The significant fluctuations in stock index prices in recent years highlight the critical need for accurate forecasting to guide investment and financial strategies. This study introduces a novel composite forecasting framework that integrates variational mode decomposition (VMD), PatchTST, and adaptive scale-weighted layer (ASWL) to address these challenges. Utilizing datasets of four major stock indices--SP500, DJI, SSEC, and FTSE--from 2000 to 2024, the proposed method first decomposes the raw price series into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) using VMD. Each IMF is then modeled with PatchTST to capture temporal patterns effectively. The ASWL module is applied to incorporate scale information, enhancing prediction accuracy. The final forecast is derived by aggregating predictions from all IMFs. The VMD-PatchTST-ASWL framework demonstrates significant improvements in forecasting accuracy compared to traditional models, showing robust performance across different indices. This innovative approach provides a powerful tool for stock index price forecasting, with potential applications in various financial analysis and investment decision-making contexts.

While inverter-based distributed energy resources (DERs) play a crucial role in integrating renewable energy into the power system, they concurrently diminish the grid's system inertia, elevating the risk of frequency instabilities. Furthermore, smart inverters, interfaced via communication networks, pose a potential vulnerability to cyber threats if not diligently managed. To proactively fortify the power grid against sophisticated cyber attacks, we propose to employ reinforcement learning (RL) to identify potential threats and system vulnerabilities. This study concentrates on analyzing adversarial strategies for false data injection, specifically targeting smart inverters involved in primary frequency control. Our findings demonstrate that an RL agent can adeptly discern optimal false data injection methods to manipulate inverter settings, potentially causing catastrophic consequences.

Neuromorphic computing offers a transformative pathway to overcome the computational and energy challenges faced in deploying robotic localization and navigation systems at the edge. Visual place recognition, a critical component for navigation, is often hampered by the high resource demands of conventional systems, making them unsuitable for small-scale robotic platforms which still require to perform complex, long-range tasks. Although neuromorphic approaches offer potential for greater efficiency, real-time edge deployment remains constrained by the complexity and limited scalability of bio-realistic networks. Here, we demonstrate a neuromorphic localization system that performs accurate place recognition in up to 8km of traversal using models as small as 180 KB with 44k parameters, while consuming less than 1% of the energy required by conventional methods. Our Locational Encoding with Neuromorphic Systems (LENS) integrates spiking neural networks, an event-based dynamic vision sensor, and a neuromorphic processor within a single SPECK(TM) chip, enabling real-time, energy-efficient localization on a hexapod robot. LENS represents the first fully neuromorphic localization system capable of large-scale, on-device deployment, setting a new benchmark for energy efficient robotic place recognition.

A Ukrainian drone attack has set an oil depot in Russia's southern region of Rostov alight, the authorities said. On Wednesday, regional Governor Vasily Golubev confirmed the overnight strike, saying on the Telegram messaging app that firefighters were extinguishing the blaze at the depot in Rostov's Kamensky district, with no casualties reported. Russia's Ministry of Defence earlier said air defence units destroyed four drones over the region overnight, without mentioning the attack on the oil depot. Three tanks were burning at the oil depot after two drones fell in the area, according to the Baza Telegram channel, which is close to Russian security services. Ukraine's strike marked its latest attack on Russian oil and gas facilities in retaliation for attacks on its energy infrastructure.

This study conducts a comparative analysis of Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithm, applied to a 1-Degree of Freedom (DOF) Quanser Aero 2 system. Classical control techniques such as MPC and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) are widely used due to their theoretical foundation and practical effectiveness. However, with advancements in computational techniques and machine learning, DRL approaches like PPO have gained traction in solving optimal control problems through environment interaction. This paper systematically evaluates the dynamic response characteristics of PPO and MPC, comparing their performance, computational resource consumption, and implementation complexity. Experimental results show that while LQR achieves the best steady-state accuracy, PPO excels in rise-time and adaptability, making it a promising approach for applications requiring rapid response and adaptability. Additionally, we have established a baseline for future RL-related research on this specific testbed. We also discuss the strengths and limitations of each control strategy, providing recommendations for selecting appropriate controllers for real-world scenarios.

