method TransST is both effective and robust in identifying cell subclusters and detecting corresponding driving biomarkers in spatial transcriptomics data.

--This paper describes the approach used by T eam UruBots for participation in the 2025 RoboCup Rescue Robot League competition. Our team aims to participate for the first time in this competition at RoboCup, using experience learned from previous competitions and research. We present our vehicle and our approach to tackle the task of detecting and finding victims in search and rescue environments. Our approach contains known topics in robotics, such as ROS, SLAM, Human Robot Interaction and segmentation and perception. Our proposed approach is open source, available to the RoboCup Rescue community, where we aim to learn and contribute to the league.

Benchmarking is a fundamental practice in machine learning (ML) for comparing the performance of classification algorithms. However, traditional evaluation methods often overlook a critical aspect: the joint consideration of dataset complexity and an algorithm's ability to generalize. Without this dual perspective, assessments may favor models that perform well on easy instances while failing to capture their true robustness. To address this limitation, this study introduces a novel evaluation methodology that combines Item Response Theory (IRT) with the Glicko-2 rating system, originally developed to measure player strength in competitive games. IRT assesses classifier ability based on performance over difficult instances, while Glicko-2 updates performance metrics - such as rating, deviation, and volatility - via simulated tournaments between classifiers. This combined approach provides a fairer and more nuanced measure of algorithm capability. A case study using the OpenML-CC18 benchmark showed that only 15% of the datasets are truly challenging and that a reduced subset with 50% of the original datasets offers comparable evaluation power. Among the algorithms tested, Random Forest achieved the highest ability score. The results highlight the importance of improving benchmark design by focusing on dataset quality and adopting evaluation strategies that reflect both difficulty and classifier proficiency.