Most evaluations of large language models focus on standard tasks such as factual question answering or short summarization. This research expands that scope in two directions: first, by comparing two retrieval strategies, Graph RAG, structured knowledge-graph based, and Advanced RAG, hybrid keyword-semantic search, for QA; and second, by evaluating whether LLMs can generate high quality non-traditional academic outputs, specifically slide decks and podcast scripts. We implemented a prototype combining Meta's LLaMA 3 70B open weight and OpenAI's GPT 4o mini API based. QA performance was evaluated using both human ratings across eleven quality dimensions and large language model judges for scalable cross validation. GPT 4o mini with Advanced RAG produced the most accurate responses. Graph RAG offered limited improvements and led to more hallucinations, partly due to its structural complexity and manual setup. Slide and podcast generation was tested with document grounded retrieval. GPT 4o mini again performed best, though LLaMA 3 showed promise in narrative coherence. Human reviewers were crucial for detecting layout and stylistic flaws, highlighting the need for combined human LLM evaluation in assessing emerging academic outputs.

The rapid advancement of humanoid robotics has intensified the need for robust and adaptable controllers to enable stable and efficient locomotion across diverse platforms. However, developing such controllers remains a significant challenge because existing solutions are tailored to specific robot designs, requiring extensive tuning of reward functions, physical parameters, and training hyperparameters for each embodiment. To address this challenge, we introduce H-Zero, a cross-humanoid locomotion pretraining pipeline that learns a generalizable humanoid base policy. We show that pretraining on a limited set of embodiments enables zero-shot and few-shot transfer to novel humanoid robots with minimal fine-tuning. Evaluations show that the pretrained policy maintains up to 81% of the full episode duration on unseen robots in simulation while enabling few-shot transfer to unseen humanoids and upright quadrupeds within 30 minutes of fine-tuning.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable abilities in a wide variety of reasoning and factual knowledge tasks (Achiam et al., 2023; Bubeck et al., 2023; Katz et al., 2024), but their large size makes inference expensive. With the advent of agentic systems that interact with the external world, LLMs are poised to become even more ubiquitous in science, technology, and society, but the tremendous inference cost presents a challenge for realizing the full potential of these agents. One way to quell the computational expense associated with LLM inference is to use small language models (SLMs). With orders of magnitude fewer parameters, SLMs are faster, cheaper, and easier to finetune for specialised skills like tool use, making them natural specialists using proprietary data or within agentic systems (Belcak et al., 2025). Training language models typically involves three stages: pre-training on large general-purpose corpora, supervised finetuning (SFT), and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) or from verifiable rewards (RLVR) (Ouyang et al., 2022).

This paper presents a scalable and fault-tolerant framework for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) mission management in complex and uncertain environments. The proposed approach addresses the computational bottleneck inherent in solving large-scale Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) by introducing a two-stage decomposition strategy. In the first stage, a factor-based algorithm partitions the global MDP into smaller, goal-specific sub-MDPs by leveraging domain-specific features such as goal priority, fault states, spatial layout, and energy constraints. In the second stage, a priority-based recombination algorithm solves each sub-MDP independently and integrates the results into a unified global policy using a meta-policy for conflict resolution. Importantly, we present a theoretical analysis showing that, under mild probabilistic independence assumptions, the combined policy is provably equivalent to the optimal global MDP policy. Our work advances artificial intelligence (AI) decision scalability by decomposing large MDPs into tractable subproblems with provable global equivalence. The proposed decomposition framework enhances the scalability of Markov Decision Processes, a cornerstone of sequential decision-making in artificial intelligence, enabling real-time policy updates for complex mission environments. Extensive simulations validate the effectiveness of our method, demonstrating orders-of-magnitude reduction in computation time without sacrificing mission reliability or policy optimality. The proposed framework establishes a practical and robust foundation for scalable decision-making in real-time UAV mission execution.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is gaining recognition as one of the key technological axes for next generation information retrieval, owing to its ability to mitigate the hallucination phenomenon in Large Language Models (LLMs)and effectively incorporate up-to-date information. However, specialized expertise is necessary to construct ahigh-quality retrieval system independently; moreover, RAGdemonstratesrelativelyslowerprocessing speeds compared to conventional pure retrieval systems because it involves both retrieval and generation stages. Accordingly, this study proposes SHRAG, a novel framework designed to facilitate the seamless integration of Information Retrieval and RAG while simultaneously securing precise retrieval performance. SHRAG utilizes a Large Language Model as a Query Strategist to automatically transform unstructured natural language queries into logically structured search queries, subsequently performing Boolean retrieval to emulate the search process of an expert human searcher. Furthermore, it incorporates multilingual query expansion and a multilingual embedding model, enabling it to perform efficient cross-lingual question answering within the multilingual dataset environment of the ScienceON Challenge. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method, combining logical retrieval capabilities and generative reasoning, can significantly enhance the accuracy and reliability of RAG systems. Furthermore, SHRAG movesbeyondconventionaldocument-centric retrieval methods, presenting the potential for a new search paradigm capable of providing direct and reliable responses to queries.