We introduce RMMI, a novel reactive control framework for mobile manipulators operating in complex, static environments. Our approach leverages a neural Signed Distance Field (SDF) to model intricate environment details and incorporates this representation as inequality constraints within a Quadratic Program (QP) to coordinate robot joint and base motion. A key contribution is the introduction of an active collision avoidance cost term that maximises the total robot distance to obstacles during the motion. We first evaluate our approach in a simulated reaching task, outperforming previous methods that rely on representing both the robot and the scene as a set of primitive geometries. Compared with the baseline, we improved the task success rate by 25% in total, which includes increases of 10% by using the active collision cost. We also demonstrate our approach on a real-world platform, showing its effectiveness in reaching target poses in cluttered and confined spaces using environment models built directly from sensor data. For additional details and experiment videos, visit https://rmmi.github.io/.

This onomasiological study uses diachronic word embeddings to explore how different words represented the same concepts over time, using historical word data from 1800 to 2000. We identify shifts in energy, transport, entertainment, and computing domains, revealing connections between language and societal changes. Our approach consisted in using diachronic word embeddings trained using word2vec with skipgram and aligning them using orthogonal Procrustes. We discuss possible difficulties linked to the relationships the method identifies. Moreover, we look at the ethical aspects of interpreting results, highlighting the need for expert insights to understand the method's significance.

This study explores integrating reinforcement learning (RL) with idealised climate models to address key parameterisation challenges in climate science. Current climate models rely on complex mathematical parameterisations to represent sub-grid scale processes, which can introduce substantial uncertainties. RL offers capabilities to enhance these parameterisation schemes, including direct interaction, handling sparse or delayed feedback, continuous online learning, and long-term optimisation. We evaluate the performance of eight RL algorithms on two idealised environments: one for temperature bias correction, another for radiative-convective equilibrium (RCE) imitating real-world computational constraints. Results show different RL approaches excel in different climate scenarios with exploration algorithms performing better in bias correction, while exploitation algorithms proving more effective for RCE. These findings support the potential of RL-based parameterisation schemes to be integrated into global climate models, improving accuracy and efficiency in capturing complex climate dynamics. Overall, this work represents an important first step towards leveraging RL to enhance climate model accuracy, critical for improving climate understanding and predictions. Code accessible at https://github.com/p3jitnath/climate-rl.

This paper critically examines the AI Act's provisions on climate-related transparency, highlighting significant gaps and challenges in its implementation. We identify key shortcomings, including the exclusion of energy consumption during AI inference, the lack of coverage for indirect greenhouse gas emissions from AI applications, and the lack of standard reporting methodology. The paper proposes a novel interpretation to bring inference-related energy use back within the Act's scope and advocates for public access to climate-related disclosures to foster market accountability and public scrutiny. Cumulative server level energy reporting is recommended as the most suitable method. We also suggests broader policy changes, including sustainability risk assessments and renewable energy targets, to better address AI's environmental impact.

To accurately compute data-based prediction of Hamiltonian systems, especially the long-term evolution of such systems, it is essential to utilize methods that preserve the structure of the equations over time. We consider a case that is particularly challenging for data-based methods: systems with interacting parts that do not reduce to pure momentum evolution. Such systems are essential in scientific computations. For example, any discretization of a continuum elastic rod can be viewed as interacting elements that can move and rotate in space, with each discrete element moving on the group of rotations and translations $SE(3)$. We develop a novel method of data-based computation and complete phase space learning of such systems. We follow the original framework of \emph{SympNets} (Jin et al, 2020) building the neural network from canonical phase space mappings, and transformations that preserve the Lie-Poisson structure (\emph{LPNets}) as in (Eldred et al, 2024). We derive a novel system of mappings that are built into neural networks for coupled systems. We call such networks Coupled Lie-Poisson Neural Networks, or \emph{CLPNets}. We consider increasingly complex examples for the applications of CLPNets: rotation of two rigid bodies about a common axis, the free rotation of two rigid bodies, and finally the evolution of two connected and interacting $SE(3)$ components. Our method preserves all Casimir invariants of each system to machine precision, irrespective of the quality of the training data, and preserves energy to high accuracy. Our method also shows good resistance to the curse of dimensionality, requiring only a few thousand data points for all cases studied, with the effective dimension varying from three to eighteen. Additionally, the method is highly economical in memory requirements, requiring only about 200 parameters for the most complex case considered.