Demographic forecasting remains a fundamental challenge for policy planning in rapidly evolving nations such as India, where fertility transitions, policy interventions, and age structured dynamics interact in complex ways. In this study, we present a hybrid modelling framework that integrates policy-aware fertility functions into a Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN) enhanced with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks to capture physical constraints and temporal dependencies in population dynamics. The model is applied to India's age structured population from 2024 to 2054 under three fertility-policy scenarios: continuation of current fertility decline, stricter population control, and relaxed fertility promotion. The governing transport-reaction partial differential equation is formulated with India-specific demographic indicators, including age-specific fertility and mortality rates. PINNs embed the core population equation and policy-driven fertility changes, while LSTM layers improve long-term forecasting across decades. Results show that fertility policies substantially shape future age distribution, dependency ratios, and workforce size. Stricter controls intensify ageing and reduce labour force participation, whereas relaxed policies support workforce growth but increase population pressure. Our findings suggest that the hybrid LSTM-PINN is an effective approach for demographic forecasting, offering accuracy with interpretability. Beyond methodological novelty, this work provides actionable insights for India's demographic policy debates, highlighting the need for balanced fertility interventions to ensure sustainable socio-economic development.

Large reasoning models (LRMs) have garnered significant attention from researchers owing to their exceptional capability in addressing complex tasks. Motivated by the observed human-like behaviors in their reasoning processes, this paper introduces a comprehensive taxonomy to characterize atomic reasoning steps and probe the ``psyche'' of LRM intelligence. Specifically, it comprises five groups and seventeen categories derived from human mental processes, thereby grounding the understanding of LRMs in an interdisciplinary perspective. The taxonomy is then applied for an in-depth understanding of current LRMs, resulting in a distinct labeled dataset that comprises 277,534 atomic reasoning steps. Using this resource, we analyze contemporary LRMs and distill several actionable takeaways for improving training and post-training of reasoning models. Notably, our analysis reveals that prevailing post-answer ``double-checks'' (self-monitoring evaluations) are largely superficial and rarely yield substantive revisions. Thus, incentivizing comprehensive multi-step reflection, rather than simple self-monitoring, may offer a more effective path forward. To complement the taxonomy, an automatic annotation framework, named CAPO, is proposed to leverage large language models (LLMs) for generating the taxonomy-based annotations. Experimental results demonstrate that CAPO achieves higher consistency with human experts compared to baselines, facilitating a scalable and comprehensive analysis of LRMs from a human cognitive perspective. Together, the taxonomy, CAPO, and the derived insights provide a principled, scalable path toward understanding and advancing LRM reasoning.

Isolated digit classification has served as a motivating problem for decades of machine learning research. In real settings, numbers often occur as multiple digits, all written by the same person. Examples include ZIP Codes, handwritten check amounts, and appointment times. In this work, we leverage knowledge about the writers of NIST digit images to create more realistic benchmark multi-digit writer (MDW) data sets. As expected, we find that classifiers may perform well on isolated digits yet do poorly on multi-digit number recognition. If we want to solve real number recognition problems, additional advances are needed. The MDW benchmarks come with task-specific performance metrics that go beyond typical error calculations to more closely align with real-world impact. They also create opportunities to develop methods that can leverage task-specific knowledge to improve performance well beyond that of individual digit classification methods.

Fractional-order models provide an effective means of describing intrinsically time-dependent viscoelastic dynamics with few parameters, as these models can naturally capture memory effects. However, due to the unintuitive frequency-dependent coupling between the order of the fractional element and the other parameters, determining appropriate parameters for fractional-order models that yield high perceived realism remains a significant challenge. In this study, we propose a systematic means of determining the parameters of fractional-order viscoelastic models that optimizes the perceived realism of haptic rendering across general populations. First, we demonstrate that the parameters of fractional-order models can be effectively optimized through active learning, via qualitative feedback-based human-in-the-loop (HiL) optimizations, to ensure consistently high realism ratings for each individual. Second, we propose a rigorous method to combine HiL optimization results to form an aggregate perceptual map trained on the entire dataset and demonstrate the selection of population-level optimal parameters from this representation that are broadly perceived as realistic across general populations. Finally, we provide evidence of the effectiveness of the generalized fractional-order viscoelastic model parameters by characterizing their perceived realism through human-subject experiments. Overall, generalized fractional-order viscoelastic models established through the proposed HiL optimization and aggregation approach possess the potential to significantly improve the sim-to-real transition performance of medical training simulators. Index T erms--Viscoelastic materials, fractional-order standard linear solid model, haptic rendering, human-in-the-loop optimization, perceived realism, and medical training simulators.

When solving tasks in the field of natural language processing, we sometimes need dictionary tools, such as lexicons, word form dictionaries or knowledge bases. However, the availability of dictionary data is insufficient in many languages, especially in the case of low resourced languages. In this article, we introduce a new conceptual dictionary for the Slovak language as the first linguistic tool of this kind. Since Slovak language is a language with limited linguistic resources and there are currently not available any machine-readable linguistic data sources with a sufficiently large volume of data, many tasks which require automated processing of Slovak text achieve weaker results compared to other languages and are almost impossible to solve.